Indymedia Ireland Internet Collective - Working Groups

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Indymedia Ireland Internet Collective - General Mailing List
3. List Administrators' Working Group
4. List Secretaries
5. Newswire Moderators' Working Group
6. Technicians & Designers Working Group
7. Feature Preparation Working Group
8. Outreach, Documentation and Contact Working Group
9. Reporters' Working Group

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1. Introduction

1.1 All of our working groups, and the general collective itself, operate over mailing lists. Our mailing lists are open and publicly archived (although some may have restrictions on who can post). This document simply sets out the basic functions of the groups and defines their mailing lists. Each of these groups operates on a mailing list, governed by our safe mailing list policy.

1.2 The first task of each working group is to describe in greater detail how it will function, how it will train apprentices and how it will make decisions and then present this to the general collective for approval. A "task list" of jobs that can be allocated to apprentices would be a good idea.

1.3 All members of the general collective with voting rights must be an active member of at least one working group. No work, no vote.

1.4 Each working group should report back on its activity to the general collective at least every 2 months.

1.5 Each working group can define its own decision making methods for decisions within its own area of responsibility. Any major changes should, however, be notified to the general collective (where motions opposing the changes can be raised).

1.6 All members and interested parties are encouraged to help out in and take part in as many working groups as they have time and interest for. People who are not voting members of a working group can take part in debates and discussions, they just don't have the permissions or the voting rights that full members have.

1.7 Working groups are bound to follow the decisions of the overall collective. They are free to decide how to implement these decisions.

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2. Indymedia Ireland Internet Collective - General Mailing List

Mailing List: [email protected] - to sign up go to: http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-ireland

2.1 This mailing list is responsible for issues which affect the entire collective. All decisions that effect the whole collective are made on this list. All members must subscribe to this list. All Proposals are debated and voted on on this list. Due to the number of subscribers, and to give everybody a chance to be heard, the number of mails that any one individual can send is limited to 5 mails per day and a maximum of 3 on any particular topic.

2.2 all subscribers to this list must introduce themselves, explaining why they are interested in getting involved. No personally identifying information is required. (unsure if this is a good idea???)

2.3 The collective can also communicate through a members-only list. The primary purpose of this list is to ensure the security of the web site. While Indymedia strives to be as open as possible there are times and situations where some topics need to be discussed in private. The most obvious one is when the site is under attack and counter measures need to be taken to protect it.

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3. List Administrators' Working Group

Mailing List: [email protected] - to sign up go to: http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-ireland-list-moderation
Contact: Send an email to [email protected]

3.1 The mailing list administrators' goal is to keep spam from the lists and minimise the amount of disruption on the lists by ensuring that all subscribers abide by the list guidelines and taking appropriate sanctions against those who do not. They are responsible for moderating all of our mailing lists in line with our List Guidelines.

3.2 There should be at least 3 list moderators in this group to ensure that somebody is always to hand to sort out moderation issues.

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4. List Secretaries

Mailing List: There is no mailing list for this group - they use the general list.

4.1 The list secretaries are responsible for overseeing the passage of proposals through the general collective list. This entails the following (as outlined in the decision making section of the constitution):

1. If a formal proposal is submitted to the general list, they will examine it to make sure that it has been submitted correctly, according to the How do I make a formal proposal guide. If the proposal is invalid, they will contact the list explaining why and informing the list to ignore it.
2. If the proposal is valid, they will send a mail to the list indicating the deadline for debate on the proposal.
3. Once the deadline has expired, they will inform the list that the time for debate has passed and ask if anybody seeks an extension.
4. If an extension vote is passed, the secretary will announce the new deadline and repeat the above step, until there are no more voted extensions
5. Once all extensions have passed, the secretary will mail the final version of the proposal to the list and will ask any contributors for expressions of blocks (ie intent to split) or for final summaries by a certain deadline (48 hours standard). Each contributor is limited to one mail of no more than 500 words summarising their position.
6. After the period for blocks and summaries has expired, the secretary announces that voting is open and announces the deadline when the polls will close
7. As soon as the poll has closed, the list secretary counts the vote and declares the vote passed or failed, depending on the results.

