Organise Leaflets
Mar 21 2007 16:26
Would it be possible to have a section where leaflets and handoutable material about current struggles could be put up by various groups, perhaps linked to organise or otherwise. This could range from anything based around the war in iraq. Is there the demand for this i mean i don't know if its that feasable at all or not but it seems to fill a gap that isn't really covered by the newswire and library.
Just was thinking about the blood service thing and it seems a shame theres not a point where a leaflet could be uploaded as a pdf. I mean around the time of particular strikes it can save time because it provides a ready made leaflet or at least a template to base a leaflet on, so a small group doesn't have to waste time writing what someone fifty miles away has already written.
Feasable, unfeasable or just a really bad idea?
Mar 21 2007 16:40
#2
well i'd say the problem with that is you don't have a section of the library that would appear 'current' to a lot of people and more importantly something thats wriiten as an A5 handout is going to look severely alien in the library and would probably lower the quality of the library as a result, since its going to annoy people searching for that obscure piece by tronti or whatever. Plus a leaflet is designed around presentation, the library isn't. So i'd reckon it'd have to be part of 'organise' rather than the library.
But yeah the uploading feature is there surely its a case of making it accessable
Mar 21 2007 16:47
#3
i mean all sorts is possible, we'll have to have a think. i mean if it was in the library, you'd only come across it if you were looking at those tags or authors etc, and it could be featured prominently on the organise page.
it would also be possible to set up a 'propaganda' content-type for this purpose to be part of organise, but we'd need to think what that offered over the library as there's already loads of content types.
if all leaflets were tagged with a specific tag, then they could all easily be automatically displayed anywhere else on the site wherever they are uploaded anyway ...
Mar 21 2007 18:13
#4
JK's covered it well.
The only two issues with file uploads are 1. security 2. the site being used like imageshack or yousendit. Both of these could mean no site if we don't keep an eye out.
I don't think we've really thought about it that much, but there's two ways to do it:
1. restrict file uploads to only a few content types - in our case I think it's only library at the moment - obviously we could add a prop one in or enable it on organise articles or something. Because it's low traffic, it's obvious what's going in there.
2. allow file uploads on more content types (news? forums? organise? a new one?) , but only for a subset of users - so anyone wanting to use it would either have to be invited or ask. That way we don't open it up to hackers/spammers/people who like showing their holiday pics or whatever, or not so many anyway.
Two is a lot safer, and probably more flexible. I think it'd make a lot of sense to have the capacity for that sort of content, and also plenty of stuff in the library (or news) started out as A5 leaflets etc. in the first place anyway.
Mar 21 2007 20:09
#5
Couldn't you just encourage people to upload things to imageshack, say, then shamelessly steal their bandwidth through a link?
Mar 21 2007 20:23
#6
yeah we do: http://libcom.org/notes/content-guidelines/forums-posting-guidelines but no-one ever listens 
For stuff like the blood service leaflet we'd be fine with hosting that though.
Mar 21 2007 20:28
#7
You could have a seperate directory for leaflets though surely? on it's own page so it didn't mess up the design.
Mar 21 2007 20:32
#8
Wouldn't the sheer amount of propaganda produced by various anarchist and communist groups cause a problem though?
Surely it'd just be better to expand the existing Organise factsheets or something? Which would allow people looking to write a leaflet on a particular subject to pick out a few useful facts and arguments.
Mar 21 2007 20:38
#9
madashell wrote:
Wouldn't the sheer amount of propaganda produced by various anarchist and communist groups cause a problem though?
I think that's why they'd limit the amount of people who could post stuff. Although judging by the number of contributors to news I doubt it would be a problem.
Mar 21 2007 21:58
#10
jef costello wrote:
madashell wrote:
Wouldn't the sheer amount of propaganda produced by various anarchist and communist groups cause a problem though?I think that's why they'd limit the amount of people who could post stuff. Although judging by the number of contributors to news I doubt it would be a problem.
But uploading a leaflet that's already been made requires virtually no effort, whereas writing a news story, however short, takes a little original thought and consideration. I just think that you'd get rediculous numbers of leaflets and flyers that all say the same thing being submitted, even from a relatively small group of contributers. Factsheets, maybe with an Organise guide to leaflet design, makes more sense and saves repitition and wasted space, IMO.
Mar 22 2007 00:11
#11
madashell wrote:
jef costello wrote:
madashell wrote:
Wouldn't the sheer amount of propaganda produced by various anarchist and communist groups cause a problem though?I think that's why they'd limit the amount of people who could post stuff. Although judging by the number of contributors to news I doubt it would be a problem.
But uploading a leaflet that's already been made requires virtually no effort, whereas writing a news story, however short, takes a little original thought and consideration. I just think that you'd get rediculous numbers of leaflets and flyers that all say the same thing being submitted, even from a relatively small group of contributers. Factsheets, maybe with an Organise guide to leaflet design, makes more sense and saves repitition and wasted space, IMO.
