Wikipedia Explodes In China

eldavojohn writes "The Chinese have recently been allowed to enjoy the Chinese version of Wikipedia now that the ban has been lifted. And the result is an explosion in use after being banned for a year. From the article, 'Activity on nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation's Chinese Wikipedia site has skyrocketed since its release, which Internet users in China first started reporting on Nov. 10. Since then, the number of new users registering to contribute to the site has exceeded 1,200 a day, up from an average of 300 to 400 prior to the unblocking. The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before, with the total now surpassing 100,000, according to the foundation.' No one's sure how long this will be available to the People's Republic of China but hopefully the government will recognize that at least a significant part of the populace enjoys a Wikipedia community."

Censorship is a bad thing

If the Chinese government doesn't see the threat that Wikipedia poses, I can only assume they already have filters in place to block objectional content.

Re:Censorship is a bad thing

I'd be interested in what the Chinese wikipedia article says (if anything) about the Student Massacre at Tienanmen Square...
For example, would they use the PRC Body count (23) or the Student Association's and the Chinese Red Cross body count? (2000 - 3000, as many as 10,000 injured).

Re:Censorship is a bad thing

Maybe before you respond next time you'll stop for a second and ask yourself; What was that whooshing sound I just heard?

Re:Censorship is a bad thing

Actually, the page is locked due to vandalizing and a dispute notice is put up, just like any other controversial article. And just like other articles, the article itself [wikipedia.org] is pretty objective. As for the death toll specifically, the article says that the number of deaths is disputed; it cites one of the protesters Chai Ling [wikipedia.org] as saying in a recording: "Some say there are about 200 dead, but some claim there are more than 4000. I am not sure of the exact numbers, either." Again, just like any "free" wiki article - explains the controversy and cites an objective source instead of making groundless assertions.

So yeah, I really wish people would stop making snide remarks as if the Chinese wiki is the government's parade ground, without even taking a look at it. Controversial topics aren't really censored, and it operates pretty much like the rest of Wikipedia when it comes to these topics. You have to remember that in the end, it's still managed by Wikipedia moderators, who ideally will try their utmost to ensure that articles are accurate and objective.

Re:Censorship is a bad thing

There are at least TWO ASIAN, non-Communist, democratic, friends-of-the-US countries that had student dissident uprisings after 1960, and their death counts were HIGHER than at Tienanmen Square. Yet we rarely get ANY press or writing about this. Always Mainland China the evil, oppressive, censoring one. Whipping boy for politicians and cozy buddy for on-the-cheap foreign manufacturers and foreign politicans and foreign tax collectors. I don't see why PRC/China hasn't decided to ease up just based on THIS.

Oh, and yeh, there are a LOT of foreign nationals who work in China and vastly under-report their earnings. Effectively committing tax evasion, just like they would if they could back home. (Not sure about this part, but I also understand that the tank did NOT run down that man, but he was under the body cavity area, uncrushed. If THAT is true, then there are a lot of opportunistic and sensationalistic jerks in the media who need to be brought up/flogged...)

I wonder if China's Wikipedia site will report about the foreigners there who are exploiting the system.

Ugh...

...just another of many good reasons to learn Chinese.

Imagine.. a completely different culture that was hidden from us by democracy loving folks exploits itself in 100.000 articles/day...

But....

How many of those people signing up are government agents there to just delete and change everything to what the government wants.

Re:But....

Well, they probably do, but the main benefit, I'm sure, is being able to track who contributes what. Don't just censor history, censor the historians... it's an old trick, but a damn effective one. :-/

Re: Wikipedia Explodes in China

I hope nobody was hurt...

What's it Like?

I can't read Chinese, so I really can't go check this myself. How accurate is the Chinese version of Wikipedia in respect to events and topics China's government sees as threatening? Do "Party-approved" versions of articles win edit wars over other ones?

Is it about people enjoying it?

Other than a loose metaphor between the intellectual socialism of wikipedia and the communistic regime that is China, the government will only keep it available for as long as it takes for "unseemly" articles about government tyranny to make there way on to the site. Make no mistake, China's government is allowing this solely for its own benefit. Who knows what that benefit is, but when the potential costs begin to outweigh those benefits, suddenly participation will be down to zero.

Re:Is it about people enjoying it?

If you were the "decider" and had a nasty problem of finding dissenters what would you do? Make it difficult to be a dissenter and rely on spying programs to try and root them out at great cost and effort? Or maybe make it easy, let them out themselves, build up a nice hefty database of potential leads, hunt them all down, expose them for the 'traitors' that they are and a threat to the good people,then destroy them to serve as a warning to any others.

Not that I'm really saying that this is what they are doing. But it is certainly a valid possibility. So many decry this type of thing as paranoid and conspiracy, but the fact of the matter is people with power and control will do anything they can to remain in power and control. This has been proven countless times in human history. It really irritates me when people fail to admit that this type of thing could happen at home or abroad...America had to fight a war to remove ourselves from tyranny. Do people think that you really only have to do that once?

