[Imc-web] Re: [Imc] Question about story on UCIMC home page.

[Mike Lehman]

Bill,
Thanks for passing along the message. Questions of this nature are best 
dealt with at the IMC-Web group address cc-ed on this reply. I've added 
the Bookkeeper list also, as Joy or someone else on it may be around 
during office hours this week in case they call back.

Just some background on this. This is the person(s) who apparently has 
their cap-lock key stuck and who frequently and unabashedly spams the 
IMC network with what is often multiple reposts of the same article. For 
some time, they were also posting this to the Local Newswire, which is 
when I started pulling the plug on this abusive posting behavior. There 
also seems to be an effort, despite the limited timeliness and content 
of the articles in question, to keep at least one of these articles 
always visible hanging on our newswire.

As a poor American who sometimes requires the services if an attorney, I 
am not unsympathetic to the issue. In this case, I do think the 
messenger severely detracts from any credible capability to do anything 
about the problem.

Unfortunately, as far as helping Mumia or anyone else, in the most 
recent set of messages -- because if one isn't annoying enough, you 
might as well send two -- there was nothing more than a vague appeal to 
send a "...A VERY SERIOUS MESSAGE OF PROTEST..." to Congress.

The current article under discussion is titled "INTERNATIONAL PROTEST 
WITH GOOGLE NEWS STORY..." but there is no link to take you to the story 
in question, making it difficult based on the thin info elsewhere in the 
article to even know what is being protested or what should be done 
about it. None of this would be a problem, if it hadn't already happened 
a hundred times or so here, as well as across the IMC network.

When there have been links posted in the past, they direct readers to 
LAWYERS FOR POOR AMERICANS (sorry Bill, but you didn't listen to him 
properly, you should always use all-caps ;-)  ), so my first assessment 
was that this irritating pattern was some form of link-pimping. Things 
have only gone downhill from there.

If anyone hears from this person again, you can direct them to send a 
message to imc-web at ucimc.org
and I'll be happy to discuss how to help them knock enough rough edges 
off to make these acceptable. After the first dozen times or so, my 
changing the all-caps headline to a more appropriate mix of caps and 
lower case did not seem to make a strong enough impression to effect any 
change. That and a few other minor tweaks could solve the issue, I suppose.

BTW, there's no need for them to establish an account to post or comment 
at UC IMC. This may be indicative they have problems beyond being able 
to unlock all-caps...
:-(
Mike Lehman

William Mullins wrote:
> I answered a call Sunday afternoon while at Books to Prisoners.  A man 
> from a group called Lawyers For Poor Americans wanted to know why the 
> story his group posted to the IMC page May 30th, "International Proest 
> of Google News Story Needs Your Support..." et cetera about the Mumia 
> Abu Jamal re-trial wasn't showing up on the IMC web site.
>  
> Members of his group seemed upset that they had to create a user name 
> and log-in to post a comment. 
>  
> I couldn't find the story myself.  I told him to try calling the IMC 
> during weekday hours and also told him I'd pass the message on to 
> whomever is moderating the web page.  (But I wasn't sure who's doing 
> that.)
>  
> Sorry...I didn't get a name.
>  
> Bill Mullins
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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