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5. Newswire Moderators' Working Group

Mailing List: [email protected] to join up go to http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-ireland-editorial
Contact: To contact the newswire moderators, send an email to [email protected]

5.1 The newswire moderators apply the editorial guidelines to the open newswire. They can edit, collate and hide any text published on the site, according on their application of the guidelines.

5.2 Any moderator can choose to take an editorial action on any piece of content, in accordance with the guidelines. If other moderators disagree with the action, the majority view prevails.

5.3 All moderator actions should be accompanied by a reason, which references the editorial guidelines where possible.

5.4 Abusive post reports will be sent to this list. All debate about specific editorial actions should also occur on this list.

5.5 This workgroup is labour intensive. Between the members, they must monitor the site around the clock to remove material which breaks the guidelines. Abusive material needs to be removed quickly or trolls become encouraged. Therefore, we need a large enough number of volunteers to work as newswire moderators so that we will have round the clock coverage. There’s currently around 8 of us who regularly do this job. It wouldn’t be a good idea to have too many less.

5.6 The job of newswire moderation is the most politically sensitive of all. Members of this workgroup must demonstrate an ability to apply the editorial guidelines as objectively as possible, according to the instructions of the general collective. Tact and diplomacy are also useful.

5.7 All of the actions of this group are logged on the newswire notification mailing list [email protected] This maintains a record of all editorial actions taken on the site, along with the editorial reasons.

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6. Technicians & Designers

Mailing List: [email protected] to join up go to http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-ireland-tech
Contact: To contact the techies, send an email to [email protected]

6.1 The goals of this group are :

1. To carry out any changes to the Oscailt configuration, such as adding new topics, adding new members etc. that the collective decides.
2. To ensure that the site is functioning properly, to take care of the hosting and to guard the security of the site and the privacy of users, to the best of their ability.

6.2 Membership of this group requires a decent level of technical skills, with some of the following: oscailt, php, apache, mysql, css, html.

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7. Feature Preparation Working Group

Mailing List: [email protected] to join up go to http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-ireland-features
Contact: To contact the feature writers, send an email to [email protected]

7.1 Although all members of the collective will have the right to prepare features and to propose them, the feature preparation working group has the responsibility of ensuring that there is a regular flow of features on the front page. Thus, during periods when there are no suggested features put forward, they will proactively work on compiling and producing features from the front page, with a particular concentration on pulling together related information from across the indymedia network for highlighting.

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8. Outreach, Documentation, and Contact Working Group

Mailing List: [email protected] to join up go to http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-ireland-outreach
Contact: To contact the outreach group, send an email to [email protected] or use our contact form

8.1 This group is tasked with spreading information about indymedia to groups and individuals who might benefit from using the site. This includes membership recruitment, contacting organisations, writing user documentation, engaging in user surveys, and so on.

8.2 Mails from the contact form will be sent to this list and the group should organise to answer them if possible.

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9. IMC Reporters

Mailing List: [email protected] to join up go to http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-ireland-reporters
Contact: To contact the reporters, send an email to [email protected]

9.1 This working group is for people who work on producing content explicitly for the indymedia site and in line with its guidelines and goals. The group will proactively seek to organise coverage of events, and issues of interest to the readership.

9.2 It is important to note that this does not mean everybody who publishes on indymedia. Many of our contributors simply use the site to spread information about things that they care about and have no interest in the project in its own right – this is fine, but these people are neither members in the collective nor do they have a say in decisions about the site. This group is for people who want to help to organise the coverage of interesting events on the site explicitly for the site, including writing about them. All the members of this group must be accepted as members by the general collective, just like anybody else.