Talk:WikiLeaks/Archive 1

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AfD

I speedily-kept the debate. If you disagree and you're a regular wikipedia editor contact me on my talk page and I'll un-close it. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

"...forcing the site offline..."

Wikipedia's frontpage news section claims wikileaks has been "forced offline", linking to this article. This is no correct. It's not in any way shape or form "offline". The only thing that has happened is that you can't use wikileaks.org to get to it. The IP address 88.80.13.160 or any of the many mirrors. The article itself notes this fact (although not very prominently). The headline on wikipedia's frontpage is therefore misleading. Can it be changed?

I USUALLY LOVE WIKIPEDIA, BUT THE BLATANT LACK OF NEUTRALITY OF THIS ARTICLE HAS FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER MADE ME QUESTION THIS SITE'S OVERALL NEUTRALITY. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.16.105.242 (talk) 03:26, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I USUALLY WRITE PROPERLY, BUT THE BLATANT LACK OF COOL OF THIS COMMENT HAS FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER MADE ME QUESTION THIS USER'S OVERALL COOLNESS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.159.50.214 (talk) 17:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

New article

• Added a ton of resources/RS sources. Needs cleanup, working on it. Please help! F.F.McGurk 22:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
• Is Wikilinks a typo for Wikileaks or something different? Peter Grey 00:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

They're different. Wikilinks are where you type a page name in double square brackets. In the context of Wikipedia, they're usually just called links. Picaroon 01:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

For the edit I just made it was a typo. Mackenson got most of them before, we both missed that last one... F.F.McGurk 01:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

And now it's popping up all over international media... F.F.McGurk 05:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Criticism

Is it me, or do the statements in the criticism section not make sense? Lcament 05:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The guy's own language, and not really, no. I put it just to have *some* balance for now. F.F.McGurk 05:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Each statement makes sense, but the second does not follow from the first. The first refers to the question of to what extent leaking of any sort is ethical in a democracy, and the second relates to misleading leaking (presumably including forged documents). I will attempt to fix this! JY, 16 January 2007

At some point the bits got put in one paragraph rather than broken up. Read better? F.F.McGurk 07:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't solve the problem - the Aftergood quoted refers to all leaking in a democracy, and the Wikileaks FAQ quote refers to misleading leaking (and as far as I can tell was not written in response to the Aftergood quote). I think we another sentance dealing with the possibility of misleading leaks, or no mention of them at all. JY, 17 Jan 2007 (I note that the misunderstaning seems to have begun in Friedman's article rather than here)

Wikileaks should integrate with Wikipedia

One of main my Wikipedia wishlist :

“ 'discussion' page on Wikipedia should have a section for debating where a NPOV/neutral admin moderator can summarize all the distinct points (typically there are very few even for hotly debated/controversial topics) and these distinct points should have voting buttons as well. ”

That wish list seems to be fulfilled by Wikileaks but I think Wikipedia will always have more visibility as compared to Wikileaks and hence Wikileaks should find ways to integrate with it e.g. the main page of a topic should always be the Wikipedia page and there should be a link to Wikileaks page (if it exists) having leaked data as well as it should support blogging/debating and should have buttons as well.
Vjdchauhan 07:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC). (Information should be centralized and rest all should be de-centralized)

Note that unless independently verified or written about, it is very unlikely that any document on Wikileaks would be acceptable in a Wikipedia article. Joshdboz 22:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Necessity of wikileaks

Is it just me, or is the start of the fourth paragraph, stating that "it has been observed that" this sort of site is a necessity, just an opinion without any backing?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Schnitzi (talk • contribs) 03:14, January 18, 2007

You're quite right; such statements should have citations, so as to comply with Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Because of this, I've added a {{fact}} tag. You can add these yourself to statements which you feel should cite a source. Be neither excessive nor stingy with regards to the use of the template. Picaroon 03:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to take down that one fact tag; it's supported by current source #12, in the third paragraph. F.F.McGurk 03:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I got it. Is there a way to use the same source twice there without having to redo the entire attribution on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. usage? Some right way to just put down the named <ref name=xyz>? F.F.McGurk 03:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

New developments?

I found like link on Michaelmoore.com It basicly says " '...an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis...' | Or Is It | " The || is a link to this site http://cryptome.org/wikileaks/wikileaks-leak.htm.

I don't have the time to sift through all this data, but I would asume that its stating that wikilinks not what it seems... would it be original research to post it on here?208.248.33.30 18:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It would be OR, I believe, yeah, as described by you. A valid RS needs to state, for it to be verifiable. We can't produce original thought, just condense, summarize and remix under NPOV. F.F.McGurk 19:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

More news coverage

See Whistle blown on Wiki site for whistle-blowers By Simon Rabinovitch (Reuters). BlankVerse 04:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

When Online?

80.56.94.31 19:59, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

When will Wikileaks go live?

We cannot yet give an exact date. We estimate February or March 2007.

I think there was an earlier date online, it does seem to take forever, anyone knows more about this?

Wikileaks taken down / censored?

Wikileaks seems to have been down the last 12 hours or so! ... does anyone know why? I've emailed, but no reply and the washington number does not answer.

From my following of earlier recent changes it is clear that they were about to release this doozy:

http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.wikileaks.org/wiki/US_Military_Equipment_in_Iraq_(2007)/Chemical_weapons&strip=1

http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.wikileaks.org/wiki/US_Military_Equipment_in_Iraq_(2007)&strip=1

James Hardine 21:28, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, the site seems to be back up, along with those pages. No mention about the downtime though? --Gwern (contribs) 22:36 3 November 2007 (GMT)

Al of the domains seem to be gonig up and down. Perhaps DOS? 210.138.109.72 06:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikilinks was on slashdot recently. Lurker (said · done) 13:52, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

This is starting to get silly. There are accusations that Wikileaks is a front for the CIA,then there are accusations that the US military controls the internet. I'm taking down the claims in the introduction until somebody rewrites them with some factual content. --Chopz 16:50, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

CIA front

Does anybody else think this section reads ridiculously? It seems like somebody is struggling to make a connection, in an almost numerological fashion.FFLaguna 07:07, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

that's pretty ridiculous, you're right. +sj + 13:26, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain the Intellius reference to a "Va Reston" is probably a misinterpretation of "Reston, Viriginia (VA)." I don't have the wherewithal to track this down, but it occurred to me. - No user name —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.122.26.27 (talk) 01:38, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

removed text

every time the site is down for more than a few hours, someone claims it is an intentional censoring of the site. Are its servers really all in one place? it seems more likely that these downtimes relate to surges of traffic... I removed related text from the page:

However, after this news became widespread on the 15th November the Wikileaks website became inaccessible.

+sj + 13:26, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

That text was put in by me - Someone else had written a long thing about some sort of conspiracy which just seemed a bit ridiculous to me, so I shortened it to that (though I didn't add the ref). But clearly now its all irrelevant. --129.67.115.253 13:34, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Outage

Where are these servers with .org.uk, .cn, .nz etc. domains? It sure seemed like some kind of event to find every mirror down like that - for well over a few hours - especially if these servers are not in the same place. Why does it seem 'more likely that these downtimes relate to surges of traffic?' Have you any evidence of this?

Rumour has it the bank BJB filed suit, and the name servers for wikileaks have been removed from whois. TRS-80 (talk) 14:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the big warning added to the article--this isn't the place to include speculation/service updates. Mackensen (talk) 06:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Some part of the outage needs to be specified in the article. And a link should be provided for people to actually view wikileaks. I will add the relevant information in a section below. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.228.82.246 (talk) 18:59, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I've added the link to the Belgian mirror. The outage really can't be discussed until some new organization picks it up (which I'm sure it will). Unreferenced speculation will be removed. Mackensen (talk) 19:01, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Please justify why you need to delete this section, when references are provided.

