Detailed information about libcom.org, the aims of the site, who runs it, how it's organised, how you can help out and more.
Guidelines for content published on libcom.org including what kind of content we want, where different types of articles should go and how to format and layout articles.
If you do not yet have permissions to submit content just request it here.
Guide to the style and tone of writing we want on libcom.org, particularly in the news and blog sections of the website.
The libcom.org style guide is designed to make our content easier to read and give our website more consistency in our articles across all the different sections. A lot of great material and information in alternative media sources today suffers from simply poor quality production and style, and we aim to try and address that. Compiled with help from Freedom Press, this style guide applies to the news and blog sections of the site, and to the library and history sections where appropriate (i.e. for new writing, as opposed to republishing old content).
This guide may seem large but please do not be put off! The most important thing is that we want content. If you have an article you think would be good on libcom.org let us have it in whatever form you can. If necessary we can edit it so that it fits our guidelines and any random bits and pieces we may be able to put in our Library. This style guide is included so people know why and how we might be editing any submissions, and for any people who feel they can take these suggestions into account when writing new content.
Different sites have different ways of conveying information. On libcom.org we decided that the most effective way for us to get our message across is with a uniform tone and general style of writing across the site. The tone we would like to maintain on all sections of the site should have the following characteristics:
These are the kinds of articles and writing styles we would like for different parts of the site:
Primarily we are interested in three main things:
While these are our priorities we will publish almost any other news stories provided they fit the aims and ethos of the site with the general exception of the following topics:
Be concise
Top of the list because it can't be stressed enough. Anything which is not a direct fact useful to the piece should be removed. Try to stick to a low word count, ideally 250-500 for news articles, 600-1,000 for comment, 1,200-2,000 for in-depth pieces.
News is not comment
Try to limit personal opinion in news articles. Unlike the corporate media we don’t pretend to be objective, but we decided to avoid overly emotive and subjective language - for example “the filthy pigs injured 11 demonstrators” should be “11 demonstrators were injured by police”. News and comment are two separate things, generally please try to treat them separately.
Be contemporary
You could find a great news story a few weeks old, so to make it sound current there are a few tricks you can use. Couch your language in the present - 'Prince Harry has been wearing a nazi uniform' sounds more up to date than 'Prince Harry wore a nazi uniform two weeks ago'.
Answer six questions
Who, Why, What, Where, When, How. Who and what should be the first questions you answer - assume your audience has no prior knowledge of your subject.
Worth a thousand words...
A relevant picture is a great addition to any news story. Our news section automatically resizes pictures to fit, so please add them to each article you can.
Read more about submitting news...
Any clearly written article with tips on various aspects of collective organising and action, which isn't already covered in our organise section. Ideally fewer than 2,000 words.
Any historical article from a libertarian/working class point of view. Ideally under 2,000 words, they can come from any period in history.
Any libertarian left text, interview, book, personal account, leaflet, pamphlet, set of images or article which would not quite fit in any of our other sections.
In all the sections of the site, please try to take the following suggestions into account:
Use as many sources as possible - The more sources you have, the more reliable, well-rounded and believable your story. Please list your sources in footnotes or in a list at the bottom of your article.
Cross-reference - If you add links in parts of your article to other articles or sections on libcom.org, please do! Further reading and links for more information at the end are very welcome.
Avoid clichés, rhetoric and slang - Clichés are lazy writing and should only be used if you really can't think of anything else. Lefty rhetoric or slang, such as “Bliar” instead of “Blair” say, should be avoided at all costs since they immediately alienate a large audience and make reading uncomfortable for people outside activist culture. They also make a writer seem unprofessional and childish.
Cut down on capitals - Anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist, communist etc. as well as government and state should all be done without capital letters. Communist with a capital “c” can and should be used if referring to members of USSR-supporting Communist Parties. Try not to use political labels unnecessarily as they break up the reading flow, and may confuse the issue.
Use shorter words - Never use 'achieve' when you can say 'do'. Make sure you don't use words which people might not understand - 'Precarity' for example - unless you absolutely have to, and make sure you explain what it means if you do. If you can, go through the text afterwards to check and explain any word or reference the average person wouldn’t know.
Kropotwho? - Don't use quotations from people not directly involved. This includes dead theoreticians and living philosophers.
CNwhat? - Do not assume in-depth historical or anarchist knowledge, particularly with respect to libertarian groups and historical events. Don’t mention groups, such as the CNT, without referring first to their full name, acronym and brief description – e.g. instead of “CNT”, first write “the National Confederation of Labour (CNT), a Spanish anarchist trade union”. It can then be referred to simply as “CNT” from then on. Don’t refer to historical events in shorthand, like “Kronstadt”, instead say “the grassroots rebellion of workers and sailors against the Bolshevik Russian Government in 1921”, and/or provide a link to a related page on libcom with more information.
To keep a standard look and feel across our site, we try to maintain a consistent use of grammar and abbreviations
Capitals - In article and page titles, only the first word should be capitalised. E.g. “US forces invade China”, not “US Forces Invade China”.
Royalty/Religion - All titles should be capped (big first letter) - the Queen, Prince (Charles/William etc.), the Pope. The Archbishop of Canterbury is Dr. Williams. Clergy should be first the Rev. John Brown, then just Rev. Brown after that. E.g. The Rev John Brown denounced Protestantism today as 'a bit silly'. Rev. Brown, a leading figure...
Everybody else - Start off using their full name. After that if it's someone we like, use their first name. If not, use their second name, with the exception of well-known figures, whose most easily recognisable name should be used - e.g. Chomsky rather than Noam. Don't use any decorations or honours.
Full stops - “USA”, not “U.S.A.”. Use “etc.” “e.g.”, and “i.e.” Don't abbreviate: Place names to St, Rd etc. Don't use Mr, Mrs or Ms at all. Don't abbreviate non-name words - “headquarters” shouldn't become “HQ” because it means unnecessary capitals.
Federations - The UK libertarian federations can be abbreviated to SolFed (Solidarity Federation), AF (Anarchist Federation) and IWW (Industrial Workers of the World). Always explain who they are at the beginning of the piece for sake of new readers.
Money/Numbers - Million shortens to m (£1m), billion to bn. Trillion is written as is because it isn't used often. Per cent becomes %. One to nine are written as words, 10 and above as numbers. If counting in euro it should be Eu120. “Euro” should always be in lower case, and “euro” is both singular and plural. Weights and measures always use the shortened version, except metres and miles. For wars, please use capitalising and numbers as follows: World War I/II, or First/Second World War.
Apostrophes - Apostrophes indicate possession or abbreviation. “Its” is the possessive form of it, so like “his” and “her” there is no apostrophe. The only time you need an apostrophe in “its” is when it is an abbreviation for “it is” or “it has” – e.g. “it’s cold” or “it’s got big teeth”. Acronyms do not require apostrophes in the plural form – i.e. “CDs and DVDs”, not “CD’s and DVD’s”
Exclamation marks - No, no, no, no, no! Try to avoid wherever possible. They undermine a serious message.
Hyphens - We use hyphenated political labels. For example, anti-fascist, anarcho-syndicalist, anarchist-communist, etc.
For terms related to political labels and terminology, particularly related to class, please take a quick look at our introductory guide and try to apply them as we define them there.
Activists – most “activists” aren’t the full-time professional activists that term implies: they’re just normal people, so try to refer to them as such. If they are professional or full-time drop-out activists then please specify. See also Demonstrators and Protestors.
Anarchists believe – Please do not use, because it isn't 'anarchists', it's the writer.
Anti-capitalist – Whatever anti-capitalist movement there was is now mostly dead, and the term has little resonance with anyone any more. Please avoid (see also Anti-anything else, below)
Anti-globalisation – The anti-globalisation movement was very badly named, and deeply flawed at the root of its politics, please try to avoid (see also Anti-anything else, below)
Anti-anything else – Lefties are often seen as “anti”-everything, so please do not fuel that impression by using “anti” excessively
Basically – Avoid. You are already putting it in layman's English, no need to labour the fact.
Bush's poodle - Possibly the most overused phrase apart from Bliar in the alternative press today. Along with similar lefty clichés please avoid.
