ISM admin collective responsibilities

What is the admin collective for?

Abstract and preface

This page formulates responsibilities of the admin collective.

This group is for long-term organization. For faster responses our mailing list might be more suitable: ISM admin collective list. Just write to its address, no subscription needed! The list is being moderated but any (non-spam) requests will be distributed to the collective.

Sense and principles of the admin collective

The communication infrastructure of the ISM (international student movement) is maintained by the admin collective as a platform to inform about activities, political developments, and repression in connection with our struggle against the increasing commercialization of education (as well as all other aspects of our lives) and for free emancipative education. At times it can also be used to inform about other issues related to the struggle for emancipation (e.g. struggle against fascist ideology, patriarchy, racism, trans-/homophobia etc.).
The ISM admin collective remains dedicated to facilitating the flow of knowledge from the front lines of the education struggle and under no circumstance will result to the promotion of party politics or conspiracy theories.
The collective shares no messages of people that are not respecting the basic principles of the ISM, but it also doesn’t see itself in a position to judge the methods used by others in the struggle since conditions are different around the world. For an international platform it is essential to respect the evaluation that each group makes of their strategies in the struggle on the local level. Summarizing, we share information and take no stance on the use of tactics throughout the wide education movement.
The collective aims to put news of developments/protests on the local and national level into a global context when reporting about them.

There are dozens of tasks belonging to the admins collective responsibilities. This we.riseup.net-group is for those who take care of some of these tasks. By joining the group you are not automatically responsible for all listed tasks. Except for keeping this (and only this) we.riseup.net-group up to date.

All members of the collective need to support our self-conception.

Once you are a member you can file tasks, edit wiki pages, have long term discussion et cetera. Consider subscribing to the admin collective’s ML ASAP (as soon as possible) if you haven’t done yet so.

Maintenance of communcation infrastructure

Fassbook

There is a dedicated council for tasks on FB.

Following pages are administered by some of the administration collective:

Each page needs people regularly doing some research on activities and developments related to the struggle and share these as well as updates/announcements communicated on the global ISM mailing list (e. g. invitations to chat meetings).

  • double checking the post on the different pages
  • facebook events to chat meeting
  • networking with groups and activists identifying with the struggle (this can help if somebody is looking to network with activist groups in a particular region or if translations are needed) Regional directories of groups might be helpful, just with contact email and social media if they have any (for groups not yet on ISM) – we also have this pad to collect contacts of groups and individuals connected to the ISM
  • sharing info about coordinations on the ISM platform

Twitter

There’s one general twitter account: https://twitter.com/ISM030. Tasks include

  • (re)tweet frequent and current updates
  • tweet announcements and details of upcoming events/chats
  • research on news and developments related to the struggle around the world and share them
  • include #1world1struggle so that the tweet also appears on the ISM website

Mailing lists

Some of the used mailing lists are moderated.

  • global ISM list
  • ISM admin collective list (I was wondering about 2 things: do we need to have somebody moderating our inside list? Do we talk about managing tension of the admin collective before tension arise, so that the collective won’t split up on an eventual disagreement, but know how to act since we’ll have talked about it beforehand?) the emails of those who are on the list are not moderated but send to the list directly. but the list is also the contact for interview requests, or any other questions from people who happen to get onto the website. (ok, so not much for the inside of the list, if more for who’s taking care of answering outside contacts to the collective. not really. the task is to filter the spam from the genuine requests. who in the end reacts to the requests should be then communicated through the admin list. I suggest that also the actual reply to the request should then be shared with the list.)
  • ISM techies for those able to help with IT related tasks (new website using joomla is in the making)
  • ISM Asia (currently not active)
  • ISM North America (currently not active)

Tasks for all the MLs:

  • moderate/filtering spam from genuine messages and approving messages which are not spam
  • messages should be in english, so that the (assumed) majority on the list understands them. If messages are not in english, consider contacting the author whether s*he rather wants to translate and resend the message.

Inviting to chat meetings (via)

  • Fb: set up event page and share on ISM pages/groups at least 1 week in advance
  • Email: (to global and regional lists) week in advance and 1hr in advance as well
  • Website: (post upon annoucement to be shared in other media)
  • Twitter: Announcements
  • seperate entry with more details on how to invite to chat meetings

Website administration

→ see also website

Drupal till 2015

  • http://emancipating-education-for-all.net/
  • maintain the websites registry and hosting package as securely as possible
  • maintain current ISM information (links)
  • post announcements and admin material in real time
  • working with drupal!! there are many ways of improving the website and including possibilities of making it more interactive (e. g. easier for people to leave comments, etc.)

Joomla since 2015

The site is not yet done (2015-01-25): https://ism.uebergebuehr.de/

  • updates on the VM (virtual machine) itself. Security/critical updates are brought in by uebergebuehr on a weekly basis.
  • update the joomla-software itself
  • insert contents to joomla
  • update contents on joomla

Crabgrass Maintenance

Last but not least several we.riseup.net-groups have to be kept alive:

For some of those groups there are seperate administration councils you have to be member of to do any administrative tasks. Those include approving or rejecting member subscription requests (if applicable), changing the group’s image/name/description, and so forth.

Prospectus

  • newsletter / zine: produce a printable update reviewing the events from the frontlines of the struggle for free emancipatory education.
    newsletter Reclaim Education
  • promote independent media and writing within the student movement.
  • formulate ISM toolkit (possibly in wiki format)
  • work with translators to create the material accessible to other languages
  • GlobalRevolution.tv can help aggregate media/content toolkits for students