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"I would like to know just what he did to upset the ED people though", 1s44c

Chip Berlet, SlimVirgin, and Wikipedia

Wikipedia's Hive Mind

Daniel Brandt on the Wikipedia Issue

Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services

This might not be entirely the same thing, but South Korea's online magazine http://www.ohmynews.com/ lets readers pay any small amount to the author if they liked the article. Though it doesn't seem to be mentioned on the English Wiki page.

Why would you be going to Ireland? It's acting as a cheap whore for abusive foreign multinationals for the last ten years has meant it has been hit harder than any other western country in the "downturn".

Iran got to read its diplomatic cables in the press.
What did Cisco get to read?
http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100&no=381337&rel_no=1&back_url=

At the top of the wired blog comments right now is this one: Wikimedia Foundation employee removes source about Wiki Scanner funding by Anonymous Vishal-WMF, an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, has removed evidence from a news story that uncovered that Virgil, the scanner's creator, was HIRED by the Wikimedia Foundation! News story that was removed by Wikipedia Employee (not admin, EMPLOYEE): http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?at_code=428814 Backup archive link in case the WMF 'vanishes' the evidence: http://www.webcitation.org/5RAEP2kAl Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virgil_G riffith&diff=prev&oldid=151814656 Yet Wired has claimed that this is a "false claim": "Update: 8/17/2007 A Wikimedia Foundation employee really did edit Virgil Griffith's entry today, but only to cut a false claim that Griffith was employed by the foundation to create the scanner. " So what makes Wired assume that it is a false claim? This is the same guy that brought us Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services, and he is stating something as fact, not as an opinion. "On July 26, OhmyNews alleged that Wikipedia may have been infiltrated by Intelligence Agencies. The story attracted more than 50,000 readers in just three days, was highly debated on the Web, and translated in several languages. Wikipedia quickly reacted to the news and hired Virgil Griffith, one of the best known American hacker, to investigate the matter." Yet Wikipedia claims its "unreliable". Wikipedia has used ohmynews as a source in 192 of their articles: and has been used in Google news 460 times: http://news.google.com.au/news?hl=en&ned=au&q=ohmy news&btnG=Search+News Virgil Griffith does claim that he wasn't paid by Wikipedia: http://virgil.gr/31.html and the Wikipedia staff went so far as to remove the links, and then ban the IP address of the person who had inserted them: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special: Log&type=block&page=User:123.2.168.215 Daniel Brandt claims that it is far too expensive for him to have done it himself: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic= 11853&view=findpost&p=43697 But perhaps he really did do all of this just to make himself popular. Spend a few thousand dollars, including the $349 to do the reverse IP lookups: http://www.ip2location.com/ip-country-region-city- isp.aspx , saved presumably through his time as an unemployed student and spent several hundred hours creating something that does nothing more than make him well-known. Perhaps it'll help him to get a job sometime in the future? And perhaps its all one almighty coincidence that all this has happened just a week after Wikipedia was reeling after the massive censorship about the SlimVirgin scandal. Oh, and also note that another IP that reverted edits to the article belonged to Jayjg, the person most closely related to SlimVirgin: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic= 11853&view=findpost&p=43641 Coincidence, coincidence, coincidence. And this over an issue in which we've proven that the CIA edits Wikipedia with a definite aim, as have many other industr

It's shameful that this made it to the front page. The OhMyNews story that is cited isn't linked to. A quick glance at it (It's at http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?menu=c10400&no=374006&rel_no=1 ) shows why - the writer's only source for his claims about Slim Virgin is the evidence collected by Daniel Brandt, who cyberstalked her publicly on The Wikipedia Review, a board populated by the banned trolls of Wikipedia. The article makes clear the degree to which this "investigation" is based on rumors and lies, and proceeds to publicly state the alleged name and city of residence of this person.

I am appalled that Slashdot decided to participate in this public character assassination of a private citizen.

Spyware, Malware, Virii, Exploits, and cost will "eventually" drive a lot of
businesses and government organizations away from windows.

For example, the city of houston is going all open source.

This will induce some ppl to go to linux at home.

It is spreading to other governemnt agencies, and
businesses as well.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,114374-page,1/ar ticle.html

IBM has a bit of clout in some businesses and those
businesses heavily invested with IBM as a solution
provider tend to listen to them.

When you hear the "entire" school system of an "entire"
country is switching to Linux, something is happening.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?no=348867&rel_no=1

Linux may not be making thunderous in roads, but
progress is being made to be sure.

...actually, very much like ohmynews.com

"The present-day insurgents weren't in Iraq until after we removed Saddam from power."

No, that would be incorrect. The Saddam's ousted party is part to blame for what's going on over there. They didn't like getting kicked out after so many years in power, and now they're doing everything to get it back.

You are correct that some of them are from out of the country, which is another part of the problem. They're doing everything they can to make sure that place is turned into an ultra-conservative Islamic state.

You know, the kind that kill women who are raped, because they break Islamic law, or kill men and women for being gay.

