Indymedia
News concerning Indymedia itself.
New Email Lists and Wiki for UK Indymedia
08-06-2011 20:25
Two of the key tools that Indymedia activists use for communication and collaboration are email lists and wiki pages. UK Indymedia activists have made extensive use of lists hosted by the global Indymedia list server and of the global Indymedia wiki over the last decade. But at the end of May 2011 key lists were shutdown without agreement and wiki accounts deleted.
In response to this situation, new email lists have been set up for people who wish to contact the site admins or to be involved in discussions about features and moderation. There is also a new wiki site for UK Indymedia related documents. In addition there is now a new Users list for users of this site to raise matters which are not covered by the Moderation, Features or Tech lists.
Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair 2011
17-05-2011 14:10
Sheffield's second annual anarchist book fair will be held Saturday 21st May from 10:00 - 18:00 @ Bank Street Arts, 32-40 Bank Street (A much brighter venue than last year!). There will be meetings and presentations throughout the day as well as some film screenings (a new feature for this year). There is also a a social/fund raiser in the evening 8:00 til 2:00, @ the Redhouse, 168 Solly Street.
Sheffield Indymedia will be screening the LibDem Conference protest video over lunch and also hosting an open discussion, with the Mayday Collective, from 5-6pm, about what is happening with UK Indymedia. Come along and have your say about the future of the site! See also the report and audio from the 2010 Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair.
Also the Sheffield Temporary Autonomous Arts event is on now in Sheffield, till Sunday and is being held at Unit 3, Bowdon Street, S1 4JP. It should be great, see the report of last years event.
Links: Sheffield Bookfair Website
Oxford's position on disagreements within Indymedia in the UK
13-05-2011 00:19
There have been disagreements within the UK Indymedia movement for some time. These came to a head on 1 May 2011. As a result, there are now two national projects - Mayday and Be The Media, and conflict between the two groups continues.
We don't intend to go into the details in this article, but you can read about them in the articles Big changes are coming to Indymedia UK (published by Be The Media) and The Attempt to Shutdown UK Indymedia (published by Mayday).
Autonomy for the UK
09-05-2011 11:53
On 1st May 2011 the UK Indymedia Network forked into two autonomous projects, running two different websites, UK Indymedia and Be The Media. Also, a snapshot of the UK Indymedia site as it existed on the date of the the fork was created as an archive.
There was a consensus in the UK Indymedia Network that the project needed to fork, so that Indymedia members with different views could all work on developments they were happy with rather than come into constant conflict. An agreement was made in December to implement the fork on May 1st but the agreement broke down at the eleventh hour. Mayday believed that part of the agreement was that their collective was to have globally recognised Independent Media Centre status at the time of the fork. Be The Media had interpreted this differently and did not see it this way. The consensus that had been thrashed some 4 months before had now snapped and activists, being activists, took action. Be The Media started implementing the changes to the site shortly after midnight on May 1st. Mayday saw what was happening, considered the blocks to have been ignored [1] and felt that if this proceeded it would have in effect shut down the UK Newswire. After several hours of discussion and consideration they agreed they couldn't let it proceed like this and so, in the early hours of May 1st, sleepless techies migrated the entire web site to a new server, thus effecting the fork on the agreed date but not in the way originally planned.
Articles: I'm glad Indymedia UK is still here! | What's up with UK Indymedia? | Ode to IMC UK: keep it going.... | Britain's Left Defeats Itself Again | IMC UK Shut Down #IMCUKshutdown
Features: The 1st May 2011 UK Indymedia Network Fork | Big changes are coming to Indymedia UK | The Attempt to Shutdown UK Indymedia
Elsewhere: SchNEWS: Indymedia: From the Rubble of Double Trouble
Full article | 1 addition | 241 comments
The 1st May 2011 UK Indymedia Network Fork
02-05-2011 22:56
On May 1st 2011, there was an attempt by BeTheMedia to disrupt the Indymedia UK site. They do not have consensus to do this, so the Mayday Collective took direct action to secure the site.
Articles: I'm glad Indymedia UK is still here! | Autonomy for the UK | What's happening with Indymedia UK? | What's up with UK Indymedia? | Ode to IMC UK: keep it going.... | Britain's Left Defeats Itself Again | IMC UK Shut Down #IMCUKshutdown| The Attempt to Shutdown UK Indymedia
Features: Autonomy for the UK | The Attempt to Shutdown UK Indymedia | Big changes are coming to Indymedia UK
Elsewhere: SchNEWS: Indymedia: From the Rubble of Double Trouble
Liverpool Indymedia pauses
29-04-2011 11:12
This version of Liverpool Indymedia is on hold because currently there are no people able to commit time and energy to the site administration, maintenance, moderation and editing. Existing articles will continue to be available. You can instead contribute your news articles, photos etc to Northern Indymedia or the new non-regional Indymedia site that will evolve out of the existing Indymedia UK.The Attempt to Shutdown UK Indymedia
29-04-2011 01:14
UPDATE: The attempted shutdown took place, see archive.indymedia.org.uk, it was announced by IMC London and has been critiqued, but the lists don't appear to have been shutdown yet. Scotland Indymedia blocked the shutdown for 3 weeks (until they can discuss it face to face).