Makes sense. 24.228.82.246 (talk) 19:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, they're all self-references. Wikileaks is claiming these things, but there's no independent verification. For that matter, the text added isn't even supported by the self-references (Judge White isn't named, for example)! I've rewritten a little, but there needs to be independent verification of some kind. Mackensen (talk) 20:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I've temporarily replaced the main link to the wikileaks site with the site's IP (that is, http://wikileaks.org is now http://88.80.13.160/ in the article). When it looks like they are no longer having DNS issues, I'll stop by and change this back. Dxco (talk) 19:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Take down order - not well explained

Okay, something is not really right here. Some section of wikileaks says the law in USA protect the release of this kind of information. Very good. Then, the documents released seem to be implicating the bank to illegal activity, which mind you the USA courts are very much against. I believe since 9/11 moving money around is closely monitored and heavily punished to minimize terror financing activities. So, taking the above into consideration, its very hard to see how a USA court can force them to take down the site, the system (meaning the judge) has very little to defend their action. Something else could be going on here..... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wk muriithi (talk • contribs) 19:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

This is censorship, as they quite rightly state in their press release. I have added a section, feel free to incorporate. Pnd (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 00:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

More info at Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks. John Vandenberg (talk) 03:58, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Legal or illegal isn't really the issue here. It's perhaps likely that Dynadot would have won, if it pursued the case, but it didn't want to. Nobody is going to force Dynadot to host a domain name it doesn't want to, for any reason. I'm pretty sure that domain name registrars are allowed by ICANN to lock or shut down domain names for more or less any reason. Certainly there are lots of complaints that GoDaddy and other major registrars will shut down domain names at the slightest provocation. So really this has the flavor of a voluntary agreement, that I can see, not a legally-imposed one: Dynadot kills the domain name, the bank doesn't sue them. I don't know what the requirement is for judges to approve settlements, but generally there's a rule that judges aren't supposed to consider arguments that the parties haven't briefed them on, AFAIK. If neither party brings up free speech issues, I don't know if the judge can reject the settlement on that basis. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:57, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

All this demonstrates is that Dynadot and other registrars hold too much power, and no restraint (i.e. they can pull the plug on a website whenever they feel like it). Perhaps the Bill of Rights needs be extended, not just to Federal and State governments, but also corporations to guarantee free speech of corporate employees or customers. ---- Theaveng (talk) 13:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

As far as i can figure out, the problem in this case is that Wikileaks is an anonymous Web site, so there is no one to go to court and represent their interests. In a more typical situation, the Web site owner would be a party to the case and could presumably assert its rights, such as they are. Of course they would face whatever legal recourse Baer might have against them as well.--agr (talk) 14:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Fire

Did the fire happen the same day as the denial of service attacks? I've only found two articles that mention the fire and they say that the fire took out all of their servers after the attacks, but they don't go mention the day or time. Is the site down everywhere now? Or just in the US? 68.107.196.111 (talk) 00:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Only the DNS resolve from the .org is switched off, the site can be reached under the .be link cited. Pnd (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 00:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

• The fire apparently affected service on Saturday, which has since been restored. The injunction affected service starting on Monday. Cumulus Clouds (talk) 01:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

wtf

this section...

The Chinese government currently attempts to censor every web site with "wikileaks" in the URL. This includes the main wikileaks.org site as well as regional variations such as wikileaks.cn and wikileaks.org.uk. However the site can be accessed from behind the Chinese firewall at the time of writing using https://secure.wikileaks.org/ or one of the many alternative names used by the project, such as ljsf.org or sunshinepress.org. As these alternatives may change frequently, the site suggests users from the mainland of China search for "wikileaks cover names" on non mainland-china search engines such as google.co.uk to locate the latest alternative names. Mainland based search engines, including those of Baidu and Yahoo, also censor references to "wikileaks."[17]

Additionally Wikileaks says users may bypass Chinese censorship by making Tor connections to Wikileaks' hidden server at gaddbiwdftapglkq.onion after installing the Tor software.[18]

With so many alternative names, there is a danger that whistleblowers may connect to a "fake" Wikileaks, run by, say, the Chinese government. To prevent this possibility, the site asks users to tell their web browser to "show the site certificate" and verify that it is for "secure.wikileaks.org" and signed by "Equifax Secure, Inc."

it's like a friken guide on "HOW TO AVOID OFFICAL CHINESE GOVERMENT BANS ON INTERNET SITES", even though that would be illegal, atleast in china, why exactly is there a guide on how to help chinese people break the law?--Jakezing (talk) 04:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

As Yanks or Brits or Aussies or Canucks or Kiwis or whatever, we are not bound by Chinese law. —Nricardo (talk) 05:44, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

However we are bound by wikipedia policy which states we are not a guide but an encylopaedia Nil Einne (talk) 09:14, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Ya, but why would we help chinese people break their law? and it is a guide therfor should be retooled to not help people in china break laws, and still tell us there are other links. it just seems, bad in the long run.--Jakezing (talk) 22:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject on closed proxies "helps chinese people break their law." --Thinboy00 @945, i.e. 21:40, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

But if we have to remove the guide like info, then we should just transwiki to WikiBooks or something. --Thinboy00 @949, i.e. 21:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is usually blocked by the Great Firewall of China (it was unblocked April 4 for the Olympics) and isn't avaiable for the Chinese to view so this information can't help them. --142.68.189.28 (talk) 03:55, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Huh?

Prior to today, I do not recall ever trying: < http://88.80.13.160 >; < http://wikileaks.be >.

So, please, what is different?

Prior to redirecting to: < http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks >; < http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks >, the server[s] very briefly shows us a quote in such a manner that it is virtually impossible to read, unless we stop the browser & copy the page:

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Please wait while loading...

Thank You,

[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 16:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Censorship in transmission?

Besides domain name censorship, denial of service attacks, and setting the servers on fire, is there also censorship in transmission? I had no trouble accessing the bank documents, but every effort to download tactical-questioning.pdf from either the "original" IP address or the .be mirror seems to stop right at 969 to 987 KB of 1.6 MB. Can anyone confirm this? Wnt (talk) 22:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC) Never mind - after all the downloads "completed" incompletely, now it downloaded from .be just fine. Wnt (talk) 22:25, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

massive rewrite of some areas

its a friken guide, the Exter's are almsot entirly jsut ways to get around a govemrnet censor, and still seems like a guide down there, hell, it says a way to get around the "great firewall of china"--Jakezing (talk) 02:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I sympathize with the motives, and it is entirely reasonable for the external links to link to the site by ip address if this is the only possible way, but this section is irrelevant and written in the first person:

You can add this IP address to your local hosts file to allow certain broken links that reference the wikileaks.org site to work. Here is the line that I added to my local hosts file.

88.80.13.160 wikileaks.org

On a Windows computer the local host file is located in the directory C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc. On a Posix compliant system the file is usually located in /etc/ You may have to later remove this reference again when wikileaks.org domain name service comes back online in the US.

128.138.64.77 (talk) 18:47, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

There are no mirror sites as yet

Despite the false claims in the BBC article, there are no mirrors for Wikileaks. There is only the site in Sweden with a lot of alternate DNS names that all point to the one IP address. That situation might change, but as of 19 Feb. 2008, there are no full, up-to-date mirror sites. All of these other DNS "cover names" just point back to http://88.80.13.160/ .--Veritysense (talk) 03:49, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

See www.wikileaks2.org, www.wikileaks3.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bughouse26 (talk • contribs) 07:41, 22 February 2008

Those just relay to wikileaks.be and wikileaks.in, which all point back to the PRQ host in Sweden. Relays are little more than an alternate name. A mirror consumes resources but provides for meaningful redundancy in case of data catastrophe.--81.91.65.211 (talk) 07:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Criticism, revisited

The "Criticisms" section is not currently well-tied to the subject of this article. There are two lengthy quotes included, but neither has the author tying the statements directly to Wikileaks or anything else in the article. As such, they sound like attempts to use this article to make larger political arguments.

The Aftergood quote is bad enough, because it's from an unidentified interview in an unidentified publication (possibly his newsletter, but this is not clear even within the cited source), cited by yet another person (Friedman) who himself uses the statement to support his article on Wikileaks. This is absurdly indirect when there should be quotes to be had from people specifically responding to these issues surrounding the Wikileaks situation in specifically identified reliable publications. This kind of indirection has the feel of gossip, an experience all too common in the modern media, and must be avoided.

Worse, it encourages editors with other opinions to add in their own generalized material, as one editor has done with the Rawls' quote. That quote has no tie whatsoever to this subject other than ideological, and we Wikipedians are not permitted to make general ideological arguments, even by well-sourced proxy. That is forbidden original research (OR) because the assertion of its connection comes not from the source, but from the Wikipedia editor. Such connections should be made only by properly cited secondary and tertiary sources.

If a quote is specifically talking about the article subject or event involving the subject, it may be appropriate to mention the larger ideas, but only so long as the connection is clear. For example, I felt the David Ardia suggesting the site shutdown was prior restraint was worth including. But that was not an excuse for me to add a discourse, or even a famous general quote from a famous person, on the subject of prior restraint. The Ardia quote itself must stand scrutiny for being relevant and may ultimately not be deemed by the community to be especially worth including as events develop.

In short, each and every sentence should be specifically about Wikileaks and directly related people, organizations, and events. If a reliable source claims that the subject or its situation is an example of "X", cite it and see if the community feels it's sufficiently relevant to keep in a tightly focused, well-written article. But if the person making the connection is a Wikipedia editor, it must be deleted as OR. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the statements above regarding the Aftergood and Rawls quotes, and only posted the latter on the understanding that a criticism section was appropriate. On might argue that because Wikileaks is such a radical and novel form of civil disobedience that at least some balanced atention be given to the issue in the wikileaks article on wikipedia. If, this view is to prevail, then Aftergoods comment and something like Rawls's should be included under a dedicated heading. I am neutral on this point, and willing to go with the flow.

