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news report
 Thursday December 05, 2002 11:24 by AKIRA
 Now that the year is near an end and Indymedia Ireland has been going since early this year, perhaps it's to time to step back and look at what it has achieved and what it could achieve. Since it's inception earlier this year IMC Ireland has covered a vast array of activities and events around Ireland. A quick look through the newswire today and a reader of IMC Ireland will find a large number of articles on the upcoming anti-war activities of the weekend, interviews with peace activist Caoimhe Butterly and continuing coverage of the Carrickmines dispute. In the past year IMC Ireland shone brighter, giving much noted and praised coverage to the debacle of the police riot at the RTS party in May, giving public access to the news that Shannon airport has recently become a warport for the USAF to use as they wish and for covering activities such as Burlington through to the firefighter strike. No doubt IMC Ireland has been a great tool for activists in Ireland. Debate (and sadly much sniping) is an everyday feature of IMC Ireland with different groups, individuals and parties using it to get publicity for their activities or event they may be organising or party to. Much can be said about IMC Ireland. I am a regular reader, logging on three to four times a day to read the news from an activist/independent view point. But is IMC Ireland as popular with non political people as it is with me, an over political individual? In my opinion IMC Ireland has only gained relevance to those within or on the peripheral of the activist scene here in Ireland, this is quite evident if you take the time to read through the newswire from the last two weeks. This is the case with alot of IMC's. But isnt the IMC motto "Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth", then if so why does IMC Ireland offer no coverage of ordinary people's concerns and problems. The answer to this is simple, IMC Ireland as i said before is directly concerned and used by the activist community here in Ireland. While IMC Ireland has received some publicity through RTE using their footage or RTS no other publicity has been received nor been produced (to my knowledge) to attract people (ordinary people that is) to use IMC Ireland. Not only that, but the ordinary Jane Bloggs out there might find IMC Ireland a little overwhelming. The features section is rarely updated (i understand the problems with such a procedure as updating the features section, but i say this to hopefully entice people to join the "imc revolution", sadly i cant as im bogged dwon with work and college), the newswire is too long and hard to work through. Stories should be perhaps put into five categories (dublin, leinster, connaucht, ulster and munster, thus making people's lives much easier), a search feature for the site would go a long way, people trying to access the articles on Mayday have a long trek back, perhaps a function to allow the user to see more than 10 stories on the newsire would be welcomed, again making user's lives easier. These are just some points i have heard from people who use IMC Ireland for a period of maybe once a day, to once a week to once a month, to one guy who only used it once. Other points were taken, a friend of mine from college, whom i pointed in this direction found that he couldnt relate to the site, in his own words "you know me, im not political in the sense that i want to be in an organisation, but in the sense that i want to be involved, all i seen on that website was arguing among the different users", this is a great downfall of what should be an excellent site. The constant sniping, bickering and abuse (by some, you know who you are) on and of the newswire by different individuals(and groups) can be a major turn off for IMC virgins. So perhaps more news less advertisements, more news less bickering, more news less conspiracy theories? The IMC project in Ireland is young, the IMC project worldwide is young as well, but the Irish one is certainly one of the youngest, IMC users have alot to learn and those involved in IMC here have some changes, improvements or what not to make. But there is plenty of time to improve on what at the moment is a vital tool in the building of a truly equal world. For me the IMC Ireland website is part and parcel of my everyday, i'd be seriously stuck without it, hell Visual Basic Labs can be fun but you need a break, all i hope is to see it here in two years time, more open (to the general public) and w/more news. Lets just make sure it doesnt descend into a public sparring arena between the different groups in Ireland with nothing else. Long live IMC Ireland into the new year!
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Comments (28 of 28)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28The above excellent posting deserves some editorial comment from the webmasters and also some suggestions and proposals on how to achieve the original aims of this site.
I think people using indymedia need to recognise that the responsability for making sure the site is advertised and that the content includes a lot of relevant and up to date articles on Ireland of interest to 'joe public' is theirs rather then the editoral group.
The function of the editoral group is to make sure the technical site of the site keeps running and to remove material that is outside the guidelines. It's also to use material in the newswire to generate feature articles. It is not to go out, research and write interesting articles. While some on the editoral group may do this the whole point of indymedia is that YOU the reader do so.
So if you think there should be an article covering a particualr topic don't demand others write it for you. Sit down, do a bit of research and write it yourself.
