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This is only some part of the debate - please add missing bits and restructure this page to be clearer, better organised etc.

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Summary (evolving: please update!)

Some key points, some sort of conflicting, some not:

• traditional indymedia engine - see Devel - comments so far
  • drupal, some arguments for, some against
  • mir, sf-active - against: don't yet have wiki components
  • samizdat - has wiki, but has small developer base, still fairly new
  • oscailt - no wiki
  • tikiMedia (addon to tikiwiki) - Athens, Valencia, Mexico using this
• minimum should be wiki
• some blog component
• some allowance for non-modifiable pages followed by comments
• NPOV ? some variant of NOR?
• informal proposal: create a new web on docs.indy - this will be the research web site

Discussion probably mostly started here:

• http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-research/2005-December/thread.html

some elements of the debate in more depth

NPOV and/or NOR ?

Would some version of NPOV be needed? or is indymedia grassroots organising enough? probably the No Original Research mechanism would not be desirable here, since we want to encourage research.

opiniated points of view

Wikipedia does allow opiniated points of view, provided that they are opiniated points of view from reputable or outside experts - in principle, they should not be the private points of view, or even private research, by a wikipedian, unless that research is published elsewhere.

For example, this page: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prises_de_positions_sur_le_trait%C3%A9_constitutionnel_europ%C3%A9en is a list purely of opinionated (but collective) points of view on the treaty to create a european constitution.

However, the mechanism to stop wikipedians' points of view and wikipedians' "original research" from being published in the wikipedia is not the software, it is rather *meta*-structure which the community of users developed and wrote up in meta-pages which are widely referred to in discussions:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV - neutral point of view
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOR - no original research

There is no obligation to include these in any installation of mediawiki, and on other wikis where the community wants to apply the same principles, they usually just put in an interliki wink to the ones on the wikipedia.

And if you look through docs.indy, you'll probably find a few opiniated pages or sections :).

Traditional indymedia style - locked article + comments

ImcResearchLockedTopicExample

The following command includes another page on this page:

%INCLUDE{"ImcResearchLockedTopicExample"}%

Here begins an included, locked topic

This is an opiniated, locked topic, which illustrates how to make an authoritarian comment. If we encourage this sort of article, then appeals would have to be made to the admin group TWikiAdminGroup in order to make any modification of those pages. Or else, people would have to simply cut off links to the authoritarian pages.

Here ends an included locked topic

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opinionated comment 1

The above example shows that a locked topic + comments below can be easily done on the twiki.

Of course, whether or not it's a habit we want to encourage is another question. -- BouD - 17 Dec 2005

opinionated comment 2

opinionated comment 3

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