ISM website gets a makeover
Well for crying out loud it’s about time and what an improvement! The design I made for ISM long ago when I was just learning how Wordpress works has been changed by my cohort and it’s about time. hop on over to the International Solidarity Movement’s spiffy new site at palsolidarity.org.
When I worked on it a few years ago, it was a jam session to get the site back up after someone had gone in and maliciously erased it from the server. Thanks to different people keeping files on their own machine, and the magic of InterWeb archiving at the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, we were able to relaunch the site in a matter of days.
The former design was always meant to be temporary and had outlived its usefulness by years. I was glad to see it replaced with something else as my design and Wordpress chops have grown since.
Like the last one, this launch also looks to come as another nasty bit of hackery is taking place against ISM, though. Someone or some people are successfully gaming search engine results against http://palsolidarity.org as a number of stale old articles slamming the organization and some fringe-rightwing low-traffic websites are suddenly getting higher placements. Dear google, please note: ou are being played. It seems that, almost overniight (as of this writing), a google search of “international solidarity movement” doesn’t actually bring up the organization’s official website. It used to come up first, now it’s not coming up at all.
It’s worth noting that long side the usual old horde or anti-ISM agitprop there are some useful links to check out. The iSM Wikipedia entry is there and usually undergoing combat as different sides re-edit it. The ISM London page comes up in the number two spot and ISM Northern California is somewhat high.
So, what can you do to help ISM Palestine regain it’s rightful spot as the main target for searches for, well, it?
- Visit the ISM website
- Link to the ISM website
- Run an RSS feed from the ISM website
- Effect website rankings (see below):
Get the latest version of Firefox that allows you to do Google search result rankings. (this may work with other browsers as well, I’ve just seen it in Firefox thus far, though) There, you’ll see icons next to each result.
One is an up arrow and the other is an “x.” Hit the up arrow for sites that are positive or at least objective about the International Solidarity Movement and hit the x for all those racist or religio-wingnut sites that are out to defame it. This will augment your search results, give you better clicking results and also let Google know what you think about the placement of some of the more hate-filled sites.
“I’m worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel – let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they’re doing. I’m concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that’s handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”
i'm pretty sure that anything you do with Google's SearchWiki feature is limited to your account only an does nothing for a site's overall Google position – yet.
This does seem to be the case according to the Google blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki...
"The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link."
I could see this aggragating into effecting search results at some point down the road. In the meantime, commenting on the choices does seem to reach other people, and possibly google itself if enough people are asking why the official ISM doesn't show up for its own name.
Meanwhile, I'd be interested in hearing more about how this sort of thing can suddenly take place.