[Imc] steering group minutes 2/9/01

[Paul Riismandel]

At 02:50 PM 12/10/2001 -0600, John Wason wrote:
>I don't know if I get to have an opinion on any of this since I didn't
>attend the Steering Group meeting?  As you have probably guessed by now, I'm
>gonna express a couple anyway.
John, everybody gets to have an opinion, but it seems that deliberation 
works best face-to-face, so I recommend that you do attend the next 
Steering Meeting if you want to be sure you can hear and be heard.

>I saw the subsequent e-mails on this.  What if a person were limited to one
>non-commercial post per day?  Would that be a significant problem?  Is it
>technically feasible?
>
>I'm curious how you monitor the frequency of posts without logging the posts
>and somehow having the computer count them.

When people sign their posts, like Mssrs. Meade and Larrabee, it's pretty 
easy to track.  We have no way to track those who change pseudonyms.


>At any rate, I can't imagine that one non-commercial post per day would
>overwhelm the UC-IMC.  And that's a simple, equitable guideline that doesn't
>restrict content, other than the "non-commercial" requirement.
The issue isn't overwhelming the system but instead making the Newswire 
useful.  If a visitor has to hunt through a mass of mostly cross-posted 
content of little local interest that doesn't make much effort at reporting 
on news of some sort, then we look like a site only useful to find content 
posted everywhere and rambling manifestos.  We don't want stuff posted by 
local citizen-journalists to be obscured by a flood of stuff mostly from 
somewhere else and being posted across the system, as it serves as both a 
disincentive to reading and posting to our site.

Currently there are four days worth of postings on the Newswire portion of 
the website front page.  If someone were to post once per day, then s/he 
would have a total of 4 posts out of 20 displayed on the Newswire.  If it's 
two people, then 8 out of 20, and so on. Pretty quick it looks like there 
are only a handful of authors, which starts to make it look like an 
exclusive club.  Hence the desire to find some balance between being open 
and also making sure there's useful space for everyone.

If there's twenty people in a room, there can be ten different quiet 
conversations.  If one person has a bullhorn, then you really only have one 
monologue.

I'll refer you to our current Website Appropriate Use Policy 
(http://urbana.indymedia.org/website_policy.php3):
"The newswire is primarily intended for the posting and discussion of news, 
opinions, ideas and experiences that relate to current events and news, 
particularly that of interest to people in the greater Urbana-Champaign 
area. The Newswire is especially intended to be available and useful to 
peoples, ideas and news that are overlooked or systematically excluded from 
the dominant media. These are necessarily broad categories of postings that 
include a wide diversity of approaches, however there are types of posts 
and posting behaviors that are not included.

"The newswire is a virtual commons that the IMC intends to be open fairly 
and equally to all who would want to use it. As a commons, there are basic 
ground rules that allow the commons to be fairly available and useful to as 
many people as possible. The principle guiding these rules is that the IMC 
discourages postings that compromise the availability and usefulness of the 
newswire as a commons and the IMC reserves the right to hide or remove such 
postings....

"The following are types of situations and posts which may be hidden by the 
IMC Steering Group, along with guidelines for determining what should be 
hidden....
·       Flooding or Spamming of Posts - this is when a single individual 
posts multiple times in a short period in a manner that indicates that the 
poster's purpose is to flood the newswire or push other posts off the front 
page of the IMC website, which typically only contains ten to twenty of the 
most recent posts. This type of posting behavior can only truly be 
identified after several occurrences, and depends heavily on the amount of 
volume of posts. It can be difficult to stop because posters can change 
screen names at a whim. Therefore the utmost care must be taken to make 
sure that only posts that are made by a known "spammer" are hidden.
·       Off-Topic Posts - this is perhaps the most difficult category of 
inappropriate posts to judge, since the IMC Newswire intends to be a forum 
that is open to a broad range of topics and ideas. Nonetheless there are 
posts that are baldly and clearly inappropriate, whose purpose seems 
clearly to be other than informing, educating or adding to a public 
discourse. In the worst cases their appearance on the IMC Newswire may 
indeed discourage other visitors from using the site. Isolated posts are 
typically not problematic, and so the problem of off-topic posts is usually 
related to flooding or spamming. Therefore the frequency of off-topic posts 
of a particular type should be considered when deciding whether to hide them. "

--Paul





> >issue 2:
> >Whether to log emails of Bobby Meade; people tend to hope he'll go away.
> >but he seems not to be
> >
> >discussion continues (too difficult to take notes on, sorry) and is
> >eventually tabled. Further discussion on the
> >IP logging issue at the tech meeting 6-7 Wednesday.
>
>Just one question and one comment here.
>
>Question:  Is it possible to log ONLY Bobby Meade's posts and not 
>everyone's?
>
>Comment: If we log everyone's, I have a real problem with it.  Personally,
>I'm more afraid of the FBI than I am of Bobby Meade.  If Bobby Meade shows
>up at the UC-IMC with a shotgun, just give me a call.  I'll come over and
>pretend to be M.L.  I'm being grandiose here - it would be better to call
>the local cops, of course - but I'm being grandiose for a reason.  I'll take
>the risk of Bobby Meade showing up before I'll take the risk of having the
>sources of all the posts on our web site accessible to any government agency
>that feels like looking at them.  That's MY paranoia, not Bobby Meade.
>
>John
>
>_______________________________________________
>IMC mailing list
>IMC at urbana.indymedia.org
>http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/imc
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/imc/attachments/20011210/71bad241/attachment.html>