Sweeble was born out of the bottom of a bottle of wine at the dog end of a bad day in the newsroom.

It was the end result of hundreds of people’s stories rejected because they didn’t quite fit editorial standards – because they were too small, too personal, too one-sided or a story we’d already done and didn’t fancy doing again.

The news we tell each other as individuals, the stories we want to share, are rarely the ones we see in our newspapers, or on our TVs or hear on our radios. It shouldn’t be like that on the web too. The web needs an open space for news where anyone can tell everyone what’s going on around them, in their own bit of the world.

But the risk with setting up the first user-produced news site, free of editorial control, where the site users write, film or record their own news, is that this dream a handful of us have invested our souls and savings in could collapse under the weight of legal action.

But that’s down to you. It’s your site, it’s your material, it’s up to you what’s posted. You’re asked to think about this each time you upload and to take responsibility for your own material – sweeble can’t stand in between you and the libel lawyers, nor will we back you against criminal charges for incitement.

For the same reason, we ask you not to use obscene, racist or offensive language. If you wouldn’t want to read it about yourself, don’t say it about others.

Similarly, because there’s no back office army supporting sweeble we’re relying on you to tell us when someone else has ignored the terms.

Sweeble will change as the user base changes and grows and as your interests change. But it’s not meant to be just about the big heavy news stuff. You could put up songs by the band you’re in; send pictures of the first egg your canary laid; add comments to every story about life on Mars; email advice to a worried fellow sweebler; sell your N64 in the marketplace, or exchange Buffy for Firefly in the swapshop. There’s plenty here and more good stuff on the way.

Sweeble is the future of news on the net. It’s a future that will be built by its users. You decide what is news, you rate the writers, you choose what stories you see when you log on. That first eureka moment of designing sweeble’s editor-free concept was the start, from that we’ve built this cleverer-than-it-looks platform to let you run the asylum. Enjoy.