On 12/3/06, Katherine Cheng <kath.k9194@msa.hinet.net > wrote:

???????????

kath9194

>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Lawrence Lo" <lorenzarius@gmail.com>
>> To: "Andrew Lih" <andrew.lih@gmail.com >
>> Cc: <wikizh-l@wikimedia.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 12:21 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Wikizh-l] Chinese-language Wikipedia presents different
>> viewof history
>>
>>
>> I call this report biased BS. A wiki as we all know is continuously
>> evolving, singling one edition of one article does not prove anything.
>> For instance the last sentences in the opening paragraph of the
>> current edition
>> (http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E6%AF%9B%E6%B3%BD%E4%B8%9C&oldid=3020691 )
>> of the article in question now reads:
>>
>> He [Mao] was also the initiator of a series of political movements
>> such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, resulting
>> in the abnormal deaths of many Mainland people and great destructions
>> to many Chinese cultural and historical monuments. He had a great
>> influence on the 20th century's China and the world.
>>
>> And obviously omission does not equal self-censorship. Self-censorship
>> is when a person knows something but intentionally avoids to mention
>> it. But IMO the more realistic situation with most Mainland
>> contributors is that they don't know that "something" to begin with.
>> When a man is taught since birth that "A is right", how can you
>> criticize him for not knowing that somebody in the other part of the
>> world thinks that "B is right"? In fact, the Chinese Wikipedia is a
>> great place for people from different parts of the Chinese-speaking
>> world to get to know things that we didn't know, to understands things
>> from the other perspectives.
>>
>> On 11/29/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> FYI, some of our own famous ZH Wikipedians mentioned...
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/29/news/wiki.php
>>>
>>> Chinese-language Wikipedia presents different view of history
>>> By Howard W. French
>>> The New York Times
>>>
>>> Just who was Mao Zedong?
>>>
>>> According to the English-language version of Wikipedia, the popular
>>> online encyclopedia, he was a victorious military and political leader
>>> who founded China's modern Communist state. He was also a man many saw
>>> as "a mass murderer, holding his leadership accountable for the deaths
>>> of tens of millions of innocent Chinese."
>>>
>>> Switch to Wikipedia in Chinese, and one discovers a very different
>>> man. There, Mao Zedong's reputation is unsullied by any mention of a
>>> death toll in the great purges of the 1950s and 1960s, or for what
>>> many historians call the greatest famine in human history.
>>>
>>> In recent weeks, the Chinese government has demonstrated its hostility
>>> toward the emergence of a credible source of reference material that
>>> escapes its control by frequently blocking access to Wikipedia, whose
>>> Chinese version, though still far smaller than its English-language
>>> counterpart, is growing by leaps and bounds.
>>>
>>> But on sensitive questions of China's modern history or on hot-button
>>> issues, the Chinese version diverges so dramatically from its English
>>> counterpart that it sometimes reads as if it were approved by the
>>> censors themselves.
>>>
>>> This gulf in information and perspective comes across powerfully in
>>> the entry on Mao, which is consistently one of the most frequently
>>> searched and edited topics in the Chinese version, and in the entry on
>>> historical watersheds, like the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Great
>>> Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
>>>
>>> Chinese Wikipedia users and critics say that the differences highlight
>>> the resilience here of a system of information control whose reach
>>> goes well beyond simple censorship.
>>>
>>> In each of its language versions, Wikipedia is collaboratively written
>>> and edited by online enthusiasts, and contributors to the
>>> Chinese-language site explain the differences in content by citing the
>>> powerful influence of Chinese education, which often provides a neatly
>>> sanitized national perspective on sensitive aspects of the country's
>>> past.
>>>
>>> This parochialism is reinforced by the blocking of foreign Web sites,
>>> and by the conformism of the carefully censored mass media.
>>> Alternative viewpoints are sometimes available, but usually only to a
>>> restricted circle of people who have the means and determination to
>>> seek them out.
>>>
>>> For some, the Chinese version of Wikipedia was intended as just such a
>>> resource, but its tame approach to sensitive topics has sparked a
>>> fierce debate in the world of online mavens over its objectivity and
>>> thoroughness.
>>>
>>> In a recent discussion on the encyclopedia's Web site about the Mao