Sorry for not adding this in the original article. I believe that many people are in the same rut as myself, unable to participate in the IMC Revolution directly due to geographic location, work, college etc.. For this reason i believe that the IMC crew (whatever title you guys go under) should take opinion on board and perhaps open up a forum on this site where direct debate could be carried out between the moderators of the site and the user, this would clear up such minefields as "why did you delete my posting" and would allow people to voice concerns about IMC Ireland and give suggestions...
that's all for me now
all the best
IMC needs a change of mindset from those who are readers - they need to get involved in producing content on an ongoing basis and using the publish button and open lists to get involved. We are not in charge or WEBMASTERS - in honesty there are 5-6 maybe up to 10 people who in an ongoing way deal in their spare time for free with publicising the site / monitoring newswire / dealing with technical issues / doing up features and coming up with content / holding open meetings / travelling to protests specifically to film and report / making short films / etc etc etc.
Readers also can help publicise the site. This is meant to be a non heirarchical network - and it makes no sense to give out to the 'responsibles'. If you are pissed off and see something that needs to be done then please please please get involved and do it yourself - you do not need to ask anyone's permission.
I agree completely with the above posting and I think we must all agree that the
priority now, must be to get the IMC software updated, to enable all these new features
such as searches, decent archive section and differenet sections for the regions to be
implemented. This would then hopefully provide the infrastructure to allow this site to
reach it's true potential.
Is the current cut of the Irish IMC software public domain and is it available. I am under
the impression that all software used by IMCs is public domain. There is surely enough
people around in Ireland to modify the source-code.
Open archived mailing lists are there and have been there since the beginning. If you have time to read the site you have time to write for the site - this bullshit about college/work - fuck off with that excuse will'ya - means you in all likelyhood get to use the net for free - I personally get combined web/phonebills of up to E 1000 - some of us who work most on this site work ful time and actually have (shock horror) responsibilities, lives of our own and even families.
"Open archived mailing lists are there and have been there since the beginning. If you have time to read the site you have time to write for the site - this bullshit about college/work - fuck off with that excuse will'ya - means you in all likelyhood get to use the net for free - I personally get combined web/phonebills of up to E 1000 - some of us who work most on this site work ful time and actually have (shock horror) responsibilities, lives of our own and even families."
First of all. My was not intended to be critical of the job the tech team do on this site, anywhere i thought i might have done that i apologised or gave my reasons why i presumed that.
Anyway. I am on the open archive mailing list, not everyone is though as not everyone who wants to be involved has access to email, we all know how quick online email accounts fill up so mailing lists arent that accessible (my opinion of course).
Your point on writing for this site is taken, i have written ORIGINAL content for this site before and i spend as much time reading on this site as i do actively supporting it through writing it or getting everyone i know to visit it.
As for "this bullshit about college/work - fuck off with that excuse will'ya - means you in all likelyhood get to use the net for free" - my reply: well my college day usually means im in here at 9.30 from outside of Dublin where im here till 3.30 usually get an hour and a half break for the entire day, might check indymedia, then study (you know, if you want to pass exams this is recommended activity) then at 4.00 get the bus back from town and go straight to work, so for many people like me who commute this is a very good excuse, as for the net for free yes, but you dont always get a computer, in my college we only have one open computer lab.
I maintain a website as well, and im the only one who does it, yet i still manage it, im not criticising here, but agreeing, but, it can be done.
It seems to me that indymedia users need to strike a balance between passionately expressing their views on issues of social/global justice while avoiding destructive negativity and egotripping.
This is a great service, with great potential. Make it a vehicle for positive discourse and cooperation. Hopefully most of the users of indymedia are aiming in the same general direction. Respect.
As for what Terry was talking about. This is a good question is the IMC software open source and if so can it be accessed by the public? I dont believe that direct access to the IMC software running the IMC site at the moment would be a good idea, but, perhaps if the software was hosted elsewhere people could download it and fiddle about with it. I for one would be interested in tinkering about with it. Any improvements that were made could be posted to the tech list. Again -- just some thoughts.
Salut!
I and many others are very appreciative of Ireland.indymedia.org
The first neutral state registered english language indymedia zone.
Failte roimh! Beir bua! Gurbh maith agaibh!
This last year has seen a few additions to the very large indymedia family.
Some familiar names appeared to return briefly...even as only a ruse...prague and france.