My reference to Rawls was deleted as synthetic OR, which is hardly defensible in the context of any section paying fair attention to the issue civil disobedience under democracy, as I took the criticism section to be. Jeff Q is right to point out that Aftergood's comment invites such balancing responses as the Rawls quote; since the former is a partisan opinion on an explosive topic. This being so, it appears that the continued inclusion of Aftergood's comment, no longer in a section devoted to meta-issues like civil disobedience in democracy, or even general criticisms, is effectively synthetic OR.

It is stated on the NPOV section of the WP:NOR page that

when incorporating research into an article, it is important that editors provide context for this point of view, by indicating how prevalent the position is, and whether it is held by a majority or minority.

Since this cannot be done with respect to Aftergood's opinion (by no means a majority one) without paying direct and balanced attention to the issue of civil disobedience in democracy, I have deleted his opinion. I would be more than willing to see it restored, in a section where comment on its prevalence status with respect to contrasting opinions is supplied, and which would therefore include reference such as that, recently deleted, to Rawls.

Multipole (talk) 06:03, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be an edit war in progress over this section. I restored the original criticism with some edits to remove editorializing. The site is controversial as criticism is appropriate. What's there now seems balanced. Yes, it needs better sourcing. I'd rather give people a chance to do that than simply lop the meat away.--agr (talk) 13:04, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikileaks.org is censored in US...

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/02/us-judge-censors-wikileaksorg.html Any one knows more information about that..? I was redirected to an error page stating so (occasionally) when I tried to access... Mugunth^{(ping me!!!,contribs)} 18:22, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

My guess is that's the bank vs Dynadot dispute thing. The .be site should still be up... The order only talks about the domain name not the site itself. --Thinboy00 @948, i.e. 21:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

NPOV - Guantánamo Bay procedures

The excerpt from the Reuters article regarding the designation of some prisoners as off limits to visitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross is misleading. While military procedures make allowances for the possiblity of some prisoners being denied ICRC access, the document never lists any prisoners who were actually denied access. If this happened, then the documentation must surely exist.

While I consider Reuters news service to be a biased source, even their story allows that, "The manual clearly mandates humane treatment and advises that "Abuse, or any form of corporal punishment is prohibited". Oddly, this tidbit was omitted. Danindenver (talk) 10:49, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Random cautious editorialising

I removed this passage added by an anon:

There is always the possibility your information will not be secure. Look what happened with the advent of wikiscanner. Many editors who presumed they were anonymous were not. Always be wary of submitted information. Anonymity is never guaranteed on the internet and anything is traceable given the proper resources.

This particular paragraph didn't really fit in with the general style. Besides, basically, this passage could be summed up as "You probably aren't as anonymous as you think - business as usual". In other words, it's pretty useless statement: it describes a general condition (lack of anonymity in the net in general) rather than the site specifically (lack of anonymity on this particular site).

Rather than vague borderline FUD, this article should describe exactly how the site tries to ensure the anonymity on this site. Does anyone know the technical details? Do they purge the IP addresses or what? (I've never looked at a page history in that site =) Currently, the article just has some vague technologies listed (tor, etc) but not how they're practically applied to ensure the anonymity! --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 11:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Merging lawsuit article here

I've talked a bit about my reasoning why the article about the lawsuit should be merged here in Talk:Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit‎. Any other comments? --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 08:35, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose merge One is an article about the lawsuit, the other about the organization. There are plenty of WP:RS/WP:V secondary sources that significantly discuss/analyze both subjects separately and independently of each other. Cirt (talk) 07:14, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
• If it's merged here, the relevant portions should also be merged into Julius Baer Group, which currently points to the lawsuit's page for information on the suit. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 14:29, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikileaks down

I'm moving the following comment (which appeared under the heading "Censored Videos of Tibet Uprising") to here for now:

As of 22:00 GMT on the 14th of April 2008, wikileaks appears to be down.

This may only become notable if Wikileaks remains down for an extended period of time. And even then, a verifiable source would be good. --Ernstk (talk) 02:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

http://wikileads.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/more-info/ A recent blog post about the April 14th 2008 downtime of Wikileaks.org and other affiliated websites. Rumour has it that China (government or public, I don't know) is initiating DDoS attacks on the Wikileaks servers in response to the leaked images and videos of the Tibetan protests. --142.162.70.157 (talk) 02:33, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Given that they had a traffic problem several weeks ago [1] ("servers to be unable to meet the demand of over 164 gigabytes of download traffic within twenty-four hours", it is also possible that they could not handle the trafffic. I'm curious to see which it was.--Ernstk (talk) 03:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

As of 3:19 EST, its still down. When you ping the server, the request either times out, or you get a message that says, "Destination Host Unreachable". Only the IP given for the "Destination Host" is NOT Wikileak's IP.--*Kat* (talk)

2008-05-03 Wikileaks down

• I tried Wikileaks site and mirrors and using proxy servers: Wikileaks seems to be down. I don't think its my ISP. Has anyone had similar problems? What is it? ISP blocking? DoS attacks? Anthony717 (talk) 04:39, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
• Several mirrors read "Error 503 Service - Unavailable - Error talking to backend - Guru Meditation: XID: 990002896 - Varnish" or similar. DoS related to Tibet protests? Anthony717 (talk) 04:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
• Site back up. Anthony717 (talk) 11:01, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Military secrets aspect

Wikileaks is looking for trouble. They are hosting military material (JDAM manual, F-15C electronic warfare manual which is no small trouble, F-18 pocket guide, GPS and Iridium non-public data). Meddling with military matters is NOT a recipe for good health.

I think those running the site are in danger of person (i.e. bullet hole in the back of the head) or Sweden will get into trouble for hosting the site (e.g. cut off from access to advanced US/UK/jewish components for the Gripen Next fighter plane project).

Wikileaks have wandered off-course, from leaking material on african dictators and election cheats to being a tool of espionage. They should reflect and return to their original aims before it is too late. 91.83.18.230 (talk) 16:49, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

So, ah - what exactly does this have to do with our article? --Gwern (contribs) 20:03 16 July 2008 (GMT)

Comment not related to article: (That said, just because a website publishes information not in the US/Western interest does not mean it should be called "bad". 130.195.5.7 (talk) 21:42, 27 September 2008 (UTC))

August 4, 2008 3:21 PM

As of now, I am completely unable to access Wikileaks through any of the domain names listed. I assume the site has gone down. Is it down for everyone else? 71.254.15.146 (talk) 19:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

It was up and running OK earlier today 06 Aug, but now seems down again. 217.44.82.169 (talk) 16:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

• "LinuxworldWikileaks1" :
  • Scott Bradner [http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1264532314;fp;2;fpid;1 "Wikileaks: a site for exposure"], [[Linuxworld]], [[January 18]], [[2007]]. Retrieved [[January 18]], [[2007]].
  • [[Scott Bradner]] [http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1264532314;fp;2;fpid;1 "Wikileaks: a site for exposure"], [[Linuxworld]], [[January 18]], [[2007]]. Retrieved [[January 18]], [[2007]].

DumZiBoT (talk) 15:20, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Links Not Working

None of the mirror site links at the bottom of the page is working as of the date of the Sarah Palin email release. Don't know if they were working previously...that is, whether they're simply outdated and need repair, or my natural paranoia is getting some reinforcement. DavidOaks (talk) 01:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, none of the links are working for me either. 75.13.162.159 (talk) 01:49, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Load, not Gov't

The website has been down much longer than 9:07PM CST. Try right after the article was published. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.73.26.243 (talk) 03:23, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, whatever. People have been trying to shut down wikileaks for years. With respect to the Palin case, there might be an argument that the private information was proof that she used a personal account for work stuff. Not sure if that's gonna fly though... Glebonator (talk) 07:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

http://www.wikileaks.org.nyud.net/ seems to be working for me. Very Very Slow. Fkmd (talk) 21:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

De-ridiculize the article please

> "Wikileaks maintains its own servers at undisclosed locations, keeps no logs and uses military-grade encryption to protect sources <

- You see the article rather makes a fool of itself by including such claims. Certainly the NSA has no trouble finding your "undisclosed" servers, the US/UK ECHELON system can monitor global communications totally. They actually have a big listener site in northern Norway, with many large dishes to spy on russian Murmansk, but is equally useful for swedish comms surveillance.

