[Imc-web-editor] Re: [UCIMC-Tech] Re: [Imc-web]
Re: [Imc-production] Steering Agenda Item: the IMC website
Mike Lehman
rebelmike at earthlink.net
Thu Jan 29 23:57:01 CST 2009
A few more thoughts...
Danielle Chynoweth wrote:
> Thank you Chris, Stephen, and Josh for your thoughtful comments.
> Reading this thread makes me happy to be involved in the IMC - not
> because we are without problems - but because of the articulateness
> and care of the people involved.
>
> I would like to advocate for a few things with the website:
>
> *Short term:*
> 1) The "Local Interest," "Global Newswire," and "Upcoming Events," at
> the top doesn't work. It really obscures our locally produced and
> featured stories. And a lot of it is bizarre conspiracy theory, and
> sometimes outright antisemitism. I think a right hand bar with events
> on top, local wire, and then global wire would work, just like it
> shows on secondary pages.
I think there's some confusion here. The "Global Newswire" at the top
middle is our own and AFAIK, doesn't have any anti-Semitism floating
through that lasts more the very temporarily. Lower down on the left
side is the www.indymedia.org Newswire, which unfortunately has less
rigid vetting for such things.
This is not to say that the top bar can't be improved. I thought the
suggestion to trim it down to the first four (or even three stories)
also visible on the right side menu was a good one, but whatever works
for everybody is OK by me.
>
> 2) Past events should not display, only future ones.
>
Truncating the Upcoming Events like the other two at the top may be an
easier hack than one that has to consider expired events. On the other
hand, I agree having this automatically resize as needed up to a set
limit of entires, say 6 or 7, would be cool if it's not a lot of trouble.
> 3) We need to recruit more web editors. Great local stuff gets
> written, but us few editors don't see it.
>
Hmm, local written or relevant stuff almost always gets moved up to the
Local Newswire if it isn't placed there by the author. Maybe we need
more editors, but what we really need is more reporters from the many
organizations associated in some form or fashion with the IMC to
remember to write up events as and after they've concluded. A good
example is the Lippman concert. I posted the announcement for it because
no one else had. It would've been really great if someone had written up
who came, reviewed Dave's performance, and noted that it raised more
than $200 for the IMC, etc. Unfortunately, I have a dissertation to write...
I know that a "Dummies Guide to Posting on UC IMC" or something similar
is floating around and presume this will get in the mix as Jason K.
joins Nicole and Steve in getting some of our infrastructure in better
shape. Getting this in as many people's hands as possible will help
encourage more authors and reporters than anything else we can do.
> *Long term:*
> 1) Our front page needs to show us as an organization, not only a
> newswire. We should keep the newswire, with the changes above, as it,
> but put another front page on it, and bring headlines onto the front,
> alongside specific requests for help, targeted campaigns, and more
> information about our many programs.
I'm enthusiastic about this, provided it does not become static and
retains an obvious Newswire sector on the main page. I would hope that
people come here for news and info and think that remains important,
even as we need to do a better job at promoting the many programs at UC
IMC, as well as reporting the local news. See my comments about the
Lippman event for more, but the existing design, while not perfect, is
very underutilized in a way that won't be changed by shifting the
Newswire around in whatever form or fashion that ends up taking. And
this has no obvious connection to our existing web editing policy...
>
> 2) Way too many comments get hidden. A number of legitimate posters
> have given up even trying to be part of the debate. We have stifled
> debate, in my opinion. There, I said it. Look at hidden comments
> yourself and see if it makes sense why they got hidden. I no longer
> consider the IMC website a free speech venue.
>
> - Danielle
>
Not sure exactly what's going on here, but suspect a discussion would
clarify things. I don't think there's been anything done to stifle
debate, although one former editor infamously thought we should operate
more like IP does. Given the coarse and reactionary nature of that sort
of discussion, I'm inclined to let IP rely on that for readers. My
reaction as to what we should do if that was important was that we
should set up a blog section to the website, especially so if there's
still some perceived shortage of a free speech venue on the web as a
whole. It's been formal policy since nearly the first days of UC IMC
that it is specifically NOT a "free speech venue" although the history
of this is very lengthy and more suited to a face-to-face conversation
than to email.
There technically is no "Hidden" comments section right now, at least it
comes up blank for me when I try to use the Hidden comments tab. I
presume this is something that will be addressed as the design is sorted
out from this initial build of updated Drupal. What serves this purpose
currently is the Approval Queue, which holds a number of what otherwise
be Hidden comments that may seem legit. However, most of the recent
comments found there are ones that were generated by the latest version
of the ad bot that's been a nuisance in recent weeks. These are properly
tagged as to what's going on. I'd be glad to explain what the tags on
them mean, if these aren't otherwise obvious.
