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I'm involved with the Finnish Indymedia, Vaikuttava Tietotoimisto. A fairly small number of people contribute, but I feel the contributions have largely held a high standard. As the amount of attention the site receives has increased, the general level of the texts has dropped, especially since Genova.
I concider it a self-publicing-tool OF THIS MOVEMENT. The Indymedia I work with has never made any claims of giving a platform for ALL people. Anyone who starts shouting, demanding that something set up by us should serve everybody (and it seems especially Americans do this), is being plain silly, in my opinion.
For one, we stop fascist texts from being published. They started appearing as soon as the site was up, and they are being stopped. I hope the reason for this is obvious. If it is not, I don't have the patience to explain right now... Maybe later.
Also, anything that would get the Indymedia people sued is stopped, and the authors are asked to rephrase. This is for the sake of continuity. I hope this makes sense to people...
Yes, we also try to uphold a qualitative standard. The primary tool for this is the fact that soe texts are flagged to stay on the front page, where as some just 'drift by'. The decisions for this are made by the editors and maintainers of the site. Some texts are stopped because of extreme unclarity, or other aesthetic reasons.
I don't see any problem with this. I want the site I contribute to stays relevant, interesting, political, independent.
Some circles seem to confuse quality control with censorship. Again, this is plain dumb. We're not stopping anyone from publishing anything. We're just making decisions on what appears on the front page of something that we've set up, that is ENORMOUSLY more free than ANY mainstream media. If someone wants to publish a long, rambling text with no relevance what so ever to anything, they are free to do so. They can set up their own network of sites for crap texts.
If we tried to stop those sites too, that would be censorship. What is going on right now is self-determination. A big difference.
Of course, I'm in no way implying that my text has any relevance, or that it doesn't ramble... Maybe that's why I'm publishing it here, and not on Indymedia? 
No, seriously, Barbelith is a good example of that also a bulletin-board environment with pre-control of what is published produces exellent texts. However, I think that the Zine, and other ways that the best texts are selected, compiled and published separately shows that not all people have the time, energy etc. to immerse themselves in the bulletin board process.
And Indymedia is a news-and-background-information-service, not a bulletin board. Different purpose, different working methods.
(Oh yeah, I'm only one person in the Indymedia process, and I'm not THAT involved. I mainly contribute. So none of this should be seen as any kind of official Indymedia statement. And of course, all individual fragments of the Indymedia whole have their own way of doing things. So they vary. Duh.) |
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