Yeah this is true. Although we're harsh with news and other sections, so we'd be equally harsh with it. But yeah expanding factsheets would be the best, and people can always e-mail us PDFs and we'll put up if they really need to be on here.
Mar 22 2007 12:59
#12
Stuff like this should just go up in the library. there's absolutely no problem with it being there, there's all sorts in the library, badly formatted stuff, ugly stuff, crap stuff, PDFs. random things should all go in there.
Mar 22 2007 13:37
#13
John. wrote:
Stuff like this should just go up in the library. there's absolutely no problem with it being there, there's all sorts in the library, badly formatted stuff, ugly stuff, crap stuff, PDFs. random things should all go in there.
But theirs nothing in the design of the library that makes this feature accessible or encourages people to use it, i mean who's going to know that theirs some good pdf's of leaflets on some random recent issues in the library. Plus the library doesn't have things uploaded as a leaflets, it has them largely uploaded as text. A leaflet needs to be uploaded as a pdf, since without presentation a leaflet is often just a few snappy comments and some times and dates.
Problem is, unless you advertise that their are leaflets in the library and explicitly advertise how that feature could be used, who's going to know about it or use it? And how are you going to encourage people to download leaflets and usde them if they are in the library? As you say without some context to why its there it becomes another random thing in the library.
Taking the somewhat hypothetical blood service leaflet example, even if you got someone to upload it into the library, would anyone who didn't spend ages perusing left communist theory in the library, or happen to google 'blood service leaflet libcom' know it was there?
Mar 22 2007 13:43
#14
We could just give it a tag, tho.
Mar 22 2007 13:45
#15
like i say we can tag it with 'leaflets' and have a leaflets feed box anywhere in the site - say in organise
edit: as jack would have said, if he could form longer sentences
Mar 22 2007 13:50
#16
cantdocartwheels wrote:
Taking the somewhat hypothetical blood service leaflet example, even if you got someone to upload it into the library, would anyone who didn't spend ages perusing left communist theory in the library, or happen to google 'blood service leaflet libcom' know it was there?
Well that's a problem with everything. We have 7,000 articles on here, and 8,000 forum topics. It's impossible to display everything on a good index. But it could be found like all our articles with a google search, a search of this site, and via our tag system. So it could be tagged: leaflets, UK, health and medicine, National Blood Service
Quote:
But theirs nothing in the design of the library that makes this feature accessible or encourages people to use it, i mean who's going to know that theirs some good pdf's of leaflets on some random recent issues in the library.
Can files be attached at the mo? if not this shuold be enabled for contributors.
Quote:
Plus the library doesn't have things uploaded as a leaflets, it has them largely uploaded as text. A leaflet needs to be uploaded as a pdf, since without presentation a leaflet is often just a few snappy comments and some times and dates.
Largely yes, but it does have PDF leaflets and things there as well.
For example: http://libcom.org/library/fight-or-walk-documents-2004
Quote:
Problem is, unless you advertise that their are leaflets in the library and explicitly advertise how that feature could be used, who's going to know about it or use it? And how are you going to encourage people to download leaflets and usde them if they are in the library?
This is a problem with any site with thousands of things on it.
When uploaded it'll display on new content. To let other people know about it the person who uploaded can let people know by posting in the organise forum about it, or could write a news article which mentions them. Doing this and linking to the leaflet will also help bump its google ranking. This also applies to external websites.
It would be best if any leaflets also had the plain text as well.
Quote:
As you say without some context to why its there it becomes another random thing in the library.
Its context should be put in the introduction field.
But yeah you have a point, we need to write up what stuff we want in the library. Basically it's everything and anything related to anarchism, socialism and class struggle that wouldn't fit in our other sections.
edit - we do mention this in our content guidelines: http://libcom.org/notes/content-guidelines but it's probably not clear enough. we can try to fix that.
Mar 22 2007 14:05
#17
Context in the introduction. Also links to leaflets should be posted with accounts other info so they'll be linked to relevant articles and forum topics.
Quote:
It would be best if any leaflets also had the plain text as well
This would make life easier in terms of editing, although someone posted up a link to a free pdf editor a while back but I forgot to save it.
Mar 22 2007 14:08
#18
jef costello wrote:
Quote:
It would be best if any leaflets also had the plain text as wellThis would make life easier in terms of editing, although someone posted up a link to a free pdf editor a while back but I forgot to save it.
And importantly in terms of google referrals and also people re-using the text elsewhere.
the easiest way would be to upload pdfs to the library (which can be done now), then link from elsewhere on the site - which could be a box on the organise page, or even front page if there was some major ongoing struggle