[IMC-US-tech] Greetings and first thoughts

[max]

Ana-
good to have you on this list!

we use dada at the michiganIMC and I've found it be solid: reliable 
(ben you can correct me on this), with an editorial interface that is 
powerful and easy to use (once you figure it out).  Something else good 
about dada is that it is a modular design, which means that you can 
pick and choose which features you want to use, and if we have some 
willing programmers, presumably add features as we see fit.  in 
Michigan, for example, we've disabled the media gallery, because we 
found that people were posting pictures without text that nobody got to 
see. we encourage people to post pictures on the newswire now.
dada works with the radicalendar (radicalendar.org) - you can have a 
small box show up on the front page with today's events (we have that 
feature active, as does baltimore, and probably others that I don't 
know offhand).  check out http://www.radicalendar.org/group/michiganimc 
for what our calendar looks like.

there are several ways to make features using dada.  the one that 
cancun was utilizing, I assume, was the "promotion by rating" option.  
this means that if a newswire article gets a high rating by visitors to 
the site, it is automatically submitted for feature-hood.  we have it 
set up in a modified consensus form - three editors need to vote 
positive without any of them dissenting in order to put up a feature.  
this works well for us because we have only three editors that are in 
constant communication.  it would be really easy to set it up similarly 
to the global site: discussion about features on an email list, then 
after a specified amount of time (global is six hours), anyone with 
access can put up the feature.

additionally, it's easy to write in the dense hyper-link form that the 
portal site generally uses.  for an example, check out michiganimc.org 
and look at the 'rahul mahajan visits michigan' article.  I also like 
dada because it's easily customizable in terms of design (michigan has 
a much calmer look than cancun or UC-IMC, for example, all using dada), 
and I think it's important that our site looks awesome, because the 
potential audience is going to be huge.

hopefully some techies will chime in about these issues.  I've also 
cc'ed to spud, who wrote the dadaIMC code.

max

On Monday, September 22, 2003, at 03:04 PM, Ana wrote:

> Hi y'all
>
> my name is Ana and i am with the NYC IMC. I am nothing short of 
> extreeeemly excited about this project. And I could go on forever 
> about why I think it is so crucial to changing the political dialogue 
> in this country. But Ill spare you, for now. :-)) This email will be 
> long enough with my thoughts on what I think it should look like and 
> function as.
>
> First off, I am not a techie. And I havent had too much experience 
> with using codes other than Active 0.0. (yes, painful!)
>
>  I did spend quite a bit of time on the Cancun site however, which 
> runs dada, and as a user i can say it was a pleasurable experience. (I 
> have no idea what the navigating the back end is like.) I especially 
> liked the media gallery and the categorized newswire. But the features 
> column seemed pretty useless to me and the design was way too busy for 
> my taste. How easy is it to take an existing code like dada and tweak 
> it to our tastes? is that something we have energy for at all?
>
> The four most important things I'd like to see in my dream us.indy 
> site are:
>
> - a tailored design for a (hopefully) tailored code
> - a manually uploadable features column much like the global site
> - a newswire that syndicates features from all participating IMCs
> - a categorized newswire (news, commentary, announcements, etc)
> - a categorized archive by issue (environmentalism, racial profiling, 
> war on the poor, prison industrial complex, etc)
> - a media gallery (much like cancuns's with easy to find rich media 
> files) or pages dedicated to inter-imc video, audio, photo and print 
> work
> - a chat room
> - a calendar
> - a "how to get involved in or otherwise support your local imc" 
> directory
> - a links page to non-imc radical media groups
>
> The #1 most important thing is what the features column looks like. If 
> its an automated thing then I dont think it will be very effective. I 
> know I never look at center columns that auto-generate. To me, one of 
> the best characteristics of indymedia sites are the hand-made features 
> that draw the reader in, and, with the use of hyper links imbedded in 
> the text, are able to connect the dots between seemingly disparate 
> issues. For example, how does the patriot act effect librarians, drug 
> dealers, immigrants and plowshare activists all in the same breath? 
> You'de be hard pressed to find any one article that does that 
> anywhere. But you can find it on a feature on the global page because 
> of our crafted hyper-linked text. thats the kind of stuff id like to 
> see us producing on our front page, always linking back to local IMCs 
> or other independent organizations putting out crucial info.
>
> So, those are my thoughts to throw out there as a starting point. Id 
> love to hear what other visions are out there and what is technically 
> possible with what we got.
>
> thanks!
> ana
>
> _______________________________________________
> IMC-US-tech mailing list
> IMC-US-tech at lists.cu.groogroo.com
> http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/imc-us-tech
>