Frequently Asked Questions

These questions mostly relate to Indymedia Ireland. There is also a Global Indymedia FAQ which answers many more questions.

1. General Questions
1. Who runs indymedia?
2. How many people read indymedia?
3. Where does indymedia get its money?
4. In what way is Indymedia "independent" media
5. Is Indymedia a free speech site?
6. Why does indymedia allow anonymous posting?
7. Does Indymedia suppress the truth on behalf of the terrorists / mossad / lizards / space aliens?
2. Complaints
1. Help, I've been censored! What happened to my article / comment?
2. Help, someone posted using my name!
3. I want to complain about an article or comment.
4. I wan't to complain about something else.
3. Publishing
1. How do I create an article?
2. How do I create a front-page feature?
3. What topics should I write about?
4. How do I upload photos?
5. How do I upload video and audio files?
6. How do I advertise my event?
7. What are the moderation policies?
4. Helping Indymedia
1. How can I contribute?
2. How do I become more involved/volunteer?
3. How can I give you money?

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1A. Who Runs Indymedia?

The Indymedia website is run by the Indymedia Ireland Internet Collective, a not-for profit, all-volunteer, with a wide and politically diverse membership as part of the global indymedia network. You can learn more about indymedia in our about us document, or by viewing our constitution.

1B. How Many People Read Indymedia?

In October 2008, there was just over 14Gb of traffic and 13 millions hits for the month. Traffic has increased steadily since we launched in October 2001 and continues to increase. Traffic increased by about 300% in 2006.

1C. How is Indymedia Funded?

By donations from our readers and the occasional fundraising event. We need money to pay for bandwidth and hosting charges - which keep going up as more people read Indymedia. You can donate to us now and help sustain the growth of independent media.

1D. What is "independent" about Indymedia?

We owe no allegiance to any commercial or political groups. The collective who runs the site are an autonomous group, not controlled by any external forces. Nobody tells us what to do, we decide ourselves, based on our principles. We accept no advertising, despite the fact that this would be lucrative. Members of many different political groups have participated in Indymedia, but the majority of our members have always been un-afilliated and no political group or commercial concern gets special treatment.

1E. Indymedia and Free Speech?

Indymedia is not a free speech site. We are a site that primarily publishes original news and we remove spam, copy and pastes and material that breaches our editorial guidelines. In particular, we do not allow posts that are explicitly racist, sexist or homophobic. We agree that such people should have freedom of speech, but we also agree that they should exercise their freedom somewhere else. The Internet's a big place, if our editorial guidelines are too strict for you, you can find somewhere else, or even set up your own Indymedia.

1F. Indymedia and Anonymity

All users can post on Indymedia anonymously. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, many people are not in a position to use their real names to post, as their employer or other organisation might disapprove. We don't think that such people should be excluded. Secondly, for reasons of privacy, we aim to retain as little information as possible which allows particular postings to be associated with particular people. This helps the privacy of readers and it also helps us since it would be pointless for state agencies to seize our servers to recover information.

1G. Indymedia Conspiracy Theories

Lots of people have claimed over the years that Indymedia is controlled by this or that group, that it is the website of this or that campaign, that it suppresses certain articles for no good reason and all manner of other weird and wonderful stuff. We have been accused of being everything from "Mossad agents" to "jihadists". Since we are an entirely transparent organisation, with all of our discussions and decisions being publicly available on the internet, you'd have to be seriously delusional to think up such theories. It's no coincidence that the people who seem to believe them are well known for their delusional thoughts: people such as the "national socialist druids of Ireland", the "Sunday Independent" and the minister for justice.

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2A. Where is my comment/article gone?

There are 3 possibilities:

1. It has been collated to a story that predates it
2. It was in breach of the Editorial Guidelines
3. It has been resectioned to Other Press or as an Event

Collation of Articles
If a story or issue has been posted recently on the newswire then the editorial collective prefer new information or updates to be added to that existing story. This is primarily the reason why the "Comments" facility exist. The reason behind this preference is that it makes it easier to find all the relevant information in one place and it prevents other stories being driven off the newswire and out of public view. So, check recent stories on similar topics and see if your story has been moved to become a comment.

Breach of Editorial Guidelines
Our newswire moderators monitor the site and remove material that breaches our Editorial Guidelines. Discussion of moderation and other editorial topics is carried out on the public mailing list [email protected].

If you saw your story successfully posted on the site and it has now been removed, an editor will have done this because of their interpretation of the editorial guidelines. Whenever this happens a notice is sent automatically to the newswire mailing list ([email protected]) and the story is hidden for review period before being deleted. The best approach is to check the publicly available newswire archives (you don't even have to be subscribed to view them) to read the reason. The most recent hides for the previous few hours can be found on our Hidden Articles List page. If you disagree with the reason then you can post a query to editorial list citing the deletion notice from the newswire list with the story number and URL e.g.

I am querying the deletion of " story 74039 performed by Ronan" http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ireland-newswire/2006-February/0201-7r.html Ronan claims that this is a copy and paste but in fact it is complete coincidence that my post is the same as the one in the reason supplied by him. Thank You -- Your Name Here If You Like

You can send your question using the contact form, or by joining the editorial list if you wish to discuss it further. If you didn't see the post after you pressed the publish button, please inform us - there may be a technical problem. Because of the structure of this site anything published should appear first and then be reviewed.

Re-categorised to Events/Other Press
Events: Postings which principally detail an event should be posted in the events section. If an editor sees something which they believe fits that description they will move it to the event calender.

