raymondmk

Ourmedia is off the hooks. We are still in alpha, the site is still bugged, and yet we have 17276 members. Woops make that 17278, two more individuals just joined.

As head moderator, it is my task to oversee the site together with a team of about 30 moderators from around the world. We try to address known issues, help users, and above all make sure that we don't get sued by organizations whose copyright interests have been infringed by some of our 17000+ members. If we get sued and charged with a bill of a few million dollars; well, no more ourmedia.

As you know, Ourmedia is a back door to the Internet Archive. As an Ourmedia member, you are / should be able to upload your movies, music and documents to the Internet Archive without the 24 hour curation period that the Internet Archive normally has. This means that with luck, you can upload your movie and have it on the IA within 10 minutes, and not close to 24 hours that is normally the case with IA.

An open system like this almost begs to be abused. The fact that we trust our members can easily be exploited, and already we have examples of people using Ourmedia to host files normally found on kazaa or other p2p systems. There have been people uploading 0day mp3's as well as footage from today's WWF (sorry WWE) pay-per-view show. We had one instance where a copyrighted media item had been downloaded 2500 times before we could spot it and get it removed. Clearly, we must be prepared for that. We cannot have a situation where Ourmedia gets shut down because a few individuals want to use us as a hosting site for their copyrighted material.

So, we need your help, with this and a few other areas. Below is a description of the different areas we need your assistance.

Copyright follow-up

Ourmedia currently has a few places open on our "copyright follow-up" team, headed by Jason Brackins. (j-san at j-san . net). This team receives lists of suspect files regularly from our media monitors, and they take action, reviewing this list, removing whatever needs removing, and takes appropriate action against the offending users. The job is a routine, and boring at times, but this just has to be done. If you have a few hours a week to help out with this, contact Jason or myself (raymondmk@gmail.com) and we will set you up. This team is crucial, and we need to make sure all the positions are filled :)

Customer care

Our 17000 users are maybe not paying customers, but they still require our attention sometimes. Especially now that things are not working, we have a lot of users emailing us with their complaints or questions, as well as on their ourmedia blogs or the forums. Because a couple of our current moderators have decided to step down as moderators due to other obligations (we all have our lives outside ourmedia, believe it or not), we are currently looking for community people who would like to help us with this. Do you enjoy gathering information and streaming it to the people who need it? Do you enjoy being in touch with people, helping them with their problems? Do you enjoy being a part of a site that has truly gigantic goals? Ourmedia needs you! :)

We need 20 community guys and girls who 1) check and respond to our email coming to info@ourmedia.org (now it is mostly me and a few others doing this, and we cannot keep up at all) 2) Can be moderators at our forums, answering questions and being in general available. Interested? Email me at raymondmk@gmail.com

Mods-coders

We currently have a few coders working full time on the site, but we recently created another group of volunteers who are to act as support to our main coding team. Headed by Jeff Kowalski (me at jeffkowalski . com), this team works on all kinds of issues related to our mission, as well as current challenges. This team need more competent coders, and if you want to help Ourmedia on this area, please contact Jeff or myself.

Outreach

The last team that needs members right now is the newly established 'Outreach' team. Working as our in-house PR department, Outreach will focus on preparing material for letting Ourmedia enter the campus and the high schools. We need to let those art/media students know they can use ourmedia. If you want to join this team, please let me know (raymondmk@gmail.com)

Requirements

What is required to volunteer for Ourmedia? Communication skills, some time to spare, and a curious mind. That's all, really. 

We want a team of young and old, men and women, from around the entire world, working together to make this site as kick-ass as we plan for it to be. As a volunteer at ourmedia, you are a part of an international community. You are part of a great urge to help people be able to share their media, without a cost, and forever.

Together, we can make this site go truly stellar. Want to help?

I guess I have to start using this blog. 

So, how are things? How do I feel this fiine early morning, 3 AM CET? Heh, I am at work (I work night shifts), and I have spent every free moment last hours to answer email coming in to info @ ourmedia dot org and there are so many things to do, and this site needs to start working yesterday, and I have loads of pissed off users complaining. Well, I can't blame them, but still, not too fun ONLY reading that :)

I am sure that ourmedia will be a great site; the concept is marvellous and more than a bit shattering to the usual ways of looking at media online. Old school: If your content gets popular, you pay. New wave: If your content gets popular, you don't have to pay, but can just bask in the praise or whatever might come your way.

I have seen soo much good stuff here at Ourmedia, and yet there is hardly any comments on the good things. There hardly is any real Discussion here. Now, how to let the community aspects of Ourmedia grow is one very good question. We have coders and developers working mostly on the publisher bugs as well as the Ourmedia/Internet Archive fusion (how to get the media actually Showing up on IA, and then also having a node/page here on OM). We have volunteers from around the world (I am from Norway myself, that explains my crappy English), and we have 15600 users. Registered users that is. :)

I am still on the outlook for volunteers, but I think we need to be a bit more specific in what we are looking for. Since this site is still in alpha and we are just at the very beginning of this venture, the path is not laid yet. The internal culture of this site is not fully developed, and we are still feeling our way forward. My hope is that we can have volunteers who realise that there is not that much structure and hierarchy yet, we still don't have streamlined routines yet. I often speak with new volunteers and they ask me "So how do you do X?" and I more often than not have to answer them "Well, we don't know. Yet." This puzzles a lot of volunteers and some of them lose interest in ourmedia and in helping out. That is a pity in my point of view, because when the site is as virgin as this, we really really need people who can just step up and take initiative.

This blog is my personal arena, and even though I have an official position within the ourmedia site as site admin and head of the moderators/volunteers team, I don't want this blog to be some sort of official channel. However, I Will talk about development issues, and I will be covering some of the challenges I face, and I will also ask for suggestions from you, my few readers :)

So, cheers for me starting to use this blog, and three cheers for OurMedia working, developing, and spreading our media throughout the world!

Raymond M. Kristiansen
raymondmk at gmail dot com