If you’re the type that talks back to the news, argues with pundits thousands of miles away from you, and thinks you could do a better job compiling the news than Rueters, CNN, or the New York Times it’s time to put the clicks were your mouth is.

A friend recently pointed me at News Spider, an interactive news source offering the latest news headlines, politics, and business news from thousands of sources worldwide. The site is informative, providing a wider variety of news sources than the average person would encounter on their own, and entertaining since you can rate each story using a four star systems. You can also leave comments on the articles for other users to read.

A quick survey of some of the sources that News Spider draws from include CNN.com, the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo News, the BBC, and Sports Illustrated. There are many, many more. This is a terrific thing because, let’s face it most of us get all of our news from a fairly limited number of sources, usually ones that reflect our own political perspective. Drawing news and opinion from sources we might not generally agree with helps us develop a broader perspective and escape the narrow definitions they carry with them.

While rating news stories is an entertaining thing to do, I wonder what precisely we are supposed to rate them on. Are we rating the accuracy of the story? If so, without access to inside information how are we to judge? Are we supposed to rate how much we liked to news? For example, I saw a story discussing the falling poll numbers of Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, a conservative Republican, would I rate this story highly if I were a Democrat because I regarded it as good news and lowly if I were a Republican?

Perhaps we are simply supposed to judge the grammar and spelling. In any case I’m probably over thinking the ratings issue. The comments aspect of the site will provide endless amusement and argument fodder for visitors and I cannot praise the variety of sources high enough.