<nettime> nettime as practice

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.org>]

On Sunday, 11. June 2006 02:21, John Hopkins wrote:
> In this Light, I would challenge Felix and Ted (and any others
> feeling qualified) to write a brief task description of the
> (different) roles/positions necessary to run nettime as it is today.
> Put it out here.  I certainly have some interest, but would need to
> know the scalability and absolute size of what tasks are necessary,
> and how they are (technically and socially) accomplished...

There is not much of a challenge here. All that you really need is
some long-term dedication to contributing to the nettime project on a
very regular basis. It helps to like it, be somewhat familiar with it,
and feel comfortable with its style.

Technically, in order to start moderating you need to be able to deal
with email on a *nix Shell (via ssh). There is no web-interface. It's
good to know the mail program 'mutt' (because we have some custom
setting that save serious time), but if you don't, it's something that
can be learned like other semi-technical stuff and we can help, and,
indeed, will help.

In the medium term, you should familiarize yourself with 'procmail'
and 'spam assassin', otherwise lots of time is spent going through
spam and/or finding false positives. This is a real hassle.

In the long term, you might need to look for a new host for the
mailing list (which has up to 50'000 outgoing mails a day), and for a
new admin for the web server. Right now, all of this is provided by
other people on a goodwill basis. As goodwill is usually personal,
rather than institutional, we have no idea how that transfers.

Also, did I mention?, you need high tolerance for personal abuse, by
people who don't know you, and, what can be more annoying, by people
who know you. It seems unavoidable because of the architecture of
mailing lists, and some people really make a big deal out of it.

Now, this might sound like endless, thankless drudgery, but it's not,
or not only. Being deeply involved in nettime is a good reason, and a
motivator, to pay close attention to the discussions and the people,
which is very worthwhile. You learn a lot, and a lot of people learn
about you. Though the abuse part sucks, no matter what.

Felix








----http://felix.openflows.org------------------------------ out now:
*|Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society. Polity, 2006 
*|Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks. Ed. Futura/Revolver, 2005 



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