#indymedia was ripped apart by the war of open/closed
Build open tools without HARD coded defaults – yes you can choose where the switches are flicked on the default install, but that is as much power that the dev team should take in #4opens dev
“War, What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it agen…”
You can’t start a war if there is nothing to fight over.
The big #fedivers is run in the voluntarist economic model of patron and donations to cover basic costs. The technical federation allows this to happen at a humane scale. This was how #indymedia was run for 10 years – not without stresses that we do need to mediate. at the #OMN we have seed funding for 3-4 years and looking for sustainability here.
We are building “grassroots” at #OMN the is a role for #mainstreaming journalism and media. Projects like @novaramedia etc. they can be funded in different ways. Diversity is always a good thing, its were real humane power lays.
It’s now hard to get an easy view of the death of #indymedia as a lot of the most shitty behaver was taken offline as a part of the ripping that tore the project apart. For the #OMN this is a problem that we strongly need to mediate when implementing “individualistic” rights/workflows. We need to keep metadata flows intact to build trust and history. This challenge raises questions on the balance between privacy and transparency.
The were internal and external forces… I tend to concentrate on the internal as it’s the area that we actually have power/responsibility to make work. The external is a harder task that we then have to fight to challenge/change.
A good (non-neutral) write up of the #death of #indymedia https://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/2011/04/478397.html
The start of the end for #indymedia with the project splitting into open/closed and the growing intolerances on both sides https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391384.html
How do movement die. Some #indymedia crew trying to unblock the ossification and growing open/closed conflict https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/02/391385.html
We need to not repeat this mess for the #indymediaback project.
What should #indymediaback look like?
For some of my views from living/working through this mess
http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2020/03/17/a-look-at-the-internal-mess-of-the-uk-indymedia-project/
http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2013/03/28/a-brief-history-of-activism/
Food for thought.
The #geekproblem is not actually interested in the #openweb as a human value network. Instead, they often feed off the current mess in different unhealthy ways. Feeding off the dying #openweb is bowing down to the #deathcult
Looked at it this way the need for change becomes more obvuse and active carrot and stick work important.
The #OMN is a shovel to compost this inhuman mess.
Q. what do you mean by “mainstreaming”.
A. we all worship the #deathcult (neo-liberalism) in polatics, economics, most of the food we eat, our jobs and social lives are all mediated/mostly created by this invisible world-view. In progressive terms #mainstreaming is pushing this agender to build carriears and social structures to further the personal #stupidindividualism created by the #deathcult we live in. This is a circle that is going to kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years from #climatechaos and the social feedback loop of political #fascism
#stupidindividualism is created by the social disintegration of the last 40 years of neo-liberalism, fascism is an outcome of this.
Examples from the UK groups @NovaraMedia while producing fab content its all distributed through the #dotcons and in the end they aspire to be the new @guardian to take the role of #traditionalmedia This is fair anufe but the wider “we” need to balance this with #grassroots media which is a non #mainstreaming mission.
Most #NGO agrenders are #mainstreaming this is an easy to see view.
I played a role in training thousands of grassroots “journalists” over the last 25 years at #undercurrents, #indymedia, #visionontv and now #OMN the majority that are still creating media went onto build there carriears in the mainstream and #NGO sectors few stayed in non #mainstreaming production missions. Cant blame them for this, though no alts were sustained from this which was why we did the training.
In each case grassroots/alt structures were devoured by the #deathcult pushing the need for mainstreaming survival – cant blame people for this.
BUT we need a working alternative if we are going to change the world that does not kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years #XR
learning for expirence the #OMN is a political/tech tool to mediate this issue.
DRAFT of #makeinghistory
This is exactly the same #OMN project and workflow as the #indymedia project – just a different template on top. We need to work to add this tag function.
Brining #indymediaback
The fallow flower beds/farm that is #indymedia needs to be bought back to life slowly with as little change to the structure as possible. In our current social tech state just about ANY change will start ripping and when this starts it escalates quickly to do real damage. The original 2000-2008’ish structures cover 90% of issues in a good way, let’s live with that for a while.
The are a host of outstanding big issues in the remaining 10% that are undefined – lets concentrate our energies on these missing bits and roll out solutions respecting “diversity of tactics”. The ansears to the missing 10% generally cannot be found pre-defined, we should be very weary of people coming in with fixed agender. Diversity and good process in hand with on the ground #4opens working overtime as a part of the real network is the ONLY valued test.
Slow/diversity/nurture vs fast/dogmatic/tearing. To highlight now before we roll out bigger, there will be lots of the second and little of the first much of the time. It is just how it is…
* #4opens is not dogma, it’s simply the last 30 years of open source development codified as social structure.
* PGA is not dogma, it’s the embodied wishes/dreams and planning of thousands of peoples over meany country’s and years of time.
* Indymedia is not dogma, it’s the expirence of meany radical media groups coming together to build an open network to fight neo-liberalism (#deathcult) on the ground, in the streets, in the fields and online.
The difference between indymedia and the hundreds of failed “radical” media projects over the last 20 years is that indymedia flourished for a good time before it succumbed to the “forgetting” of the #PGA and #4opens foundation it was built on and was thus helpless against the internal forces that ripped it apart. Leaving no malubilerty to shift to the heavy blows from the forces attacking from the outside.
We core crew need to learn how to become benign older folks who answer every “better” solution put forward by the thrusting young with “how does that work with the #4opens” then fallow up with “lets look to see if that furthers the PGA hallmarks” to all their enthusiastic “youth” energy for “change”. Keep it gentle and most importantly, keep the focus…
At meany stages there will be howling mobs soured by hatred and through wing shit to create a stinking mess… our job is to keep focus and calm… a hard thing to do in a messy/disaster world #Brexit and #climatechoas pushes, but it’s the simple job we are taking on.
I have been developing and using #opensource and #openweb projects for nearly 40 years. For the last 20 years at the coalface of development, this is my experience.
Most #openweb projects are more than 99.9% unusable this is normal. A few come up to 5% usability; these are the “successful” ones. It’s very rare for a project like mastodon to be 50% useable – but more than 90% of the people I push in that direction still bounce – though this is more likely because of digital drug habits of the #dotcons than the UX of the project which is good itself.
Let’s be generous our #indymedia reboot project is currently 90% unusable; this is normal for openweb projects. It’s hard to build something with limited resources and training.
Our plan is to make it as simple and #KISS looking as possible to roll out to small groups of testers to develop it into being 20% useable by their feedback. While doing this we can roll out the idea of the project to bring more energy and resources into this shift from 10% to 20% usability.
We only open outreach when we are beyond that 20% level, because it would obviously be self-defeating otherwise. Then inch up the usability while shifting the social expectations of good #UX to a social harmony.
UPDATE:
If you would like to help with this process please set up a account here https://unite.openworlds.info/indymedia/epicyon/issues and give us feedback on this test site https://indymedia.openworlds.info and this test look and feel template https://indymediadev.openworlds.info/test-css/ two versions of the UX then add an issue to the unite site with your feedback for the developers.