What's Chinese for "wikiality?"

Did you know that the number of Tiannenmen Squares has tripled in the past six months?

Uh huh...

"No one's sure how long this will be available to the People's Republic of China"

Just as long as it takes to build a representative statistical sample pool of the individuals doing all the recent updates...once that's ready - OH! ...and the guys are done clubbing dogs. THEN we're gonna see some real head-banging :)

Helpful unit conversion

1 Library of Congress == 6.19 * 10^17 fortune cookies

Tienanmen Square

Very interesting to see the Tienanmen Square wiki in Chinese. Already it has been locked down due to 'vandalism'

Heh.

See it zh.wikipedia.org/

Population Bomb

Activity on nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation's Chinese Wikipedia site has skyrocketed since its release

How about donation activity? OK, it's only 5 days into the popularity explosion. But if Chinese support of the nonprofit doesn't also explode by, say, Feb 18, 2007 [wikipedia.org], then how will Wikipedia accommodate the huge demand increase that Chinese popularity represents?

Will the "capitalists" now paying to operate Wikipedia have to give the "Communists" a free ride? Just how does Chinese Communism cooperate with global nonprofits when their government isn't managing the process?

Ain't seen nothin' yet...

The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before, with the total now surpassing 100,000

You gotta love scale. Imagine what will happen once they get genuinely interested in the West and start checking out something more than just college entrance fees...

Maybe this will finally get people outside China to start showing a bit of awareness when told they have no reliable/previous experience with the shear scale of things China brings to the table.

Maybe, just maybe, a few outsiders will get a clue and stop thinking they can judge China according to how they go about their (statistical) lives every day. More than one business model is going out the window, I can promise that much :)

ChinaWikipedia entry for Freedom of speech

This article has been marked for deletion. Reason: "Doesn't exist".

Naive much?

hopefully the government will recognize that at least a significant part of the populace enjoys a Wikipedia community

As if they care if anyone enjoys it.

The real question is how long before they demand that they be the ones to control it, including full access to the user logs.

Actual statistics and charts

Strangely, the WSJ article does not mention any links or references to where to find the raw data.

It was based on charts and research I did from Beijing. [andrewlih.com]

Cheers.

Wikipedia Explodes in China -- Recall ordered

Sony has recalled all their batteries used in Wikipedias in China. Sony stock fell another 3.75 on the news.

I smell..

I smell some re-education torture in the near future.

searches

As to be expected, there isn't any critical information in the obvious searches (democracy, Tiananmen Square, PRC). I wonder if any of the edits will add this. I'm also curious of the Chinese authorities have secured a way of seeing all edits to the entire site from day to day, purging all the information that is damning to the government.

  Under "democracy", I wonder intrigued to see how China is described on the map [wikimedia.org] [from CIA world factbook originally] as "democratic, but does not allow for alternative parties" - which seems to be the standard Orwellian-speak of a communist nation. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is their most obvious map listing of a non-democractic government.

  FYI, use babelfish [altavista.com] and use to/from Chinese-trad for best-but-still-poor results. Remember to translate your search words into Chinese-trad before entering.

 

"significant part of the populace"

Yes, 1200 new every day. That would perhaps be a significant part of the Lichtensteinian populace. What country are we talking about again?

Why China finally unblocked Wikipedia...

See also the explanation I gave as to why Wikipedia was unblocked in China [andrewlih.com].

The short version:

November 9, 2006 saw the complete unblocking [andrewlih.com] of Wikipedia in China, resulting in a four-fold increase [andrewlih.com] in new user registrations. Though it is still subject to URL- and page-level keyword blocking, the vast majority of the site is freely accessible.

Why was it unblocked? No one can know for sure. But in the end, I believe consensus among the Chinese authorities found the benefits of Wikipedia far outweigh the risks, and signals their understanding of a read-write Web.

China wants to read it, the world wants China to write to it.

With Wikipedia blocked, China suffers because its ranks of knowledge workers cannot access the top reference site in the world, and the world suffers from not having China's expertise and input in Wikipedia. Sound familiar? This is Wikipedia as the ultimate implementation of "read-write [lessig.org]" culture, ala Lawrence Lessig.

And in the end, if you think about it, doesn't it make complete sense that the People's Republic of China would embrace the people's encyclopedia of Wikipedia?

Inflow of Information

What's the point of allowing people outside China to access the Chinese wiki, but censoring the rest of Wikipedia? It still allows access to incoming information.

Quality of articles

The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before

Um, it's not too hard to increase the article count that fast when the articles are just filled with nothing but question marks. Visit the site and see for yourself!

