Saturday, January 22, 2005

Disinfopedia is now SourceWatch

Disinfopedia has changed its name to SourceWatch. It remains a valuable key to deciphering PR spin, with useful research and writing tips, and describes itself as

a collaborative project to produce a directory of public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. Sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy (http://www.prwatch.org), SourceWatch was started in February 2003 and contributors are now working on 6270 articles.

SourceWatch articles can be published and edited by anybody:
This site is built by ordinary wise people, like you. You don't need any special credentials to participate -- we shun credentialism along with other propaganda techniques. It's the fact that it is open to everyone that makes these articles ever-improving, as we review and build on each other's work. Although no one is free of bias, we can cancel each other's out to a large degree, and deal with any systemic bias remaining by policy measures.

So, you can just dive right in and work on any article you like! You can edit any article directly, or if you want to add your thoughts, questions or comments about an article, you can go to the article's talk page (click on the 'Discuss the page' link in the sidebar or at the bottom of the article). You don't even need to be logged in to edit articles, although it is still a good idea to log in as this gives you access to more of the site's features and makes it easier to communicate with other users.

To work together effectively in building the encyclopedia, the SourceWatch community has some established policies and guidelines. An "encyclopedia of propaganda," by its very nature, is bound to attract controversy and debate. It is important, therefore, to write articles that focus on documented facts. Please include thorough references to documentation supporting the facts in your article, and avoid rhetorical or inflammatory language. If you are using or defining a rhetorical or inflammatory term then explain it in an article where it can be put in context and balance introduced - redirect all references to competing terms to one place. This is critical: We want the SourceWatch to be a useful information resource for journalists, activists and the general public, so please do not treat it as a debate forum. Any discussion about topics should be mainly directed at improving articles to the point where they are useful to journalists, the main consumer of our work.

New contributors are always welcome to SourceWatch, and you are encouraged to be bold in editing pages. You don't have to worry too much about making mistakes, as all contributions are monitored by other contributors at the Recent changes page.


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