On February 7, 2005 we had a poll on Meta to
gather opinions on
how to deal with the particular problem of whether to launch a
Chinese language edition of Wikinews or not. Back then, the main
reason for not launching the project was that it might jeopardize
the Chinese Wikipedia, i.e., put it at risk of censorship. The
poll was evenly split, with half favoring launching the project
given enough support (which it has), and the other half wanting
the decision to be left to the Chinese Wikipedia community (which,
incidentally, also voted 50/50):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/China
Exactly one year later, I think it might be a good idea to
relaunch this poll, with the old votes archived, given that the
situation has changed fundamentally. According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Wikipedia_in_mainland_China
Wikipedia has been censored in mainland China since October 2005.
Furthermore, we have all seen large search engines cave in to the
Chinese government in recent months. Interestingly enough, recent
reports note that Google China is being censored in spite of
filtering search results:
http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/afx/2006/02/03/afx2498050.html
To me, this indicates that it may simply not be possible to create
an encyclopedia written from the neutral point of view which will
be accepted by the current Chinese government. The question then
becomes whether it is legitimate for us to continue to put a
resource on hold that might be useful to millions of Chinese
speakers outside the mainland, i.e. Chinese Wikinews.
So, are there any objections to relaunching this poll, or
alternative suggestions on how to proceed? I think the "wait and
see" approach has gone on long enough.
Best,
Erik
Admittedly, the previous attitude which consisted of "not opening"
the chinese speaking wikinews to avoid China censoring our
projects... makes little sense now...
Actually, I am concerned...
We currently claim this : "Imagine a world in which every single
person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
That's what we're doing."
Unfortunately, I feel it is not true. That might be what we are
*trying* to do, or what we are *aiming* to do.
But if we are frank with ourselves, we are currently putting most
of our energy "in giving free access to a lot of knowledge to
people who could mostly access this knowledge without us".
Granted, we simplify the access to knowledge to many. We collect
the info. We organise it. We put all our attention in giving non
biaised information. And this is already really great.
But we mostly give information to those who have internet access
and if they made a bit of effort, they could actually find this
information all by themselves. At least for major languages.
In short, we facilitate access to information for those who
*already* can access it.
What we do not do is:
* We do not *improve* access to those who do not have access to
information now
* And we do not make *every effort* to collect the sum of human
knowledge.
The best example being precisely chinese (main land) knowledge that
we do not collect and chinese (main land) end users which we do not
inform.
ant
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