Wales began, Norway, Finland, and India, and Jerusalem and many other interesting places felt the need and urge and found the courage to begin the indymedia thing.
The software could be better, the user-friendly stuff, like cross referencing, sectioning, search engines stuff like that.
I don´t really see the need to do the "count everyone online" thing such as is done in Wales.
I think there should be links to all the indymedia sites, there are a few omisions.
The editorial policy has in my opinion been good.
And the commenting and fun aspect has been excellent.
Ireland has a reputation for being a gloves off teasing take the personal piss arena for discussion especially on age old issues close to the heart.
But the contributions have been outstanding.
Indymedia centres and things always accompany Reclaim the Streets mobilisations and an increased local awareness of current geo-political issues and more importantly local awareness of the wide variety of campaigns constantly happening and thw equally wide variety of groupings and individuals involved in the great 21st century evolving revolution.
why even the bolsheviks take part, and the greenies and the lunatic fringe.
Thank you for the neutral space Ireland.
before there waw only Austria and Sweden.
now all neutral zones of Europe have a internet place to publish news, to discuss news and to MAKE NEWS.
Thank you also to the readers of this site where as many might now have guessed I left in backwards order several nodal texts and threads of my wonderful second novel, the one that really helped me (in the future) win that Nobel prize.
I enjoyed the feedback on my "retro-temporal-psycho-geography of the struggle".
& ...plug...plug....plug....you may next year 2003 / 1423 (since the Hegira islam) have the option of buying a hardcopy version of that "lovely does it" text. which means giving me centimos for my phone bill and continued efforts to turn everyone on to the global trippy-hippy-anarcho-freakie-evolving global revolutionary fifth international of crusty loved up muppets who played a valuable part in awakening conscienceness at the end of the 20th century and probably did undpeakable things to their brains and reputations in the process.
Love ye all.
grá mór and poggeeez better than bogies.
iosaf mac diarmada ...........an anagram for
if Osama mad IRA cad
reclaim the streets!
reclaim the internet!
reclaim the land of Erron from the little rascals!
and don´t forget tis all but a biochemical thing called
HEART AND MIND.
This has been an issue for a while. Currently the site runs under some perl scripts written specifically for it - I assume these can be made available for review / moderation but will check out.
We have looked at the more standard codebases used in other IMC's and went to the extent of setting up nicetreaty.nologic.org using the dadaIMC code which is freely available (and now under GPL). Attempts to move to this spluttered out partly because of the scale of the change in functionality - ratings and user accounts and all these under 'features' were somewhat contentious. But have a look at this site to see if you prefer it to the present one.
From the original post: "but i say this to hopefully entice people to join the "imc revolution", sadly i cant as im bogged dwon with work and college" - this is sure to generate a reaction from those who consider themselves part of 'the imc revolution'. Reading the site should create a sense of belonging to something and should empower people to see this as their media. I think the site is failing if there seems to be something to 'join' beyond hitting the publish button. I also think it's a bit insulting to people who do put the work in - my job is less important than yours, my time less valuable since I'm not bogged down by work or family or whatever.
Having said this, I can see this thread is meant constructively and it covers issues which people who go to meetings or use the lists say themselves.
So .. any perl hackers willing to put in a few hours?
Anybody want to call an IMC meeting here on the newswire?
the judge put away the
"clever but errant" lad (18yrs)
for being a
"clever but errant" lad without thinking about phone tracing or bouncing.
But sure there you go, now he can start IT groups in prison, where there are many other "clever but errant" lads who probably don´t see six months locked up in a small 8metre square space as a good way of rehabilitating them to the prevelant culture of playing computer games based around death, today in the supermarket I saw an action man riding a dolphin.
only 20€ but really, Gallizia and WW4 and they´re selling the niños action men on dolphins.
if you want help with ur perl, give me a shout.
but i´m not doing time fur ye!
Personally, I prefer this nologic version of the IMC site, i find it closer to what alot of people want this site to be, of course, this is only my opinion again, other people reading this thread should certainlu use there time and voice there opinion...
As for perl, im afraid that's not my language, but im sure now that the offer has been sent out publically it might be taken up.
Now, i would just like to say i meant no insult to anyone who is currently involved in the IMC project, or to anyone (and i mean ANYONE) who has spent time putting this site together. I have a great amount of respect for what you people have done already and I look forward to what can be done in the future.