I think journalist dont use blogs becouse there are better tools or journalist. In internet is a lot of webservices for citizen journalist, which can publish any kind of material without agreement of redactions. for exammple: http://ohmynews.com/ http://reporter.co.za/ or in Poland http://www.ithink.pl./ That kind of webpresence make Journalist more independent in readers eyes.

Courtesy of: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?article_class=7&no=279261&rel_no=1

Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Monday on his live "700 Club" television program that Islam wants to take over the world and is not a religion of peace, and that radical Muslims are "satanic."

After watching a news segment about radical Islam in Europe, Robertson remarked that the outpouring of rage elicited by cartoon drawings of the prophet Muhammad "just shows the kind of people we're dealing with. These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it's motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it's time we recognize what we're dealing with."

He also said that "the goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen whether you like it or not, is world domination."

> Robertson obviously has confused a religion with a war monger.

Seditously,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.

Brazil Leads Drive to Biodiesel 'Clean Fuel' http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?no=224467&rel_n

BIODIESEL - BRAZIL RESEARCH: SOYBEAN, CASTOR, PALM, SUNFLOWER, PEANUT, AND COTTONSEED OILS, PLUS RECYCLING AND JUNGLE FRUITS http://www.nuclear.com/archive/2004/09/01/20040901 -002.html

Brazil Opens Another Biodiesel Plant; Wants to Be Largest Renewable Fuel Supplier http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/05/brazil_ope ns_an.html

Some people reported some research cars running on certain mixtures of Biodiesel as smelling of French fries. Well, better than gasoline combustion...

Outside of the single most established Korean based OhMyNews most, if not all of the citizen reporting web sites I've looked at, including WikiNews, have had a hard time gaining traction. I'm not sure why they're having such trouble, particularly given the popularity of WikiPedia, but it is clear however that the movement is beginning to take off, and here to stay. News will never be the same - and imho that is a VERY good thing!

What I really like about NowPublic, and what imho differentiates it from the other sites, is that the site is NOT trying to be the hub of citizen reporting itself - it's trying to create a toolset to facilitate citizen reporting. Through creative commons licensing and their really nifty 'SmartMedia' technology their goal is to facilitate the spread of newsworthy information created by people like you and I (though admittedly they need to do a MUCH better job of communicating this). Anyone (you don't need to be a member) can use the content posted on NowPublic. So if you have a blog and are writing a story and you need/want pictures or video you can use existing or request new photos/audio/video from NP members.

Being a photographer, I like the fact that through their SmartMedia my photos always show my name, and provide a way to contact me directly (actually had one person offer me a gig through this already!!) - this is all done through the image itself ensuring that anyone who uses my photos attributes it back to me (anyone who has posted a good pic to the web has most likely had it ripped off and should really apperciate this new idea). Additionally, anyone who sees the photo on any site can in turn copy it and put it on their site... it's really a great promotional vehicle for photographers. But my favorite bit is that every story is implicitly a request for citizen coverage - if you want to see a local perspective on a story, simply post it to the site. In effect every story is actually an assignment - you now have an army of people, soon to be larger than any major media organization willing to go out and get coverage of the story for you! As a photog, I'll never be at a loss for photos ideas again!

They are currently running a contest, awarding cash prizes to encourage people to go out and take photographs of newsworthy events. Their Citizen Photojournalism Awards were created to encourage people to go out and cover news stories. Any newsworthy photo uploaded to NowPublic is eligible for weekly $100 cash awards and there is a $500 grand prize. I'm hoping I win something so I can get that fish eye lens I've been drooling over.

This is really quite an eye-opening survey of the broad and already-demonstrated applicability of "open source" principles beyond the domain of software. There's something very stirring and promising about the potential of things like Ohmynews , PledgeBank and TheyWorkForYou. This is about us and what *we* can do.

Yes, Pyongyang already is.

I moderated the parent comment +1, but I have since received word that this is likely a cut-and-paste of one or more uncredited sources, most notably this one, dated 11/11/04. My posting will undo my postive moderation of the parent. I encourage future moderators to take this situation into account when evaluating the parent post.

South Korea may not be as free as you think. A few weeks ago, I was surprised to learn (from a friend of mine who is teaching English there) that the government was blocking access to a number of web sites, including blogs hosted at Blogger (a.k.a. BlogSpot) and TypePad (a.k.a blogs.com).

The Korea Times and other news sources reported that this was done to frustrate the distribution of videos depicting the decapitation of South Korean hostage Kim Sun-il. But you hardly need to point out to Slashdot readers that blocking entire domains like that entails a lot of "collateral damage". My friend in Korea, for example, was unable to read his own blog, which consists mostly of his poems.

I submitted this as a Your Rights Online story, but it was rejected for reasons I still don't understand. This is the kind of story that I depend on Slashdot to keep me apprised of.

South Korea's Ohmynews(not in english yet) has thousands of contributers whose stories are ranked and polished by seasoned editors. The internet played an important role in electing their progressive president in the last election.

There is a future for independent original news on the web. For now, though, it will remain the province of armchair pundits who sift through dozens, or hundreds, of articles and put them in a context that Google news could never do (maybe with the purchase of Pyra Labs . . . ) They may have other jobs but if they are successful enough to elicit 10,000 people to contribute $5, they are on their way towards financial independence as well.