Publish Page

This is somewhere to edit the text for the publish page and there is a seperate page to discuss the ImcUkCopyleft stuff.

See also: PublishRedesign

Table of contents

Linking to the publish page

Yossarian suggested:

We are going to have to alter the publish form to say something like "If you are having problems with video, audio, or photo uploads to the site, click on this link to be taken to an unencrypted article submission page."

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-tech/2004-March/001526.html

Ben suggested:

I must say I agree with kriptic that the publish form defaulting to encrypted is a problem - not just because of the video issue but also because of the intimidating messages.

I propose we switch it round so the default is unencrypted and people have the option to encrypt. I can however see arguments for defaulting to encrypted and if there was a seperate publish form for video and a certification system for the encryption, then I'd agree it's best the way it is currently.

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-tech/2004-March/001537.html

Publish page bugs

Barny pointed out:

The warnings I get are about part of the page being insecure. as far as I can see, this must refer to the images in the sidebar, which are served by http from images.indymedia.org. Would someone want to copy these over to kosmos and serve them up by https?

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-tech/2004-March/001532.html

GarconDuMonde adds (4 Apr 2004):

but the warnings Barney refers to, above, are on top of warnings about the certificate being provided by an unknown authority, i.e. indymedia.org.uk. How about the suggestion of using certification by cacert - http://www.cacert.org ? In the longer term, this is poised to be recognised by browsers (mozilla and potentially ie also) so would eliminate some of the warnings.

Publish page text

zcat suggested:

should we have a peice on that page about frowned on formats (propriety s/ware) recomending to upload audio and video in mp3/ogg and mpeg/divx rather than .rm or Qt or wma/v somthing like prefered formats blahblah but if you canot convert to these then still upload your clips but not all will be able to view them

SpaceBunny adds I like ogg but there is problem uploading it to imcuk when I tested. We should probably do a whole static page on file formats which is linked to from publish page and help page.

Current text

This is the current text, please improve!

note:Indymedia is based on donated work by individuals. It is not a 'professional' organisation. Our servers are pretty good, but during events such as Genoa, or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are often not able to immediately keep up with the demand.

Imc UK - United Kollektives - has been upgraded to a new codebase. Users and admin volunteers alike have to get used to it. Please notify imc-uk-tech @ lists.indymedia.org about any glitches.

• Please help us by not hitting the publish button a thousand times.
• Uploads of large files such as video or audio might time out. This is a more serious error - and it will be easier to publish your story by sending your file to imc-uk-reports at lists.indymedia.org for us to upload it. Please include in the email under which name and title your posting should appear.

Please use this form to contribute news stories only. In order to keep the newswire concise, we will hide uploads which are discriminatory, infactual, advertising or a repeat posting. For details, see our Editorial Guidelines . If you want to announce an event please use the calendar. To have your say in response to a story on the site, please use the add your comments link at the bottom of the stories.

We consider, as a rule, that material contributed to this site free for non-profit re-use in the spirit of Copyleft. If you want to change that for your material posted, please give your conditions in the summary.

Proposed text

And this is the text for revision: feel free to change it!

note:Indymedia is based on donated work by individuals. It is not a 'professional' organisation. Our servers are pretty good, but during big events such as the G8 summits, or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are often not able to immediately keep up with the demand.

Imc UK - United Kollektives - upgraded to a new codebase in 2003. Users and admin volunteers alike are still getting used to it, although improvements are continually happening. Please notify imc-uk-tech [at] lists [dot] indymedia [dot] org about any glitches.

• Please help us by not hitting the publish button a multiple times. You should see confirmation page once uploaded but may take a while.
• Uploads of large files such as video or audio might time out. Try the non-encrypted publish page which also MS Internet Explorer users on Macs may need. It may be easier to publish your story sending your file to imc-uk-reports [at] lists [dot] indymedia [dot] org for us to upload it. Please include in the email under which name and title your posting should appear. Also see help page.

Please use this form to contribute news stories only. In order to keep the newswire concise, we will hide uploads which are discriminatory, infactual, advertising or a repeat posting. For details, see our Editorial Guidelines . If you want to announce an event please use the calendar. To have your say in response to a story on the site, please use the add your comments link at the bottom of the stories.

We consider, as a rule, that material contributed to this site free for re-use in the spirit of Copyleft. If you want to change that for your material posted, please give your conditions in the summary.

Also we should point out near tick boxs limits this should be done with varibales and lang bundles.