This thread is all about improving on what is already a "very useful tool".
""From the original post: "but i say this to hopefully entice people to join the "imc revolution", sadly i cant as im bogged dwon with work and college" - this is sure to generate a reaction from those who consider themselves part of 'the imc revolution'.""
why? it is after all an honest statement, personally (and again im only speaking personally) the amount of things i already have myself involved in (maintaining a well know site, political activity, college and work) is enough for me. But, other may not have the workload i have (im not saying its the greatest workload in the world, just enough for me) and may have more spare time, for that reason i would like to see more people getting involved.
"Reading the site should create a sense of belonging to something and should empower people to see this as their media."
It does, I didnt say otherwise, my point was ordinary people might find it hard to relate to this site due to the simple fact that it doesnt facilitate some of their interests, now i dont have the answer to that, but I think its worth looking into.
"I think the site is failing if there seems to be something to 'join' beyond hitting the publish button."
Never said that either, i know that by hitting the publish button people are becoming more active, but, you have to admit there is more to just hitting the publish button, correct me if im wrong but im sure IMC ireland needs moderating, updating, tech stuff etc etc... this is all i referred to.
"I also think it's a bit insulting to people who do put the work in"
As I said it wasnt meant to be, i have a great amount of respect for what has been done, i just believe like others there is room for improvement, there is room for improvement in everything, all software that appears etc... again though, i apologise for any insult taken.
only hack if you know what you're doing, can conceal your ip etc, there is a thriving hacking community here in belfast, which has never yet got caught. it pays to hack safely and watch your back always.
...i think what C meant by "So .. any perl hackers willing to put in a few hours?" was to hack away at the code, not actually hacking IMC and taking the code to play with >>> personal opinion, i could be wrong...
The term 'Hacking' is a old one in the software industry and simply refers to
a person who works away on a piece of code or system to try and get into to do
more stuff, usually as a kind of quick fix. As previous posting suggested, it
literally means to hack the code, same as a carpenter might hack a bit of
wood to get a door frame or something to fit.
Hackers were usually those sort of geeks and techies really into the particular
problem they were solving and using often unconvential approaches or as I said
quick and dirty fixes to get something done.
It later came to mean it's present common meaning of hacking into computers.
In fact such people should be called 'crackers' as they are usually cracking
the security to get in, but unfortunately politicans and the general public
have now got hold of the term 'hacker' and distored it's original meaning.
-Much the same way people often say they are nuking their dinner in the microwave
oven, when microwave ovens have nothing to do with nuclear things, except that the
word 'radiation' in the term microwave radiation was picked up by people. However
from a physics/engineering point of view or meaning, all forms of electro-magnetic
radiation is 'radiation' which means from radio to microwave to infra-red to visible
to ultra-violet to x-rays and to gamma rays.
As to the IMC Perl scripts, the intention was not to break into the IMC, but
merely to get copies of them, modify them, test them and when ready, reload
them with the consent of those running the IMC, to then give new services.
In fact that is how Open Source projects more or less work and the CopyLeft
refers to the fact that the source code is not copyrighted but copylefted which
means it is public domain and available to all to use as they see fit.
Anyone can download Perl for Windows or Unix/Linux and start straight away. There
are plenty of tutorials, manuals and example code on the Internet and it's all
free. Likewise for most other programming languages.
the friend who posted earlier saying if you read off the site you should have time to wirte for it. definitely thts true people have to make time to post and write for site, il post up articles i write of course if people mind them coming from my mindset and position re free to say if i shouldnt or not, but i do believe it is the people and users of this site who have to make it work. and i think it si healthy and impressive to see this kind of discussion on indymedia
Lets not get too upset at people for not writing... Indymedia is designed like an online newsletter or something. From these sort of discussions I get the feeling we should migrate to DISCUSSION FORUM or discussion board software.
First of all, I agree with all the crticisms of the current software but need to point out that it was created as a temporary fix to get IMC Ireland up online. It was always intended to replace this software with one of the open source software used by other IMCs. That however has yet to happen.
I have often thought of adding exactly what people have been asking here - search, categories, ways of grouping posts, etc - I can do it but it takes time and I never seem to have much of that (yes I have a family too!). One of the biggest things that put me off continuing with this project (and this may seem childish) was the tirade of abuse on the newswire and also often on the mailing lists - people shooting each other down all over the place instead of creating. I even started to be abusive myself, at which point I withdrew completely from the scene (though I've not gone away).