Some people involved with UK Indymedia have been talking about shutting down the UK IMC site for years [1], for a variety of reasons; an openly declared disillusionment with the original model of open publishing and wanting to move to pre-moderated newswires which don't allow comments on articles [2], a dislike of the political content that is carried on the UK site [3]; a desire to see the traffic, which the UK site gets, redirected to regional IMC sites [4] and perhaps other motivations. Those wanting the site shutdown have also blocked improvements being made to the UK Indymedia site [5].
However the activists who have been maintaining the UK IMC site are still committed to running a UK-wide Indymedia open newswire and are not prepared to see the UK Indymedia site shutdown. They believe that the UK Indymedia newswire provides a valuable service for articles and comments and it should be maintained. These activists are also committed to running UK Indymedia in a transparent and open manner and in the spirit of the initial Independent Media Centre. Prior to the UK Indymedia Network meeting in Bradford in December 2010 this group of IMC UK admins applied to the global New IMC process as an autonomous collective with a wish to continue running the UK Indymedia site. Clearly the UK Indymedia site isn't a New IMC, it's been going for a decade (the early IMC UK story is covered in the BeTheMedia article about the impending shutdown), the application was made to make it clear that there was a group of activists who were running and wanted to continue running, the IMC UK site, but with autonomy from the activists running the other Indymedia sites in the UK. The activists running the other Indymedia sites in the UK wanted to take the indymedia.org.uk domain away from the UK Indymedia site and point it to the BeTheMedia site (at the time it was all.indymedia.org.uk, it has subsequently been renamed).
Articles: I'm glad Indymedia UK is still here! | What's up with UK Indymedia? | Ode to IMC UK: keep it going.... | Britain's Left Defeats Itself Again | IMC UK Shut Down #IMCUKshutdown
Features: The 1st May 2011 UK Indymedia Network Fork
Elsewhere: SchNEWS: Indymedia: From the Rubble of Double Trouble
Gateway 303: Police Disinformation on UK Indymedia
22-01-2011 22:35
In the wake of the outing of 4 undercover police infiltrators into the UK activist scene, SchNews, have broken a story about police posts to Indymedia. For over two years suspected police articles and comments have been tracked by filters that are triggered by matching IP addresses, the first comment tracked in this manner dates from August 2008 and the last from January 2011. The full lists of gateway 202 and 303 posts has now been published so activists can do their own analysis on the police posts. A feature article about the abuse has also been published by Birmingham Indymedia, this feature article, first started in in December 2009, has been the subject of a huge amount of internal discussion within UK Indymedia and has been one of the reasons behind the decision to fork the project. Sheffield Indymedia supports the use of anti-abuse features to track and remove disinformation from the site and long argued for the feature article exposing the state abuse to be published.
Articles: Full list of Gateway 303 and 202 posts to IMC UK | Advocating Domestic Extremism - Cops on Indymedia - An Exposé | INTER-NETCU: Government Agency Caught Infiltrating Activist Media Outlet | State infiltration and attempted disruption of activist websites | UK Police Agent Provocateurs Exposed | Nottingham Indymedia statement on recent events | IMC London Statement on the recent Schnews Article | Bristol Indymedia's position on IP logging
Other Press Coverage: SchNews: INTER-NETCU | SchNews: Gateway Gate: Straight from the Pig's Mouth | Slashdot: UK Authorities Accused of Inciting Illegal Protest
Advocating Domestic Extremism - Cops on Indymedia - An Exposé
22-01-2011 16:02
On April 27th, 2010, a comment appeared on the Indymedia UK newswire entitled Don't use SPEAK as a model. The comment, on an article entitled New animal lab at Leicester; New nationwide campaign to start urged readers to respond to the campaign by "Model{ling} the campaign on a successful AR campaign such as Hillgrove cats or Darnley(sic) Oaks etc". Readers familiar with those campaigns will be aware that the campaigns are alleged to have included violent actions against individuals, including a a letter bomb in the Hillgrove Cats campaign, and the removal of Gladys Hammond from her grave.
UK Indymedia to Fork on 1st May 2011
14-12-2010 13:23
At a UK Indymedia Network meeting held in Bradford on 11th December 2010 it was agreed that the UK Indymedia project would fork into two separate projects on or before 1st May 2011 (fork in the sense of a Free Software fork). Many issues and disagreements over the years preceded this decision and it is now hoped that all involved will be able to continue to work on activists media projects without ongoing conflicts. One collective will take over the running of the www.indymedia.org.uk website, with a new name that won't include "UK" and on a new indymedia.org sub-domain, which has yet to be agreed. The other group will continue developing an aggregator site they are working on. The indymedia.org.uk domain will be used to host an archive of the web site which will no longer be updated.
This won't have much direct effect on Sheffield Indymedia, the web site will continue to run as part of the renamed UK Indymedia website. Sheffield Indymedia will remain on sheffield.indymedia.org.uk (and hopefully soon also be available on sheffield.indymedia.org) and it is our hope that the Sheffield Indymedia newswire will be syndicated to the aggregator site.