Other Press: This is a section of the site for material which originates at other media sites. Because Indymedia.ie is a news site which wishes to carry mainly original reports and stories from you we do not encourage the wholesale reproduction of news from other sources. We value your original material. However, there are occasionally stories to which it is worth linking. They should be introduced with a summary written originally by you outlining their content and importance to other indymedia.ie readers. Your posts in this section should not be complete copy and pastes if the original source is available freely and without restriction online. If the source is a pay-per-view or otherwise restricted site then it is acceptable to reproduce it in full. Otherwise please merely include a URL to the original source below your summary.

If you have further questions/comments on the issue contact [email protected] It is helpful if you give the URL of the story or comment. Hint Get the URL of the comment by right clicking on the number link at the start of the comments section and choosing Copy link/Shortcut.

2B. Someone is claiming to be me on the newswire?

Because of Indymedia Ireland Open Publishing system anyone can post under any name but if you believe someone is maliciously posting under your distinct name please click the report post icon beside the comment or story in question. or email [email protected]

Other more technical methods for dealing with impersonations rely upon technical methods such as using public key encryption to sign your posts.

2C. How do I complain about an article or comment?

If you feel that a story or comment breaches our editorial guidelines, just click on the report post icon beside the comment or story in question. This will bring you to a form where you can fill in the reason why you think the comment or story should be removed. It helps if you can state the guideline it breaks (abuse, untrue, cut n paste are the most frequent). This will be sent as an email to our newswire moderation email list- be patient though since, while we try to monitor the lists all of the time, it may take a while for a response.

2D. How do I complain about something else?

Use the contact form to bring issues to the attention of the collective . It is helpful if you provide as much detail, including URLs and links to background information as not everybody will be up to date with all the discussions on the site.

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3A. How do I create an article?

Just click on the publish link in the left hand column, fill in the publishing form and hey presto!. For more information, see our Publishing Guide.

3B. How do I create a feature?

Features tend to be first-hand coverage of an important event or original investigation. They are ideally coupled with some multimedia aspect (video/audio/photos) and links to other sources and views on the subject.

First, write and gather your materials for your story and publish it as normal on the newswire. Then contact the editorial team to propose it as a feature for our central column. A feature usually takes the shape of a short introduction of about 250 words with an image to illustrate it on the front page. Additional text is carried "below the cut", so if you can structure your initial report taking this into account then it's more likely to become a feature as it's less work for us trying to decide how to move the text around. It also ensures that you get to put the slant/angle/spin/emphasis that you wish on your story.

If there is an article which you think deserves to be featured please recommend it to [email protected] where it will be noticed and discussed by editors and other subscribers to the list. You can also then add content to the feature.

3C. What shall I write about?

The short answer is just do whatever interests you!

The collection of first hand testimony such as interviews (either transcripts or audio/video) and first-hand reports and photos of whatever issue happens to be your concern, especially if it is under-reported or inaccurately reported in the mainstream media is of particularly high value to Indymedia.ie.

Material which specifically relates to Ireland and Irish affairs has a higher priority but international analysis is definitely not excluded. Originality and newsworthiness are the most important criteria. For more information about publishing, see our Guide to Publishing

3D. How do I upload photos?

Go to the Publish page. The publish form is divided into a number of steps, the first step is headed "Choose Number of Attachments (optional)". Select the number of photos that you wish to publish and click on the button that says "Upload your Files". You will then have to click on the "browse" button to select each file from your local harddrive, add a caption and fill in the titles and whatever text you need.

Note that the maximum width of an image is 2000 pixels and the size of the image file can't be bigger than 1MB. If they're too large then they just won't be published. Contact the imc-ireland-photo list for help in resizing them.

3E. How do I upload video and other media?

Audio/Video: The ability to upload audio and video and size thereof depends on the always fluctuating capacity of indymedia servers. Currently Indymedia.ie allows uploads of images (up to 2MB), audio (up to 20MB) and PDFs (up to 2MB). You can use http://video.indymedia.org and http://radio.indymedia.org to upload large audio/video files and then post a text-only story to the Indymedia.ie newswire providing a link to the video.indymedia or radio.indymedia upload. If you have any further questions use the Contact Us link and an Indymedia contributor or editor will be happy to give you technical advice.

3F. How do I promote my talk / meeting / protest: posting an event?

Indymedia.ie has a special calendar for events. Click on the publish button. On the publish page you will have to choose an "article type". Choose "Event Notice", then fill in the date of the event in the menus beneath. This will then be published on the events calendar. Upcoming events are also highlighted in the left hand column of every page. Please do not post your event as a separate news story as this might cause the postings to be hidden.

Although it is permissible to advertise events which are raising money for charity, or for voluntary, non-commercial organisations, we do not allow the advertising of events whose primary purpose is commercial no matter how "right on" the event may be.

3G. How is this site moderated / edited?

The ethos behind the editing of Indymedia.ie is based around keeping the site flowing and cultivating good news pieces. The actual editorial guidelines detail the rules we operate by and the workings of the Indymedia collective are detailed in the site's documentation section.

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4A. How can I contribute?

See our Guide to Contributing to Indymedia

4B. How can I Volunteer?

The main lists that are used to create the site are [email protected] and [email protected]. If you subscribe to them, lurk or get involved in discussions, then you can begin to learn how the site works and contribute your own ideas and passion. For more information, see the Guide to Contributing to Indymedia.

4C. How can I Donate?

Yes please! See our Donations Page