- Military-grade encryption? All the things we now use on the net (RC4, RSA, 3DES, SHA1) were invented by the NSA a decade before civilians re-invented them and the DES S-box story shows they are lightyears ahead of academia skills in crypto. All military ciphers are reversible, because a person can never be trusted, there must be a way to find out if he gets KIA or deserts to the enemy.

And the DES S-box story also shows that they have in the past made crypto stronger and more irreversible; note that the S-boxes made DES more resistant to NSA's best non-bruteforce attacks, hence the reduced key length. Regardless, this is wildly inappropriate paranoia-mongering; this is a talk page for the article, not a discussion forum. Go away. --Gwern (contribs) 17:00 27 September 2008 (GMT)

- Otherwise, swedish air defence depends mostly on their JAS-39 Gripen fighters having access to AMRAAM missiles, which enjoy total dominance over russian made Su-27 planes and their AA missiles. AMRAAM is exclusive US manufacture, expensive and tightly export controlled.

If wikileaks ever published something really valuable and hurtful (nuke CAD files, F-22 or F-35 fighter plane electronic warfare manuals) the swede would no longer have access to AMRAAM purchases, so they will throw out the whole Pirate Bay and Wikileaks gang in no time (AMRAAM is about the only thing that keeps the russians away from coming across the bay and gang-rape all those long-legged ABBA blondes on top of an IKEA table).

When the F-15C electronic warfare manual went onto Wikileaks, there was serious talk about putting the site or the people behind it down, but eventually the leak was considered useful, as it can be used to scare the shit out of politicians, to accelerate the transition to the sparkling new F-22 and buy more of those Raptor planes for the USAF, as the old Eagele's secrets are now out in the wild. The leakers were probably rogues in USAF who wanted to do a little bit of Robin Hood job to get more Raptors faster.

This comment includes such varied allegation that I will attempt to add only some observations about cryptography.

There have been many claims about the status of NSA (GCHQ, Moscow Centre, ...) cryptanalytic abilities; some on the "they can read anything" end and some on the "these oafs waste a large amount of money to no useful end" end. There is no credible information however. Speculation starting from credibly reported comments by NSA personnel can be construed to suggest that breaking quality encryption is no longer a chief attack modality. Pilot error (including using impressive sounding, but feckless, cryptography products), computer insecurity (often due to pilot error, but also famously due to defective design and/or implementation by some vendors, some persistently so) would on this reading, seem to have become more important. But, this too is speculation, merely of a higher grade.

At present (ie, about 1/10th through the 21st century), there is no credible reason to believe that very good cryptography (eg, the AES cipher, careful implementation and use of RSA or El Gamal, even Tuchman's Triple-DES, ...) are not secure against even NSA attack. And of course the one time pad has been proven (in a strong sense, and mathematically) to be, uniquely, unbreakable, beyond doubt. Sloppy key management, pilot error, poor computer security, opposition access to rubber hose cryptanalysis, or defective implementation can -- and should be expected to actually -- make anything, including each and every one of those listed and every other candidate, vulnerable in real practice. Not vulnerable to real cryptanalysis, of course, since it won't be necessary in any of those circumstances, the compromise coming from other aspects of deployment.

The situation is somewhat different for cryptosystems. These include TLS or SSL, PGP or its GPG semi-clone, all of the PKI schemes commercial or otherwise, etc. Gluing together crypto primitives (eg, encryption, signing, key exchange, ...) into practicably usable systems introduces many degrees of freedom. The problem is not solved even, in theory, for the results of those security proof methods we have available are so hedged about with contingencies that little can be said to assist real world crypto engineering. It's in principle difficult to even talk about "security of the system", the "system" being different in every location in which it is used. If nothing else, the particular mix of software installed on the local computer at any node of the communications network will be different and quite possibly unique across all computers ever turned on. When you add differing choices (or non-choices, as in the case of (I feel sure it's nearly all!) the average Windows computer, or a POSIX system (Linux, Unix, xxxBSD, ...) being administered by the innocent (too common, but certainly less so)), the "uniqueness space" grows at least at exponential rates. And most every element of it all changes over time, sometimes quite rapidly. There is a saying, of the engineering "ironic pessimism" type, from the aircraft industry, that airplanes are really only a few million parts flying in close formation. Computer security is something akin to that, though more abstract and more virtual.

Thus, visions of vastly capable, secret, collections of expertise (eg, at CIA, NSA, GCHQ, KGB, military, ...) are unnecessary. Given human reality, I personally suspect they're unlikely as well, but this is mere opinion, however well grounded. The inescapable problems of secure computer operations, including communications, are more than sufficient to account for many (most? nearly all?) successes by the spy agencies -- even those triumphs not yet public. It's a very difficult issue, both in actual engineering practice, and in discussion of it in a public (at best splotchily informed) forum. Not much can be said with good confidence beyond noting that.

I would direct your attention to pilot error in several famous instances, however. The pilots being in these cases, the end users of intelligence. Foreign Minister Zimmermann of Germany, publicly confirmed that the decrypted contents of the infamous Zimmermann Telegram were correct. That the Germans did not know it had been decrypted, believing an inference (carefully encouraged by Room 40) that it had been stolen, doesn't affect the issue. One never confirms anything that might help the opposition effort. And, both Winston Churchill and Admiral Jackie Fisher published accounts in the 20s noting that the UK had broken German Navy encrypted communications during WWI. Germany took rather better care by WWII (starting with Navy adoption of the Engima machine in the 20s), and only inspired work by the Marian Rejewski, and more inspired work by Bletchley Park building on the Polich work, was able to repeat the success in WWII. Similar politically motivated disclosures by other British politicians in teh same period regarding cryptanalysis of signals which 'proved' that UK branches of some public Soviet enterprises were engaged in subversion resulted in a considerable upgrade of Soviet cryptography, probably in the end preventing more that a bit of its continuing subversive activities in later years (eg, see the Mitrokin Archives or Venona) from becoming public.

The money and resources devoted to the Walker spy ring suggest that stealing key schedules was important to Soviet espionage, perhaps because direct cryptanalytic attack was inadequate.

Finally, the inability of GCHQ to find any use for public key-private key encryption after they invented it (until it was reinvented and made public in the middle 1970s) suggests that the bulging brains have their occasional difficulties, sometimes of considerable import. Note that there is at least one claim (from Gus Simmons) that NSA knew about two-key encryption for a decade or more before publication by Diffie and Hellman. Perhaps the legends of omni-competence or omniscience or both are just that, mostly legendary? ww (talk) 17:48, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

British National Party member list leak

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a notable leak or not as Wikileaks was not where the list originallly appeared, though the blog who originally published the list have taken it down. The leaking of the BNP member list has become a major news story in the UK however and the list I believe is currently responsible for Wikileaks being down with its servers being overloaded (I don't know how common an occurence that is). It seems it might be worth noting? 92.236.245.163 (talk) 17:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I would agree with this, though if there are mainly American editors, then they won't know who the BNP are... St91 (talk) 19:33, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Updated...--SasiSasi (talk) 23:13, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Coleman donor List Posted

Wikileaks has now published lists of donors to the Coleman Campaign in an attempt tointimidate people who contribute to Republican campaigns. In emails that they have sent to people on the lists, they request "donations" to their organization. The data includes sensitive credit card information and sufficient details to give identity thieves a field day.

[2] for first donor list email

[3] for the second donor list email —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.231.6.68 (talk) 15:13, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikileaks appears to be down

Wikileaks appears to be down everywhere, not just Australia, as it says in the article http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/wikileaks.org/ cojoco (talk) 06:18, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

It's down in Australia

Just to let you guys know wikilinks is now blocked by Australian servers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.19.237 (talk) 07:11, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm in Canada and it's down here too now. they were reporting on Australian internet censorship, and I was able to get it less than an hour ago, but now it's gone.--Dguenther - DGun (talk) 07:39, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

58.161.19.237 is wrong. its down worldwide. Please do some research next time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.215.168.186 (talk) 12:23, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

It's back up now and I removed a mention of Australian censorship (the proposal to introduce mandaory filtering hasn't been implemented yet). Wikileaks just happened to have gone down at the same time as the announcement regarding the Australian blocked sites list. It could be due to the Slashdot effect - The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald have been including links to Wikileaks press releases in their online articles. invincible (talk) 14:13, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

No canz wikileaks.org? Teh site can noes load? it loadz teh icon for the page so there MUST be something there, but teh pages no load. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.72.130.233 (talk) 09:38, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Currently it's gone unnoted, but according to the March 11th List, the whole of Wikileaks was to be blocked. Note the IP at the top of list, 88.80.13.160, is the IP of wikileaks. But between the 11th and the 16th it appears they've rethought this decision. Themania (talk) 08:55, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

"TOP SECRET" CIA memos leaked

https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Series/US_Justice_torture_memos :

This is SOO exciting! (and notable, it should be mentioned in the article) --nlitement ^[talk] 10:27, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Where's Julian Assange?

