Indymedia - Philosophies

Auditor #9 wrote:

http://seanryan.baywords.com/2008/04/21/this-blog-exists-because/

Let's hope this house of cards stays down.

Auditor #9 wrote:

http://seanryan.baywords.com/2008/04/21/this-blog-exists-because/

Nice to see you're on the ball. I was waiting for an opportunity to go public. I wasn't quite ready, but what the heck - strike while the iron's hot. The proverbial caca's going to hit the alleged fan on this one - hope everyone's brought an umbrella and wet gear.

I noticed there were 16 users/visitors suddenly online when there's usually about 5 (hardly public!) so I had a sniff around for links. They must have come via p.ie/via your blog... what have we let ourselves in for Seanie? A host of trolls with their clubs?

O let them come - we'll fight them in the Sibin Reoite.. we'll fight ..

Auditor #9 wrote:

O let them come - we'll fight them in the Sibin Reoite.. we'll fight ..

The Defenestration Chamber will gladly jump to the defence of the glorious Machine Nation!

Ain't it great the way that chaos works

Don't think we'll have anything to fear from club wielders here. I deliberately witheld the existence of the blog from here to avoid such a thing (probably a bit paranoid, but just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean that I'm wrong). Now the cat's outta the bag, it's open season for spillin' the beans.

Indymedia Ireland is a truly valuable commodity for activists in Ireland. Now that it has been subverted, it must be replaced. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be pretty, but it will happen.

Denial of service = ping of death? That's a quick, dirty subroutine to write. It's easy enough to combat it too though, isn't it? Or should be...

So a rake of machines need to be making requests on the server like that simultaneously? and these machines don't know they're doing that - these botnets. How many computers are you talking about there? thousands?

It's only guesswork on my part that it was a denial of service attack. Such an attack from an individual would easilly be thwarted by Indy. If many were involved though it would be a different story, particularly if they were using thousands of proxies. This is all speculation on my part, it might turn out that one of the mods might have been drunk or something and accidently killed some essential feature that caused the site to go into a terminal spin.

I do reckon it looks very suspicious though. I also know that readers at IMC Antwerp might be a bit miffed that two articles telling of their problems were removed from the Irish Indy. Here's a link to the UK Indy on that particular cause of worry for IMC Antwerp: Link.

Based on your experiences, for how long do you think indymedia will be down? 2-3 weeks? Could it be permanently closed by such attacks?

If it's something uncomplicated like a denial of service, I'd expect it to be back by late Monday or early Tuesday. If it's a more serious hack (assuming that it is a hack) and someone's inserted a malicious code, it could take weeks - Oscailt's a hefty and serious piece of software for a few techies to search through. It wouldn't be a case of just replacing the uploaded version with a copy as Oscailt is updated on the fly and this is done often.

Twould be impossible to take it down permanently, the articles stored on it are copied regularly and if it came to it could easilly be uploaded to a new platform.

Is this the best Irish coverage we have of it on this thread? The politics.ie discussion seems to have faded away though it will rejuvenate tomorrow more than likely. Anywhere else covering this do you think? It is an important blogospheric story.

Auditor #9 wrote:

So a rake of machines need to be making requests on the server like that simultaneously? and these machines don't know they're doing that - these botnets. How many computers are you talking about there? thousands?

The Storm botnet (one of the biggest) is estimated at somewhere between a million and 50 million compromised machines. Smaller botnets, of which there are quite possibly several thousand, would have several thousand machines apiece. As Hermes says, it's just guesswork that it's a DDOS.

We're the only ones.

It'll get big when the sun comes up.

I don't really understand the indymedia set up but is this a splintering of the irish organisation or is indymedia in general due a shake up?

Auditor #9 wrote:

I don't really understand the indymedia set up but is this a splintering of the irish organisation or is indymedia in general due a shake up?

This issue confuses a lot of folks.

Indymedia is a global network (this network is in fine working order). The Irish Indymedia is affiliated to this network. It comes under the global Indymedia umbrella. This simply means that Indymedia Ireland agrees to certain conditions. It would be my argument and others agree with me, that Indymedia Ireland is violating its duties. I believe that this is very provable. Regardless of what I can or cannot prove though, Ireland is quite entitled to open up as many Indymedia sites as is required or desired, so long as each site is accepted by the global Indymedia network.

It would not be quite correct to suggest that there has been a splintering of the Irish organisation as there is no organisation as such. Everyone who has any input into Indymedia Ireland is considered a member of the collective. This includes those who contribute to the site via articles and or comments, and the mods. It just so happens that certain mods are also the techies who wrote and maintain Indymedia Ireland's platform: Oscailt (written in PHP, it's a work of fine art that Google has a major hard-on for). This being the case, these particular mods are able to alter the site to conform to whatever decisions they make. This makes them very powerful entities within the community (eventhough the ethos would suggest that nobody should wield power over another). The number of mods has declined over the years and new blood rarely gets infused. A small group within a small group will obviously wield power and this is exactly what has happened. It's my argument that they wield this power unfairly and in ways that do no service to the collective.

