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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Sri Lanka at the edge of a civil war? Sounds like someone is trying to get some good press for their country.

"Camouflaged troops" descended in helicopters on a Utah canyon Sunday night to bust up a permitted and insured rave party.

A horrific video recording of the police and military violence against hundreds of dance kids can be found here.

http://cutup.org.nyud.net:8090/dir/fascism.mov

Detailed account of what really happened
http://www.404audio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1481 4

Utah Forum Database of first hand accounts.
http://www.utrave.org/showthread.php?t=20020

WikiNews Link
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Dance_party_broken_up_ by_police_in_Utah%2C_USA

Anyways, so much for your right to peaceful assembly. It was fully licensed, permitted, and insured. 100% legit. It's sick and disgusting what happened, but we can probably expect more vicious gestapo tactics to try and incite violence and fear. Read a few personal accounts of what happened.

Your reference to the tube killing is outdated, records have recently been released revealing that Menezes did not do any of the things described in the initially media reports. Wikinews entry, content less valuable than source links but linked for ease of reference to those source links: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brazilian_shot_by_poli ce_on_London_Underground_was_not_acting_suspicious ly

looks like the video link is gone.
I found more info at wikinews with links to videos.

-metric

million pilgrims attend open-air mass with Pope
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/One_million_pilgrims_a ttend_open-air_mass_with_Pope

I'm sure it's occurred to many other Slashdotters, but this is probablly the best kind of press Wikipedia can get.

This, along with the London bombing coverage in Wikinews last month, is an excellent example of the power and self-healing of MediaWiki sites.

You can rant and rave about misuse, and I agree, but this is evidence in favour when the critics talk about how a community-edited encyclopedia can never be a reliable information resource.

I'm sure it's occurred to many other Slashdotters, but this is probablly the best kind of press Wikipedia can get.

This, along with the London bombing coverage in Wikinews last month, is an excellent example of the power and self-healing of MediaWiki sites.

You can rant and rave about misuse, and I agree, but this is evidence in favour when the critics talk about how a community-edited encyclopedia can never be a reliable information resource.

Again, you think this isn't being done, in regards to a particular article having citations being used as where the original source material was posted from? I do it all of the time, and some of the better articles have both a bibliography and even footnotes. When there is an editorial dispute, the citations are especially used to prove factual quality. There are even facilities within the MediaWiki software to merely put down an ISBN number and that will link you to pages like Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble so you can look up the dead-tree citation and get a copy of the book yourself, or even look it up in your local library. So even a random citation for just about anything can usually be found, and found quickly except for unpublished sources. And yes, there are mechanisms to directly tie these references to the poster directly who added both the citation and the content of the article.

The trust rating is more social, as in the fact you get used to the same set of authors and after awhile you get used to who is likely to mess things up and who does a solid job of fixing things up in an outstanding manner. You also have access to the edit history of each author that you suspect may be doing some damage, and there are even structures within Wikipedia to deal with problem users. Outright trolls (the GNAA has moved into Wikipedia lately) are dealt with harshly, to the point their IP addresses are banned from even participating. There are some problems with doing that, but even the "innocent" people who get burned due to trolls are allowed to appeal their case of banning.

In the case of Wikinews, citations are considered "essential" and are grounds for deletions if you don't provide a direct news source (or in that case don't clearly identify that you are the original journalist creating the account as an eyewitness). If you want to see how each reference is thouroughally checked and identified, try to get in and edit a Wikinews article, particularly on a front-page article or even a developing story. Try to introduce a bogus "fact" without a citation reference, or even "make up" a reference. I promise you that it will be culled almost immediately.

Wikipedia articles take a little more time before the vetting occurs, but it does occur as well in even some of the most obscure articles that I've seen. Almost every subject you can imagine has at least a few people that really are knowledgeable about that subject, and getting away with introducing outright BS (like the Moon is made of cheese or that Bill Clinton was the first astronaut in orbit) is going to be edited out over time. Wacked out UFO conspirists generally don't get much of a chance to promote their theories, unless the article is specifically about one of their theories... and even then the citation issues still hold.

It appears that you think the trust metric applying to both the content entry and encouraging citations should be more rigerous, and required, even put into the software of the contributors putting in the content. I would dare you to find even a peer reviewed scientific paper that has been published which has that thourough of a review where each sentance has been put under that kind of scrutiny. I know of PhD dissertations that should have had that kind of review that didn't (where you would expect that kind of microscopic review process).