How come this article doesn't mention Julian Assange, when Wikileaks is described as "his website" and he as "the brains behind Wikileaks".?

Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:38, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

You are hereby invited to improve the article. :) -- intgr [talk] 17:29, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Mirror Site - Link

Added http://wikileaks.info/ as Wikileaks Mirror page, since the main one was down - I THINK this is the official mirror guide, but might be wrong.93.96.148.42 (talk) 21:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yet another outage

Wikileaks appears to have taken itself offline until 6 January 2010 in a play for more financial support. Probably not worth going in the article in the grand scheme of things, unless the outage is other than what it appears. —C.Fred (talk) 16:37, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Call it quits

Julius Assange has may explanations, but the true cause of WL downing is not public. They published the Microsoft CoFee police rootkit program binaries and the Interpol ordered to shut them down. They probably will not return and their donation collection may be a law enforcement sinkhole. 82.131.210.163 (talk) 11:47, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

What evidence is this based on? -- intgr [talk] 21:49, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Can someone delete this misinformation. COFE was leaked on bittorrent in nov (not wikileaks), I doubt this much it has anything to do with wikileaks. Furthermore if the money was going to go to law enforcement they would stop collecting donations just as pirate bay did. Ethyr (talk) 21:29, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

And wouldn't they have said as much on twitter? --Gwern (contribs) 19:54 2 February 2010 (GMT)

Climatic Research Unit

I've removed references to the Climatic Research Unit hacks. The mechanism by which the emails were stolen and made public in no way involved Wikileaks, and both sources given with the piece on the hacks were utterly outrageous opinion pieces containing a mixture of blatant falsehood and conjecture. --TS 22:02, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The Tech (newspaper) is a RS, as is the New York Post. Would you like to explain how their 'blatant falsehood's and 'conjecture's include Wikileaks's role in the mass dissemination of the emails? If 2 American publications aren't good enough, then how about de:gulli.com's article? But perhaps the Germans are part of the global warming denial conspiracy; surely those good liberal Norwegians at E24 Næringsliv will be free of the taint of opinion, falsehood, and conjecture - alas and alack! though, for they prominently mention that the emails were available on Wikileaks as well.

If Wikileaks 'in now way involved' itself with the emails, then how come these 4 articles I quickly turned up? --Gwern (contribs) 22:23 16 January 2010 (GMT)

There's no such thing as an unimpeachably reliable source. The Tech piece was an editorial of some kind, and utter drivel, and the Post piece was also clearly marked as an opinion piece. Now would you like to try to establish that WkiLeaks was involved in the hacking or was a primary recipient? You cannot because it was not. So why falsely imply that it was? --TS 22:28, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikileaks was involved because it chose to host it, and that was where all the mainstream news services and content aggregators (eg. Reddit or Digg) pointed to. When people wanted to download it and see for themselves, they were not pointed to the obscure Russian FTP host or whereever it started, but to Wikileaks. This makes Wikileaks important in it, and certainly worth mentioning in the Wikileaks article! --Gwern (contribs) 22:49 16 January 2010 (GMT)

If you refuse to defend your removal, Tony, then I will restore the material. The climate scandal was big, Wikileaks was involved, and it is at least as worthy & of interest as some oil dumping, or some dull Bilderberg papers, or 9/11 pager messages. --Gwern (contribs) 18:58 18 January 2010 (GMT)

I'd say cut most of the "notable leaks" section. Unless there was some sort of a reaction from the party whose information was leaked (more than the standard threat to sue), it's not notable here. Guettarda (talk) 00:16, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

And who decides what is more than the standard threat to sue? Let's just use our normal standards - 2 or 3 mainstream media articles is enough. --Gwern (contribs) 18:12 23 January 2010 (GMT)

I've removed this again. The statement that Wikileaks played any serious part in dissemination of the material seems to be based on poor and obscure sources. Had Wikileaks played a major part, surely a multitude of non-weird, immensely reliable sources would have stated so. --TS 00:01, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I've added it again. You say "The statement that Wikileaks played any serious part in dissemination of the material seems to be based on poor and obscure sources.", but this is not what the deleted section said. All it says is that Wikileaks was a prominent host of the material, and, as it is cited by multiple reliable sources, I think that this is true. cojoco (talk) 01:58, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Editing screw-up

I just made a copy edit for style but I suspect I got it wrong. Would somebody please check and revert if necessary? It's rather difficult to fix on a Skypephone. --Tasty monster 18:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems you inadvertently dropped a ref tag; no worries I've put it back. Cheers,  Skomorokh  18:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

By the way. Tasty monster is the account I use to edit Wikipedia from a cellphone. Which, fortunately for Wikipedia, I do not do very much. --TS 00:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Heinlein

In Revolt in 2100 Robert A. Heinlein wrote:

Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

This simply didn't belong in the article. I've moved it here. --Shaundakulbara (contribs) 10:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

freenet

how is this shit based on the freenet software package? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.152.58.98 (talk • contribs) 11:47, 10 March 2008

A little hard to say. Based on links like this, it's my guess that FreeNet only comes into play for leakers -> WikiLeaks, not WikiLeaks -> everyone else. It wouldn't be too hard to set up, just have WikiLeaks set up a well-provisioned node and then it could correspond with leakers over the message boards as to the ID on FreeNet of a leaked file. --Gwern (contribs) 18:11, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

September 17th, Site Down

As of September 17th, 9:07PM CST the Wikileaks website is down through any route. The assumption is that the site is either overloaded due to the Palin e-mail story or it has been shut down by government officials. According to the news, the FBI and CIA are currently investigating so I wouldn't be surprised if they just shut it down temporarily. (DoSA anyone?)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Dgrizzell (talk • contribs) 04:08, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Reference

A Web site that for years has let anonymous whistleblowers break stories of corruption and government malfeasance has gone dark and is expected to remain offline until it finds funds to support its operations and fend off lawsuits.

Investigators and governmental watchdogs say Wikileaks.org has been an invaluable tool for exposing corruption and releasing previously unseen documents. Founded in late 2006, the Web site has posted sensitive documents related to the September 11 attacks, Guantanamo Bay and the Church of Scientology, among others.
...
Neil Gordon, an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, an independent nonprofit group that exposes corruption, said Wikileaks had played pivotal roles in some "pretty juicy stories" in recent years, including documents related to standard operating procedures at Guantanamo Bay and rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq.

"We think there's nothing but good that can come from sites like Wikileaks," Gordon told FoxNews.com. "It provides places for whistleblowers to provide documents anonymously, which is often the only way you can uncover corruption."

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/01/06/whistleblower-web-site-remains-dark/ --Gwern (contribs) 14:16, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Reception section?

Given the feedback the site has had (specially during the CoS and Palin affairs), I am surprised there isn't a section overing the media coverage of it. BrickBreak (talk) 01:45, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Capitalization

Why "Wikileaks" and not "WikiLeaks"? On wikileaks.org, the logo and all occurrences of the word are capitalized in the latter form. --93.39.96.250 (talk) 16:44, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

A great many places go with Wikileaks, such as the BBC or the _New York Times_; plus, it's easier to type. --Gwern (contribs) 19:09 7 March 2010 (GMT)

Sunshine Press

This article really needs to mention Sunshine Press somewhere in the WP:LEAD per WP:BOLDTITLE. —Sladen (talk) 05:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Reppe raid aftermath

This article could use information about the aftermath of the raid on Reppe. Were any charges laid? Did Reppe press charges or lodge complaints in return? Etc. (I am opting out, but figure this page will be getting attention in the next little bit and hope a keener will catch this.) Also, if associated with both Wikileaks and Tor, does Reppe not surpass BLP1E? - BalthCat (talk) 07:09, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Apache vs AC-130

Is there any reason to believe that this video is a pair of Apaches rather than a single AC-130? It would be difficult and unnecessary for an Apache to fire sideways and to the left, whereas this is standard operating procedure for an AC-130. It also fits the role of the AC-130 based on operating cost and armament. OrangeCatholic (talk) 23:42, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense. And if it was an Apache then why would it need to circle around the targets? However, per WP:V, we shouldn't change the article until there's a reliable source. -- intgr [talk] 23:55, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Right. The circling is what gives it away. I'd like someone from the Wikileaks community to indicate why it was labeled an Apache video. Was this information provided? Or was it a causal inference from the word "gunship"? OrangeCatholic (talk) 04:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Crazy Horse 18 and Crazy Horse 19 were both AH-64Ds. This is supported by the sworn statements released by the military. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 23:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment redacted. I'm willing to accept that this is a pair of Apaches, based on the shape of the gunsight and weapons used, not to mention the high-pitch whine on the pilot's radio calls. Interestingly, chopper 19 never identifies itself in the video. It's fairly easy to detect the second gunner, but the presence of the second pilot is tricky to infer. OrangeCatholic (talk) 03:30, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

