Description

Content:

• 0. Policy status

• 1. Preamble

• 2. News posting

• 3. Mission and functions of Indymedia Belarus Team

• 4. How to join Indymedia Belarus Team

• 5. Policy of content moderation in special cases

• 5.1 Item hiding

• 5.2 Complete deletion from the database

• 5.3 Content moderation

• 6. Content usage terms

Document status

This issue is a current Indymedia Belarus policy version 1.0(revision 2005-05-11) english translation. This issue contains no differences in sense from the original policy version 1.0.

At 2005-05-21 this issue is still on a vote of Indymedia Belarus Team.

0. Policy status

This document is an informal social agreement between Indymedia Belarus Team and users of the resource. This document is not of a legal character.

The document describes principles of work of the Indymedia Belarus resource and social obligations voluntarily undertaken by the members of Indymedia Belarus Team within the limits of work on the project. The document is approved, revised and supplemented by voting of the members of Indymedia Belarus Team.

The current policy version 1.0 (revision 2005-05-11) includes only formal corrections applied for the previous revision 2005-03-03 of policy v.1.0 approved by Indymedia Belarus Team. Any further corrections that change the sense of the policy require additional discussion and voting by Indymedia Belarus Team.

1. Preamble

Indymedia is a collective of independent Mass Media and journalists and provides non-commercial coverage of news and up-to-time information channel that is open for collaboration with all users. Indymedia Belarus is one of more than a hundred Independent Media Centers functioning all over the world and united into the international initiative of Indymedia.

Objectives of Indymedia Belarus

1. To create information space for support of Belarusian libertarian activists and open interaction between them.
2. To supply society with free and up-to-time information that is not distorted by state, commercial or political censorship.
3. To provide possibility for everyone to take part in spreading news and analytic information as well as for its open discussion.

Indymedia Belarus cannot be a body of any political party.

Our main principles are openness and non-discrimination. We invite everyone who is ready to follow these principles to participate in the project.

2. News posting

Indymedia Belarus accumulates news that is provided by both members of Indymedia Belarus Team (IBT) and any user of the resource. For these needs Indymedia Belarus provides an open publishing engine with possibility of commentaries.

Note:

Indymedia Belarus Team aims at the most complete verification of posted news. At the same time our principle position is as follows: the main criterion of reliability of any information is its open discussion. The value of any information depends most of all on its critical comprehension and results of its public discussion. For navigation convenience pieces of news that are close in their subject matter can be connected with each other, thus being grouped by topics. In addition to a general news line, sorted out in the chronological order, the resource provides possibility to view the latest news in such groups. Presence of any message in the group of “hot” news is determined only by the fact of its connection to any general topic and cannot be treated as conferment of a higher “rate” to it.

Indymedia Belarus strongly and in any form objects to political or other ideological censorship.

However, Indymedia Belarus Team has to delete or hide from viewing in the group of general news line a certain kind of messages to provide efficient resistance to pressure of state bodies and other authoritarian institutions.

The list of such cases strictly determined and is supplied in chapter 5.

3. Mission and functions of IBT

In addition to participation in news presentation along with general users, participants of Indymedia Belarus Team voluntarily undertake a range of technical functions:

1. Technical support of the resource and work on its further development
2. Watch over the resource’s content, efficient suppression of informational provocations
3. Participation in voting of Indymedia Belarus Team on issues of tactics and strategy of the development of Indymedia Belarus. IBT undertakes to keep direct contact and discussion with users on issues of the resource’s work in one of the following ways:

• Recurrent meetings and seminars on a wide range of questions with free access and timely announcement on the web site of Indymedia Belarus
• Support of a discussion mailing list with free subscription.

4. How to join IBT

IBT is open for new participants. Joining to IBT is performed voluntarily and implies the following:

• a) Obligation to take part in work on the support and development of Indymedia Belarus on a voluntary basis
• b) Franchise in all question that requires IBT voting

Any participant has a right to not fulfill IBT’s decision with which he or she doesn’t agree, but a participant has no right for active resistance to its implementation.

Any participant has a right to start team voting for revoking any team decision.

Any participant has a right for unimpeded leaving IBT that means shifting off undertaken obligations and franchise. Any former participant has a right to re-join IBT on common grounds.

For starting voting on joining of a new member, a candidate should:

• a) Contact any IBT member by e-mail or in person
• b) Inform about his or her motivation, real abilities for participation in work of IBT and wish to join it

Since this moment and until decision making a candidate has a right to access IBT discussion about his or her participation and a right to send his or her comments on the discussion to all participants of IBT.

5. Policy of content moderation in special cases

Here and later “moderator” means an IBT member who takes duty on supervising integrity of the resource content and preventing provocations.

In special cases described below some pieces of news can be hidden from viewing in a general news line or completely deleted from the database.

5.1 Hiding from a general news line

While hidden from a general news line, a message can be viewed by any user when the web interface option “show hidden items” is on.

The following messages are hidden from a general news line:

1. Ones of a destabilizing character, i.e. those that include incorrect information about events and actions.
2. Ones falsely presented on behalf of known activists.

5.2 Complete deletion from the database

When completely deleting news from the database, a moderator must inform IBT about a taken decision and provide grounds of necessity of complete deletion.

For preventing provocations the following messages are deleted:

1. Threats of death and physical violence.
2. Information whose fact of publication can be a direct and main cause of armed conflicts with human victims.

For preventing flood, the following messages can be deleted:

1. Messages whose principal content is abuse, unleashing of national discord and racial hostility, gender, race or sexual discrimination.
2. Commercial advertising
3. Commercial pornography

Note:

There are many other web resources that provide hosting for the mentioned kinds of content. Complete disappearance of such resources is one of the global objectives of Indymedia Belarus.

Indymedia Belarus is eager to provide its resource for any information that is not of the kind determined above.

For preserving integrity of the content the following messages can be deleted:

1. Duplicate messages
2. Empty, broken or not-readable messages

5.3 Content moderation

In the case if a message contains private information about any person published without his or her permission, regardless of a source for getting these data, a moderator has a right to delete this information from the text of a message.

But for all that a moderator must leave a comment about his or her action.

6. Content usage

Indymedia Belarus encourages free reprinting, citing and spreading in any other way the content of the resource. News can be spread according to GNU General Public License, GNU Free Documentation License, or Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike by your choice. Publishing news on the Indymedia Belarus resource implies that the author of a message accepts these terms.