Everything wikileaks does is not Hacker News. This is just "news."
I see you haven't been here long, though, and your karma seems to be reflecting that you don't really get HN yet, so if you're just trolling you can ignore this comment.
news - wikileaks provides information to the public
hacker - ummmmm, i'd have to ask you what your def'n is here. this is just fairly obvious. a lot of their data is acquired through electronic means.
p.s. i don't post often (not much time), and i've been here quite a while. my karma is due to one comment making a digital underground reference not many people got (look it up). that's all irrelevant tho (only people with X karma and X years on hn are qualified to post?).
My definition certainly doesn't end at "uses electronics."
Today I turned on a light. Should I describe the contents of my room? It was information gathered through electronic means.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.""
so i guess you don't get hn either....
As far as calling names was concerned, I actually suspected that you were just trolling me.
main point was that wikileaks, for me, provides much more insight/info/"bootstrapping-a-new-source-of-news" than most of the stuff i see on hn. hence, i'd rather keep it's presence on here than have it removed. (again, it might only be me that's interested in such things, but judging from some of the comments, it looks like i'm not alone).
whether you agree or disagree with the tone/perspective of wikileaks, they are a resource of information that is "changing the industry" (or whatever hollow cliche is usually spouted up by VCs/investors). hence by either interpretation of "hacker news" (either strictly an entrepreneurial/start-up resource or something akin to 2600), their activities/approaches can be insightful to some of us.
Ignoring the content of these files for a while, it seems to me that nobody is too concerned with the fact that the US government managed to lose 400.000 secret documents and what implications this might have for future conflicts.