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At 02:50 PM 12/10/2001 -0600, John Wason wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite cite>I don't know if I get to have an opinion on
any of this since I didn't<br>
attend the Steering Group meeting? As you have probably guessed by
now, I'm<br>
gonna express a couple anyway.<br>
</blockquote>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. <br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite cite>I saw the subsequent e-mails on this.
What if a person were limited to one<br>
non-commercial post per day? Would that be a significant
problem? Is it<br>
technically feasible?<br>
<br>
I'm curious how you monitor the frequency of posts without logging the
posts<br>
and somehow having the computer count them.</blockquote><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite cite>At any rate, I can't imagine that one
non-commercial post per day would<br>
overwhelm the UC-IMC. And that's a simple, equitable guideline that
doesn't<br>
restrict content, other than the "non-commercial"
requirement.<br>
</blockquote>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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
I'll refer you to our current Website Appropriate Use Policy
(<a href="http://urbana.indymedia.org/website_policy.php3" eudora="autourl">http://urbana.indymedia.org/website_policy.php3</a>):<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"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....<br>
<br>
"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....<br>
<font face="Symbol">·<x-tab> </x-tab></font><b>Flooding
or Spamming of Posts</b> - 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. <br>
<font face="Symbol">·<x-tab> </x-tab></font><b>Off-Topic
Posts</b> - 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.
"<br>
<br>
--Paul<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite cite>>issue 2:<br>
>Whether to log emails of Bobby Meade; people tend to hope he'll go
away.<br>
>but he seems not to be<br>
><br>
>discussion continues (too difficult to take notes on, sorry) and
is<br>
>eventually tabled. Further discussion on the<br>
>IP logging issue at the tech meeting 6-7 Wednesday.<br>
<br>
Just one question and one comment here. <br>
<br>
Question: Is it possible to log ONLY Bobby Meade's posts and not
everyone's? <br>
<br>
Comment: If we log everyone's, I have a real problem with it.
Personally,<br>
I'm more afraid of the FBI than I am of Bobby Meade. If Bobby Meade
shows<br>
up at the UC-IMC with a shotgun, just give me a call. I'll come
over and<br>
pretend to be M.L. I'm being grandiose here - it would be better to
call<br>
the local cops, of course - but I'm being grandiose for a reason.
I'll take<br>
the risk of Bobby Meade showing up before I'll take the risk of having
the<br>
sources of all the posts on our web site accessible to any government
agency<br>
that feels like looking at them. That's MY paranoia, not Bobby
Meade.<br>
<br>
John<br>
<br>
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