Talk:Bloggers investigate social networking websites

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

[edit] WORTNET info

"Original reporting" consisted of communications with Facebook and MySpace representatives, and searching through the Internet Archive and Google Groups. Ashibaka 19:34, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Original draft

Hummm. I just finished writing this, and it seems unresolvably POV. If Wikinews doesn't allow investigative reporting please just mark this inactive and I'll copy the content to my userspace or Web site. Ashibaka 01:26, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

• I don't agree that it is unresolvably POV, and the story is good. It should be written to be much more 'newsy' and present the ugly facts early, rather than starting with some wishy washy conjecture about sites that aren't even mentioned in the body of the story. Is the story covered elsewhere? If not (or if only in forums etc) then this is a scoop, (assuming it's accurate). Please pretty please, keep working on it! It's a horror story confirming every internet users worst fears, and this is important stuff! -- Simeon 03:22, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I'm impressed by some of the findings in this piece. In case it helps, here are some comments.

• Neutrality: I think you can ask comments from these companies, and explain that they have their own reasons for doing this (speak for your enemy, as NPOV policy says) and that could neutralize the negative connotation in this article. As a matter of general principle, I think investigative journalism could be done in a way that presents enough of opposing sides and leave the value judgments to readers. This piece could be done that way, too, I believe.
• Argument (1): Regarding the reading of the terms of service for the second company, I am not sure I would agree with it. It seems like the company is saying "if you upload your music to our site, we deliver it to our visitors. And visitors come from any part of the world." So I feel that there is nothing even remotely suspicious about this part of the term. (And upon reading the following part on their web site, it seems this license terminates when the user deletes the content. That's I would say a pretty decent term of service.
• Argument (2) You seem to suggest that "non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license" is something common between the two contracts. But if you search that phrase with Google, you will find thousands of pages with that phrase. So I am not sure if that part means something significant.

Tomos 04:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Your two arguments make good sense. I'm keeping the Facebook information because their license is notably "irrevocable" and represents a change from their former license, but the MySpace license is probably just to cover their backs, as you said.

As for talking with the companies, maybe I can do that over the weekend... if I find the time. If someone else wants to please do so. Ashibaka 05:27, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I sent an e-mail to Facebook, MySpace, and a former developer of MySpace who now works at another company. If any of them write back it will be totally awesome. Ashibaka 16:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds great. I'm hoping they will respond. :) Again, thank you for your work on this! Tomos 16:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I've just read about some companies on Hoovers.com, and it seems that

• The prison term has ended on Nov. 2005. It was a paid leave.
• The spyware issue was settled out of court. The company paid/pays 7.5 mil.

Perhaps that's relevant information.

Tomos 17:34, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I have received a full, lengthy reply from Facebook, and I haven't checked the e-mail account from which I e-mailed MySpace. Rather than an investigation I think this should be a neutral story, because the boring facts are better than stretched sensationalism.

As soon as I have the free time I will work these into the article.

Ashibaka (in a hurry) 12:59, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Todo before publication:

• Waiting for official statement from Facebook regarding privacy policy Done!
• Waiting for any sort of reply from MySpace - 3 DAYS LEFT

If MySpace doesn't respond by the 27th I'm going to up and publish this. Ashibaka 00:02, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Excellent

This is an excellent article! My god man! Please please continue it! --65.5.204.50 01:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Story preparation

I'm moving this to Wikinews:Story preparation for the time being; the basis of the investigative reporting is good though there are some elements which may need to be examined for POV. In short, good work, but it's not finished yet! - Amgine | ^{talk en.WN} 08:12, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

The Facebook section, at least, should be about finished by now (still waiting for a reply from Myspace). Do you have any specific comments about that? Ashibaka 06:40, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

i am not familiar with practices of posting here but here goes, i have your answwers on myspace and to make this easier on everyone all you need do to get a start is to go to catbird forum or simply google Alan MacLeese (me) I am the writer of piece on catbird and amworking with trent lapinski on this and i think the story will break tonight (wed) on Willamette Weeklylwhich goes to press today I gather. Trent's blogs, my piece on murdocoh,coleman,wiederhorn, my space is your wucik jumpstart. alm mac hallowell me 207 622 3732. good luck on getting it out there, these colemans andwiederhorns are bad people and tryuing to get out of a major scam. mac

Is editorial work off-limits on Wikinews? I don't think so, as long as it's a Supported Opinion with facts, I feel that it's neccesary to stimulate a healthy democratic discussion amongst people. I'm going to be moving this back, thank you. Also, too mac, fix your grammer, include more shades of definitions of words with varying strengths of meaning in adjectives, like "Big" versus "Humungous", or "groslly and morbidly overweight" versus "Beer-belly", etc -- it's getting reminiscent of newspeak, thank you.

[edit] find

how to pass a ccsd fire wall to get to you guy's and to go on myspace.com

[edit] Facebook page of Million Dollar Wiki

I hear facebook is going to sue because someone purchased the facebook page of million dollar wiki http://www.milliondollarwiki.com/facebook