Bourgeoisie/Bourgeois – Sounds very old-fashioned, out-dated and complex. We prefer to talk of capital as the enemy of the working class, but if it must be used please use modern equivalents possible, or provide a definition if you really must.
Capital - Try to use this term to describe the entity of capitalism which the working class's interests are opposed to, rather than capitalist class, or bourgeoisie, which are a little muddy in terms of definition.
Class – Due to confusion about class on the left and in the general population we try to maintain a uniform usage across the site:
Deliberate misspellings such as cos, innit etc. - Activists trying to be more street. Ouch. Avoid.
Demonstrators – See activists
Fascism/fascist – Only use when referring to actual ideological fascism. Its usage referring to non-fascist phenomena like liberal democratic governments makes the author sound silly.
Middle class – see class
Obviously – Avoid. It's only obvious to you, not to casual readers.
Proletariat - see bourgeoisie
Propaganda - The word "propaganda" is associated with distortion of fact for political gain, usually by dictatorial regimes. When talking of material designed to persuade people of a political idea, please use a different term, such as "outreach material"
Protestors – see activists
Smash – You can’t really smash an abstract concept, so please don’t encourage people to try.
Swearwords – Avoid in news or information articles as it can make the writer look immature, and put readers off.
Unsurprisingly – There is no such thing if you want to write for a mass audience. Avoid.
Working class – See class
Z - Go easy on the zeds. Please use UK English spellings of words, i.e. "organise" not "organize".
This style guide is designed as an addition to large guides like the Guardian’'s, rather than as a comprehensive replacement. The Guardian guide contains large numbers of standardised ways of referring to people, places, companies and concepts and is worth checking out if you ever have anything you’re unsure about.
libcom group, with help from Freedom Press
We encourage other groups, websites and publications to use or adapt this guide if they so desire.
How to submit and format articles and images to the library, history and news sections of libcom
A well formatted article is easier and more pleasant to read and should be easier for site users to quickly print off a readable copy. So a little extra work is worth it.
Submitting and formatting
First, take a look at a formatted article - http://libcom.org/library/intakes-history-tactics-political-reading. This will give you an idea of what we are talking about below. Also read the formatting guides for news and Library and History.
Submitting text/article
1) Click on 'create content' at top of page.
2) Click on library, blog entry, history or news. This will take you to the appropriate page.
3) Type in the title of the article in the 1st box. This should use normal sentence case. I.e. "Strike continues at Ford". Rather than "Strike Continues at Ford". Try to keep article titles as short as possible, while still explaining what the article is about. For library articles, please include the author of the text in the title like this: GI opposition the Vietnam War, - Howard Zinn
4) Please add an image to any article you post up. Try to include the most relevant picture possible. Google image search is a great way to find photographs, but please do not post up images copyrighted by big companies like the BBC or Associated press.
If you cannot find a photograph of the exact story you are covering, please use one related to the person, company, or city that is mentioned, for example. Ideally the photograph will be a good image, with the bulk of the detail in the centre of the image, so that it will be visible in our site's thumbnails. (See our submitting images guide, below for more information)
5) Choose the appropriate categories for the article in the 'regions' and 'sectors' list. (If you are unsure on the correct choice, it can be done by an editor after submission.) You can select multiple regions or sectors by using ctrl-click. Topics the article is about can be entered in the tags box, but only match tags to ones which already exist, please do not create any new tags. For more guidance see our article tagging guide.
6) Enter a brief explanation of the article in the 'Introduction' box. If appropriate, this could be the 1st paragraph of the article. Otherwise, write a short descriptive summary of around 130 characters, or one or two lines on the page. This will automatically appear at the beginning of the article in bold type in the finished submission.
7) Paste in the article itself to the 'Body' box.
8) If your article is about a particular geographical location, in the 'Location' field please click the location on the map it is about.
Formatting text
In your article, if you include subheadings, please use BB code headers for these. There are three levels of subheadings which look like this:
Body text
To use subheadings type the following code around the text of subheading, but leaving out the spaces:
[ h2] Subheading 1 [ /h2]
[ h3] Subheading 2 [ /h3]
[ h4] Subheading 3 [ /h4]
Some articles in their original format have too many line breaks. to correct this use a site like this one; http://www.fwointl.com/FWOFormatter.html
- and set max characters to 999999 and Format. You can also use word processor' Find and replace functions to remove additional line breaks and correct any repeated errors.
Also ensure that you use (two) full line breaks for paragraphs to ensure readable text. One line break will not get caught by our automatic paragraph formatting.
If you are writing the text yourself, then short paragraphs are easiest to read, especially on computer screens, so please keep paragraphs brief.
Footnotes
Footnotes can be automatically generated at the end of articles. Where you would normally put the footnote number like [1] instead, put the text of your footnote wrapped in <fn>Footnote goes here</fn> tags. When you submit the article, Drupal will find all the footnotes and format the superscript numbers and link to them for you.
File attachments
If you would like to attach a file to your article, such as a PDF, or other images you would like to display in the article, click the File attachments link, then browse to the files on your computer. If you would like readers to be able to view and download the file, for example with PDF documents check the "list" box next to the file. If you would like them to remain hidden, for example with images you have used in the article, leave it unchecked.
The maximum upload size is 16 MB. Only files with the following extensions may be uploaded: jpg jpeg gif png txt html doc xls pdf ppt pps odt ods odp tif svg mobi epub psd zip xml docx rtf.
Adding lengthy books
To add entire books, or texts too long to be in one article, you can add a book with different chapters and sections. See Volin's Unknown revolution for example.
- Create a library or history article as normal
- fill in the fields as appropriate with the name, author and description of the book etc, then click Book outline.
- in the Book drop-down field which appears, click the second from top option, <create a new book>.
- click save.
- to add subsequent chapters click "add child page" on the book page you have just created.
- Do not add tags, regions or sectors to child pages as you will have already categorised the parent book.
Sources
Please credit sources at the end of your article with any relevant information such as author, edits or translations, in italics. e.g.
By Wildcat Germany, 2009, taken and slightly edited by libcom from www.prol-position.net
Adding tables
If the article you want to add has a table in it, you can use an online automated HTML table generator such as this one:
http://www.quackit.com/html/html_table_generator.cfm
If you put in an HTML table you need to set the input format to "normal (some HTML allowed new)"
And finally…
If you ever have any problems, or need any assistance adding formatting content there are lots of people happy and able to help you. Just make a post in our feedback and content forum.
Thank you for reading, and for making libcom.org an easier and more attractive site to use!
Appendix: Submitting images
1. Use png, gif, jpg or jpeg files only.
2. Give the file a meaningful name. Don't leave any gaps between letters/characters in file names or the file may not load.
3. Don't upload files over one MB. If you can only find a large version of a pic, various resizing applications can be found online, or download (http://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/ is a good one, http://gimp.org is a good one)
4. Resize large images to no more than 450 pixels wide (and around 250 pixels tall if you want sidebar thumbnail images to display correctly).
5. Do not use copyright images, and especially not copyright images from news agencies like AP.
Instructions for windows users:
To submit a main image that will appear at the top of the article, use the 'Image' box.
You will need to have the image stored locally on your computer.
Click the 'browse' button to browse your PC to find where you have stored the image. A 'file upload' window will appear.
Browse to the file on your computer, images downloaded from the internet usually default to your "Desktop" folder
Click 'Open' and the file will appear in the 'Image' field on the Libcom submissions page.
Then press 'Upload' to bring the image file from your PC onto the site and into the article.
Then you can add, if you want to, in the "title" field, a caption for your image. This caption will appear when readers hover their mouse over the image.
Information on posting content to the libcom library
Information on the layout and format of articles posted to libcom library
Titles
- Please only capitalise the first letter of any article titles (and any other already-capitalised words of course).
E.g. Capital, labour and primitive accumulation, not Capital, Labour and Primitive Accumulation.
- Please add the author's name to the title after a dash.
e.g. Capital, labour and primitive accumulation - Werner Bonefeld
Article
Please try to write an abstract for the introduction field for your article, explaining what it is about. This will appear on indexes like this: http://libcom.org/tags/russian-revolution. Try to keep it to around 150 characters, or 1.5 to 2.5 lines of text in the entry field.
