Contents

0. Status of the document
1. Mission statement: essence, objectives, and principles of Indymedia Piter
2. Content publishing
3. Mission and functions of the Indymedia Piter Collective
4. Rights of a Closed Group member
5. Technical resources of Indymedia Piter Collective
6. Content moderation rules
6.1. Kinds of moderation used by Indymedia Piter
6.2. Kinds of content that should be moderated
7. Decision making procedure
8. Content usage terms

0. Status of the document
This document is an informal social agreement between Indymedia Piter Collective and users of the resource. This document is not of a legal character.
The document describes principles of work of the Indymedia Piter resource and social obligations voluntarily undertaken by the members of Indymedia Piter Collective within the limits of work on the project.
The document is approved, revised and supplemented by consensus of the members of Indymedia Piter Collective.

1. Mission statement: essence, objectives, and principles of Indymedia Piter
Indymedia is a collective of independent activists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage and up-to-time information channel that is open for collaboration with all users. Indymedia Piter is one of more than a hundred Independent Media Centers functioning all over the world and united into the international initiative of Indymedia (IMCN, Indymedia).

Objectives of Indymedia Piter:
1.1. To create information space for support of Piter libertarian activists and open interaction between them.
1.2. To supply society with free and up-to-time information that is not distorted by state, commercial or political censorship.
1.3. To provide possibility for everyone to take part in spreading news and analytic information and to discuss about things, happening in St. Petersburg and Leningradskaya region, and other material, which might be interesting for residents of these regions.

Principles of Indymedia Piter:
1.4 Our main principles are openness and non-discrimination. We believe that open and unrestricted access to information is a necessary condition for a more free and just society. We invite everyone who is ready to follow these principles to participate in the project.
1.5 Indymedia Piter cannot be a body of any political party.

2. Content publishing
Indymedia Piter provides an open publishing engine with possibility of posting comments
Our principle position is as follows: the main criterion of reliability of any information is its open discussion. The value of any information depends most of all on its critical comprehension and results of its public discussion.
Indymedia Piter strongly and in any form objects to political or other ideological censorship.
However, Indymedia Piter Collective has to delete or hide from general newswire certain kinds of messages. The list of such cases is strictly determined and is supplied in chapter 6.

3. Mission and functions of the Indymedia Piter Collective
Definition: Anyone who publishes articles on Indymedia Piter or participates in technical support of the media center, can claim to be a member of the Indymedia Belarus Collective, if they follow the principles declared in chapter 1.
Indymedia Piter uses the following principles of work:
3.1. Discussion of any issues related to documents, public statements, tactics and strategy of development of Indymedia Piter is free and open, and is performed in appropriate unrestricted parts of the website and on publicly announced collective meetings.
3.2. Technical support of the website and direct moderation of messages is done by members of the closed group. Mission and functions of the closed croup are limited to technical support of the media-center and security measures that are explicitly defined in this document. Under no circumstance mandate of the closed group shall be extended beyond the limits defined in this social contract. Any member of the Indymedia Piter Collective can offer himself as a candidate to join the closed group, discussion and decision will be made in public by acting members of the group.
3.3. Issues related to location and functioning of media center’s servers, as well as issues related to disclosure of identity of collective members or criminal persecution of collective members, are discussed within the closed group.
3.4. Traceless content moderation is forbidden, except for cases falling under section 3.4. and 6.

4. Rights of a Closed Group member
4.1. To participate in resolution of issues listed in section 3.3, as well as in defining the people responsible for technical support of the media center.
4.2. To access closed group’s communication channels (mailing list etc.).
4.3. To access website’s content moderation facilities.
4.4. To refuse to participate in implementation of closed groups’s decisions that they disagree with. (For example: if a member of Closed Group is not interested in the decisionmaking of a particular item, he is allowed to not to discuss or realize this.)
4.5. To veto decisions of the collective and the closed group.

5. Technical resources of Indymedia Piter Collective
Currently, the Indymedia Piter website uses content management system drupal. Any modification or switch of the technology should continue to satisfy following requirements:
5.1. Free software.
5.2. Open publishing wire on the front page.
5.3. Facility to add comments to messages.
5.4. Protection of nicknames via publicly available registration system.
5.5 Facility to add materials trough mobile phone and e-mail.
5.6 Facility to add materials and read calendar, which contains future events.