While certainly things could be improved, I find that the current review process is very healthy. I've even written extensive articles myself and when I've made even minor typos simply due to the huge amount of content I've added, they have been corrected by other readers and contributors. And that is on very technical subjects where the typo would never have been caught by a spell checker. I did review the change and discovered that I made a mistake... again a part of the review process.

Wikinews?

I'd like to add that the chinese military, same as the US military, does not want people thinking of what really happens in a real war, such as team killing, weapons jamming at the moment an enemy is aiming at you, and vehicles killing people by running them over, etc. They want to romanticise combat, making it seem as thought you get killed only if you do something wrong like not following orders. In reality, there are plenty of ways of dying in war that have nothing to do with what you do or don't do.

Remember, the Chinese military's strength is absolute numerical superiority. If they can't get the youngsters to fall into rank at 18, they lose that, and they become more vulnerable.

Go find out why there's no blood and gore and wounded screaming in a pool of blood in America's Army the game. (there's plenty of blood and gore and screaming wounded in the real US army, just not on CNN).

There is another angle which FidelCastro alluded to.

China is portrayed in the western media, as well as by its government, as a united block. It is not. It is a country with 1.3 billion people with different religions, ethnicities, languages, and economic backgrounds. It should not be surprising that there could be factional fighting in China; as there have been many times in the past (see the 20-50 million deaths in the Taiping Rebellion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion) in the 1850's, as well as the turbulent times from 1900's Boxer rebellion and the time of the warlords (which Chiang Kai-shek put an end to at the head of the Kuomintang, fought against the Japanese in WWII, then moved to Taiwan when the Communists took over. His goal in Taiwan being to retake the mainland -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-Shek).

Back to Fidel: The chinese government does not want young chinese to think that team killing is "part of the game" since, in their case, team mates would be chinese. So no chinese killing chinese. Because once they think it's OK to kill chinese, then the pawns are set for internal armed struggle (civil war) and since there is a strong and growing sense that China is important in the world, and that the Communist government is, well, a little backward, the people on the street might think that not blindly following the government and exercising a little violence to show the world that China "has arrived" would be a good thing. For a fine example of that, refer to the Chinese protests at the Japanese embassy on April 9, 2005 (see http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Chinese_rioters_storm_ Japanese_embassy_in_Beijing)

Of course, over violence by chinese youth against the Chinese government would trigger a brutal crackdown, and international media would use that to portray China as a military dictatorship, thus undoing the many years of work to appease the west.

It would also strengthen the position of the military supporters within the Chinese Communist party at the expense of those who wish to extend greater economic and political rights in order to better compete with the west and against India (who currently has cheaper labor).

All in all, I can say that this is not a decision based on morals, but rather a potentially very clever political move.

A binding release is not hard to do, at least within the U.S. system. Recently IBM did one for a portfolio of software patents, although it was limited to use in "open source" software. See the wikinews entry here.

http://wikinews.org/ ?

I don't know much about it (I actually just found the site from a link last week), but it's a start. Imagine something like that coupled with podcasting or video...um...podcasting.

Wikinews is covering this:

Four bombs rock London

Wikinews is covering this:

Four bombs rock London

Might I suggest Wikinews?

Indeed, the LA Times recent experiment with wiki-ized editorials shows the true nature of their fear. They realized quite quickly the true power of the wiki, realizing that it was introducing true debate and discussion.

Similarly, CNET News.com just launched a wiki where readers/contributors collaborate to predict the future of India's technology industry. It's quite an interesting read so far.

Link to CNET's Indian Tech Renaissance Wiki

Wikinews article on it

Pardon me, Mr. Coltrane. I believe that you are partaking in trollery. This conference covers Wikimedia, not just Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, yes.

But then there is Wikinews that directly challenges the Old Media.

Wikimedia covers all of the new wiki-based, individualistic, non-corproate media.

Here's the link to the story at wikinews:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_ Court_Justice_O'Connor_to_retire

Wikinews. From the creators of Wikipedia.

http://www.wikinews.org/

Sits somewhere between NYT and the blogosphere...

Wikinews currently has a human-maintained RSS feed here, and a feed of all new pages here; as I replied to the other poster, code for category RSS feeds has been written. It has been temporarily deactivated for security concerns, which should be addressed in the next few days.

