[Foundation-l] Re: Relaunch Chinese Wikinews poll?

Sat Feb 4 22:43:16 UTC 2006

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 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