Indymedia UK - The regrettable move to pre-moderation

bristol | community | opinion/analysis Tuesday September 25, 2012 11:02 by Tony paralel at fastmail dot fm

In a recent exchange with a moderator at Indymedia UK it has been admitted that there has been a move toward a Pre-Moderation assumption rather than the Post-Moderation theory that was first established in the Seattle IMC policy that was the blueprint for the Indymedia Open Publishing idea. This has been done by way of a series of filters to posts and comments.
This results in fundamental questions being asked and needing a response from the collective. 

1 - Have these filters been approved by the UK IMC collective? If so where & 
when? 
2 - Do these filters work based on IP addresses? 
3 - Are these filters set to pick up any pattern in spam posts? 
4 - Have they been installed with any advice from trusted ISP such as 
Greennet with lots of experience in this area? 

There is a requirement here for a universally positive editorial quality control 
change would be to be recorded, displayed only to mods, moderation audit trail, with each moderator having their own sign-in so that if passwords are stolen or hacked everyone can see which needs changing. 
That would help destroy any suspicions that iffy, unaccountable, 
decisions are being made, which can spread distrust & redce solidarity 
in any collective. 

Just to remind people IMC UK still has a Seattle style Post Moderation 
editorial policy as set out here: 
 https://wiki.indymedia.org.uk/Editorial 

"Indymedia UK IMC is an open-publishing platform for news, issues, 
actions and analysis reporting on grassroots, non-corporate, 
non-commercial social justice, environmental and political issues. IMC 
UK is maintained by a network of media activists and groups. IMC stands 
for Independent media centre. 
IMC Mayday is dedicated to the open publishing ethos. This page explains 
how content on the site is generated and how you can contribute. 
IMC Mayday volunteers are moderating the site and collaborate in the 
production of features. Contents on the newswire and calendar are 
generated by anyone who wants to contribute. The open posting guidelines 
below have been created to ensure the integrity of the site. 
Occasionally we choose to hide postings offending the open posting 
guidelines. Because of the 'real time' nature of the newswire, it is not 
possible to monitor its contents 24 hours a day." 

And as we move ever further into the super-rich attack on the poor, and 
social unrest. Individuals' and local autonomous collectives' instant access to the newswire is only likely to become more urgent. The long term solution will be preventing spam arriving on the newswire in the first place rather than Pre-Moderation 


Indymedia is the property of those who contribute to it not those who moderate it.