So, just like Wikipedia, Wikinews will have areas where people interested in certain topics will work on these topics only, while at the same time benefitting from the potential for massive collaboration, i.e. the entire community can quickly get involved in an individual dispute, or try to refine a problem article until it meets our standards of quality and neutrality.

So, just like Wikipedia, Wikinews will have areas where people interested in certain topics will work on these topics only, while at the same time benefitting from the potential for massive collaboration, i.e. the entire community can quickly get involved in an individual dispute, or try to refine a problem article until it meets our standards of quality and neutrality.

If you want to contribute, you can submit a story right away, or you can learn more about writing news stories the wiki way.

Wikinews is run by a non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and the Wikimedia Commons, a media repository with almost 100,000 free content images, videos and sounds.

If you want to contribute, you can submit a story right away, or you can learn more about writing news stories the wiki way.

Wikinews is run by a non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and the Wikimedia Commons, a media repository with almost 100,000 free content images, videos and sounds.

If you want to contribute, you can submit a story right away, or you can learn more about writing news stories the wiki way.

Wikinews is run by a non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and the Wikimedia Commons, a media repository with almost 100,000 free content images, videos and sounds.

If you want to contribute, you can submit a story right away, or you can learn more about writing news stories the wiki way.

Wikinews is run by a non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and the Wikimedia Commons, a media repository with almost 100,000 free content images, videos and sounds.

Some other wikinews coverage:

• Freed hostage Sgrena says "shooting no accident"
• Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena Freed
• US may not have known of Sgrena rescue operation
• Italian PM rejects US version of shooting

Anyway, here's some other discussion about it: Maybe All 400 Bullets Missed

Some other wikinews coverage:

• Freed hostage Sgrena says "shooting no accident"
• Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena Freed
• US may not have known of Sgrena rescue operation
• Italian PM rejects US version of shooting

Anyway, here's some other discussion about it: Maybe All 400 Bullets Missed

Some other wikinews coverage:

• Freed hostage Sgrena says "shooting no accident"
• Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena Freed
• US may not have known of Sgrena rescue operation
• Italian PM rejects US version of shooting

Anyway, here's some other discussion about it: Maybe All 400 Bullets Missed

Some other wikinews coverage:

• Freed hostage Sgrena says "shooting no accident"
• Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena Freed
• US may not have known of Sgrena rescue operation
• Italian PM rejects US version of shooting

Anyway, here's some other discussion about it: Maybe All 400 Bullets Missed

Some other wikinews coverage:

• Freed hostage Sgrena says "shooting no accident"
• Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena Freed
• US may not have known of Sgrena rescue operation
• Italian PM rejects US version of shooting

Anyway, here's some other discussion about it: Maybe All 400 Bullets Missed

Hmm, just read the linked article from the post and noticed a roll of toilet paper in one of its pictures.

I guess it's necessary for the non-AI test participants do be indistinguishable from the AI by equally not having to leave the chat-room to go to the toilet.

Hmm, just read the linked article from the post and noticed a roll of toilet paper in one of its pictures.

I guess it's necessary for the non-AI test participants do be indistinguishable from the AI by equally not having to leave the chat-room to go to the toilet.

There is always Wikinews, a public domain news source.

As a blogger I am horrified when I see someone post the full text of an AP story on their site. Quoteing is one thing, but putting the entire article in a blog post is blatent plagirism. On the same note I'm bothered by people who submit Slashdot summaries with the same exact language of the AP/Cnet/Tom's Hardware story they are submitting.

Then again, there is Wikinews, where "All content of the Wikinews Beta is in the public domain."

WikiNews?

If you own content that might be useful to Wikipedia or the other Wikimedia projects, such as holidy photos from a far-away country, please upload it to the Commons. If you don't want to learn the ways of the wiki, you can use the newly created (free) file upload service, where Wikimedia volunteers will tag and upload your files for you. The only condition is that you put them under a free license or in the public domain.

Remember, all the Wikimedia projects are run by a non-profit organization that depends on donations from people like you.

Wiki News: Free to the user, anyone can contribe.

1000 articles and counting!

Newspapers could be replaced by blogging aggregates, or Wikinews type collaborative efforts.