Another thing that should be pointed out is that the global Indymedia model calls for editors (mods) to be rotated regularly. There's been a certain clique in existence for years in contravention to this.

Anyway, everyone's a volunteer. Some of us (citizen journalists) take ourselves very seriously and go all round the country (and the planet) to cover stories. Indymedia is a tool for activists, so some of us also take part in the making of these stories. One could call it propaganda and would be right. However, I prefer the explanation that arrives via the motto: 'The passionate telling of truth.' Unlike conventional journalism, we make no pretence at impartiality and in our defence, the mainstream media rarely ever picks up on what we cover, until prompted to do so.

There is a belief (which seems to have broken down somewhat on the Irish Indy) that mistakes and other things (like lying) can be ironed out by peer review. This happens via folks utilising the (confusingly titled) comments function. They are supposed to add news or clear up mistakes and other errors in fact that invariably arise. This does somewhat leave the door open for troll fests, which the mods are supposed to hide (and in fairness to them, they mostly do).

So we're all volunteers and we get no financial rewards or perks. The only reward is to see your efforts causing results and to know you've worked your guts out to do a good job. Indymedia Ireland (if memory serves correct) gets about a million unique hits a month and is more popular than the global Indymedia.org site itself. Type indymedia into google with any other criteria to see for yourself.

No singular individual can take credit for the success of Indymedia Ireland (though many are due a huge debt of thanks). The Irish Indy, I suppose, got a huge leg up from many folks in the various antiwar movements when it first started. Many like Tim Hourigan, Conor Cregan and Ed Horgan used it as a platform when they were snubbed and sidelined by the mainstream media. Shell To Sea used it and use it in a similar fashion. If Indymedia Ireland had never existed, I'd have never met many of these fine people (probably). So it is much more than just a news site - to put it mildly.

I'm originally from Limerick and was living in the Silvermines in Tipperary when I first got involved with Indymedia. My various activities inspired by my work on Indymedia and the associations I formed through activities on Indymedia, forced me to come to a decision to move to Dublin, where I could maximise my ability to be a pain in the arse. To see Indymedia turn out this way is like having a limb hacked off.

utter pettitness by mr blisset and co
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ireland-newswire/2008-May/0503-mz.html

lostexpectation wrote:

utter pettitness by mr blisset and co
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ireland-newswire/2008-May/0503-mz.html

Not able to open the Antwerp link.

Hermes wrote:

Indy is now back up and running.

I was just wondering.

Hermes wrote:

Indy is now back up and running.

Somewhat more info than we got from p.ie, anyway:

Indymedia Site Announcement In case you were wondering.....The Indymedia Site was down this weekend for approximately 48 hours due to a technical fault and it was brought back up at 9:15pm GMT Monday 5th May.

I must confess something: like Chekov, I don't have a relativistic view of truth.

What I'd really like to know is how the Indymedia mods identify "dangerous misrepresentations of psychiatric science".

Once we're clear on that, I'm sure the MN mods can apply that knowledge to all branches of science, and then, in no time at all, we'll have here the best website in the world.

Kate P wrote:

But the principle informing that discussion is very worthwhile and I'd like to hear more about this, chekov, in relation to being a journalist and moderating a site like indymedia - ideally without reference to named third parties.

Quote :

I don't have a relativistic view of truth and consider the notion of each individual having an equally valid particular truth to be completely wrong-headed.

Some stuff is more true than other stuff and we can use evidence to get a more or less accurate estimation of the likely trueness of stuff. The idea that all voices are equally valid (whatever that means) is post-modernist nonsense. Opinions that are based on evidence-free claims about the world have zero value to somebody who wants to understand the world.

I'm afraid that it contains no great insights, but It all seems pretty obvious to me.

Where does this discussion fit in under that definition?

Kate P wrote:

Where does this discussion fit in under that definition?

I'd say there's an interesting general point - whether someone whose view of the world isn't reality-based is a "valid" voice, what "valid" actually means, and who gets to determine that.

ibis wrote:

Kate P wrote:

Where does this discussion fit in under that definition?

I'd say there's an interesting general point - whether someone whose view of the world isn't reality-based is a "valid" voice, what "valid" actually means, and who gets to determine that.

Indeed. But that's only part of what chekov said.

This is the bit I'm more interested in in terms of the discussion that's happening here.

Quote :

Opinions that are based on evidence-free claims about the world have zero value to somebody who wants to understand the world.

Here we're having discussions about discussions about discussions - and opinions about same. How many removes away do we have to be before the truth, whatever that is, is not longer clear?

And I wonder if there are a few words missing from what he wrote - would it make more sense to finish the paragraph with the phrase '...understand the world in a particular way.'