Please also put - whenever possible - the original source of the article at the the end of the article; its book, magazine and/or website publication details, date and location of publication etc.
Image
If possible, please add a relevant (non-copyright) image to your article via the upload form, this will also appear in indexes.
Tags
Most tags are added by libcom editors, but you can add the following:
Authors and groups. This applies only for writers and groups you'd expect to find in the library - i.e. alongside Marx, Kropotkin, Wildcat, Situationists etc. if the article mentions trade unions etc. these will be added as tags.
Sector: if the article deals with a particular sector or sectors, you can add that here.
Region: Please add the primary region the article deals with, if it has international scope, best to leave this blank rather than selecting every one.
Since September 2007, all historical articles are now found in our history section (this includes any detailed analysis of recent events that is not suitable for /news). All theoretical articles can now be found in the library.
If you need technical help with posting articles, or are not sure which section they should go in, please post in our feedback forum
Many thanks, and happy posting!
A short guide to tagging and categorising articles posted to libcom.org.
- Choose region for story, and industrial sector if appropriate (i.e. if about a strike in a particular sector, or a person who worked almost exclusively in that sector and did lots of stuff related to it). You can use multiple choice with CTRL-clicks
-Select any individuals, groups or unions the article is either written by or written predominantly about in the Authors, people and groups box.
- Enter tags for the story. Try to enter between one to three keyword tags. Enter them in lower case, unless they're proper nouns, and separate with commas. Important things to include are:
---- The city the story in, if it's a big city or US state
---- If it's about a big company, the name of the company, e.g. Asda-Walmart
---- If it's a strike add the tags strikes, if wildcat add wildcat strikes, if general general strikes
---- If it's an interview, add interviews, if a review add reviews
---- If the article is related to race or racism add race, women or feminism add women, fascism or anti-fascism add fascism.
---- Any other good keywords you can think of, like: riots, environment, demonstrations, but only ones which have already been used, and so appear as options when you start typing.
---- If in doubt, leave it blank - an admin can always fill in the tag information later.
Information on the type of news articles we want on libcom.org.
If you've registered on libcom.org, you can post content to our news. There are particular kinds of articles we want most, and some obviously that we don't so much. But don't worry, if we can't use something on our news page we will look at any other areas of the site where it might be suitable, or we may edit it to make it fit in.
For a detailed look at the type, style and tone of content we'd like on libcom.org, please take a look at our Style guide.
If you're not sure whether your article is suitable, take a look at our existing news articles for comparison, or consider posting it in the forums first.
For general advice on how to write news articles, see our news report writing guide.
In brief, however, here are a few basic tips and suggestions:
Content
For libcom.org news the main kinds of article we want are as follows, in this order of importance:
1. Stories and analysis about people taking collective direct action to improve their lives.
Example: Fighting the fare hike in San Francisco
2. Analysis of current events, such as wars, natural disasters and other big mainstream news stories from a class perspective.
Example: Post Office privatisation will be disguised as workers' ownership
3. News about the effects of corporate and government policies on people and the environment.
Example: 12 million trapped in forced labour worldwide
While these are our priorities we will happily publish other news stories provided they fit the aims and ethos of the site with the general exception of the following topics:
Actions: There are many websites for 'activists' to post stories about 'actions' they have taken part in, such as indymedia. We suggest using one of them instead of libcom.
Example: "Activists blockade Esso station"
The left: Leninist groups are a minor irrelevance in society who do not interest anyone. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, let's not give them any attention they don't warrant.
Example: "Trotskyist Workers' Alliance split"
Promotion: If you would like to advertise an event, group or campaign please use the announcements board on our forums.
Tone
To get our message across most effectively, we have decided to try to keep all content with the following tone:
- Serious - avoiding rhetoric and overly emotive language
- Clear - written using simple English, free from jargon
- Concise -try not to let articles get too long. Very long texts (say from over 2000 words) may be better off in our library.
- Outward-looking - i.e. aimed at the intelligent layperson, not at people who are anarchists, activists or libertarian communists already. Not talking down to anyone, but explaining all historical references, acronyms specialised vocabulary, etc. and in general trying to address general issues of concern to all.
Many thanks, and happy posting!
If you need technical help with posting news articles, post in our feedback forum.
Information and guidance on how and why you should edit articles on libcom.org.
You may have noticed that most articles on libcom.org have an "edit" button above them.
This is so that our users can help us improve the site, and fix any errors.
To edit in article, just click edit, then make the required changes, in the revisions information box enter the information about what you have changed, for example "fixed typos" and click "save". Your edits will then go into a moderation queue, to be approved by administrators.
Here is some quick guidance on the type of edits which we hope people will make, and which can improve the site and its utility to our users.
- fixing typos
- fixing errors in the text, for example if some text is missing, or if it is a scanned text with some mistakes in it and you have a copy of the original text so that you can correct them. If there is an error in the text, such as a date or place is wrong then it may or may not be appropriate to just fix it directly. Example, if it is an old historical text and the original author made a mistake then it would be more appropriate to add a footnote explaining that the error is in the original. However, for news articles these can just be corrected. Ask in the comment section below the article if you are not sure.
- adding images. If the text does not have an image attached to it, please feel free to add an appropriate one. Or attach and add images throughout the text if you have the time.
- adding hyperlinks to other content on libcom.org. This is something we would really appreciate. If a reference in one article is made to an individual, event, country, organisation or whatever else that we have content elsewhere on libcom.org, please turn the relevant words into a hyperlink to the relevant page. If there is a tag for the keyword then that would be the best page to direct people to. For example:
Maria fought in the Durruti Column (named after Buenaventura Durruti) in the Spanish civil war...
Ideally this would be edited to:
Maria fought in the Durruti Column (named after Buenaventura Durruti ) in the Spanish civil war...
- editing articles to match our style guide. If any articles or badly formatted, or don't match our style guide please feel free to fix them up and make them look nice.
- entering new style footnotes. Any footnotes written with text like [1] please feel free to replace them with the new style nicely formatted footnotes like this1. There is still a slight bug with these notes, so they may look funny initially, but just post a comment below the article saying this has happened and an administrator will fix it.
- entering PDF documents as text. We have quite a few PDF documents in our library, many of them are here. However, we much prefer to have documents in text format on our site. This means we can add links between articles, and also articles are easier to search for on libcom and from Google. So if you have the time to copy the text from PDF documents and paste them up in the body field of their existing article pages it would be very much appreciated. You can leave the original PDF attached to the article.
Many thanks for any help you give us - and any questions please feel free to e-mail us or ask in feedback and content forum.
http://libcom.org/filter/tips/6
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Links to helpful online tools for assisting with putting together articles and content for libcom.org.
If there are any other tools which could help libcom contributors please post them below and we can incorporate them into this list!
10 simple rules for posting comments on libcom.org.
1. Be clear
2. Play the ball, not the person
3. Cyber-bullying
4. No trolling, no sock-puppeting
5. Don't post up large 'copy and pastes'
6. Spamming/direct linking
7. No adverts
8. Have a look at these tools which may come in handy for the forum
9. Moderation policy
10. Overview & legal bit
Be clear
Start new threads in the appropriate forum. Give relevant, precise titles, don't capitalise every letter ("LOOK @ TH1S!!" - is not acceptable). Give meaningful post content which gives people something to discuss - relevant? coherent? formatted?
Play the ball, not the person
The internet is not as far removed from real life as you'd like it to be. People are real, have real feelings and thoughts. Do not abuse people because of their ideas and beliefs for no reason. Be aware that not everyone has read as much Bakunin as you. Be nice to new posters and people developing their ideas. ANY KIND of oppressive, sexist, racist, unreasonable personal abuse, discrimination etc. is not allowed and threads will be removed and offenders banned. Please respect people's privacy and refrain from posting up personal details without their permission. Untrue smears or allegations against other forum users or related individuals or organisations are not permitted.