There are also a few scattered comments from a very familiar anony
troll(s), for instance in the last week spinning talk that is clearly
racist in nature, which is crudely disguised as some expression of
concern about the Obama presidency. I'm not that hot on Obama myself,
but I think our policy on what to do with this is longstanding. Maybe we
want to ignore it in the future, but anyone can look it over right there
where it was originally posted by simply creating an account and using
it. It hasn't gone missing and is only a click away. If one wants to see
really aggressive and somewhat troublesome editing, I could suggest a
number of other IMCs who operate under policies that far and away exceed
anything done here. Not that we should not do better than that -- we do.
There's nothing really new about conduct of web editing policy for
dealing with this sort of stuff. I'm not sure how it can be determined
that a "number of legitimate posters have given up even trying to be
part of the debate." I do know that after the falling out between one
web editor and the rest of us two years ago, anonymous posting took a
dive, as well as posting from a number of registered users.The only real
difference between before and after was that news of the situation
created an perception of mistrust about the actual anonymity of the
site, which was clearly a violation of Indymedia principles that we
should be loathe to repeat.
If we need discussion to revise an existing consensus, I'm OK with that,
but just want to point out the existing consensus on this seems to have
worked for a variety of people involved in editing in the last 5 or 6
years, because it's been essentially unchanged over that period. The
website has had its ups and down in use and probably reflects more how
the website has been ignored institutionally, just like some other
aspects of our work have been that we've been working on lately.
Furthermore, it's a policy that withstood vetting by the IRS. True,
there is at least one disgruntled person out there, but I really don't
think that we're going to make whoever that is happy anyway.
Mike Lehman
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 6:37 PM, Nicole Pion <nicole.pion at gmail.com
> <mailto:nicole.pion at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I didn't take it that way either -and I'll only make one quick
> comment - I was the person who advocated against the side bar
> where the "Local, Global and Upcoming Events" feeds used to
> reside. That was a long, narrow bar and stories got lost if they
> were about 1/3 down the page. I'm really happy with how Josh
> changed this to the top - thank you. But, I see Chris' concern
> and perhaps we can shorten those top 3 items (like limiting to 4
> bullet points, for example). That way the feature stories are
> visible, but we don't short-change the "Local, Global and Upcoming
> Events."
>
> Nicole
>
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Stephen Fonzo
> <fonzo.stephen at gmail.com <mailto:fonzo.stephen at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Josh,
>
> I didn't take it that way at all, and in fact, I am glad that
> you shared your perspective and clarified these issues for
> us. I often worry that the things I write sound angry, too -
> no worries. I just don't want people at the IMC to think that
> it's your fault if the IMC site doesn't have everything they
> want. It helps that Chris has outlined specific requests.
>
> -Stephen
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Josh King <josh at ucimc.org
> <mailto:josh at ucimc.org>> wrote:
>
> Sorry, this sounds kind of pissy now that I go back and
> read it. It's really just a lot of tired, unconnected
> thoughts. In summary, I'm sorry that the website isn't
> everything that it could be, I'm working on it, and I
> should try harder to put systems in place to include
> others in the process.
>
>
> On 01/29/2009 08:19 AM, Josh King wrote:
>
> Hi Stephen, Chris,
>
> I just wanted to comment on a couple of things. First,
> I definitely want
> to expand the role of other people in the day-to-day
> administrative and
> monitoring aspects of the technical work at the IMC.
> It does, however,
> need to be done in a way that's more careful than
> giving a large pool of
> people root access. I can attest that even for someone
> like me that has
> spent a huge amount of time managing our systems and
> has the requisite
> skill set to design a large chunk of how everything
> fits together at the
> IMC, it's not too difficult to do something that
> screws up something big
> for everyone. The need for a careful, managed solution
> requires systems
> to be in place and structured in such a way as to
> allow that kind of
> careful management, and unfortunately putting those
> kinds of systems in
> place is one thing that I've spent a colossal amount
> of time on over the
> past year or so. I've started to reach out to certain
> people for them to
> help take over some day-to-day tasks, and this will
> happen even more as
> I continue to work on the IMC's websites and migrate
> the email server
> this weekend. But for Tech at least, it's going to be
> pulling a small
> number of people from an even smaller pool, as I don't
> currently have a
> lot of time for training people in server
> administration and web design,
> and so have to work with the people that I already
> know have the skills
>
> Chris, in response to your specific concerns, there
> was a problem this
> morning that Dan fixed where the partition on the
> offsite server where
> the website is stored filled up, and I'll be working
> with him to make
> sure it doesn't happen again. This may be why you had
> the problems
> you've had in 2, 4, and 5, as 2 and 5 I've never
> experienced. Featured
> stories should be at the top, except for the logo
> image, top menu, and
> the blocks "Local Interest," "Global Newswire," and
> "Upcoming Events,"
> which I placed up there in response to complaints that
> they were too
> difficult to find. It is true that there are bugs with
> the site,
> specifically one pertaining to uploading images and
> another with the
> WYSIWYG editor. I'm working on those and on a further
> redesign of the
> site, as the current version is a rough upgrade to
> improve performance
> and allow for anonymous commenting again, rather than
> an effort to
> significantly extend the functionality of the site as
> it existed before.