...Except that the way one uses an attack helicopter with a front-seated gunner (like the Apache) varies hugely from the huey's (with a left-side mounted machinegun/gunner) you are thinking about you mean? All in all, he has a good point. Circling around like that seems inconsistent with Apache's, especially when that means they will lose their targets from time to time? Kinda defeats the purpose of using a helicopter as a weapon platform. 130.240.136.67 (talk) 08:46, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Think about it this way: how smart would it be to park a helicopter in the air, staring down (at least) one guy with an RPG? Especially over a built up area, where people can pop out of buildings in an instant. I don't know anything about helicopter tactics, but I suspect in a case like this (where they can't just dart-in, make the kill, and dart-out), they try to keep moving, to make themselves less of a target to the visible and invisible threats.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 09:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Considering the time between shots fired and shots hit, it's fairly safe to say that the one guy with the suspected RPG is out of range anyway. Still, that's not the point. Helicopters are agile, while being parked over a contested urban area would be a bad idea, and while it would be best to keep moving, why would the helicopter circle in the manner they do? It makes little sense. Hence why the original poster had a completely valid point. 130.240.136.67 (talk) 11:06, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Agree with the OP, this does not look like a helicopter flight. (Or maybe if it's on auto pilot set to circle :P) looks way more like an AC-130. Plus it was already circling before they "saw" the "RPG". This was actually the first thing I thought when I read 'Apache', I thought no way, that's an AC-130 (or similar). But since the source says Apache... S!lver NL (talk) 03:51, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Higher resolution available?

Is there a higher resolution available for the Collateral Murder video? People are asking what the gunners were able to see compared to what we saw. In particular, the gunsight numbers are blurry. Obviously, this would not be the case for the gunner.

The overall presentation is very nice, I'm just wondering if we are seeing compression artifacts after WikiLeaks added the subtitles. OrangeCatholic (talk) 03:39, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

"Sweden or Ireland based"

That's a rather, computer-y way to put it. "- Are you Sweden or Ireland based? - Yes. -Well, which one are you? -Wat?". I don't think humans operate that way though usually, especially if they're not computer scientists :-) --Athinker (talk) 21:00, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism or just poor wording?

In the background section it says none of the people working for the project are paid because "they have no skills." That wording doesn't seem to be in the source cited, which suggests they don't get paid because there isn't enough money coming in yet to pay them. I would guess that this is vandalism, but perhaps someone without a decent facility with English meant something else. Could someone look into this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.95.148.252 (talk) 18:00, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Haha, yeah I saw that too. Ima delete it though. --200.69.43.218 (talk) 19:18, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Reference to Kaupthing returns 404

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Financial_collapse:_Confidential_exposure_analysis_of_205_companies_each_owing_above_%E2%82%AC45M_to_Icelandic_bank_Kaupthing%2C_26_Sep_2008 isn't valid anymore... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.4.70.190 (talk) 16:49, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Is Wikileaks really a wiki?

It doesn't look like any wiki I've ever seen. Tisane (talk) 01:45, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

It used to be a wiki, before the site was shut down in December 2009; the wiki was used for discussing items, posting interpretations/translations, etc. But I guess they needed "wiki" mainly for marketing reasons "because everyone knows Wikipedia". -- intgr [talk] 18:41, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the authorship of the site needs to be more throughly disscussed. In an interview i saw with the editor of the site, it sounds as if it is more of an editorialized version of their content, usually politically motivated. --134.129.136.30 (talk) 02:07, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Article Probation, seriousness of article, etc

I think, at this point, we need to recognize that the article, though somewhat young in its developmental life cycle, is a pretty serious one right now due to its relevance to a current event and its possible relevance to future current events. I myself, a non-contributor (sitting at a public computer lab), am pretty happy with it, as it stands, and I'd like to thank the contributors for that.

I see that the article is on probation and is currently being monitored pretty intently. This is probably a good idea, simply because we must recognize that this article, like many, could become a potential ideological battleground between people who are more interested in promoting their views than preserving encyclopedic integrity on wikipedia. We've seen a few malicious edit attempts on this page alone (at least one act of vandalism and an attempted Article deletion that came from a user with no previous history on Wikipedia). And if the rest of Wikipedia is any lesson, you see that Wikiscanner has already exposed countless ill-intentioned edit attempts by think tanks, companies, article subjects (in vanity edits), the CIA, and other malicious browsers, to pages other than this one.

Fortunately, wikipedia's core admins/contributors are always on task to make sure that standards such as NPOV, no original research, no vanity edits, etc, are upheld. But in this situation, there is an added importance for us to be vigilant for the possibility of malicious edits -- the page is relatively young, Wikileaks is relatively young, Wikileaks is in the news right now (as the subject of a controversial story), and Wikileaks has also released an article that claims "U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks" recently by way of discrediting specific stories, sources, or the very nature of the site, to the point of building a fatal lack of credibility around the site. I'm not going to join Wikileaks in accusing the CIA, but I will say that *if* there was any such attempt to marginalize the site, it should be noted that such attempts have probably failed by now, since many of the site's leaks have been deemed credible, and also since they are now supported by credible mainstream journalism institutions such as the AP and LA Times. But still, we can't dismiss the possibility that the page could suffer malicious edits from the sorts of organizations/people who might feel threatened by Wikileaks -- or, on the other hand, malicious edits from people/organizations that might want to co-opt the cause of Wikileaks as something complementary for their own cause, and influence the site to show an unfair bias *for* Wikileaks or against the subjects of leaks. We must protect Wikipedia's standards in all cases. Once again, it's evident from this discussion page that this Article has already been subject to malicious edits in the form of vandalism (see other section on this talk page, where a watchful user has thankfully brought up a vandal's edit -- a claim that the people behind Wikileaks are unpaid because "they have no skills"). Also, the page was once nominated for deletion due to Wikileaks' supposed lack of notability -- the nomination received unanimous calls for "keep" or "strong keep," and one user voting "strong keep" noted the following: "Clear notability established. Also, nominator may be a throw-away SPA account. No other edits but this nom." Again, there is evidence of malicious activity surrounding this page.

Like I said, I am a non-contributor, and am happy with the current state of the page. But I will keep an eye on edits in the future in case anything malicious pops up again (at this rate, I'm sure it will, unfortunately). 96.56.205.131 (talk) 21:48, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

While I agree with the points you make, I suggest that you keep them brief and to the point in future, and read carefully before you post. You seem to have made each point at least twice, and some are unclear. Also, I would suggest getting your own WP account, as an IP address is not permanent as is inherently less trustworthy. cojoco (talk) 04:48, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Strange Avoidance

Article and discussion page have a decidedly "stay away" feel to them as well as an intimidating attitude here with the "article probation" threat. The fact few experienced Wikipedians are editing this article as well as the subordinate one is disappointing, I think. Mindmattering (talk) 01:11, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll see if I can get that fixed. cojoco (talk) 09:49, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

there was a bit of discussion and Polargeo appears to have removed that template cojoco (talk) 03:30, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Was the power supply fire ever explained?

Wikinews:'Wikileaks.org' taken offline in many areas after fire, court injunction said that just after a dDOS attack, the UPS caught on fire. Was this done by hacking into it, or by some other means, or a bizarre coincidence? Wnt (talk) 03:28, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Climate research unit emails

I've just re-instated the Climate Research Unit emails, as I think we've been there before cojoco (talk) 11:39, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Why is it here at all? What does it have to do with Wikileaks? The emails where stolen - Yes. They were leaked on the Web - yes. But: They weren't released to Wikilieaks. They may later have been copied to WikiLeaks - but that was after they were leaked and disseminated to the rest of the web. Seems to be a pretty obvious case of irrelevant information (and despite what the references (2) say, Wikileaks isn't/wasn't a prominent host). Clear case of WP:UNDUE to my eyes. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

If you think the case is so clear/obvious, please make it. There are multiple RSes cited and Googling Wikileaks climate research yields tens of thousands of hits. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 23:58, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I really don't understand what the issue is. It was a prominent leak, with a lot of sources which mention Wikileaks. Why does this issue keep returning? There have been a lot more than two WP:RS which mentions the connection between the emails and Wikileaks; how many WP:RS do we need? Would it make you happy if we added ten? cojoco (talk) 02:58, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

"lot of sources"? Hmmm - interesting. Please give some. Perhaps you may want to exchange the ones in the article, since those are quite frankly rather low quality ones:

The first one is an opinion article, and not a reliable source for the information given (op-eds are reliable for authors opinion - but never facts). The second is also an opinion article. The third one is the only one to be classified as a reliable source - but its information comes not from something about the CRU - but rather from Wikileaks itself.