Cyber-bullying/harassment
Cyber-bullying/harassment can be as simple as continuing to send private messages to someone who has said they want no further contact with the sender, but it may also include threats, sexual remarks, pejorative labels, ganging up by making them the subject of ridicule in forums, and posting false statements as fact aimed at humiliation or defamation. Cyber-bullies may disclose victims' personal data (e.g. real name, address, or workplace/schools, photos) or may pose as the identity of a victim for the purpose of publishing material in their name that defames or ridicules them. Some cyber-bullies may also send threatening and harassing messages to the victims, while other post rumours or gossip and instigate others to dislike and gang up on the target. Please report malicious PMs to the admins via the contact form.
No trolling, no sock-puppeting
From Wikipedia: "a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion." Trolling is not allowed, and may lead to posts being deleted, users warned and persistent offenders banned. Sock-puppetting is setting up multiple accounts to agree with yourself, to create a false impression that more people are expressing a certain view, to try and evade an account ban, or to make posts the perpetrator doesn’t want associated with their ‘real’ pseudonym. Sock-puppetting is not allowed, and may lead to ALL associated accounts being banned. Multiple accounts are allowed in some circumstances, e.g. a shared account to upload library articles from a group or publication, or to maintain a collaborative blog. If in doubt, ask in the feedback forum.
Copy and pastes
Do not post up large chunks of cut and paste text to the forums, but make things easier for others by summarising the article and including a link to the unabridged version. If your text is not available elsewhere online you need to find somewhere to host it - perhaps our library or news section if it is relevant, otherwise use one of these sites to paste the article in then use the link to it - http://docs.google.com (free registration), http://writer.zoho.com (free registration) or http://paste.turbogears.org (no registration required). Post a comment on your summary in order to arouse interest in discussion around the article. What is a long piece of text? Think - would anyone be prepared to sit and read it in the context of a discussion forum?
Spamming/direct linking
Flooding the boards with links to your site is considered spamming. If you want to link to a relevant article provide a short summary or quote to describe what's contained in the link. This will help readers know if it's relevant and moderators to distinguish it from spam. Do not directly link to 'hostile' websites (leave gaps in the URL if you wish to refer to them or prefix the URL with http://anonym.to?). Anyone found posting up malicious links on other sites and/or trying to stir up 'board wars' will be banned.
Advertising
Any form of commercial or personal advertisements will be removed and the poster dealt with. Relevant adverts should be posted in the announcements forum. This is a discussion forum, not a free advertising resource and offenders will be warned and then banned. Signature files/avatars are disabled and putting in links to your own website with every post isn't permitted either: we want to hear your opinions, not see the same link with every post!
Useful forum tools
All tools are free and nothing to do with libcom.org, where free registration is required look for the [R].
- http://www.box.net - upload any kind of files publicly and link to them from the forum [R].
- http://imageshack.us - upload, resize and link to images.
- http://docs.google.com - upload long text files (articles, pamphlets) here for referencing on the forums [R].
- http://tinyurl.com/ - turn long web addresses into short ones, or just use the URL button above the comment box.
Moderation policy
Ordinarily we have a policy of one thread per topic. Duplicate threads may be locked, with a link given to the main discussion. If your thread or post goes against any of these guidelines it is likely to end up in the bin, unpublished (hidden from non-admins) or deleted. Infringement may lead to a temporary ban (typically 72 hrs), or in serious cases and/or serial infringement a permanent ban. Abuse of the report function, e.g. mass reporting posts which don't breach the site guidelines will result in a ban. You have been warned. Old threads may be deleted without warning. PLEASE MAKE COPIES OF THREADS IMPORTANT TO YOU.
If your post is moderated or you are banned, an explanation should be edited into the post or posted on the thread. You should first check these posting guidelines if you have any questions. Failing that, you can start a thread in feedback, or if banned, use the contact form to contact the admins. Querying moderation decisions on-thread derails discussions and such posts are likely to be removed. Repeatedly doing so will attract further moderation up to and including a ban. Please only query moderation decisions, using the feedback forum, if they do not appear to conform to this policy, not just because you don't agree with them. Reposting anything that has already been edited or removed by admins will usually result in an immediate ban.
Overview & legal bit
Please remember we run this website out of our own time and money. Please respect the site and forums and people putting effort into them. This is not a haven of free speech for some wackos with weird ideas, we have clear aims and ideas about what we are trying to encourage with this project and will strive to maintain those ideas. Posts represent the views of the respective posters, we do not take any responsibility for the contents of posts and cannot be held responsible for any information in a post or any actions and events resulting from information within posts. All opinions stated on the forums or in comments are those of the individual authors and are not the responsibility of libcom.org.
And finally...
Watch this.
Last revised December 2011.
This website is built and maintained purely by volunteers and costs are paid for out of our own pockets. If you like what you find here and want to see the project continue to grow please consider donating.
Like what we do? Want to help out? Here are some easy ways to lend a hand with libcom.org.
If you like what we do and think that libcom.org is a worthwhile project, we’d love you to help us out. The site is maintained and funded entirely by volunteers. As such we appreciate any assistance anyone can give.
We could do with some help in the following areas, and if you think you can do anything within these areas or any others (even its just suggestions), please get in contact - either here or ideally in our Feedback forum.
Spreading the word about the site is always appreciated. Liking or tweeting our content, or sharing it on other social media websites like Facebook, Reddit and StumbleUpon is great, as is linking to libcom.org or to particular section/articles from your own website, blog etc.
A great way to spread libcom's content is to syndicate content from our site - see our RSS feeds at the bottom of each index.
We also encourage people to add links to our content on relevant pages on online discussion forums, newspaper comment sections and editable websites. For instance, libcom.org hosts many historical texts that can be used as evidence citations for assertions made on various Wikipedia pages or listed in the external links sections. We do not encourage spamming, but only relevant placement where it might enrich content or discussions.
This is always useful, as we need money to pay our host, and also pay for advertising like leaflets etc. With our upgrade our hosting costs have increased 20-fold, so donations are especially appreciated. You can donate to us here.
We aren't super geeks. We are always looking for people to help us with technical tasks, or even just advise us on stuff we don't understand. So if you have technological wizardry, please let us know how you can help or ask us for more info.
Websites can go offline unannounced anytime, so if you can have articles from our site up on yours (with a reference link to us too) then that can help assure that the information will always be available. Also if you would be able to mirror our entire site please contact us.
Please feel free to register on the site, and post any comments to articles or forum topics which interest you, even if it's just to thank the author for posting up a text which you have enjoyed. The forums can also be used to discuss issues which affect you, or about prominent news stories of the day. libcom.org relies upon a community of posters to maintain its social nature: without active users it could not function.
We especially welcome people with workplace disputes with their employers who might like advice on how to proceed with overcoming them, or to share how they overcame their specific issue. However, take care to protect your real life identity.
If you spot any errors on our site, like typos or wrong dates, or if you see an article which could be formatted better or have additional hyperlinks to related texts please edit it. See our guidelines on editing articles. We would also like people to add relevant images to any articles that lack them. Edits then go in to a moderation queue. If you don't feel confident editing directly, post a comment to let us know about the error.
The more quality information the site holds, the better a resource it is. You can help with the content of the site in two ways – either whenever you have a spare moment or by becoming a regular contributor. We are happy for any and all contributions. However, for interested parties we do have a style guide with information about the main kind of content, focus and tone we are aiming for.
Occasional
We particularly desire articles written from a libertarian class struggle perspective of between 400 and 2,000 words for the news, history and library sections. Have a browse through the section for important ideas which are missing or pages which could be improved on. Please also feel free to write and submit your own news to our news page, post up interesting stories you have found elsewhere, or scan texts which you have access to. For any interesting articles you have which don’t look like they fit anywhere, there’s always our library.
Regular
If you want to and have the time, you can become one of our contributors. Contributors have access to additional site functions, and can take responsibility for several different areas of the site:
News – write, find, edit and submit news regularly to keep it up-to-date and provide a quality resource for libertarian news and analysis. Adopt-A-source - if you help out with, or particularly like one publication or website you can take responsibility for posting all relevant news from it to our site.
