Possible letter for IMC-Leeds re. crabgrass - IMC Northern England - groups

To: imc-leeds

Dear Leeds/Bradford IMCistas,

You may have noticed some strange talk recently about something called ‘Crabgrass’, mainly due to some recent exchanges on this list. It’s time to let the cat out of the bag!

A few of the more geek-minded collective members have been busy beavers, working on an area of we.riseup.net where we can hopefully organise more effectively as a network and where we can have truly collaborative, decentralised stuff going on. Although mailing lists are an excellent way of getting a message out to a large number of people, they’re not very good for writing documents collectively, sharing task lists or voting on the name of a robot. Crabgrass allows us to open up the process stuff that goes into our imc for everyone to participate in, and all contributions are welcome.

We have now put in the carpets and wallpaper and are ready to invite anyone with an interest in building the new IMC Northern England network to meet us there and get involved.

Signing up for a crabgrass account is easily done from the start page and once you are there, navigate to https://we.riseup.net/imc-northern/ where you will find the things currently being worked on. Whilst there, you will be able to join the group to be updated on what is currently being talked about/worked on and join in.

This is a collective process and all input is important if we are to build a newswire that will better represent the rich array of activist groups in this area.

If anyone has any problems using crabgrass, either email to imc-leeds@lists.indymedia.org or imc-leeds-contact@lists.indymedia.org (if you don’t want it publicly archived) and we will do all we can to help you.

Better still, there’s lots of ways you can meet us face to face. We have made a commitment to holding our meetings at as many places around the region as possible so if you or your group would like to host one, we could do some training with your group at the same time. Our meeting locations are advertised on leedsbradford.indymedia.org.uk and this mailing list and all are welcome to come along and get involved. Alternatively, you could come along to one of the linux/tech skillshares, held by a collective that includes several geeky members of IMC Northern on the first sunday of every month at the Common Place, Leeds, and we will help you get organising!

In Solidarity,

IMC Northern (formerly IMC Leeds/Bradford)


markr 2009-05-31 2009-06-01	Excellent – we should send this out at the same time as the new-imc letter I think. (edit – I’ve chnged my mind, see below)


JimDog* 2009-06-01	ok i’ve made a few minor edits to tidy it up and happy for it to go with the other letter. Is everyone else ok with this? Also, before we do, should we make the new imc form viewable but not editable by public permissions like ana suggested? I’m in support of that.


protag 2009-06-01	Also brilliant but…anyone not in the know might confuse the reference to the 1st Sunday Skillshares Meeting with the IMC Northern meetings. Perhaps a paragraph to mention our commitment regular fact-to-face IMC meetings and to move the meetings around the region?


JimDog* 2009-06-01	ok, i’ve tried to add those in but i’m tapping away on my phone in the pub so does someone want to make it a bit more coherent before it gets sent :-) if it needs it?


markr 2009-06-01 2009-06-01	Hang on – I’m suddenly worried we might be being a bit too open here. Who can join this crabgrass group? Remember that once someone’s in, there’s no way to get rid of them, even with a committee. We don’t have to be super-secure (that’s what the committee is for) but we don’t want to let in all the nasties who monitor what we do or would like to vandalise our work. I’d suggest we only let people join if we know them somehow – either one of us knows them already or they’ve come along to a meeting. Not just people who visit the public page and click ‘join’. We don’t have to say all that in the announcement, we just need to be clear amongst ourselves before we start getting applications – whatever you do, don’t click ‘accept’ for someone you don’t know! I made this mistake in another group and we ended up having to close the group, move all the content to a new group, and all the bona fide members rejoined it. The more I think about it, the more I think we should restrict crabgrass membership to people who come to meetings. Sorry for changing my mind on this one :-S


JimDog* 2009-06-02	well we can set the permissions to be viewable but not editable to anyone and all the stuff that we don’t want people to see can be locked away in the active area, which we can help meeting attenders join at the meetings. Other than that i personally would like to have something that anyone can see so we are accountable and don’t get viewed as a clique like uk (not that we are).also, a lot of people have been saying to me they didn’t realise they could get involved. Maybe the bit of text at the top could say something like these pages are viewable by everyone, if you would like to get involved and be able to edit and create content for the collective here, come along to one of the meetings or email contact and we will get you set up. That way, there’s still a way in for new people and the process is as transparent as possible. What do others think, we need to decide asap methinks :-)


markr 2009-06-02	Yay! Now the group wiki’s behaving itself, it all makes sense. I’m happy with Jimdog’s proposal as above. We just need to remember to keep an eye on the permissions & ownerships.