Copyleft

Space Bunny adds:

I think link to gnu site should be dropped as confusing and just link to expanded text on static help page which we can improve via admin. I think word non-profit should be dropped as that is not in spirit of copyleft as understood by some people, or we should drop term copyleft. copyleft also implies reuser should grant same allowances and conditions of reuse.

This is a big issue that should be discussed on the imc-uk-process list? see also: ImcLegal#_Copyright_Copyleft_Issues perhaps we should also start a ImcUkCopyleft page? — ChrisC

Possible Radical Redesign

mish adds (9th Jan 2005):

I still think the publish page is too much, and it should have a radical redesign to make it simpler. The main points (explained in full further down) are:

• Having a cut down, simple publish page, with a link to a "full fat" page
• Regional publish pages, or at least publish pages with the regional background and header.
• Getting rid of the abstract part (use the first paragraph instead).

Smaller changes I think would improve the look are nicking some of the look of the interface used by Mir admins. It is a much nicer interface than the public interface! Small ideas could be:

• Having multiple columns of tick boxes in the "region" and "topic" sections, so less scrolling down is required to get past them.
• More fonts and (background) colours to split up the sections.
• Have pop-up text appear in some places when the mouse hovers to reduce the text (eg. the navigation buttons at the top of the cambridge page. For good use in a form see http://www.wereallneighbours.co.uk/myaccount/events/add.php )
• It would also be good to have the publish page fully compliant with web standards.

It would also be nice for normal people to be able to have formatted articles. Though there are definitely problems with allowing people to enter html directly. Maybe wiki formatting could be an option. (I know this is lots of work, I mention it mainly to record the idea rather than a short term aim).

Scrap the Abstract

The "Abstract" section confuses lots of people. How many newswire items have we seen with the first paragraph repeated becuase it is in both the abstract and the article. I think it should not appear on the normal public publish page. (It should still be an internal field, and accessible through the admin interface, as it is required for features). When a newswire item is published, the first paragraph would be used as the abstract, maybe up to a maximum number of characters.

Simple Publish Page

There still seem to be far too many fields in the publish page. I think we should have a "lean" default page with less fields, and a link to a "full fat" page with all the options. Then it will be more friendly to first time or less confident users.

The fields I think the "lean" page should have are are:

• title
• For the 'UK' page
• Region
• Topic
• Action
• Author
• Article

The fields scrapped (from the lean page, but still in the full-fat page) would be:

• All media-related fields (including the top "Number of media items")
• abstract (as described above)
• email address
• web address
• postal address
• telephone number
• language

Regional Publish Pages

I imagine that quite a few people are confused when clicking the 'publish' button from the sheffield site takes them to a UK page. It should be possible to have regional templates for the publish page. Or publish pages if we have 'lean' and 'full-fat' ...

Other Press Publish Page

The idea is to have a different publish page to the current one for people linking to existing articles on the web. (Note that we are still interested in alternative media - we do not want links to corporate media - BBC, Guardian etc).

The publish page would serve two purposes

• It would automatically mark the page as "other press" topic so that we can display it separately on the front page (how that is done is another discussion)
• It would guide the author to comment on the article rather than simply cut and paste ...

How it could look

It would look similar to the existing publish page, but the text it steps 1 and 2 would be replaced by the text below. (Note that I've left out incidental stuff like "required" or "optional" - this stuff will be added at the point it gets mocked up on the dev server) Step 3 (selecting regions and topics) would be the same as now, and there would be no option to add media items.

Please only use this form to link to other interesting alternative media. Put the link to the original article in and write a paragraph or more to say why you think it is interesting and why people should read it. Articles that only include a link with no text may be hidden.

Please do not bother linking to the mainstream media (BBC, Guardian etc.); Indymedia is intended for alternative media.

If you need help, go to the Other Press help page.

Step 1 - Your Details

Author information (this will be displayed on the site)

Author of this article (pseudonyms are acceptable)
TEXT BOX

Step 2 - The Article

The URL (web address) of the original article
TEXT BOX

Title of your article
(Please use a unique and meaningful title, and do not put it all in upper-case letters)
TEXT BOX

Why is this article interesting
(a paragraph or more summarising why you are reposting this article)
TEXT BOX

You can enter an extract from the article here (but please do not copy-paste the whole article)
TEXT BOX

page started by -- ChrisC - 24 Mar 2004
-- GarconDuMonde - 04 Apr 2004 - some work on text, changed uk copyright link
-- HamishDowner - 09 Jan 2005 - added radical redesign section
-- DaMish - 07 Dec 2006 - added other press publish page
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