(open for editing, but the Polish version is likely to override the English version)
Editorial principles IMC Toruń
The idea of open publishing – Centre column – Principles of moderators’ interventions in messages – Other moderators’ actions – Other information
- Creating an open newswire system without censorship in the spirit of Indymedia and in the spirit of our declarations to the Indymedia network, on which solidarity by the worldwide network for us in Toruń depends:
- The newswire system [recent updates] as well the whole website should have a community atmosphere, being made for the people and by the people with the idea of equal access to creating and distributing information.
- Words have the ability to cause pain, so they should be used responsibly.
- Indymedia should be a source of accurate information.
The idea of open publishing
The idea of open publishing means that everybody with direct or indirect access to the internet can send his/her material to a webpage and every document gets published. Given such a level of openness, certain abuses can occur. In order to retain the principle of openness while protecting against abuses, there are four types of intervention possible after publication by people carrying out the role of “moderators”: hide/takeover/replace/new_parent_message.- The principles of intervention by moderators and the choice of moderators are defined in this document.
- Moderators’ actions are publicly documented
- Hidden articles are publicly available but lightly obscured, e.g. at the /moderation link or by clicking on Run under article 2785
- Discussion concerning interventions can be carried out in comments under the article or possibly in an article in the focus Indymedia Toruń.
Principles of choosing centre column articles
“Geographic bottom-up filter” principles
In order to avoid mainstream media filters, we propose the following principles:- Every person living in or near Toruń has the right to participate in decision making regarding the importance of articles, in such a way that they are automatically shown in the centre column. Other people are in general requested to comment rather than to “vote”.
- We request people not to promote articles copied from the dependent media or opinion articles to the centre column, since the priority is presenting events concerning local people.
- These are general principles, to which exceptions can… exceptionally occur.
Method
The method in samizdat-0.6.0 (March 2007.): Every person, who creates a login, can link an article to an existing focus (theme) or create a new focus (theme). The rating of the importance of this article in the focus can be between -2.0 and +2.0. If the average value of this rating of a given article in one focus is 1.5 or greater, then the article is automatically shown in the centre column.
In the future, the technical aspect (algorithm) may be corrected in order to better agree with these principles.
Principles of moderators’ interventions in messages (articles or comments)
Unfortunately not everyone is able to properly use the freedom offered by open publishing, which is why moderators have the possibility to intervene.
Definitions:
simple case
- Advertisements – messages whose intention is to sell something or to advertise a commercial www page;
- Duplicates – identical or nearly identical articles;
- Articles without content (e.g. empty or containing random characters).
complex case
- 1. Material containing insults or offensive accusations against an individual or group (in particular, promoting racism, sexism, homophobia or other discriminatory practices) or using language, images or other forms of communication debasing an individual or a group on the grounds of ethnicity, race, nationality, sexual preferences, religious beliefs (or lack thereof), sex, gender, age or social origin, or encouraging scorn, intolerance or hate on the grounds of these differences;
- 2. Messages referring to websites and publications violating point 1. or messages originating from these websites or publications (in particular this refers to articles linked to the “dependent media” focus);
- 3. Covert or overt advertisements for organisations propagating the above mentioned content, or using the rhetoric of these organisations;
- 4. Repeated self-promotion of individuals or political factions, in the sense of political parties. An article cannot be a place for promoting hierarchical institutions or organisations.
extreme case
Extreme cases of the complex case or of violation of netiquette principles, e.g. publishing personal identifying data of private individuals without their consennt or publishing a password or private key.
Moderators’ actions:
Where: proposal + discussion + consensus test
- normal: under the article and/or linked to the Indymedia Toruń focus
- in the case of an important controversy or continual failure of the consensus test, the proposal concerning the intervention should by treated as a “moderately important” or “important” proposal; in this situation the formal consensus method written in Imc Toruń Decision Making Methods is to be used – this applies whether the case is “simple” or “complex”
Action in the simple case
- Hide
- no proposal phase
- if this is controversial, then reverting the article can be proposed
Action in a complex case
- alternatives available include:
- Hide
- Takeover and change the status of the message from non-wiki to wiki (“open for editing by all members”; a member is anyone with a login) or edit the message – it is preferred to change the status to wiki, so that all members can participate in editing the article.
- In obvious cases, the action can be taken without waiting for proposal/discussion/consensus_test phases, since it is reversible.
- In less obvious cases, the method is as follows:
- proposal – comment (“reply”) under the message, defining the proposed action (hide or takeover, why, ...)
- discussion – minimum 24 hours
- consensus test – minimum 24 hours
Extreme case
- Replace. This is an action necessary to protect e.g. personal data. The old data are completely removed from the database. As with every intervention, the action is publicly documented in the moderation log
Other moderators’ actions
New parent message
At the request/agreement of the author, the moderator can unconnect a comment from an article or connect an article to another article, converting it into a comment.
In the case of duplicates, a moderator can shift a comment from a copy of the article which becomes hidden to the non-hidden copy of the article.
Anonymous messages (author = guest)
By default these are treated as messages without an author for the above purposes.
In the case of a continual lack of consensus for a given decision on the web pages, anonymous people can be treated as less serious than those with an “electronic identity”, i.e. with a login (“members”) and a track record.
Blocking an account
In extreme cases, someone who is destructive against Indymedia web pages can become known as a “vandal”.
A vandal is someone who fulfills the following conditions:
- Fills the service with a large number of articles or of comments unrelated to articles with the aim of destroying the quality of the service (simple situation), or excessively violates the editorial principles (complex situation).
- Does not react to requests for an explanation (placed in comments on the webpage).
The decision making method in the case of proposing someone as a vandal or of removing someone from the list of vandals is:
- simple case
- proposal – comment under the message
- discussion – minimum 24 hours
- consensus test – minimum 24 hours
- complex case
- proposal – comment under the message
- discussion – minimum 10 days
- consensus test – minimum 7 days
After obtaining consensus, any moderator can block an account.
In order to stop a vandal, the collective can use any available technical methods, as well as hide a vandal’s contributions under the simple case. After someone gains vandal status, the collective can decide to hide part or all of that person’s earlier messages.
Other information
- Messages published here are by default considered to be published according to copyleft principles, specifically under the four licences GPL + GFDL + CC-BY-NC-SA + CC-BY-SA any or all of which may be chosen by someone reusing the material, unless the message is not original. In order to choose another copyright, this must be stated explicitly.
- Responsibility for the content of the messages lies not just with their authors, but also with every person who reads the article, who has the obligation to:
- add a comment with corrections if they are needed; or
- in the case of an article open for editing – creating an account and directly corrected the message
- Moderators reserve the right to correct gross language errors using the “takeover” action – this is automatically documented in the “history” of the message.
The source of a part of this text is the editorial policy of IMC PL.