[moxiemk1]

While I think this is a great idea (and similar to things I've been slowly working on in spare time), I don't think that the execution really does "Fair" or "Fact based" justice.

The facts that are presented are pretty minimal - while I may agree with some of the conclusions that seem to be pushed by it, it doesn't feel like a general-use tool in order to provide better information. It feels like a presentation with specific goals.

EDIT: I think a better way of phrasing what bothers me about this is: It focuses on making the presentation of the data compelling. That's a good thing - if the presentation is compelling, people are likely to engage and learn. However, here that seems to have been accomplished in an "editorial" way - by hand-selecting things. Compelling presentation of data will be meaningful and honest when it can happen with minimal editorial influence. This is (or at least appears to be) completely hand-selected.

[knowtheory]

I have the opposite criticism.

This feels like data porn. There's no love in here. I'm not sure why I should read through this data. I don't know what the point is, or what relevance it has to ... well anything.

Data display is not the same as analysis.

This is one of the reasons why i hate all the stupid supposed "data-visualizations" images that people always repost from the net. They don't provide people context for the information they're supposedly displaying, nor any way for people to view the source of the analyses.

In that light, i am delighted that a site like this provides ways to interact w/ the data and dive back to the source of the data. And I do hope that these guys will keep experimenting, but I kind of have a "what's the point?" reaction at the moment.

[rndmize]

The material we currently have on the site is indeed hand-selected, and on multiple levels. We currently do all the research for the articles, which means the preference of news sources that my partner and I have comes into play. On top of that, we also choose which facts/data we feel are most relevant and that's what goes on the site; all of which gives the content a certain bias.

It is our objective to get away from that as much as possible. First, personal source bias is pretty difficult to escape, but if our users send us facts/corrections, with sources, this not only decreases the research we have to do (and likelihood we fall back on our defaults), but also gives a much wider range of sources than we would ever have ourselves.

Second, the information that appears in the Summary tabs will always be selected by us. The Minutiae tab serves as the catch-all for information we didn't think important enough for the summary tab, so that if you feel you aren't getting a complete enough picture from the Summary tabs, you can always go to Minutiae or even Sources for additional detail (and escape whatever selection bias we might have).

There's still the problem that we decide what's useful as far as user contributions, but I think that since we're aiming for factual info, this is easier than it might appear. As long as its accurate, we'll consider adding it, and the only question is a matter of relevance.