Posts, information, web-sites and people are disappearing.

Could this be censorship by the state, or just ordinary technology not working?

the story is repaired. would be more helpful though if you'd mail to the tech list on imc-uk-tech@lists.indymedia.org instead of posting it on the newswire... for a more in-depth technical explanation see here.

Steve I don't think it is state censorship, it is censorship by one or more of the imcuk bods. I don't know why. Do they think they are protecting people? If so from what? One way this is done is if someone, for whatever reason, does a multiple post then they will 'hide' the post with replies leaving the unanswered one on the newswire. I haven't posted here for a long time because of this type of underhand censorship. It's shameful for a supposed independent media site.

It makes the argument for a generally automated site where censors (can't think of a better name) only become involved if someone makes an open complaint about a certain post. Contrary to what a certain imc censor keeps banging on about, the complaint and the imc reply and reason for 'hiding' should be published openly on the newswire. Would anarchists support this type of behind the scenes shenanigans in other areas - I think not.

dllc, you're confusing two things here. if there's a "no story to tell yet" coming up it's a technical bug - you obviously were too lazy to read the link i posted above, so here i post it again, bloody read it before throwing around accusations  http://docs.indymedia.org/twiki/bin/view/Local/UkNoStoryToTellYetHOWTO

there's been debate about this bug earlier, read  http://uk.indymedia.org:8081/front.php3?article_id=37255&group=webcast
the debate on that posting as well touches on the ridicolous censorship accusation you and other people are keeping to come up with. clearly you have never followed any links on this site, otherwise you would have seen the link called "Editorial Guidelines" on top of the page where we have published the criteria for hiding.

Thanks for the reply Andi, and for not disputing the particular method of censorship I mentioned. Although it was a shame you had to resort to personal abuse: boring, lazy, ridicolous (sic).

I wasn't confusing two issues. There was a definite link between the two - censorship. I've read the tech stuff you put up and it makes a lot of sense. What doesn't make sense is when posts and replies get 'hidden' when they have not breached the imc editorial guidelines. When this happens surely readers and authors are not being ridiculous in wanting an open ( on the newswire ) explanation from whoever was resposible for it.

dllc, sorry for the personal abuse, I got slightly upset by the words "behind the scenes shenanigans"... i still don't think censorship is the link between a story being hidden by a technological fault and a story being hidden by a conscious decision - the only link there is that they are invisible in the wire. of course you can name the hiding by a conscious decision as censorship but then i have no problems to censor repeated postings (for readability) or a fascist posting (they can fuck off and create their own open wire, i'm not putting in my free time to give them a platform). anyhow, even when a post is hidden it can be read in the publicly accessible admin page on http://uk.indymedia.org:8081/display.php3?led=y&first=&

could you give examples for posts being hidden which don't fit the criteria? that would really help. it would as well be very helpful if we could have this conversation on the features list where the people hang out who monitor the newswire. that is as well a place where the criteria for hiding could be discussed which i think would be a good discussion to have. this list is open to anyone who wants to engage and you can subscribe to it at http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-features. To see the archive which is open to anyone to see go to http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-uk-features/. To send a mail to that list mail to imc-uk-features@lists.indymedia.org. this is as well the list to which all the middle column stories are proposed so it's a good email address to keep if you want a particular story highlighted in the middle...