I don't think the Perl scripts are suitable for open source type activity. The method of writing/reading to the database files is non-standard, and the database files themselves are not on a database server of any sort (the server is written in Perl too!). Neither are the scripts documented in any way. Saying that, if anybody out there is experienced with Perl objects then contact us.
Many of the suggestions above are good, including Eoin's points about developing discussions dimension. Something badly needs to be done about improving searches for material on indymedia and a decent archive section would be great. However all of this will be of no use if the sp/swp continually bores the pants of everyone with their constant sectish dogmatic posts. By the way I oppose censorship as a solution to this, but it is certain that as long as the sp/swp persist most non affiliated younger people will run a mile from indymedia. This is a real pity as the potential youth audience for a properly designed and functioning indymedia site would be fairly large.
The SP/SWP bore young people, really, well I don't agree with you. Advocating a democratic socialist society where all persons would have a roof over his/her head, a job, health care regardless of income and access to education is actually just a little interesting to some of us.
I would suspect that what you really mean is that you don't agree with the policies of either party. That's fine, you have a right to express your point of view but you don't have the right to censor the views of others. I am not a supporter of the WSM but Andrew and others are entitled to express their views and I would respect their right to do so. IMC is a concept I fully report and while there is always room for improvement, CENSORSHIP is NOT the way to go. We can leave that to the establishment media.
the last two posts:
"some good ideas to develop indymedia, but it could be all in vain" posted by Praxis
and
"Praxis?" posted by Des
really just sum up what i was trying to put across, how people can be put off visiting the IMC Ireland site. here we had a fresh debate, with ideas on how to improve the site but in the end members or supprters of two parties (both of whom i have a strong dislike of, but i do try and keep it off the newswire and in debate) and people with nothing else to do but equate all wrongs on indymedia with these parties despite the fact that they egg them on. Can we try and get back to the debate at hand.,,
newswire is mega important
if discussion forum feature article stuff get´s to seperated from newswire then readers will avoid it if newswire is too full of feature article discussion stuff then readers don´t get the full benefits of news.
you need at least a fluffy cat.
columbia for the people back in Erron.
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=48357&group=webcast
I am sure that there are many improvements that could be made to IMC subject of course to the resources being available. I think that Aidan and others are to be congratulated on the work they have put in. My problem with the article posted by “Akira” is that basically he/she is advocating censorship, which as far as I am concerned is directly opposed to the IMC concept. I am not put off from visiting the site because articles are posted by members of the Labour Party, SF, IRSM, WSM, Green Party or any individual. I respect and support their right to put forward their views on issues and I am sure they would respect mine.
Currently the newswire is presented as a set of "summaries" and a link to "full feature and comments". Seperate the last link into two links "Full feature" and "Comments on feature".
Those that want just the news thank you will be able to get it. Those that want to engage in the sectarian circle-jerk (and I'm one of them) will be able to do that too.
"I am sure that there are many improvements that could be made to IMC subject of course to the resources being available. I think that Aidan and others are to be congratulated on the work they have put in. My problem with the article posted by “Akira” is that basically he/she is advocating censorship, which as far as I am concerned is directly opposed to the IMC concept. I am not put off from visiting the site because articles are posted by members of the Labour Party, SF, IRSM, WSM, Green Party or any individual. I respect and support their right to put forward their views on issues and I am sure they would respect mine."
Des first of all, no where in my article did i advocate censorship, i advocated a different mentality of IMC users to begin posting news and not the sort of drivel that yourself and praxis began to bring into this debate.
Second, from what i read from past comments you have written you are a member of a political organisation or at least have political opinions, so of course your not put off by coming to the site and dnt mind articles posted by the groups you referred to, nor am i, but when it comes down to it, the ordinary person who might have interests in the things being reported on on this site might be turned off reading this site when they see slagging matches being held left right and centre.
btw next time you respond to someone's article please try and get your facts right, by the looks of it, praxis was the one advocating censorship...
Akira, what can I say, even as I key in my humble contribution I am wearing sackcloth and ashes. I also considered making like a Shi’te but no can do. I used your “name” when I should have referred to “Praxis”. My utterly grovelling and abject apologies. Possibly I may have become so obsessed by your “unusual” name that I was temporarily incapacitated. Re my political views, your description of political debate if “slagging”, mine is NOT.