FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Intro

welcome to Twin Cities Indymedia 2008 Edition!

• Who are we?

• Anyone who wants to be one of us. Pretty much. Unless it's the feds.

• Specifically?
  • A) TC-IMC Tech Collective: Wily gang of ne'er-do-well infomaniac nerd types etc. We handle the nuts and bolts of the TC-IMC web platform, coordinate with the international Indymedia technical groups, and also corralling some content stuff.
  • B) TC-IMC Editorial Collective: The far flung network of passionate observers, killers of spam and all around geniuses of the written word
• Shouldn't there be meetings?
  • Yes, there will be. We are building up the group first! (We would have meetings if you came. And only if.
• How do I post articles?
  • Click the Publish button on the main menu at top.
• How do I post video?
  • Please post the video at one of the major video hosting websites, i.e. Blip.tv, Brightcove, Google, JumpCut, Live Video, MetaCafe, MySpace, Revver, Sevenload, YouTube, or perhaps a custom URL. Then add a 'Video (embedded)' node, and provide its URL in the embedded_video field.
• how do I post a blog / opinion item?
  • Use RSS button to create blog entries from those. Blog Entries, different than Articles, are the preferred way to write about stuff with a non-first-person perspective (i.e. you're describing something you didn't personally experience). Maybe that is ontologically imperialist but there is a certain logic to it.
• How do I join a group?
  • Step 1. Register!
  • Step 2. Check off which group you want to join, or else visit the groups' page to Subscribe.
• Hey can I get one of these fancy websites like you got?
  • Yes! We want TC-IMC's uniquely home-brewed Drupal engine & theme to be cloned by anyone interested! Please a drop a line at the TC-IMC Tech Collective group, as we haven't yet made it clonable.
  • [That will also help everyone with good security - we try to adhere to standard, secure Drupal methods.]
  • Also, the global Indymedia community is working on Drupal-powered CMS solutions. See the IMC-Drupal-Dev mailing list or here: http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/ImcDrupalDev
• I want Indymedia coverage for my event!
  • Create an Event content node and publicize it to Help Wanted Group
• I want to find stuff to do
  • visit the Help Wanted Group.
• I want to support TC-IMC!
  • We need equipment, content, sweet labours of love and money. We have not yet organized that stuff, but if you want to help, join our groups.
  • Also, support the Drupal community with features, feedback, debugging and other help etc.
• I don't want to support TC-IMC!
  • go start another blathering rightwing blog which will surely save the day from 'Al Qaeda in Iraq.' 101st fighting keyboarders yay!
• What about TC-IMC and that one Republican National Convention thingy? What are you people gonna do?
  • See TC-IMC-RNC Working Group
• Who decides what counts as a feature? why don't i get to vote?
  • The editorial collective or the tech collective decide which articles become features. Unless they are somehow spectacular, blog entries will generally not be features. In principle it would be cool to let people vote up features, but our web server is not fast enough to support such bells and whistles yet. If you would like to help with this, see Donate $ or equipment.
• Why is there no Spanish/Hmong/Somali/Ethiopian option to use TC-IMC?
  • Indymedia strives for media participation for all people, with all abilities. Multilingual IMC sites are common around the world. However we use Drupal 5 as a platform, and its multilingual support is not very good. We are going to try to get multilingual support for Drupal 6 quickly when it is released. Also we want to support any efforts to bring new languages to Drupal that serve people in the Twin Cities. See the Languages-Accessibility group for more on this. Also our site should work OK for people with limited vision but please let us know if it doesn't.
• Who decides what content is acceptable?
  • We use a hidden module to hide spam and other materials, if you want to see um then look at that. Also we are pretty firmly expecting provocateurs sent by the usual suspects to post provocative and illegal bullshit, and then tattle on our site to the FBI or something. Such provocateur nonsense will be handled as such. If you want to use the Internet for your schemes please feel free to clone the design of our website and take it somewhere else. Really. We will probably need a real lawyer to write our disclaimer/content policy.