Topics – adopt a feature - if there is a particular topic you are interested in, such as ID Cards, say, we can help set up a feature page and give you access to it to keep it updated
Library – become a libcom librarian! Find obscure or interesting articles, books and documents and make them available to all. We have a wish list of sites we want to archive here, take a quick look and if you have 10 minutes here or there, post an article across.
History - we have a list of topics we need history articles about here. So please have a look and you can either post existing articles to the history section, or maybe take some time to write one yourself.
Anything else – if you want to help out with any other sections on a regular basis email us and we can sort something out.
Blogging
We are always looking to expand our pool of libcom bloggers. If you would like to blog on and at least semi-regular basis please request a blog here. You can also set up a libcom blog to duplicate your existing blog.
Different formats
Ideally we would like all of our articles as formatted text, as well as in printable and on-screen PDF formats and mobi and epub format for e-readers.
So help OCRing PDF documents in the library into text, as well as help turning text documents into PDF, mobi and epub formats is very much appreciated. You can download OCR software online (often you get free trials, for example with Trapeze).
You can just click to edit articles to upload the new formats. If you want to do this on a regular basis let us know so we can increase your permissions to speed up the process.
If you have a scanner, any help scanning new documents for the library would be great (if you don't have one, you can just use your smartphone, and an app). Or if you have old leaflets/pamphlets/books you no longer need you can donate them to us so we can scan them and put them online. So please get in touch.
If you have artistic or design skills, and would like to help out with our site, we would love to hear from you. Please post in our feedback forum or send us an e-mail.
Legal and copyright notes on libcom.org
General
All published content residing on libcom.org is for informational purposes only. Libcom.org takes no responsibility for how anyone may use the information found on this website.
Privacy
Libcom.org respects our users privacy and will not release any information on users under regular circumstances. We track visits with log files. Libcom.org uses this information only to determine which pages are the most popular and least popular, and to detect any problems with the site. Libcom.org will not pass on any information collected from our users to a third party.
Copyright
Libcom.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. If you find material published on libcom.org for which you or your organisation owns the copyright and libcom.org is not licensed to publish this material, please contact us with the URL in question and we will remove the content in question.
Forums
Messages posted in the forums represent the views of the respective posters. Libcom.org does not take any responsibility for the contents of message boards posts and cannot be held responsible for the content of any post. Nor are we responsible for any actions or events discussed or advertised on the forums.
Hosted
Websites hosted on libcom.org and libcom.org.uk are not the responsibility of libcom.org and we do not support or condone the views expressed on these sites.
Third party links
Libcom.org contains links to many third party sites. Access to any other internet site linked to this web site is at the user's own risk and we not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any information, data, opinions, advice or statements made on these sites. Libcom.org provides these links merely as a convenience and the inclusion of such links does not imply an endorsement.
Libcom.org services are currently limited to website hosting. These services may change from time to time and are provided AS IS. You understand and agree that Libcom.org assumes no responsibility for, among other things, any service outages or interruptions, the unavailability of particular features or services, and your inability to access or make use of all or part of our services. Furthermore, you understand and agree that Libcom.org assumes no responsibility for deletion, loss or mis-delivery of information stored or delivered through our services. Libcom.org makes no warranties or guarantees as to the security of any machine or wesite operated or hosted by Libcom.org, nor do we make any warranties or guarantees at all.
In consideration for your use of the Libcom.org services you agree to the following conditions:
You acknowledge and agree to not sell, resell or exploit the use of our services, access to our services or any of the content accessable through our services for any commercial purposes except to use such information or content for the sole purpose of listing our service in a search engine or other service directing users to our site.
You also agree not to use our services to:
* harass other people;
* harm or exploit minors;
* impersonate or cause others to believe that you are another person;
* send unsolicited messages; and
* interfere with or disrupt our services, those of our users or any other person or service;
Further, you agree to:
* avoid excessive use of our services, including but not limited to network bandwidth, computer system resources;
* be responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your accounts and passwords;
* be responsible for the actions of any person who uses your account or passwords to gain access to our systems;
* notify us immediately of any unauthorized use of your accounts or any other breach of security at any time with relation to your account(s);
Libcom.org does not claim ownership of content you upload or otherwise transmit through our servers or networks.
If you do not fulfill your obligations under this Agreement, or you solicit others to breach their agreement with Libcom.org, OR FOR ANY OTHER REASON OR NO REASON, at Libcom.org's sole discretion and without limiting its other remedies, Libcom.org may terminate your access to part or all of our services. However, our failure to act with respect to a breach by you or others does not waive our right to act with respect to subsequent or similar breaches.
No Warranty
YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT WE, AND OUR SUPPLIERS, PROVIDE OUR ONLINE SERVICES "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY. WE AND OUR SUPPLIERS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. YOU FURTHER UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT WE, AND OUR SUPPLIERS, MAKE NO WARRANTY AS TO THE RELIABILITY, ACCESSIBILITY, ACCURACY, LEGITIMACY OR QUALITY OF THE ONLINE SERVICES OR THE CONTENT AVAILABLE THROUGH THE ONLINE SERVICES. YOU AGREE THAT USE OF THE ONLINE SERVICES AND THEIR CONTENT IS AT YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE RISK. Some jurisdictions do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties, so the foregoing disclaimer may not apply to you.
Liability Limitation
YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT Libcom.org SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, GOODWILL, USE, DATA OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES (EVEN IF Libcom.org HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES), RESULTING FROM: (i) THE USE OR THE INABILITY TO USE THE ONLINE SERVICES; (ii) THE COST OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS AND SERVICES RESULTING FROM ANY GOODS, DATA, INFORMATION OR SERVICES PURCHASED OR OBTAINED OR MESSAGES RECEIVED OR TRANSACTIONS ENTERED INTO THROUGH OR FROM THE ONLINE SERVICES; (iii) UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO OR ALTERATION OF YOUR TRANSMISSIONS OR DATA; OR (iv) ANY OTHER MATTER RELATING TO THE ONLINE SERVICES. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitations or exclusions may not apply to you.
Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold Libcom.org and (as applicable) our parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, agents, volunteers and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable legal fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your breach of this Agreement or your violation of any law or the rights of a third party.
Modification and Termination
You agree that Libcom.org may amend this Agreement at any time by posting the amended terms on our site at libcom.org/notes. All amendments shall automatically be effective 10 days after they are initially posted on our site. Your use of our services following the effective date of any modifications shall constitute your binding acceptance of those modifications. Furthermore, you agree that this Agreement and all incorporated agreements may be automatically assigned by Libcom.org, in our sole discretion, to a third party in the event of a merger, acquisition or other transfer. This Agreement may not be otherwise amended except by a member of Libcom.org. This agreement was last modified May 5th, 2006.
You agree that Libcom.org may terminate your use of any Libcom.org services at any time and for any reason whether you violate this User Agreement or not. You further understand and agree that Libcom.org, at its complete discretion, may remove or alter the services or any of content available through them at any time and for any reason or no reason.
Complaints
Libcom.org respects the rights of others. If you have a complaint regarding abuse of our services, please contact us. Libcom.org will review the complaint and, at its sole discretion, take action Libcom.org believes to be appropriate.
General Headings in this Agreement are for reference purposes only and in no way define, limit, construe or describe the scope or extent of such section. This Agreement sets forth the entire and exclusive understanding and agreement between you and Libcom.org with respect to the subject matter hereof. This Agreement supercedes and cancels all previous and contemporaneous agreements, commitments and writings with respect to this subject matter. You agree that if any provision of this Agreement is held to be invalid or unenforceable, such provision shall be struck and the remaining provisions shall be enforced.
We would love if if you could link to libcom.org from your website, blog or wherever.
http://libcom.org/tags/libcom-graphics
This page contains various link graphics and descriptions you can use to help publicise libertarian ideas. Don't forget that you can also use our various RSS headlines on your site.
Descriptions
To accompany links, below are some descriptions of our site you can use. If you don't like them please feel free to edit them or write your own.
Very short
libcom.org - class struggle online
Short
libcom.org is an online libertarian resource and community. News, views, listings, resources, ideas, history, discussion and more. Check it out!