Corporations already produce information about things related to their industries (although its often just marketing.) In a free (as-in-beer) press environment the incentive may be strong enough to produce unbiased information. This could help the companies in a general way, i.e. More general knowledge about the auto repair could mean less competition from makers of cheap, low quality parts. A good situation for any company that competes on merit rather then brand.

Large organizations could become more public and timely. For example the CIA publishes the World Fact Book and Universities collect information for research and publication. Churches create newsletters that don't compare to the metro 'local' section, but that could change.

A mix of these is probably what will happen (as you said,) but I think free content will become even more common then it is now.

1000 articles and counting!

Out of curiosity, what's your opinion of the wikinews project?

I posted a Wikinews story yesterday entitled "CIA Sending Suspects Overseas For 'Rendition'", which received almost 2000 hits due to being displayed on the front page of Google News for most of the day. This helps give Wikinews more readership, since they are not listed in Google News. Sadly, however, it does not result in increased discussion, since most people visiting from Google News are not people interested in posting comments.

A good example of "open source" or "free as in speech" journalism is Wikinews. Granted, organisations like the AP and Reuters provide on their wires every news story Wikinews will (probably) cover, but that's beside the point. The point is that there exists a news source that licences it's content under the GFDL which means that anyone can take the stories on Wikinews and do whatever they like with them that springs to mind.

One might want to write a tool that analyses news sites and not want to worry about whether or not scraping the news content is legal or not!

Of course, many detractors will say that there is no way that a wiki news source could ever be accurate. The same thing was said for a wiki encyclopaedia. It turns out that mass-collaboration can sometimes be a more accurate form of editing than traditional forms. I don't want to mention Rathergate so I wont :)

In any case I think the whole argument about Wikipedia/Wikinews 's accuracy is pretty much irrelivant. This is a free information source that exists and if people don't want to rely on it they are more than free to do so. In any case there is a big push happening right now to improve the validation of articles within wikipedia. Check the comments of an article i wrote on this subject for more information.

P.S. If you live in Europe anywhere near Brussels or Berlin at all please try to make it to the protests against software patents! I'll be travelling from Amsterdam to Brussels on the day.. if anyone wants to catch the train with me please reply here and we'll get in touch!

Everyone is biased.

Encarta is edited by professional editors, and as such it has a standard of integrity which Microsoft's customers expect.

Wikipedia is edited by bored Internet users, and as such it bears a disclaimer that it is "for entertainment purposes only."

I would much sooner trust Encarta than Wikipedia for encyclopedic knowledge, in much the same way that I'd trust any other journalistic source than a bunch of bored Internet users to edit my news.

"When I read news, I want 3 page articles about it. Most of these stories you read online or in a paper could be put into one sentence and it would have the same value."

Try wikinews for coverage which stands a chance of running to more than one thought, or Wikipedia/current events which should have lots of links to detailed background information.

Yahoo "full coverage" also used to be quite good at grouping the "ongoing" news about a particular topic, so you could read the whole history as well as just the latest event.

Or just get the Financial Times, of course...

However, It is still comming along

I agree with that viewpoint I'm not trying to say this example is a trend or something but i decided to surf around at the Wikinews beta project to search for a news item which i know a bit of background on.

Little bit later i stumbled upon Pinochet arrested after Supreme Court ruling and i read the article. What striked me was the following sentence: The crimes where a part of "Operation Condor," an attempt to supress opposition to the government. The dictator ruled from a 1973 coup, overthrowing the elected socialist Salvador Allende, until 1990.

This statement is true, but not accurate. Its not news either, its background information for the uninformed reader. From here, the power of Wikipedia (or any other encyclopedia) could be used to link to history but the nice thing is that this is the Internet and that websites and Wiki's can easily 'connect' to each other. That'd be a good way IMO. Because now it misses all the facts of the CIA which were involved in this coup and who have blood on their hands, which is regulary censored or evaded (comes down to the same). I verified, and yes the wikipedia entry for Salvador Allende contains some information on this piece of history of Chille.

I'd like to know why they don't link to the encyclopedia for background information...

Check out this Wikinews article. It looks like the big confrontation of MPAA and BitTorrent/eDonkey networks is only just starting, so that article is supposed to cover all important developments in the future, such as police raids, lawsuits and the like. Since it's on Wikinews, everyone can contribute by adding information, editing, reediting, deleting, restructuring, etc.

CNN is biased. I'd prefer a WikiNews article, please.

If no such article exists, please write one and link to it.