[Wikipedia-l] Re: China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia today

Sun Jun 13 06:20:20 UTC 2004

Yes, having en.Wikipedia in China is a wonderfull tool for teachers that
have not so many valuable material here. It's also nice for students and I
gave mine the links on Chinese versions, explaining them what is a wiki. I
sent also links to other teachers in other fields (like Chinese culture,
psychology), and some used it as main material for their courses. What
westerners may not know is that universities in China are very important in
the city life (in Kunming, campuses fill nearly fully the north-west quarter
of the city) and the biggest university's dean is often one of the five most
influential men around the mayor. Here education is something important, and
Chinese gov is focusing a lot on it, because they know that well educated
people produce wealth and stability.

My claim is that, if something is to be done to lift this ban, I suggest to
do it first in a soft way, not using laywers, but try to convince Chinese
officials that wikipedia is mainly a wonderfull free tool for educational
purposes, that, as far as they agree on "encyclopedic NPOV", /they/ can
check it and change articles if they think the content offenses China's
integrity or so on. They know perfectly well how to drive such kind of
"reading commitee"...

Example : There are few pages on "how to write Chinese articles" explaining
how to deal with Tawainese problem that would probably fit their demands
("never present Tawain as a nation", and so on... can't find the page now,
you know why....) So I suppose the best could be to try to ask them (but who
? thats the problem, see below) which pages they don't like and deal with
it, explain them that wikipedia is always under construction and that, with
their help, offensive pages will progressively reach npov. The question they
could ask is something like "is wikipedia controlable ?" We would answer
yes, very easily in 99% cases, using admin tools like locking pages in the
other 1%. We could also say that there is a simple and open procedure to
become admin on chinese wikipedia...

Trying to go too quickly in frontal fight would imho be a mistake. They may
want something in exchange if they lift the ban. This "something" could
simply be the possibility to participate in the project, what everybody can
do !

So "who" is to be contacted ? I have no idea but maybe this article
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-06/10/content_1519843.htm
give a direction. See also http://net.China.cn

(gbog)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jiong Sheng" <sheng.jiong at gmail.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2004 12:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia today

> Now I think if the ban is still not lifted for another week, we shall
> have a press release about this. I agree with mav that if the whole
> world knows about it Chinese government will lift the ban, just like
> what it did to Google in 2002.
>
> Another possible choice is to consult a lawyer in PRC. There was a
> case last December, when a Hong Kong reporter brought a political
> magazine into mainland and was confiscated by the Custom. He sued the
> local government and won the case. I believe that we have to fight for
> this freedom. If we keep quiet then they will never lift the ban.
>
> formulax
>
> On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 01:10:00 +0800, ruimu uestc <ruimu at uestc.edu.cn>
wrote:
> >
> > From: "Yann Forget" <yann at forget-me.net>
> >
> > > > Today China gverment blocked all lang. of all projet on wikimedia.
How
> > > > manages?
> > >
> > > Are you sure of that ?
> > > This looks like serious bad news.
> >
> > I can't get to wikipedias today with my ADSL connection located in
Sichuan.
> > I hope tomorow...
> >
> > (gbog)
> >
> >
> >
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> >
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