Long
libcom.org is a constantly growing resource for all people who wish to fight to improve their lives, their communities and their working conditions. We want to discuss with one another, learn from successes and failures of the past and develop strategies to increase the power we, as ordinary people, have over our own lives. It contains clear information about basic ideas and history, as well as listings, news with both up-to-the-minute syndicated news and more detailed analysis, organising tips about how to start a local group, produce a newsletter or resist in the workplace, lively global discussion forums to link up with people in your area, help plan events, and chat about anything from politics to music to monkeys, and much more besides. Check it out!
Graphics
You can put a link button on your site pointing to libcom.org. Just copy and paste the code from one of the boxes below for a button which suits your website.
More link graphics are available here.
We don't have a huge links database of every interesting site in the world because we think there are other services out there providing that. Instead we split our links into two categories - sites which are like ours ('hub sites') and sites which link to us ('friends'). All our links our managed on our page at del.icio.us, below are listed our top 10 links from: all links, hub links and friends links.
Sites in our hub category share roughly the some outlook as libcom.org and provide similair sorts of services. We link to friend sites on the condition that they also provide a link to us. If a site you know of meets one of these two criteria please contact us and we will link to it.
This page contains link to other places you can find libcom.org on the web - review sites, listings, community pages and more.
If you have found libcom.org elsewhere on the web please let us know.
Del.icio.us
Another social bookmarking and review website.
http://del.icio.us/url/45b1bb276cc683f7353c60c979ff625d (and the pages we link on del.icio.us)
Facebook
A fan group started on this social networking site.
http://facebook.com/group.php?gid=2211824041
Last.fm
A libcom group on this music social-networking site.
http://www.last.fm/group/libcom
Myspace
Of course libcom.org is on Myspace! Click here to make us your friend, or check out our page with the link below.
http://myspace.com/libcom
StumbleUpon
Social bookmarking and review website.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.libcom.org/ (Also: History, Library, Forums and more)
technorati
See who's blogging about us.
Virb
Another social-networking site. Make us your friend if you hang out there.
http://virb.com/libcom
What people are saying about Libcom
A page we compile from comments we get.
http://libcom.org/notes/reviews
Wikipedia
The world's foremost Open Source encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libcom
What people are saying about libcom.org and the work we do.
Positive comments about libcom.org
You have put together a terrific site
Loren Goldner
In a short space of time, libcom.org has proved itself indispensable - a great site
Steve Wright - Australia
On the Greece unrest archive:
Http://libcom.org have been following the occurences closely and have been doing a sterling job at sourcing and providing a flood of vital information on the disturbances.
http://toypirate.blogspot.com/
Libcom is divided into a discussion board and a article archive.
The history section is a treasure trove of obscurity, as past articles... have been refound and then digitised.
This site is purely concerned with politics, and only that of the left, but it sets a standard that other historians should follow... past articles should be freed for all to read.
On this site you'll find an item on origins of the pirate flag, the Jolly Roger; a history of revolutionary song in France and the Merthyr Tydfil uprising in 1831 amongst hundreds of other items.
www.historynexus.net
Abahlali often use libcom as a resource in their university of abahlali self education meetings.
Abahlali baseMjondolo
Thank you for your excellent work and for helping us promote awareness about art, scholarship and activism that dismantles racism and expands social justice throughout the African diaspora.
Claudie Mabry, Progressive Pupil
On our people's history of Mexico:
It's great! I knew most of it since I studied Mexican History in college, but it's well written and gives a good intro to Mexican politics and valuable background knowledge.
Clayton - www.infoshop.org/wiki
Hello!
I’m a postal worker (as well as commie) from Gothenburg, Sweden. Me and
my friends have with excitement followed the wildcat strikes at Royal
Mail...
We have been reporting, with
libcom as primary source, on the wildcat strikes at Royal Mail.
A member of Postverk - Sweden
Cracking good site!
Stuart Christie - TV Hastings, UK
Libcom has improved immeasurably over the last year, to the point where I check its newswire for many of the stories I'll be writing tomorrow. Probably the best libertarian site in the english-speaking world at the moment, among the best leftist sites period.
Rob Ray, Journalist - Freedom Press, UK
On our article on the Spanish resistance in France in World War II:
As a Basque resident on the French-Spanish border and a WWII historian, I would like to commend you on this article.
Max - Spain
This is the most useful site for libertarians in Britain
A - UK
Our sister site in Britain
infoshop.org - US
...Thought I'd drop you a very brief line to express how much I like your site, particularly after the revamp! It's an inspiration to the admin teams of uglier and less useful sites all around the world, I'm sure...
Cheers, and keep up the excellent work
Christian - UK
We love Libcom... Your library section is excellent
Pauline - Openmute/Mute magazine/Metamute, UK
Just wanted to say how much I like the site redesign. We've been reposting some of your excellent material
Alex - UK
Excellent site, wow very impressive. I had a link to your original site on my blog. Now this is really useful.
Eugene Plawiuk - Le Revue Gauche Left Analysis and Comment, Canada
This is one of the best anarchist resources I've found on the net.
Colin - US
The site looks great
Chris - Baltimore, US
On our article on the Battle of Lewisham:
Well done. The only other thing I'd read about this was on Indymedia, and it was shite.
Nigel - London, UK
Hi - good site!
Michael - UK
On our history of the Rwanda war and genocide:
I wanted to thank you for your interesting and highly accurate historical account of the genocide in Rwanda
L - France
Your website in certainly very interesting and informative. I am glad to see that there are people who are well-informed of most things.
L - by email
I'm a very big fan - in most respects it's the best lefty site I know. I think it should be pushed more by everyone using it.
Nick Durie - Scotland, UK
So I just visited enrager.net [now libcom.org] and it's bad ass! When I first learned about it, I was told it was "Britain's version of infoshop.org." I don't think that really does it justice. In fact, the more I look at that site, the less impressed I am with infoshop and think it should be taking notes from enrager.
The reason I say this is that Enrager seems to be designed to really generate anarchist activity. It has news like infoshop, but it also has easily accessible links to information on how to do things. Infoshop seems to just be a bunch of pages on news and information, which is important but so is doing something about it. Ya know, the whole "education, without action, does nothing" deal.
... With enrager, the tools are right there for everyone to see under "organise."... Also, this section should be visible and easily navigable Enrager.net's "organise" section is what comes to mind as a good example of this.
Johnny Applecore - Colorado, US on the infoshop forums
libcom.org is a UK wide anti-authoritarian site, the largest Anarchist based website in the UK. The forums are awesome.
af-north.org - UK
This is one of the best anarchist pages on the internet.
jesusradicals.com
Class War welcomes the introduction of www.enrager.net [now re-named libcom.org]. This website aims to fill a real void in the UK anarchist movement. Serving as a moderated newswire and also providing discussion forums, we encourage all our members and supporters to get involved, contribute and have your say.
London Class War - UK
I'd just like to express my sincerest respect to the libcom collective for a brilliantly vibrant website. Both the library and the news on here have been pure cool, and updated so regularly. Like, I'd never heard of eh, (*copy and pastes*) Paresh Chattopadhyay until I saw it in the highlights. Seriously, thanks you guys.
I will definetely tell all my libertarian friends.
Volin, Manchester, UK
I ... celebrate the existence of LibCom, it is wonderful and nice. Thanks to you all.
Chris, UK
I like it here a lot.
I've learnt quite a bit from the forums and the news and history sections.
Jef, London, UK
The library is the dogs bollocks IMO, and the other resources are great as well - thanks to anyone involved.
I have been plugging some texts in the library to others as much as possible.
The love/hate relationship with the forums continues though ;)
JD - Manchester, UK
Excellent site and has improved alot!
Bobby, Northern Ireland, UK
Buffs Libcoms shiny bottom and worship the ground that Libcom walks on.
Big Bro - UK
On the Everyday Manifesto articles:
They look pretty ace.
...
Read them again and I take back my judgement of ace. They are really fucking ace. Very impressed.
Luke - Cambridge, UK
The library's wicked. I still think the name's a bit naff, though.
Garner - UK
The forums have improved immensely by driving away certain elements that were both pointless and fruitless.
The name is a distinct improvement.
Longterm posters have figured out (or at least are in the process of doing so) how to interract with each other and even gained a certain element of tact (with the exception of one or two who frankly just seem to want constant attention).