>>> legacy, a user with the online name Manchurian Tiger wrote, "If anyone
>>> can prove that Mao's political movements didn't kill so many people,
>>> I'm willing to delete the wording that 'millions of people were
>>> killed.'" Rather than contribute to encyclopedias, those who wish to
>>> pay tribute to Mao, he added, should "go to his mausoleum."
>>>
>>> Another user replied angrily: "If you want to release your emotions,
>>> use a bulletin board. Wikipedia is not your toilet." In the end, the
>>> entry on Mao included no death toll from either famine or political
>>> purges.
>>>
>>> Indeed, in its present form, the Chinese Wikipedia introduction to Mao
>>> Zedong could hardly be more anodyne: "One of the main founders and
>>> leaders of the Communist Party of China, the People's Liberation Army
>>> and the People's Republic of China," it reads. "He introduced a series
>>> of political movements such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
>>> Revolution. He had a great influence over 20th-century China and the
>>> world."
>>>
>>> On the evidence of entries like this, for the moment, the fight over
>>> editorial direction of Wikipedia in Chinese is being won by
>>> enthusiasts who practice self-censorship.
>>>
>>> "Most of the people who contribute to Wikipedia rarely touch upon
>>> political topics," said Yuan Mingli, a frequent contributor from
>>> Shanghai. "They prefer to write about things like technology. There
>>> are other things in life."
>>>
>>> Others denounce compromises on content as a deviation from the
>>> original mission of Wikipedia, which they say is to spread reliable
>>> information and to seek truth. In any case, they add, self- censorship
>>> has already proved naïve because the government still frequently
>>> blocks access for most Chinese Internet users.
>>>
>>> "There is a lot of confusion about whether they should obey the
>>> neutral point of view or offer some compromises to the government,"
>>> said Isaac Mao, a well-known Chinese blogger and user of the
>>> encyclopedia. "To the local Wikipedians, the first objective is to
>>> make it well-known among Chinese, to get people to understand the
>>> principles of Wikipedia step by step, and not to get the thing blocked
>>> by the government. The government doesn't buy into their attitude."
>>>
>>> After Mao Zedong, few questions are treated as more sacrosanct in
>>> China than the status of Taiwan, which every pupil is taught is
>>> irrevocably part of China. To publicly suggest that Taiwanese have any
>>> historical basis for asserting their independence from China would be
>>> a career-ending offense for anyone in academia or in the media.
>>>
>>> The English-language version of the encyclopedia speaks of a Japanese
>>> shipwreck off Taiwan in 1871, in which 54 crew members were beheaded
>>> by Taiwanese aborigines. Japan demanded compensation from China, only
>>> to be told that Taiwan was not within China's jurisdiction. The
>>> Chinese-language entry on Taiwan, meanwhile, is silent on the
>>> jurisdiction question.
>>>
>>> Similarly, the English-language Wikipedia mentions the settlement of
>>> Taiwan by aborigines who are genetically related to Malaysians, about
>>> 4,000 years ago. It also places the first meaningful settlement of the
>>> island by Chinese in the 16th century.
>>>
>>> The Chinese version of Wikipedia, though, merely speaks of cultural
>>> affinities with Malaysians and speculates about the possible
>>> exploration of the island by Chinese as far back as the third century.
>>>
>>> A parallel, and purely homegrown, effort at creating an online
>>> encyclopedia in China, Baidu Baike, skirts controversies like these
>>> altogether. Baidu Baike, which is owned by the biggest Internet search
>>> engine company in China, asserts that Taiwan's original inhabitants
>>> "came from mainland China directly or indirectly," and not from
>>> Malaysia.
>>>
>>> Similarly, a user who searches for the Tiananmen Square massacre will
>>> find no entry.
>>>
>>> As online reference sites grow in popularity here, Baidu Baike
>>> benefits from government efforts to block Wikipedia, just as the same
>>> company's search engine once benefited from similar blockage of
>>> Google.
>>>
>>> Baidu Baike, much of whose content appears to be copied directly from
>>> Wikipedia, would not release detailed user statistics, saying only
>>> that it has "several million" users each day. A spokeswoman for the
>>> company, Zhang Yan, said it is guided by the editorial policy of not
>>> "judging the existing national system with malice."
>>>
>>> Asked to explain what this meant, Zhang said, "Anyone who is Chinese
>>> knows."
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Wikizh-l@Wikipedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikizh-l
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
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