e-mail lists
A run through of the lists:
- PGA Announce was named to be retained
- STAMP DS - will be kept for the digital group for now, as they have no other way to keey in contact
- STAMP I18N - translation list, it was a lot of work to find people for the list, it would be better not to start from scratch again, it could be nice to convert this list into PGA TRANSLATIONS list or something similar. People should of course be asked by mailing the list.
- Q: Are there any existing lists or tools for this? If it would be better to route this to currently active groups or lists?
- A: It is good to keep our own structures and our own translation list. I think the more specfic the list is the easier the work is.
- The work on an indymedia translation list is probably more general It is an interesting proposition though as well, we thought about it several times, but we never got to review how the indymedia translation works. The indymedia list is up and running, there is some traffic, there is some good structure, and there is a workflow, but it needs more people. what is indymedia is the structure and the software, not the people or the input. Both the pga and indymedia are tools by and for the movement, i would shocked if we couldn't join our efforts.
- Working group to make contact with indymedia translation group and work out how to practically join in from the lists. [maxigas, dkvg to write e-mail]
- STAMP MEDICS - medics to be consulted
STAMP WWW - used to maintain the stamp related websites, assuming http://pgaconference.org/ is to be kept going. A review of the sites is needed. It could be done before the centralised conference if more people got involved in helping. The websites (four of them) have not been so well maitained (the most obvious examples: the hallmarks are in different languages, in different forms, on different websites). We should go further in reworking these websites, we should make notes to propose changes... to follow.
IRC
The channel irc://irc.indymedia.org/pga should be maintained, and used for peoples needs.
Websites
old.pgaconferene.org
Gathered together useful information, mainly from european meetings. Mainly placed forward onto
pgaconference.org
This old info and then also new information, and material, for the french locations and conferernce. For this site we want to have something more or less static, it can then be used by each conference to put in the information they want in the same place, with a clear structure.
There is also space for some general pga information.
- Q: What about global and other regional pga conferences, it is confusing having their info on the pga site A: Yes it is confusing, you want uri to send people attending, a clear one place, but then there is the broader network
There are also langugage issues:
- old.pgaconference.org says "is to be transfered", I would be glad to make it clear, [dkvg to do]
- there are other countries conferences, we have the pgaconference domain name, we keep this domain name for europe, does this reflect our dominance?
We did not start the pgaconference.org website, it was started by the lieden group. we prefered the name pga encounters. we cope with history it is not so bad. we assume the concequences of the name, there is no european ownership of the name. the cms is drupal - each conference is a "book" that can be "owned" by seperate entities. If there is a webteam that can take care of it, one of the roles should be to accept mails from say north america and then let them get a section they can contol.
- 404 pages Q: Are we going to maitain the site so pages will be persistent and you don't link to them and get 404 pages. A: We have made the clean uri so they can be persistent.
- It is already an issue for the old website however. Looking at the statistics there a still many people trying to get content that was on the old site. Solution to make a custom 404 script [ekes to send example with apache ssi]
- Just Europe using pgaconference
The site could be made so there was a different drupal for each continent. europe.pgaconference.org for example. with admin teams for each. do we want to go into so much detail?
it is a good idea to have toolbars, reflecting fact the pga processes on different continents are seperated, i also think it is a good idea also as we don't want to have to maintain all the same website
proposal for seperate installs for each continent
dissent: this would create more work, what are we to do with the pga book? we would end up with pga books on each site, there is even more duplication. there would also be even more changes of url. this is a good website. the practical starting over issue doesn't help there aren't people to restart the site on each continent. it is not so hard to give out accounts.
it is possible to seperate things out using drupal, it would even be possible to change the themes etc. assistence offered
there is some i18n issues with present module they will need to work
I am just worried about all the work you need to do as admin and can't pass to other people. User moderation is an issue.
consensus? to keep pgaconference.org for each confernce, for the organising, and for reports. and to try and change it to scale to other continents.
- Q: Do we know about other confernces and their own websites A: No, stuff on the global website
This design and scheme is better for describing the conferences.
addition to consensus: if we are seriously considering changing the pga web presence. we consider the hosting. we don't worry about the effort on one website. ask the convenors what they want to do? if they are interested we make changes, for now we keep things as they are
if people from other continents don't want to use it they won't we can just see.
considering the presence of other contininents, if they don't have a presence already on the web, this kind of install can make it easier for them to get one.
i just wanted to raise the issue we are sitting on a domain name which has global significance so it should be considered
it will require an active effort on our part, we should ask, there is a technical choice, it is a matter of communicating with others.
there are books created for the older conferences, milan, leiden, belgrade. it would be good to put stuff from all over the agp website, which is well distributed, together in these books. is there anyone motivated to do this?
