Slashdot Mirror
Self-Censoring 'Chinese Wikipedia' Launched
Billosaur writes "New Scientist is reporting that Baidu, China's largest search engine, is launching its own version of Wikipedia. The site, Baidupedia, differs from the more well-known Wikipedia in that it is self-censoring." From the article: "Unlike Wikipedia, which allows anyone to create and modify entries, Baidupedia is censored by the company to avoid offending the Chinese government. Entries to the encyclopaedia must first pass a filtering system before being added to the site. Baidupedia bars users from including any 'malicious evaluation of the current national system', any 'attack on government institutions', and prevents the 'promotion of a dispirited or negative view of life'."
This sort of censorship is pure unequivocal evil. The Chinese government has no right to do that under any circumstances.
Check out my women's designer clothing store.
there are plenty of Western companies that will happily develop the technology. For a modest fee, of course. I'm sure that Yahoo have much to contribute on how to stiffle free speech for the sake of profit.
prevents the 'promotion of a dispirited or negative view of life'.
Yeah, they'll give the breakers of this rule a healthy dose of soma.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
where the Western Wiki presents the Western cultural view of things and events, and the Chinese Wike presents what the Communist Dictators dictate.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Does it record the origin of the offending articles and report them to the government, or merely deletes othe offending articles?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Flamebait me if you want, but companies DO have rights to censorship. Heck, Slashdot censors. Otherwise, every article here might be M$ bashing or Linux raves. Or, endless dupes (oh wait, this happens already). Back to my point, companies can censor if they want. Users just don't have to go there. Why go to Baidupedia when you can go to Wikipedia? Yes, there is a Chinese language section of Wikipedia.
As far as I'm concerned, Chinese companies can censor all they want...so long as the government doesn't force them to use only Baidupedia and block Wikipedia.
By the way, Google owns 2% of Baidu. And as we all know, DO NO EVIL! (yes, full of sarcasm)
However, we can do little more.
Freedom in China ultimately depends on the citizenry. Barring external intervention, the future of a people are determined by the people. Period.
Back in 1989, Czechoslovakia had a population of about 15.6 million. In November of that year, 800,000 citizens assembled in Prague and demanded freedom. 800,000 is about 5% of the nation's population.
The story repeated itself in all of Eastern Europe. Once it was free from the external intervention of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Europeans collectively decided that they wanted freedom, and they got it. They forced their authoritarian governments out of power.
The story is quite different in China. No one is imposing authoritarian rule on China. If the Chinese people wanted to enjoy the same democracy and human rights that we have in the West, then the Chinese people could get democracy and human rights tomorrow. The problem is that most Chinese either support authoritarianism or are indifferent to it. President Hu Jintao (the dictator of China), all by himself, cannot impose authoritarian rule on China. Hu has a lot of supporters.
That is the difference between Eastern Europe and China. I respect the Eastern Europeans.
You realize, of course, that people are criticizing a government that is absolutely convinced that the values and beliefs they hold are the ones that should be universally observed, and they WILL KILL YOU for it?
I think you can see the difference here... Besides until you can tell me you've read the Analects, as well as the various other works of classical Chinese scholasticism, I don't believe you're in ANY position to claim an understanding of Chinese ways. Period. ~a - b.a. History, focus: China.
I challenge you to make an argument in which a government that censors its people is in the right. Convince me that my personal beliefs valuing freedom of expression and speech should not apply in China or anywhere else.
>It's a chance to read a whole bunch of responses by contributors who are absolutely
>convinced that the values and beliefs they hold are the ones that should be universally
>observed.
i find your beliefs are wrong, should not be observed and belive you should be silenced...
when you say that intolerant views should be quashed, you are intolerant youself.
you cannot simultanrously hold that value systems which silence opposition with threat of death are on a level playing field with those that allow diverse oppinions.
put another way - If you silence intolerant speech, then you are far worse than the one who speaks intolerantly.
By definition, you cannot speak ill of Chinese policies in China - which places it on equal ground or superior ground to other systems in China. In the US (and some Euro countries), the subject can be debated - therefore, by simple logic, whatever system the US has is better than what China has.
how can i say that?
I'm in the US.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I challenge you to make an argument in which a government that censors its people is in the right. Convince me that my personal beliefs valuing freedom of expression and speech should not apply in China or anywhere else.
I can't, because you clearly believe in the idea that a social construct such as freedom of speech has some fundamental, inherent "rightness", and I do not.
There is no possible agreement between us on the topic.
Everyone knows that the USA is great as long as it's better than China! National wiretapping? That's fine, it's not as bad as China! "Free Speech Zones"? In China, they don't even get free speech, so that's okay too! Imprisoning citizens indefinitely without trial? In China, they do it a lot more!
Yay, go USA! We're Not As Bad As China (TM)!
