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Cleaning the Newswire: Moderation-How-To

Updated version for 2005

This is, of course, an ongoing discussion! There is a huge archive of previous debate from which this present update of the page has been adapted: the old page is still worth reading though - hence providing two links to it in the opening paragraph!! In creating/updating this page, people have tried to organise it in a logical way which lends itself to further addition around topics, as opposed to the somewhat ad-hoc chronological method that was used before.

Editorial Guidelines

The current editorial guidelines as used by indymedia-UK are - perhaps deliberately - vague. This has advantages as well as disadvantages: articles that do not 'fit' in some way with the politics or ideals of the site can be easily hidden, yet there may also be differences of opinion on whether an article should be hidden or not.

Article Moderation

At present, there are certain "rules" for moderating articles (maybe "guidelines" would be a better word):

1. in admin, state in the "comments" box who has hidden the article, and why if it isn't obvious e.g. "gdm - dupe"
2. send an email to the imc-uk-features list stating the id no of the article (in the subject line - e.g."Hidden - 123456"), and why it has been hidden.
3. that's it!

However, that said, someone may disagree with the reason the article has been hidden. They should really write back to the features list disputing the reason (often done just to voice an opinion) and may also take the step of *un*hiding the article. NOTE: I think this is something we don't do often enough, maybe 'cos we are afraid of upsetting other people... as long as there is an explanation sent to the list (and probably cc'ed to the person who hid the article), I don't see that there is a problem - we all make mistakes sometimes, and as long as there is the opportunity to reach concensus, it shouldn't matter.

How to un-hide:

1. in admin, state in the "comments" box who has unhidden the article, and why , e.g. below "gdm - dupe" you might put "jbloggs - unhidden, not a dupe, it's an updated version"
2. send an email to the imc-uk-features list stating the id no of the article (in the subject line - e.g."Unhidden - 123456"), and why it's been unhidden.

Comment Moderation

The UK newswire gets many more comments than articles, as you might expect. Because of this, it's a lot more work (and noise) to notify the list every time a comment is hidden.

There is a kind of unwritten consensus on some types of comment which probably don't need notification via the list. These include:

• mindless abuse, e.g. one-liners with "Kill all the ***", or "Indymedia sucks" etc,
• spam comments unrelated to the actual content of the article

The second type is not as easy to spot as the first, but after some time spent monitoring the comments on admin, it gets easier.

It's important you don't give in to the temptation of hiding comments that you violently disagree with, but don't really breach the editorial guidelines. Before hiding a comment, it's a good idea to ask yourself "is this really against the guidelines, or am I just angry at the author for saying something so stupid?" We don't have the right to censor comments simply because we disagree with them.

Other types of comments which should be hidden, but with which the list ought to be notified include:

• reposts of hidden articles as comments to other articles
• "flame wars" unrelated to the articles

It's generally accepted that angry responses to hidden troll comments should be hidden along with the troll itself, because they make no sense on their own, and angry replies are exactly what the troll was looking for.

GarconDuMonde also posted these initial questions he wrote in an email to the features list that could provide further discussion.

How Hidden is Hidden?

There was some discussion about possibly deleting posts, or having a black background. A proposal made was accepted minus one point. The parts not objected to are

PROPOSAL STARTS

Hidden articles (and comments) are hidden because they contravene the editorial guidelines. Indymedia UK does not want to have front page space linking to the hidden article or comment.

• Indymedia UK also wants to be as open and transparent as possible. In this spirit hidden posts are still viewable, so that visitors to the site can see what we hide.

• However, these posts will be clearly marked as hidden. (This is so that if a page is linked to directly from another site, it will be obvious that it has been hidden). This will be by the article header (as at present), and by a light grey watermark over a white background. The intention is that the article will be readable without special tricks, but it will be obvious that it has been hidden.

• Hidden articles will persist on the site without a time limit.

PROPOSAL ENDS

The part which is still contentious, and was meant to be discussed further at the ImcUkGatheringSpring2005 , is

• The "view all pages" page will be linked to from the editorial guidelines, but not from the front page.

The discussion about the proposal started here.

However, time was limited at the ImcUkGatheringSpring2005 and there was only time to discuss in the ImcUkGatheringModerationDiscussion about developing a ImcUkPrivacyPolicy^?.

Guidelines for Indymedia Ireland

Here are the new editorial guidelines for IMC IE. They're pretty comprehensive, as you can see. Maybe they can serve as a means of kickstarting debate in UK IMCs.

---

-- GarconDuMonde - 11 Feb 2004 - page started!!
-- SpanneR - 23 Feb 2004 - added to comment mod section, plus link to IMC IE article
-- GarconDuMonde - 23 Feb 2004 - couple of little changes, tried to add the imc-ie guidelines then found that spanner had beat me to it!!
-- SpanneR - 15 Oct 2004 - added a "how to unhide" section and removed advice to put hidden article URL in emails to list.
-- HamishDowner - 14 Feb 2005
-- GarconDuMonde - 08 Mar 2005

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