> It is true that there seems to be no "Home" link,
> though you can click
> on the logo image to return to the front page, and now
> that it's been
> pointed out I'll add one.
>
> It's clearly unacceptable for the IMC not to have a
> functional online
> publishing presence, especially if it's felt that the
> design and
> functionality of that presence is the main reason for
> lower traffic. I
> should probably have been more diligent about making
> sure that people
> interested in working on modifying the website get the
> shell access they
> require, but that's out of only 1 or 2 people who have
> asked. I'm not a
> great drupal developer, but since we're unlikely to
> have tons of drupal
> developers with lots of time on their hands popping
> out the woodwork,
> I'll try and set aside some of my other tasks and work
> between now and
> the next steering meeting on creating another
> potential redesign and
> improvement of the site to show.
>
> I'm thinking of implementing some kind of online to-do
> list for myself
> that people can submit to. My workload has gotten to
> the point where I
> can't always even keep track of all of the different
> things I have to
> do, and it might provide a more centralized way to
> keep track of things.
>
> I definitely agree with Stephen about the poor level
> of volunteerism in
> the more support or infrastructure oriented groups.
> Stephen and Nicole
> have done a great job of trying to foster that in the
> Production and
> Community Connections groups to some avail, me and
> Tech not so much.
> Partly this is just because if someone comes in and
> says they want to
> get involved doing Tech work, unless there's a
> specific project they
> already have in mind there's not a lot I can have them
> do without fairly
> extensive training. And just the fact that someone
> knows how to do
> something doesn't foster the trust that I need to have
> before I just
> hand over the keys to something that everyone in the
> IMC depends on. So
> I've been trying to come up with a better system of
> doing this, and I'm
> working on it, but it takes time.
>
> Anyway, I'll try and fix up the website some more.
>
> On 01/29/2009 12:27 PM, Stephen Fonzo wrote:
>
> I'm forwarding this to Tech and Web - not to
> bother Josh with complaints
> - but to let him know that others are thinking of
> ways to distribute his
> volunteerism to others at the IMC.
>
> Josh has significantly improved the site from its
> former state, in my
> opinion, though I agree with Chris that there are
> still problems with
> posting and accessing content. We have two
> approaches to making further
> improvements to the site or to other things at the
> IMC - a) keep saying,
> "I don't know - ask Josh;" or b) figuring out ways
> to spread tasks and
> knowledge so individuals can address needs as they
> arise.
>
> I believe the root problem is analogous to other
> working groups'
> difficulties at the IMC, namely, that for many
> tasks, the volunteer body
> of the IMC relies on one or two people. So for
> Tech and Web, it is
> pretty much Josh, Dan, and Mike; for Shows and
> Production it is pretty
> much me; for WRFU it is pretty much Noel; etc.
>
> Beyond everyone being strapped and focused heavily
> on keeping the
> building, raising money, and paying bills (all too
> common non-profit
> challenges), there are two reasons for these
> scenarios:
>
> 1) Volunteerism is generally weak at the IMC when
> it comes to anything
> that is not directly activist (in other words, the
> media and tech
> stuff). Books to Prisoners, Print, AWARE, Finance,
> and CUCPJ are all
> strong, focus on business/specific agenda, and
> rally around issues and
> deadlines. Perhaps the media/art-oriented groups
> need to learn from
> these other groups (who happen to have an older,
> more serious and
> experienced demographic, which is probably a
> factor). I will admit that
> due to the presence of VISTAs and especially the
> development work of
> Nicole, membership activity is indeed improving in
> some of the other
> groups, and we are starting once more to provide
> more in the space
> (Shows and Librarians are making great progress
> for such small groups
> and for such spotty histories). Will this continue
> and are our members
> aware?
>
> 2) Access, especially to Tech and Web
> infrastructure, is limited,
> creating a cycle in which Josh or Dan are often
> the ONLY people to
> contact about a given issue. As long as they are
> okay with this
> arrangement, I don't think we need to change the
> way we work - after
> all, I don't think Josh wants extra work by having
> to clean up messes
> that others less qualified than himself make while
> doing things on the
> server or databases. It is apparent that IMC
> members (myself included)
> cannot do all the things that Josh or Dan do, when
> it comes to
> web/internet work, but I don't know how much of
> that is due to our lack
> of skills, lack of access/mutual training, or
> both. I know it's tricky,
> because security is of top concern when dealing
> with technology. Access
> is less of a problem with Shows, Production, and
> WRFU, but I still get
> the impression that along with Web and Tech our
> work is considered
> either too specialized, difficult, unimportant or
> undesirable for
> volunteers to do - or even that we hold less clout
> or interest because
> our work supports activism and artistry but is not
> directly activist or
> artistic. This especially pains me when I am here
> to train and openly
> offer tutoring to those who would clearly rather
> just have me, Nicole,
> or someone else do the work.