- open website
we should think about how tools function. it would make sense for the tools to meet the pga values. power should be spread so the tool should be self managed by the people who use them. so publishing who should decide who has the right to publish? the means of funcitoning would be a wiki set up like wikipedia, where power is most shared and there is no concetration of power.
this is mainly a static website, there does not have to be a lot of people posting info to the website
i think this isn't about people contiributing like the wikipedia, i think this about us telling the world about the pga. pga is a network open to people who abide by the hallmarks and are involved, so it isn't open to anyone to post to it.
if it is an open forum people will come and just edit the contents and change the text for disagreement
there is a possibility for everyone who takes part in the pga to take part in posting to the site. either they ask about it so they have the possibity, like the wiki you can ask and then do it.
it can happen, it could be more open, i think we are asking for reports, but i think we should redouble our efforts to get reports and reflections and media and notes... We need contributions as many as possible. I don't think there is a problem with having a website and a wiki. I don't think there is a problem with making it clear that stuff can be from wiki to website, and there is a team on the website who need help.
this leads into the wiki that was made. it is expected that other conferences will have a similar need.
the combination of the two tools may have been a bit chaotic sometimes, but generally it worked, and we should leave these tools for people in the future so they benifit from our collective experience
there is work moving content from site to wiki and back, this takes some work, so the group working on it should be made larger
- hosting of the site
it is poivron, was on squat.net - which just hosts squat stuff really poivron have dns control so can do lists and such like, they are doing the mx too - moving list is a pain poivron has no problem hosting it, happy what allowed us to work on the site was having access to the machine to administer it, we had to hack bits of the drupal install, if someone doesn't want to be involved from poivron could be more difficult
wiki
the pgaconference.org was used as a front page for information, a facade, and then there was the wiki for more interaction and information
we should make an evaluation of how this worked as a more democratic tool for organising
there were very few people using the wiki, actually publishing, it would be nice to have workshops to help people use the wiki, and show how to. not talking about ds group, but others, who did not find themselves confortable about it.
i don't like wiki so much, a trendy tool, that is more and more used, but a wiki training would be good
from the experience of indymedia there have been years of using the wiki for planning conferences and session, and it was clear that indy folk were using it for the ds theme. it makes people think about session before hand, you can suggest timings and you can make papers and such to discuss. we should help people get access to it too though.
it was used by even non-tech people, and in the last days of preparation it was used seriously by the info point, it was very good for getting non-tech people involved. not that we don't need more training, but it was good
the last days of organising the conference were a bit of a mess, i hope it wont be the same 24 hour work, agrees about getting more involved in using the wiki, and having a session at the start at the centralised conference, so there can be documentation written over the days of it.
AGP/PGA Global
Note: Time is short. Next week there is another webmaster of the site that can discuss then as well.
This page was was installed at the first global conference 1988 in geneva, run by three people who are all in europe, in time similar websites had been put together, so it ends with chaotic structure, there is little structure to it as well as there is little co-ordination between people. we need more people involved in the site, especially for the different languages, as it has little of the same content.
it can be interesting to integrate this into drupal, with the pgaconference, then there is only one web team for all these sites
thought about putting everying on one website, it would be good, but i don't know how feasable it is. i don't like the site much, it is hard to find stuff on it. there have been people dedicated to maintaining if for years. it's hard to say it's really chaotic, i feel respect and say thankyou for all this work, and all this static html is like really hard work. i am a bit uncomfortable. i want to consider the best option, is to start something else, but i want to consider the people who have made this site. i want to find a middle ground, and want people to remember this when talking.
this website has stuff with different intent, it has campaigns and conferences and actions. pgaconf does just conferences.
i think it is good to keep pages communicating, but seperate, there are different people doing different things too, so people on a conference don't want to have to deal with it. but as part of the process we should make sure that stuff should be obvious, the site could be a good tool for this. the site is structured so the webmasters may want some help making it easier to maintain.
i was saying something about the lack of apparent structure of the site, but i have some concens about the contents too - where are the pages about genoa. there is some stuff that has nothing to do with the pga. i remember being very shocked to see pages about ... i remember a web page about genoa about callio gulliani showing the scene when he was killed. i remember seeing a photo report about how the death was a deliberate attempt, by a guy in a red t-shirt who was supposedly a cop and was trying to justify... it was like conspiracy theory... stuff i don't agree with, wierd things, some pretty anti black-bloc.. stuff that doesn't represent the pga process. for me pga is a network that binds many people together, people who take part in different tactics, and it isn't about taking a position on that... my concern is that people who will see this will link it with all those bogus reports about police infiltration of the black bloc and assume pga represents this sort of opinion that has been justifying the criminalisation of black bloc tactics... this may not be the only example, or the best... but on a site that represents the pga we have such pages that represent one particular focused point of a fractured discussion isn't good
it seems a very personal content, there is first person used, it's not collective. it should be involving people in the process.
there is an e-mail address to contact the webteam
there are tools for making sites more collabortaively now, i used to make sites statically and it is hard work
there is no collective discussion about this website at any pga conference
there could be a comment section added to this page
there is a problem with the way the page is made, and doing this. there was a working group proposed for this specific site/page? and nothing happened
it is technical, but also political issue. this site doesn't meet this prinicples. it represents personal impressions.
suggests it is possible to put content like this asside to some personal website, split pga and this part of the website, there can be space
if the pga can use wikis and cms then it is necessary to do this, it is the horizontal way
suggestion that it could be moderated,
the question is of diversity from very reformist which isn't pga to the most radical, is this site pga
saw the pga as an oportunity to meet a fairly large set of opinions without making a particular stand
here there is a lot of information, and history, campaigns and stuff that was made by the pga, there should be differentiation about what really is about the pga.
is there is a consensus of postponing the discussion till the other webmaster arrives.
YES meeting postponed.