I now feel far more politically motivated than I did 6 months ago.
There.
Alan - UK
The numbers using libcom must be very, very significant. Especially since, with the news feature, libcom is being used more and more, and frankly since the launch of that part of the website it is THE way to find out what's going on in the world. It'll grow monumentally just for that - especially coz it's got a feed from all the other sites - ZNet et al - that are trying to do roughly approximate things in that 'class struggle news' bitty.
www.citystrolls.com is trying to do a similar (but different) thing in Glasgow. That gets 50,000 hits a month (server stats ASFAIAK). By virtue of being for the whole of the British isles and being much, much, much, much better than anything else about any lefty (of which there are 100s of thousands in Britain) with an ounce of computer literacy is going to be bookmarking it shortly. With internet usage on the increase and the google referals for libcom soaring and the fact that the collective running libcom seems very highly aware of how people access information online, libcom is certain to be a very powerful propaganda tool if it isn't already. You certainly couldn't say that about the socialist worker, the morning star, indymedia or even something as cool as Znet.
Only criticism I think could be levelled is that it is a bit 'REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM! YAAAARGH!' but initiatives like the 'everyday manifesto' seem to suggest moves towards more of a 'punter's pop-in' approach.]
Nick - Glasgow, UK
Excellent work with Libcom... keep up the good work,
J - UK
GREAT SITE!!!!!!!!!
Steve - UK
Not everyone appreciates what we're doing. If you don't like us, you too can let us know and if we think you're interesting or funny enough we'll put your comments here.
Hi US anarchos,
Some valid points about sectarianism from libcom.org, but listen-
Forget about libcom.org, they don't represent fuck all in the UK. They are an isolated clique who hate most of what is happening in the uk anarchist movement. The Libcom bulletin board is populated with outdated social-democratic forms of ideology. Libcom.org is totally irrelevant in the UK, nobody really knows anything about it other than the people on the boards are intolerant, arrogant idiots.
In a few years most of them will drop the 'libertarian' and just stick with the 'communist' definition. Broadly speaking, most of the forum participants hate the insurrectionist currents, they hate any form of critique of technology or industry. They do not support the ELF or ALF. They are navel-gazing twats who slag off the US scene endlessly, and love taking the piss out of anyone who doesn't conform to their definition of what it means to be an anarchist/libertarian communist.
Fuck libcom
UK anarchist (posted on indymedia)
FUCK YOU ALL
HEIL HITLER YOU FUCKING POSH ASS COMMUNISTS!!!!!!
GO DIE IN A DITCH WITH STALIN!
Addid - BNP, Pershore High School, Worcestershire, UK
An appalling resource... a port of call for lazy radicals...
anarchist hairdressers... Stealing pens from the office and calling it class struggle. And who are they useful to? Students, office boys & the idle curious?
"Montevideo" - Wombles, UK
Stop blaming the white man for the cost of burying niggers [sic] . They don\'t [sic] accept food stamps. When a love [sic] one die\'s [sic] You [sic] pay. Get off welfair [sic]. GET A JOB NIGGER, STOP HAVING (6) KID\"S [sic] THAT YOU CAN\"T [sic] SUPPORT AND STOP BLAMING THE WHITE MAN FOR EVERY THING [sic] THAT HAPPENS TO YOUFROM [sic] THE DAY YOU WERE BORN TO THE DAY YOU DIE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Niggerhater" - US
Self-referential activist bollox... anarchist middle management... [you] and the rest of your cliche [sic] are putting yourself [sic] up for a big fall...
"Raw" - Wombles, UK
Felt like Libcom is run by a bunch of pussies and pissant mooks? Here's your fucking proof.
The words of the moderators Joseph K and John. have finally fucking succeeded in pissing me off to an extensive fucking degree. I'd make it clear to all those who think Jonny Toy Boy and Jospeh KKK are sane, rational and well read people to consider what their motives are behind their creep-up-behind-you-and-stab-you-in-the-throat "politics" exactly are.
Libcom seems to be run by a bunch of whiny immature liberals, extremely immature. ones who would rather point fingers and make shit up, then find out the truth of the matter, "John" is an example.
Fuck them. They want to fuck things for us, then be assured we won't take it laying down with our legs spread like the whores who spawned these two fucking stronzes.
If that John moderator is unwilling to apologise for the verbal attack on the League and it's members, I challenge him to a fight, wherever he likes on equal terms. If by chance John knows how to use a Katana (y'know a big fucking sword), then i'd love to have a duel.
It's all about honour here, without your balls to back it up, what good is your word?Barkan, Communist League
Die red scum!
By email - UK
Enrager/ liberal.com is fucking irrelevant & 'Freedom' is totally fucking shit
From an email address beginning "smoke crack" - UK
With activists and activist forums this place has a bad rep for cointel-trolls. This forum is reckoned to be dead dodgy.
"Messy," UK
[...] It is the appearance of anarchists like yourself, communists
like your brother Mengistu Haile Mariam and your uncle Meles Zenawi, the
terrorist viceroy of Tony Blair that brought corruption, tribalism,
extra-judiciary killings and associations of citizens. Get out of your
cave and go visit Kaliti prison in Addis. Or eat your Crowe; Sir! Shame
on you for posting such a dishonest, deceptive and fabricated article, the
sole purpose of which, I believe is character assassination.
From "Haile Selassie", with the e-mail address, address not supplied.
A quick rundown of libcom.org's website history.
v.4.2 - July 2012 - A complete overhaul of the look of the site, and new features like social sharing of articles.
v.4.1 - March 2007 - A major upgrade of the Drupal infrastructure for the site and a new look.
v.4 - Summer 2006 - We went web2.0, the entire site is ported into Drupal giving greater control and interactivity.
v.3 - May 2005 - we renamed the site libcom.org and added new sections (library) as well as updating old content.
v.2 - May 2004 - the re-design, dumping the dull grey and going for a more accessible, easy-read site adding the history section.
v.1 - September 2003 - our public launch, when we adopted a grey/white format and hit the world with our ideas and the project.
v.0 - October 2002 - enrager.net is founded: a personal site hosting a couple of texts and some pictures.
A guide to finding what you want on libcom, and navigating the site.
There are many of ways to find what you are looking for on libcom.org.
Generally speaking the majority of site content can be found in the main sections which are listed in the dark grey bar at the top of the page. These are explained in detail in our guide to our sections.
Information about the site can be found in notes, linked from the footer.
Information about you (if you have registered) is under 'My account'.
Other useful tools are our categories, which include regions, sectors and tags. You can read more about these in our categories guide.
Perhaps most usefully, you can use the search box at the top-right of the page, or why not install our Firefox search plug-in so you can search direct from your browser. You can also search from here.
Content on libcom.org is divided up in several ways. The main types of categorisation are: sections, regions, sectors and tags.
More detailed descriptions of these categories is given in the pages listed below.
Sections
Sections are the different areas of libcom.org which index different types of content. The main sections are news, history, thought, organise, library, the forums and notes.
These are linked to at the top of every page, and can also be accessed from the home page http://libcom.org.
Regions
Most of our content is classified by the geographical region to which it is most relevant. These are divided into Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Oceania, North America, South America, UK and Western Europs.
Sectors
Our content is also classified by the industrial or work sector it is about. We have thirteen main sectors: claimants and unpaid, communications, construction, education and learning, energy, health and medicine, manufacturing and materials, media and culture, military and law enforcement, public and third sector, retail and food, services, and transport.
Tags
Tags are more specific classifications which group content into different topic areas. Tags group together articles according to any number of features, including the subject of the articles, the country or city they are about, key events, individuals, corporations, decades or centuries.
A quick guide to finding the information you want on libcom.org.
Short descriptions of each of the main sections - Forums, History, Library, Listings, News, Notes, Organise and Thought - and the type of information they each contain, as well as related sections elsewhere.
If you are looking for a particular piece of information, use the search function at the top of the page.
Home
The front page of the site, which contains links to all the other main sections
News
News and analysis. Focussing on grassroots struggles of workers and communities, but also providing a libertarian look at big national and world events and how they impact on ordinary people.