Periphrial sources - can you give a reference to a mainstream media article on the email debacle that actually states that Wikileaks is a main outlet - or has played any role in this debacle? (i rather think you can't - which is why i'm objecting). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:28, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Not to mention that the text currently in the article, about being a "prominent host", is entirely unsupported by the only reliable source given for the existence of the emails on Wikileaks. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I didn't realize that WP:RS now included a clause which says 'a source is a RS, unless it's a low-quality RS as defined by random editors, in which case they no longer count if said random editors feel like challenging them'. --Gwern (contribs) 23:30 9 May 2010 (GMT)

Do you dispute that Opinion articles aren't usable for factual information? (hint: this is a fairly basic "in a nutshell" WP:V item). That something is a "prominent host" is a factual claim - and can't be sourced to the opinion of an individual. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

If you have any policy backing for this supposed opinion/factual distinction, show your cards - provide the quotes from policy. --Gwern (contribs) 00:52 10 May 2010 (GMT)

Why does climategate cause so much trouble here? It's clear that Wikileaks role was noted by a large number of usually reliable sources, and we have been over this same old ground several times now. Nothing of Wikileaks role seems remotely contentious, so why do people keep arguing about it? I can't even see any possible benefit to either side of the climate debate if this material were removed: can somebody please enlighten me? Is the mere mention of climategate going to give succor to climate change deniers? Would some prefer if it was written out of history? cojoco (talk) 01:47, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The disputed part of your comment is: "noted by a large number of usually reliable sources". If that is the case - why aren't we citing these? Sorry but the claim that Wikileaks somehow was an important outlet or even a notable mirror of the information is simply not correct. There were lots of sites that were (and are) distributing the emails (and probably notable for it). But wikileaks had no notable position afaict (and the current references certainly don't back it either). Again: Wl was not a major distribution site. And the emails weren't originally released here. Nutshell: Both the CRU emails and Wikileaks are notable - they are just not notable in connection with each other. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 14:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Please don't cloud the water. Nobody is suggesting anything except that WL was a notable and prominent host, and there are ample sources to support this. Why should we be citing these? Because one should be enough. If you wish to add more, there are some here [4][5][6][7][8][9] cojoco (talk) 17:44, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

On what WP:CRYSTAL means and doesn't mean

I believe a good faith reversion of my edit by Ianmacm, was a slight misinterpretation of WP:CRYSTAL. The policy states that Wikipedia should not include unverifiable speculation about the future. I would like to stress that this means we, as an encycopedia should not make unverifiable claims about the future. So under this policy, the statement "right now Wikipedia are sitting on history-making stuff", should not be included in the article, and I think this is what Ianmacm was getting at. However the statement I added to the article was "Julian Assange has said "right now we are sitting on history-making stuff"". It is verifiable that he said this so it does not fall under WP:CRYSTAL, because we, as an encyclopaedia, are not actually claiming that his prediction is correct. Thanks. Gregcaletta (talk) 04:01, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but as a rule Wikipedia articles should not tease the reader. There is also a WP:NOTNEWS element here, since the article is not a blog or publicity piece for Wikileaks. If and when the "history-making stuff" is published, and it receives significant coverage in reliable secondary sources, it should be mentioned in the article. Until then, it fails the notability guidelines as well.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:34, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Gregcaletta is correct: WP:CRYSTAL prohibits Wikipedia editors from speculating about the future: it does not stop us from reporting on the speculations of others. Here's the policy: It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the prospects for success of future proposals and projects or whether some development will occur, if discussion is properly referenced.

This still fails WP:NOTNEWS in the absence of any information about why the material is "history-making stuff".--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

You pointed out, correctly, that WP:NOTNEWS is about establishing notability. You will notice that WP:NOTABILITY emphasises that "notability guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article. They do not directly limit the content of articles". The questions are (1) whether the quote is from a reliable source (yes, a major newspaper) and (2) is it relevant to the article (yes, relevant to "Wikileaks") and relevant to the section in question (yes, very relevant to "Upcoming leaks"). Gregcaletta (talk) 06:20, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Rather than us dissecting policy issues, let's look at the overall situation: Julian Assange made a statement and offered no information about why the material would be "history-making stuff." It is not for him to decide what is history-making, as he has a clear interest in promoting his own website. Let's see the material before deciding how history-making it is. We are missing the point here, because the interview with Julian Assange could be in the external links section without any problem.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:32, 24 May 2010 (UTC).

We don't care whether or not it's history making. What we should be concerned with is what it adds to the article. I don't see any policy issues. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 06:39, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Right, if there is a real question here it is about whether or not the quotation adds to the article. To me the statement in itself in interesting and relevant enough to be included, whether it is a true statement or not. Gregcaletta (talk) 07:36, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Random comment

I can see why the usual group of criminals (USA,RUSSIA,ISRAEL,ZIMBABWE,KOREAS,....) would be upset with them but does anyone know why our mainstream press has them at arms lenght? 159.105.80.141 (talk) 14:11, 26 May 2010 (UTC)I just found out that they posted all the emails and addresses of anyone who did business with David Irving - wow tough guys. I wonder if they would like the ADL emails - just a thought. Please, wikileaks should get the names spelled right when they upload garbage.159.105.80.141 (talk) 14:27, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Still Swedish based?

Their snail-mail goes to Australia, their IP's are all over the world, their servers are in multiple countries, the founder himself holds no residence and moves from country to country on a project basis. Should we really call them Swedish based just because they started there? I think "an international organization" is more appropriate for their intro descriptor. Dkriegls (talk) 04:03, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Well the source does claim that it's in Sweden. Do you have a better source? -- intgr [talk] 11:52, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

The current issue of the NEW YORKER contains a very long article on WikiLeaks and its Swedish founder who reportedly has no permanent home. WikiLeaks may once have had a "Swedish Connection" but it is hardly Swedish today in any relevant sense that I can discern. Frankatca (talk) 14:02, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I haven't gone back to check, but doesn't the New Yorker article also discuss how they are still hosted by a Swedish ISP, Proq.se or something like that? --Gwern (contribs) 14:37 5 June 2010 (GMT)

The New Yorker article indicates that the hosting is now very well hidden by a secretive group of unidentified techies who have made it extremely difficult to identify the exact location of the actual servers. Possibly in Sweden, of course, but more likely a geographically dispersed network. Frankatca (talk) 17:43, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I should have been more clear about that in my original post- Is a bad source (the current one) better than no source, when most sources say they are trying to hide their location. Their home page says snail-mail should be sent to an address in Australia. Should that be identified as their location? I think identifying them as an international organization is the only rational course. Dkriegls (talk) 19:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, WP:IGNORE. -- intgr [talk] 22:57, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

If the topic is this complex, then perhaps we should just have a section on it and describe it neutrally as 'international' anywhere else that we have to? --Gwern (contribs) 21:55 7 June 2010 (GMT)

avoiding discredited sources

because wikileaks exposes a lot of powerful organizations and nation states, there are continual attacks on it and this page. infact there is a us intelligence report from 2008 released on wikileaks that makes it clear the site considered the enemey of some in the us government for exposing guantnamo bays main manuals etc. some of these attacks appear to repeatedly involve using discredited articles such as one from motherjones. this needs to be watched carefully.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Martymay (talk • contribs)

This is a Wiki, so if you can cite an article which discredits (or at least, disagrees with) another, please add your reference and explain in the text how it casts doubt on the other. Wnt (talk) 13:19, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but I have not seen any evidence of manipulation of this article, and there have not been all that many attacks on WL itself. The intelligence report discusses potential methods of attack, but there is zero evidence that anyone has actually acted upon them. Let's dial down the paranoia a bit and try to find some new sources with good information about Wikileaks. I am sure that there is some reason why it has abandoned the Wiki format and lost most of its material, but I've not seen it in any form yet, let alone a reliable one. cojoco (talk) 01:53, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I had posted something along the same lines as the original post -- admittedly, it was pretty long-winded, so it got deleted from this talk page. But I said, in so many words, pretty much the same thing as the OP -- that the page could conceivably become subject to malicious edits, especially in light of the intelligence report mentioned (about ideas "floated" by the CIA to "fatally" discredit Wikileaks via Wikipedia and other internet sources). At this point though, I concur with the last poster that the page doesn't seem to have evidence of malicious edits so far. That's not to say that it couldn't conceivably happen, which is why we have things like Wikiscanner. For now though, I think the page looks fine. 96.56.205.131 (talk) 23:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Icelandic Modern Media Initiative

