SourceWatch:Purpose

Purpose is a guideline page used on SourceWatch.

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< About SourceWatch

SourceWatch is a free encyclopedia about the people, issues, and groups shaping the public agenda, including activist groups and government agencies but especially public relations firms, front groups, industry-friendly experts and think tanks that try to manipulate public opinion. SourceWatch has 68,584 articles, as of today, thanks to interested contributors like you, and over five million visitors to its pages a year.

What is SourceWatch's role in increasing transparency and public scrutiny?

SourceWatch provides simple tools to attract public participation in documenting information about the people, companies, and entities attempting to shape public opinion. With the experience of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) in researching and writing about spin and propaganda, CMD believes it is vital to a working democracy to increase public scrutiny and public awareness of the people and companies shaping public policy. We think it is imperative to provide useful information about key policies and document disinformation about these issues. And, it is important to help people understand options for addressing these problems. See Flack Attack for more information about PR spin and some of the reasons CMD and SourceWatch were founded.

Who owns SourceWatch?

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is the publisher of SourceWatch. CMD owns the server and domain names related to SourceWatch. The articles in SourceWatch are released by their authors under the GNU Free Documentation License, so the articles are open content. See SourceWatch:Copyrights and SourceWatch:Readers' FAQ for information on how you can use SourceWatch content. Other publications of CMD, including our PR Watch web site, remain copyrighted property and should not be used without permission.

Who is responsible for the articles on SourceWatch?

This is a collaborative endeavor. Many people have contributed to different parts of this project, and anyone can do so, including you! All you need to know is How to edit a page. It would also be good to know what you are talking about or to have a passion for the truth about these issues or the public's right to know more about them. You can see who is responsible for the most recent versions of any given page by clicking on the "History" link.

Getting Started

• First you need to register.
• Then you need to know how to log in and set your preferences.

Contribute an Article or an Edit

• How to add an article or edit articles
• How to follow the policies for contributors.
• How to edit articles and find more information on our help page
• How to test out how wiki editing and formatting works by playing in the editing sandbox
• How to upload images and key documents
• How to get answers to Frequently Asked Questions

More Details

• Finding recent changes: see the articles that SourceWatch contributors are working on with the most recent changes listed first
• Tracking new articles
• Requesting an article or information
• Fixing a stub: A stub is the small starting kernel for an article. So if you are looking for somewhere to start it is worth having a look here.
• Finding the categories index - You can also look through the articles indexed in the various categories
• Getting better search results
• Checking random pages

Errors or Complaints

• Fixing errors

Other Policies

• SourceWatch: Editorial Policy
• SourceWatch: General disclaimer

Some Quick History

• July 3, 2004: SourceWatch is the world's 14th biggest wiki website by mere article count.
• March 10, 2003: SourceWatch is publicly launched.
• January 15, 2003: SourceWatch is first created.
• December 18, 2002: PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton attends a conference in Amsterdam hosted by World-Information.org and first learns about the creation of Wikipedia.