Related: Features - big news features, General forum - discussion of current affairs
History
A people's history website, with concise articles about history, from about 800BC up until yesterday!
Listed by date, subject and region, articles are mainly about historical events as they affected ordinary working people, and the actions of large masses of people during those events. There are also biographies of people involved in those events, as well as some important world figures, and grassroots histories of whole countries.
The articles are mostly written to a standard format, and are mostly under 2,000 words. Where the word limit is insufficient to cover an issue in detail, links and references for more information are provided.
Related: Library - Longer, or further reading texts in a mix of formats, Thought - the ideas formed due to the past
Thought
A series of short introductory texts to various ideas and issues. Articles are mostly to a standard format and under 2,000 words. Where this is insufficient links to more information are provided.
Related: Glossary - explanations of frequently-used terms, Introductory thought forum - for basic queries, Thought forum - for in-depth discussion, Library - archive of many theoretical texts
Organise
Tips and advice for organising and taking action. A series of concise articles divided by the type of organising. This section covers everything from the basics of setting up a group, running a successful campaign, organising your workplace and taking strike action, and much more. Includes a personal section with helpful advice on issues such as debt, bullying and dealing with the police.
Related: Organise forum - discuss with people, News - people organising now, History - the past lessons of organisation
Library
A large archive of left and anarchist texts, including material for reference and further reading for articles on History, Thought and Organise. It contains a lot of material that libcom.org group does not agree with, but it is there because we feel that it is interesting or useful in some way.
The articles are in many different formats, from short 500 word pieces and leaftets to PDFs of books with hundreds of pages. It is sorted by author, group and format, and where relevant by subject, or region for historical material. Many of these articles were taken from elsewhere on the 'net, including the endpage archive, AF North, Anarchy Archives, prole.info and Class Against Class. If you find an article you wrote or put on-line, but which isn't credited, please contact us.
For introductory texts various topics or events we would recommend looking in Thought or History first.
Related: Thought, History
Forums
Discussion boards for debate, information-sharing, upcoming events, talking about current affairs, networking, advice and general chit-chat. It is divided by topic, with some - thought and history and organise - being more serious than others - libcommunity, with a more irreverant atmosphere. It also contains regional forums for local events and issues.
Related: History, Listings, News, Organise, Thought - different sections of the forums relate to other sections of libcom.org
Notes
Notes are pages, like this one, which contain technical information or features about this website itself.
The libcom library contains over 10,000 articles. If it's your first time on the site, or you're looking for something specific, it can be difficult to know where to start. Luckily, there's a range of ways you can filter the library content to suit your needs, from casual browsing to researching a particular topic.
Every article is tagged with relevant keywords. Clicking on these will take you to a chronological list of all the content with that keyword, with the most recent at the top. So if you're reading a biographical article and click on the 'biographies' tag, you'll be taken to a list of all the biographical content on libcom.
Beneath each article there is also a list of five related articles under the heading 'More like this'. This is based on all the tags on the article, comparing them with other articles. It's a great first port of call if you're looking for something similar to what you've just read. And of course any article you click through to will also have its own 'more like this' recommendations.
The starting page for navigating the library is the library index. This page shows a chronological list of the latest library content, with the most recently added at the top. At the top right of the site is a search bar, which can be used to search the library (once your results come up, you can filter by 'library' using the controls in the right hand column). But also, you'll notice five other tabs, which contain powerful ways to search the library content.
Authors, people and groups
The authors tab, as the name suggests, allows you to search through the library by author. This includes individual authors and groups. Articles are also labelled with authors if they are about the person or group, as well as if they were written by them. This is very helpful if you know what you're looking for, or even for casual browsing keeping an eye out for interesting-sounding groups or names you recognise. The first thing you'll see is a short list of featured authors, but if you click on 'index' you can navigate an A-Z list of all the authors in the libcom library.
Sectors
The sectors tab allows you to navigate content by industrial sector. If you're looking for content on a particular industry, this is a great place to start.
Tags
The tags tab contains a list of featured tags, and clicking on 'index' opens up an A-Z index of all the tags on the site. If you're looking for something specific, this is a good way to narrow down your results.
Map
The map tab does what it says on the tin: all library content is overlaid onto an interactive Google map. The box above allows you to filter the content by tag, so for example entering 'strikes' would show all the library content about strikes on the map.
Bookmarked
Finally, the bookmarked tab shows popular content that other users have bookmarked. You can bookmark library articles yourself by clicking the 'bookmark this' link at the bottom of each article. You can find your bookmarked articles via the 'my account' link on the menu at the top of every page.
We hope you find this guide useful. Any comments, questions or feedback can be posted in the feedback forum. The libcom library is an ever-expanding resource and we're keen to make it as useful and accessible as possible.
A guide for making the most of libcom.org for users who own e-book readers/kindles/tablet computers etc.
E-readers or kindles can be a great way of reading, especially long texts, off-line.
Some of our articles are already in e-book formats suitable for e-readers. Check out our PDFs, epub and mobi file archives.
It is easy to put articles and texts from libcom.org onto your e-book reader, by following these 3 simple steps.
1a. Simply copy the text in your internet browser (such as Internet Explorer or Google Chrome) from the article title to the end, and paste it into a blank document in a word processor program, such as Microsoft Word.
1b. For PDF files go straight to step 2.
2. Save the document to your computer.
3. Upload the document to a free e-book reader conversion website, like www.2epub.com (or put it into a free conversion program like Calibre) and choose the kind of e-book file you want to turn it into (such as .epub or .mobi for kindles).
The libcom.org group is a small collective of libertarian communists based mainly in the UK and the US. We run libcom.org, and as individuals are involved with a number of other groups and activity.
Meet the libcom.org group
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Mike Harman Mike Harman found fame early when chosen to be the Milky Bar Kid. Now out of rehab, he plays jazz and is an IT worker. |
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Juan Conatz Minneapolis Jew Rican and member of the Industrial Workers of the World. One of the primary reasons a general strike never happened in Wisconsin. |
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Joseph Kay Brighton-based libertarian communist and anarcho-syndicalist. Also a member of Solfed, and estranged brother of horrific acid jazz singer Jay. |
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Steven. Steven Johns is a council worker, libertarian communist, Anarchist Federation member and hipster wanker. |
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Ed Ed Goddard is a libertarian communist schools worker and Jew. |
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Ramona A substance misuse worker, call centre worker, education worker and AF member residing in Edinburgh, Ramona also provides vocals to Crystal Castles and was once described as "the soft face of anarchism". |
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Gav Our token ginger: a libertarian communist nurse in East London. |
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Pingtiao Pingtiao is a libertarian communist medical doctor living in the West Country, who once killed a crocodile with his bare hands. |
Links to the non-English-language content on libcom.org.
Please feel free to add non-English-language content to the libcom.org library. If we do not have any content in the language already just contact us or let us know in our feedback forum and we will set up the language. Also, if you are able to translate any of our texts, or translate foreign language texts into English please get in touch.
A breakdown of the other websites and online archives which libcom.org has incorporated over the years.
Recently, with the deletion of GeoCities and the surprise closure of numerous radical websites, we have absorbed a number of additional online archives, to keep content online and stop it being lost forever.
Below is a list of the main websites and archives which we have incorporated, with new URLs. If you spot broken links to any of these archives, please inform the websites of the updated addresses:
Antagonism
Aufheben
Biblioteca Virtual Revolucionária
Class Against Class (articles from the newer site are also elsewhere in the library)
Collective Action Notes
EndangeredPhoenix
Endpage (Merged completely with libcom.org)
John Gray For Communism (merged completely)
Kolinko
Kurasje (contains some documents, others are elsewhere in the libcom library)
McDonalds Workers Resistance
No War but the Class War
Prol-Position
Practical History
Processed World
Red and Black Notes
Subversion
The Red Menace
Undercurrent (merged completely)
Wage Slave X
Our site continues to expand daily, and we appreciate any assistance in posting additional content. We are also happy for any people who run similar websites to duplicate all of their content here, or set up their website using the libcom library, as Aufheben and others have done.
In accomplishing this task we are extremely grateful to our users who copied content over.
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