Re:Poste is a web service intended to bring academic-level standards of criticism and intellectual integrity to web-based mass media reporting. It accomplishes this by creating a trusted network of academics, experts, and professionals who review stories in the media.

These reviews are to be rigorous applications of the reviewer's knowledge in their areas of expertise. Re:Poste will gather all of these reviews into a single interface and make them available to the general public in the context of the original media article.

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Intellectual integrity in the media is an essential part of any democratic society. It is impossible for anybody to make a good decision when they do not have good information. When making a decision with great implications, which every member of the public does every time they vote, inaccurate information can lead to disaster. Therefore, as the only source the public has for information about non-local events, the media must be held to the strictest standards of intellectual integrity possible.

Unfortunately, the media has rarely met these high standards. Whether intentionally distorting a story to bring about a specific response from their readers or by simply failing to understand a part of the story they are telling, journalists always leave their fingerprints on the facts. Re:Poste seeks to add another voice to the voice of the journalist, one that can bring a more focused expertise to bear on the subject of their story than the journalist's own.

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Re:Poste is still in the testing and community building phase. Once enough contributors have joined their will be a full launch. If you'd like to participate, please let us know!

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The name Re:Poste is a combination of two words. The first part, "Re:", comes from the "Re:" you usually see in the subject line of an email or message board post. The whole name together, "Re:Poste", is pronounced like "riposte", which means to reply quickly.

So, in short, it's a pun. We're really quite sorry.

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A bookmarklet is a small program that you store in your browser's bookmarks or favorites just like you would store a link to a website. A bookmarklet, though, carries out some function on the page currently loaded in your browser instead of loading a completely different page. In the case of Re:Poste, that function is loading the Re:Poste commentary window.

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Technologically, Re:Poste's bookmarklet should be able to run on most web sites. However, the goal of the Re:Poste project is very specific: to provide expert commentary on mass media stories. As such, we have restricted the use of Re:Poste's bookmarklet to only a few media sites, including:

• ABCNews.com
• AOL News
• BBC.co.uk
• CBSNews.com
• CNN.com
• FoxNews.com
• MSNBC.com
• NYTimes.com
• Yahoo! News

This group was chosen because they represent either the highest traffic news sites on the web or the major broadcast news organizations in the United States.

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Yes. Once the Re:Poste contributor community has expanded sufficiently, Re:Poste will be available on other news sites. There is not yet a set timeline for expansion, though.

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Contributors are currently restricted to faculty at a college or university. These are people who have often spent their entire lives studying their area of expertise and educating others on it. In short, they are people worth listening to.

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Re:Poste is gathering a group of contributors now, but it has not yet reached a critical mass. If you would like to be involved, please contact us! Once the initial core of contributors has been set, the only way to become a contributor will be to be invited by a current contributor.

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For a complete explanation of the Re:Poste commentary window's interface, see the How-To page.

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The Re:Poste bookmarklet is compatible with recent versions of Mozilla- or Internet Explorer-based browsers and Opera. This includes recent versions of Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape, Camino, Internet Explorer, Maxthon, Opera, and a number of others. Safari is not supported.

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When you try to make a bookmarklet in Internet Explorer, it always warns you that it may not be safe no matter what the contents of the bookmarklet are. This is generally a good idea; bookmarklets can contain malicious code, and you should always know what you're saving when you store a bookmarklet. Re:Poste's bookmarklet is not harmful, though, so it is safe to say that you want to save it.

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