>
> It is clear to me that we need to expand, even by
> a little, volunteerism
> and access to active members that are deemed
> trustworthy. I acknowledge
> that a lot of this will be difficult because it
> requires a shift in the
> culture of the IMC, which I do not think is
> "unhealthy" as one member
> said recently, but is perhaps stale at the moment.
> Josh, Nicole, and I
> are here to increase the sustainability and
> capacity of the
> organization(s) we work with, but I feel that
> there will be a vacuum if
> any one of us leaves, and I am concerned that we
> (and others at the IMC)
> are being relied upon rather than utilized. That
> would be fine if
> everyone at the IMC received a salary or stipend,
> or had clearly defined
> positions and authority, but it contradicts the
> consensus, volunteer,
> anarchist structures touted by members who have
> been here longer.
>
> I detest argument for argument's sake, and I have
> not said any of this
> to start a debate, to revel in exercising critical
> muscle, or to pretend
> that I know any better than anyone else how to
> proceed from here. I want
> to avoid the petty personal and intellectual
> politics that too often
> constrain groups like ours and divert
> conversations to the theoretical,
> and I merely make these suggestions so we can act
> practically upon them.
> We need to think about sustainability through
> shared institutional
> knowledge.
>
> -Stephen
>
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Christopher Evans
> <caevans2 at hotmail.com
> <mailto:caevans2 at hotmail.com>
> <mailto:caevans2 at hotmail.com
> <mailto:caevans2 at hotmail.com>>> wrote:
>
> By no means is this criticism of the IMC website
> intended to
> criticize the excellent effort and contributions
> of Josh King, who
> has worked very hard to maintain and upgrade the
> IMC's website.
>
> However, as one of the journalists who still
> regularly uses the
> site, I have to make a few comments about my
> current experiences
> with the site.
>
> 1) *hardly anyone ever posts* articles anymore,
> and hardly anyone
> ever comments to the few articles that do get
> posted. Shortly after
> the Brian Chesley articles posted by Brian Dolinar
> in March of 2008,
> the comments to articles have dropped
> dramatically. It used to be
> that a Brian Dolinar article could inspire 60 or
> more comments to an
> article. The inability to post Annonymously may
> have affected that,
> but even after the re-installment of Annonymous
> posting capability;
> hardly a response is given to what people post.
>
> 2) The site has become *difficult to see the
> featured articles*.
> They are not posted at the top of the page, but
> rather, are placed
> at the bottom of the page after the long scroll of
> international
> links to other IMC sites. To me, those links seem
> secondary for a
> site that offers local stories.
>
> 3) there is no *"Home" link *to get you back to
> the original page
> after you've navigated somewhere on the site.
>
> 4) the site is *unreliable*. This morning I was
> able to log on, but
> when I tried to respond to a comment, even though
> I was able to type
> in my text, the site would not upload it, and
> stayed in some kind of
> holding pattern. Finally, I tried to start over
> and now I can't even
> get to the IMC website.
>
> 5) there is *no side to side scroll bar *for the
> *calendar*. I can't
> see what is happening on the weekends at the IMC.
>
> I know Josh has tons of other duties and I know he
> has been very
> diligent in trying to improve the site for us.
> It's probably
> unrealistic for us to expect one person has the
> time to do the daily
> maintenance and designing of the site.
>
> I can only say that if the above is true for
> others, it might
> explain why one of the most dynamic sites for
> local news has become
> a silent graveyard for old articles.
>
> The IMC needs to decide if a website remains a
> viable avenue for
> news reporting and local IMC announcements, and if
> so, we need to
> make it as user-friendly as possible. If we have
> neither the time
> nor inclination to maintain this site, I will form
> my own blog on
> Illini Pundit and Smile Politely and assume that
> the tremendous
> history of the IMC website from 2003-2008 is over.
> thanks for listening to my rant.
> On behalf of Local Yocal,
> chris the building guy
>
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>
>
> --
> Stephen Fonzo
> Media Training Advisor
> AmeriCorps CTC VISTA
> Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
>
>
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>
> --
> Josh King
> --
> "I am an Anarchist not because I believe Anarchism is the
> final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final
> goal." -Rudolf Rocker
>
>
>
>
> --
> Stephen Fonzo
> Media Training Advisor
> AmeriCorps CTC VISTA
> Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
>
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>
>
>
> --
> Nicole Pion
> Outreach and Development Adviser
>
> AmeriCorps CTC VISTA
> Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
>
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