6. Content moderation rules
Content moderation on Indymedia Piter is an exceptional situation and can only be done in accordance with criteria defined in this chapter. Technical facility for moderation is only provided to members of the closed group.
Traceless moderation is forbidden. Every case of moderation (except duplicate removal and security-related issues) should be publicly documented by the moderator, whenever possible, justification should be provided.
Public discussion of moderatorial actions is encouraged.
6.1. Kinds of moderation used by Indymedia Piter
6.1.1. Editing by moderator
Text of a message is changed by moderator. Moderator must leave a note in the body of the message including moderator’s login name, description of changes, and reasons for moderation.
6.1.2. Full deletion from the database
Message is completely and irreversibly deleted from database.
6.1.3. Hidden publications
Material can be hidden by moderator, but is still available for all participators. Hidden publications are deleted after 12 months.
6.2. Kinds of content that should be moderated
In all cases moderator should be applying common sense and the principle of minimal intervention. The following sections define the most harsh measures that can be applied to different kinds of materials that violate the Indymedia principles listed in the chapter 1.
6.2.1. Exclusion from open publishing wire
• Commercial advertisement
• Party and pre-election advertisement
• Duplicates of messages
• Personal information, published without sanction.
6.2.2. Editing by moderator
• Information about upcoming events that is proved incorrect
6.2.3 Hidden publications
• Propaganda of hate, racial, national, or sexual intolerance.
• Comments without a connection to the topic or consisting direct threat towards participants of the resource.
• Flood (senseless or unreadable messages)

7. Decision making procedure
Discussion and approval of any decisions that affect Indymedia Piter as a whole is made in public (except issues listed in section 3.3). Proposals for discussion can be brought up by any Indymedia participant. Public discussions are held either on the, or on the publicly announced open meetings of the collective.
In its decisions, Indymedia Piter values input of every participant. In order to avoid dictatorship of minority, as well as dictatorship of majority, all decisions are made using the method of formal consensus. Following procedure for discussion and decision making is recommended:
1) Each participant is allowed to offer their position on the discussed matter. At this stage, the focus is on the solution as a whole, potential problems may be mentioned, but discussion of solutions is postponed.
2) All possible problems of the proposed solution are identified. At this stage, it is most important to create a full picture of all problems and interrelations between them, so it’s recommended not to distract the discussion with solutions.
3) Each of the identified problems together with all possible solutions is discussed.

For each of the above stages, sufficient and previously agreed upon time should be left for thinking over; it is recommended to provide at least a week when discussing online and at least 20 minutes during face-to-face meeting. When decision doesn’t have to be made urgently, it is recommended to move the second, and whenever necessary, third stage of the decision making to a separate meeting.
If any problems remain unresolved after all three stages, two outcomes are possible:
а) All participants agree to approve the decision with unresolved problems. In this case, all unresolved problems are included into the text of the proposal and become part of the decision.
б) The remaining problems are essential (see chapter 1) and do not allow for consensus. In this case, the decision is blocked.
Every discussion should be coordinated and protocolled by a facilitator. Facilitators should be rotated from one discussion to another in a manner that would make every member of the collective play this role regularly. Before each stage of the decision making process, the proposal under discussion and a short summary of previous stages should be published or presented. Decision that was made by consensus can only be changed by another consensus. In case in a member of the collective without a reason disturb the work of the Indymedia Piter collective, a common discussion about the deprivation from the collective can take started.

8. Content usage terms
Indymedia Piter encourages free reprinting, citing and other ways of distributing its content. Content can be re-distributed according to the license Creative Commons* CC-BY-NC. Publishing content on the Indymedia Piter website requires that the message author accepts these terms.

*- CC-BY Copying, sharing demonstration, modification and producing own publication from the publication is allowed, but the original author of the publication should be mentioned. The result can be shared througr another, more closed license.
CC-NC (Non-commercial): Copying, sharing demonstration, modification and producing own publication from the publication is allowed, except for commercial purposes.