• Icelandic Modern Media Initiative

It appears that this has been passed as law in Iceland. Should probably be expanded upon, in this article. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 09:44, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Arrest of Bradley Manning

This entire section was deleted from the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikileaks&diff=369732861&oldid=369581503 I think this is very relevant to the article, well-sourced and NPOV. It should not have been COMPLETELY deleted. Ghostofnemo (talk) 06:15, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, so I added some of it back in under the "July 12 2007 Baghdad airstrikes video" section. Adding the rest of it back in too is fine by me. Gregcaletta (talk) 07:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Wikileaks

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Wikileaks's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "NYDNBM":

• From Arrest of Bradley Manning: Sheridan, Michael (7 June 2010). "Report: Soldier arrested for allegedly leaking 'Collateral Murder' helicopter video to WikiLeaks". Daily News. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
• From July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike: Sheridan, Michael (June 7, 2010). "Report: Soldier arrested for allegedly leaking 'Collateral Murder' helicopter video to WikiLeaks". New York Daily News. Retrieved June 7, 2010.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 19:38, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I fixed the problem by removing the "reference name" from the ref in question, which was a BBC story. The reference you note above does not appear to be a reference at this time. The article you mention appears to be based on the Wired.com story (ref name "wired") which is already being used as a source. Ghostofnemo (talk) 01:06, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, appears to have been dealt with, thank you. Gregcaletta (talk) 07:02, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

MotherJones

Somehow this conversation ended up on the Julian Assange talk page, where I have responded, but I will repeat my main points. The MotherJones article needs to be given due weight in the article, but we need to be equally careful that it does not receive undue weight. I believe the point that is worth including in the article as a compromise is "despite appearing on the list, when contacted by Mother Jones magazine in 2010, Khamsitsangs said he recieved an e-mail from Wikileaks, but never agreed to be an advisor." This is a plain factual statement by a source generally considered reliable, and can added without too many problems. I have two main points as to what would would give undue weight to the MJ article: (1) Details from social networking sites such as a Facebook fan page are not encyclopaedia worthy. THe fan page in question was not under the control of Wikileaks when MJ wrote the article (which they have now conceded) and I have checked their Facebook page recently and can find no reference to Noam Chomsky. Chomsky still appeared on the page, and even if Assange himself ran the page, and even if MJ said all this, it would not be encyclopaedia worthy; it's is a Facebook page. (2) The statement "However, when contacted by Mother Jones magazine in 2010, some of the listed advisory board members "didn't know they were mentioned on the site or had little idea how they got there"" may be true, but it is more rhetorically powerful than it is factually informative. It is much better to be specific and simply say "despite appearing on the list, when contacted by Mother Jones magazine in 2010, Khamsitsangs said he recieved an e-mail from Wikileaks, but never agreed to be an advisor." Placing the first statement directly after the advisory board list potentially insinuates that the advisory board does not exist at all, or that Wikileaks is being misleading in some other way, and the MJ article does not explicitly say this, so it would be a violation of WP:SYNTH, apart from being merely less specific and informative (and entailed within) the second. Gregcaletta (talk) 13:53, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

knight foundation grant

The section on the 2010 Knight Foundation News Challenge grant needs improvement. The section is currently statements made by wikileaks without much balance. Wikileaks, as is explained in referenced articles here, failed the foundation's due diligence process. This should be concretely noted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.104.134.130 (talk) 20:15, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

It should be noted, but you need to cite a source. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 20:42, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I think I read an article in which someone was speculating that Wikileaks had not met the due diligence criteria, but I do not think the Knight Foundation themselves have spoke on the matter. If they have, please provide a source. Gregcaletta (talk) 03:42, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

The source is on the article currently. I linked the reference to make it more clear. The source is the same Yahoo News wire story as was referenced in the following sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.144.249.93 (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I have responded to this on my talk page, but I will summarise here. The sources cited show that the spokesperson for the Knight Foundation actually said "we don't comment when asked whether Wikileaks failed the due diligence criteria, and the writer of the article arranges other statements made by the spokesperson so as to imply that this is the case, without actually stating it. We cannot state things in this article that are only implied in the reliable sources. Gregcaletta (talk) 05:16, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Can a neutral third party review the article and weigh in on the wording? I believe it's entirely clear, based on the article, that "failed the due diligence process" is a completely fair and accurate description of the events. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.144.249.93 (talk) 06:41, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I have requested a third opinion for you. It should not take long. Wikipedia policy is pretty clear on this though. The source has to actually state it explicitly, not merely imply it by arranging facts in a particular order. Gregcaletta (talk) 07:05, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

That's where we disagree :) I think it's explicit, at least as explicit as any other cited, non-directly-quoted material on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.144.249.93 (talk) 07:18, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I would agree that it is very "explicit" for an implication, but would you call it and "explicit statement"? Gregcaletta (talk) 07:21, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

It's clear to me that the reporter is summarizing what the spokesperson said. Unless you think the reporter fabricated the interview summary.. For instance, an article might say something like: "Mr Gregcaletta says that 'I love farming, it's just how life should be.' He spends his time running around the farm, picking up chickens, and "singing songs as loud as he could"' It would not be WP:SYNTH to say, in an article here, "Gregcaletta loves farming and singing."

WP:SYNTH is defined as "If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C " That's __not__ what I did here!

Actually, I think that is almost what you are doing here. You are not simply combining A and B to get A&B. You are combining the statement "one of the criteria for selection is due diligence" with the statement "Wikileaks were not selected" and drawing the conclusion that "Wikileaks did not meet the criteria for due diligence". Not only is this a deductive argument; it is an unsound one. The author of the article placed the first two facts together in a certain way to imply the third, but he did not actually state the third statement, nor is the third statement even entailed within the first two (if so, we could quote the first two statements, rather than asserting the third) but I guess we can wait for the third opinion. Gregcaletta (talk) 10:23, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

The relevant policy here may not actually be WP:SYNTH; it may just be WP:VERIFIABILITY in general. The source needs to explicitly state what you have included in the article "Wikileaks did not meet the criteria for due diligence". It does not explicitly state this, but I suppose we shall have to wait for the third opinion. Gregcaletta (talk) 10:28, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I am here from WP:3O, which stands for Third Opinion. I have no vested interest in the article or the discussion. In fact, I know nothing about the subject except what is provided in the article, the discussions, and the problematic source. My opinion is not binding, but it is a way to get an outside voice to try to help resolve matters.

I agree with Gregcaletta on this source. While I see your points, anon, in the end, the source does not explicitly state what you are sourcing it as saying. It either needs to say it outright or it can't be included. Another relevant page is WP:TRUTH. Wikipedia doesn't care if it's true; it has to be verifiable.

There are only two instances of "due diligence" in the source:

1. "After that, staffers take over and conduct 'due diligence' on the finalists. Those staffers, he said, make final recommendations to the board, and WikiLeaks 'didn't make the cut.'"

This statement does not say the foundation failed the due diligence process, it states that it wasn't recommended by the board. While it may be true that they failed the process, there may have been some other reason they weren't recommended.

1. "'Every year some applications that are popular among advisors don't make the cut after Knight staff conducts due diligence. That's not unusual.'"

This statement is not a direct statement about WikiLeaks. It is a generic statement that may or may not apply to Wikileaks.

I know that this is a complex issue because of the implications made in the article, but the problem with implications is that they are original research and can't be included. While the letter of WP:SYNTH might not match the issue here, the spirit certainly does. You're taking multiple statements and trying to tie them together, when they weren't actually tied together. Unless it is explicitly stated, not implied, it can't be included

All that said, I have found a source (through a quick Google News search) that explicitly states that Wikileaks failed due diligence: [10]. While it suffers from some of the same problems the Yahoo source does, it explicitly states due diligence is the reason it failed in the title. You can do what you want with that source, but I thought I'd throw it out there. If either my explanation or the second source are not sufficient, I would invite either of you to request an RFC for a wider audience. --13² 18:25, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly, that source states that the Wikileaks failed due diligence in the title, but does not offer any more explicit statements than the yahoo article in the actual body of the blog. It is a blog, so we cannot state that they failed the criteria as if it were a fact, but we could include something like "Steven Aftergood has suggested that Wikileaks may have failed the due diligence criteria". It may be giving undue weight to that one opinion, but I'd be willing to do that for a compromise. Gregcaletta (talk) 02:34, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy to leave it as-is given a third person has looked at it. I'd prefer to not include a "has suggested.." quote there because I think it makes it seem more doubtful that they failed due diligence. They actually did not pass due diligence, but I'll throw in the towel on this argument for now. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.144.249.93 (talk) 02:42, 14 July 2010 (UTC)