Dan East

(mtcf)

Google Translation of Tiananmen Square Page

Here is the text of http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4 %BA%8B%E4%BB%B6 [wikipedia.org] above the Table of Contents translated by http://translate.google.com/translate_t [google.com] (white space reinsertion attempted):

Due to the recent frequent sabotage half of this page has been protected, anonymous users or users can register new editor. And if that entries can be obtained for the revised use of the discussion page, or for the discharge of the protection. (Protection is not an authorized version of the current page. In addition, notices of the template was used. To protect the pages please request. ), the latter sections or paragraphs, some of the information is not confirmed or suspicious sources failed at all.

Page confirmed discussions have relevant discussions and courage injected Source! Disputed the accuracy of this article.

The editors need to hang up this template pages illustrate the accuracy of the controversial dialogue, in order to allow the editors to discuss and improve.

Produced by the Beijing Central Academy of Art's "Goddess of Democracy" statue, and later became a symbol of the democratic movement in China in 1989.

Original destroyed, in Vancouver, San Francisco and other cities have copies of legislation in public places. Amplification produced by the Beijing Central Academy of Art's "Goddess of Democracy" statue.later in 1989 became a symbol of the democratic movement in China. Original destroyed, in Vancouver, San Francisco and other cities have copies of legislation in public places. June 4, also known as the 1989 pro-democracy movement (Democratic Movement), the 1989 student movement (Students), the June 4 massacre, the incident. 1989 democratic movement, the 1989 pro-democracy movement at Tiananmen Massacre, the Tiananmen incident, the Chinese government has called the unrest, counter-revolutionary rebellion.The recent political turmoil has renamed the turn of spring and summer, referred to the June 4,it is April 15, 1989 to June 4 and the day after the political events taking place in mainland China.by the mass of students, and public processions and demonstrations Movement. However, during the negotiations between the government and the student body failed to reach consensus and political compromise,Finally, the government convened caused some military force to suppress (exact numbers are unknown - exists from several hundred to several thousand of view) the general public and students end up casualties. The center is generally believed that Beijing's Tiananmen Square incident. Besides Shanghai and many other cities are also the expression of different political views during the demonstration. General political commentators say that this incident led to the People's Republic of China since 1978 after the pace of political reform to stop or even reverse it. Today the many controversial incidents which have not been resolved.

Oh Noes!

Wikipedia Explodes in China. Oh, the humanity!

Wikipedia Explodes in China!

30 Million people dead! News at 11! :p

Something Missing...

Something I didn't see at the top of every Chinese Wikipedia page:

Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!

Realiable,mainstream sources

They still argue on the talk page about reliable sources.
that enough to convince me that wiki rules are flawed from the root.

hello, wikipedia is not a cure

hello, wikipedia is nothing, we can't get food, or money, or job from it..
we cant even sell wikipedia content for money.
why's reading such a website important to chinese people?

Most requested topic...

How Do I Eat Your Lunch?

Wow what a great way to monitor readers!

Wow smart move PRC, it doesn't really matter who writes "sensitive" articles. I will just monitor who reads them and who searches them! Weeeee profits! Uh.. maybe not but a good list for reference..

Old tricks

Wow. Been perusing the Chinese Wikipedia. I honestly didn't know that a glorious member of the Committee invented the telephone, the television, algebra, _and_ the paper clip!

Re:sure,

It's probably all about power and the control of "dangerous" information. If the people learn about "xyz", or, on the other hand, people start talking about the government (or a specific person), a revolution may ensue. People in power like to keep that power and will do a lot of things to keep it that way.

Re:Filters?

"Taiwan may be a de facto separate state, but definitely not a separate nation"

It's a separate nation in reality. Everyone recognizes it as such except for just one foreign country. The only time it is not treated as a separate nation is when someone has to give a wink toward mainland China's wishes. The world operates under the basic attitude of "Of course Taiwan is a separate country. When forced to, we'll agree when Beijing for its own silly reasons says it isn't, but that is just to make them happy and NOT because Beijing's argument has any merit. Otherwise, we treat Taiwan for what it is: a separate nation."

Taiwan should be a nuclear nation

Indeed it is hypocritical and downright foolish for the US not to back a highly successful Asian democracy. Surrendering it to the communists, like the British did with Hong Kong, would be a disaster. Since the worst has happened and North Korea is nuclear (a Chinese client with weapons of Chinese design), the US should insure that Taiwan and Japan have a nuclear deterrent as well. This would arrest Chinese adventurism in the region permanently.

Re:Explosion...

>>While it is good for some reason I don't really get :), what is the future of Wikipedia as such in China?
>Let me sugest this to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Kawashima's_Brain [wikipedia.org] _Training_2

Did you read it? :) All I am asking is why Wikipedia is important for China. Individual freedom is a part of western philosophy. East has a long history of sacrificing individual benefits for the benefit of Society.