Slashdot is a clearing house for news related to the open source movement. If publishing is viewed as a spectrum with conventional edited news at one end and completely unmediated publishing at the other, Slashdot is toward the latter end. People submit items of interest and its either accepted or rejected by the site's editors. Once the item is posted visitors can post comments which are graded by other visitors. When you log in you can set a threshold for comments which ensures that you usually only see reasonably intelligent comment. Indymedia Sydney is part of an international network using similar methods. It takes the idea of open publishing one step further in that everything is published - and eventually visitors will be able to rank the original articles (not just the comments on them). These methods are not just limited to activists and open source nuts but the Slash system is used by a news site that covers Australian and international technology trends (australia.internet.com). This was used because of the view that journalists could never tell the full story. One observer suggested that, given the right tools, large open communities could create more interesting things than closed communities  (Source - Gliddon J. "Nerds from the underground", The Bulletin, 8/5/01)  [The software that underpins Slashdot is freely available, and is used by many organizations world - though it is a bit messy]