Saturday, June 12, 2004
Isaac |
Wikipedia totoally blocked in China
From Shizhao, a wipipedian from Wikipedia Chinese edition, "All Wikipedia sites were blocked (in China), I proved this via router tracking. The requests to this sites can't even go through Beijing's boundary. It's time to report this to some departments".
I don't know what "departments" Wikipedian should report, and by what reason. It's not like 3/11 incident(blogbus.com, blogcn.com were all blocked by local police), Wikipedia is an open project ran by open team. Blogbus can argue to local Commujnist Party's propaganda department that it's an commerical service that will affect over 200,000 users(all blog owners). However, Wikipedia can't.
I welcomed a HSBC private bank delegate this Tuesday in Shanghai. After that, I composed a news press for my business on this event. However, I can't find any reference information about HSBC prviate bank besides their own web site. Thus I turned to Wikipedia. You know, it's not accessible from public internet. I have to find a proxy server to get that page. I know it's just a click in a open internet world, but now i have to hate the knowledge blocker, it's their own fault.
Wikipedia is also an important grassroots publishing method. It also reflects free speech in a free culture, even it's more important from the perspective of grassroots collective intelligence genre. There is no free culture at all in China. If a baby was killed, no one will be sad except their parents.
I know Shizhao and his team is sad enough, take care.
I don't know what "departments" Wikipedian should report, and by what reason. It's not like 3/11 incident(blogbus.com, blogcn.com were all blocked by local police), Wikipedia is an open project ran by open team. Blogbus can argue to local Commujnist Party's propaganda department that it's an commerical service that will affect over 200,000 users(all blog owners). However, Wikipedia can't.
I welcomed a HSBC private bank delegate this Tuesday in Shanghai. After that, I composed a news press for my business on this event. However, I can't find any reference information about HSBC prviate bank besides their own web site. Thus I turned to Wikipedia. You know, it's not accessible from public internet. I have to find a proxy server to get that page. I know it's just a click in a open internet world, but now i have to hate the knowledge blocker, it's their own fault.
Wikipedia is also an important grassroots publishing method. It also reflects free speech in a free culture, even it's more important from the perspective of grassroots collective intelligence genre. There is no free culture at all in China. If a baby was killed, no one will be sad except their parents.
I know Shizhao and his team is sad enough, take care.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
ls |
More G-mails?
Google is giving more Gmail accounts,because some "old" Gmail users will get 3 more invitations.
Then I went to orkut's Gmail Communities to make sure. It was true. (If you are an orkut users, please login and read here.)There are more hopes to get a Gmail. And someone can sell more Gmail too.
The huge e-storage-fight is battling (1) (2)(3). Well,I don't care which company will win the battle, but do the users get the some benefits of it without lose anything? Sorry for the stupid question, I always dream of the "free lunch".
Then I went to orkut's Gmail Communities to make sure. It was true. (If you are an orkut users, please login and read here.)There are more hopes to get a Gmail. And someone can sell more Gmail too.
The huge e-storage-fight is battling (1) (2)(3). Well,I don't care which company will win the battle, but do the users get the some benefits of it without lose anything? Sorry for the stupid question, I always dream of the "free lunch".
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Owen |
Thinking of Chinese Wikipedia
A lot of confirms from Chinese Bloggers confirmed that Chinese Wikipedia was blocked in China. Through my refer system, I saw a dutch weblog "wikipeida benutzer" quote my previous post. Although I couldn't understand what he/she was talking about, I find a good link from his blog: Chinese Build Free Net Encyclopedia. After some of interviews with active contributors in Chinese wikipedia, the article point out why wikipedia was not blocked in China at that time, and predicted potential risks of blocking by Chinese censors.
As Andrew Lih said:
I saw plenty of debates on shizhao's comment page (who is a pioneer Chinese wikipedian and a administrator of Chinese wikipedia), Some Taiwan contributors complained his arbitrary deletion on their works, most of them are caused by sensitive topics such as: definition of Republic of China, Taiwan's WHO bid etc. Actually here is a big culture conflict between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. There just only one version of Chinese wikipedia called "zhongwen" wikipeida, its include both two kinds of Chinese characters. So it's mean no major Chinese character was preferred on site. The problem is mainland Chinese and Taiwan Chinese have different practice to write in Chinese. It's kinda of complicate.
Another debate wave is on the political issue, These topics easily drive contributors lost their patients. Obviously, at this point, contributors (even visitors) were missing one of most important principle in wikipedia: Reflect neutral point of view.
Wikipedia is a very attractive project, I do appreciate they efforts on thousands of Chinese entries. I hope to see that more and more contributors join this project to represent professional information, But if people are focusing on debates to define what kind of major Chinese should be used in Chinese wikipeida, The project couldn't widely participate by others.
Original Post on here.
One reason why Chinese Wikipedia has not been blocked by Chinese censors may be the site's insistence that all entries reflect a neutral point of view, a policy that defines all Wikipedia versions in other languages. The neutral point of view is intended to avoid editing wars between contributors competing to impose their interpretation of various subjects on other readers.
As Andrew Lih said:
"The site is not blocked en masse at the site level because its not obviously pro or against anything because of the neutral point of view policy,"
Another reason Chinese Wikipedia has not been blocked by Chinese censors may be its low profile and relatively small group of regular contributors. As the site gets more attention and attracts more contributors, Chinese censors may decide to block access to the site, giving an indication of how much exposure censors are willing to tolerate for a site like this,
I saw plenty of debates on shizhao's comment page (who is a pioneer Chinese wikipedian and a administrator of Chinese wikipedia), Some Taiwan contributors complained his arbitrary deletion on their works, most of them are caused by sensitive topics such as: definition of Republic of China, Taiwan's WHO bid etc. Actually here is a big culture conflict between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. There just only one version of Chinese wikipedia called "zhongwen" wikipeida, its include both two kinds of Chinese characters. So it's mean no major Chinese character was preferred on site. The problem is mainland Chinese and Taiwan Chinese have different practice to write in Chinese. It's kinda of complicate.
Another debate wave is on the political issue, These topics easily drive contributors lost their patients. Obviously, at this point, contributors (even visitors) were missing one of most important principle in wikipedia: Reflect neutral point of view.
Wikipedia is a very attractive project, I do appreciate they efforts on thousands of Chinese entries. I hope to see that more and more contributors join this project to represent professional information, But if people are focusing on debates to define what kind of major Chinese should be used in Chinese wikipeida, The project couldn't widely participate by others.
Original Post on here.