I notice that articles about China seem to bring a certain number of posts about how we in the west shouldn't be arrogant and assume, that just because we value freedom of speech and such rights, the chinese people want the same freedoms. And of course there ARE cultural differences between East and West. But I also have to wonder...if the chinese people are so content with the pace of change in society, then why does the government need all those citizen censors, and great firewalls, and controlled wikis? It would seem that there would be no need for such stringent methods of control when the people don't want western ideas.
This is where it got them.
Seriously, you need to read up a little more on just how extensive the demonstrations around Tiananmen Square really were. That wasn't one guy and a bunch of tanks. It was thousands and thousands of people, getting shot in the back by troops armed with assault rifles as they fled. I recommend a recent Frontline special, called "The Tank Man," for more information.
Breakfast served all day!
Communism's been tried? Where? I have been told that Marx never espoused a single party system, which as I see it is the problem with all the "communist" governments that have been around. Cuba, China, the USSR, all single party... Personally, I'd be very curious to see what a communist system (i.e. the government owns everything, etc) combined with democratic elections (or some other means of forcing at least some accountability on the government) would be like.
Fuck this "much worse" shit. It doesn't matter if you're better than a hundred repressive totalitarian regimes.
What matters is what your ideals are and how closely you live them.
We supposedly value "justice". But we seem to be living "vigilantism". And there are people who are 100% okay with that.
The only difference between them and any Chinese executives filtering content is where they were born. If they had been born in China instead of the US, they'd be 100% behind their government's actions to stop the democracy movement.
It is interesting to note that China, being a permanent Security Council, should feel obliged to follow these declarations, but does not.
And guess what? I discovered another member of the permanent Security Council that does not feel obliged to follow these declarations (especially the fourth one). Now what exactly was your point? I forgot...
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
Baidupedia bars users from including any 'malicious evaluation of the current national system', any 'attack on government institutions', and prevents the 'promotion of a dispirited or negative view of life'.
That doesn't sound much different from the Bush administration's stance toward anyone who disagrees with them.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Cultural relativism, and indeed moral relativism in general are tricky subjects to deal with. I start from the position that everything is relative because there is no scale external to reality by which to measure things internal to reality. All scales are internal to our universe, created by the same process that creates the things being measured, therefore all value judgements are relative.
Okay, so does that mean Hitler was an okay dude? Yes and no. In the bigger picture, there is no right and wrong, and nothing matters. But that's not a useful picture. From a Human point of view, Hitler was bad.
Okay, so something may be okay from a particular culture's perspective and still be bad from the perspective of humanity as a whole. The universal declaration of human rights is a pretty good place to start when looking for what might be good for all of humanity.
Now other things are not so clear cut. Circumcision, for instance. Valued cultural practice, or horrible genital mutilation? Who decides?
Finally, simply because something is bad from humanity's point of view, does that give humanity as a whole the right to force an individual or culture to modify their views or behavior? In the case of Hitler, most people would agree that humanity had a moral right to place a value judgement on what he did and use force to stop him. Do we also have a moral right to go into Africa and stop them from cutting off young girls clitorises? Where do we draw the line, and more importantly, what system do we use to determine where the line should be drawn?
I don't have the answers, but I'm sure the answer isn't a simple "everything is relative and we shouldn't ever place value judgements on other cultures" or an arrogant "What I believe is right, is absolutely right, and everyone else can go hang."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
>Well?
Information wants to be free. That's a force.
Insecure governments will go to any lengths to protect themselves from their perceived insecurities, even if it means imprisoning or murdering their own citizens, making war on their neighbors, or isolating themselves from the world.
That's a far more dominant force.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
No, it isn't possible if you live in a country that is either
a) under a government structure that prevents dissent (Cuba)
b) is too apathetic to dissent and hold the government accountable for its actions (the USA)
Socialism and free enterprise are two approaches to the same problems, neither of which have a guaranteed outcome.
Guess what: socialism works in a million American communities every day. Assuming you live in a city, I hope you have water, sewage, and roads. You and your community assign these responsibilities to (and pay) a government that is directly responsible to you. If the jobs don't get done, you should go to meetings and find out what the hell is wrong.
If you are too apathetic or stupid to hold your local government responsible for its failings, it isn't a failing of socialism--it is your fault for being a shitty citizen. That's Democracy, chum. And if your government is competent, you have every right as a citizen of a democracy to elect to give them whatever economic responsibilities you want to.
Go read up on rural electrification in America. It would not have happened without government sponsored electric cooperatives, because no investor in their right mind would have tackled the problem. Socialism is an extension of the idea of the cooperative approach to problem solving. It is a choice, and can coexist with free-market solutions, just like credit unions coexist with banks. It is one approach, and is not itself inherently evil or flawed.
The free enterprise approach is also neither fundamentally evil nor flawed. But, just like a cooperative approach, if you have a nest of corrupt, self-serving players running the game with no oversight or accountability, you will have a shitty outcome (Enron, Qwest, Savings & Loans).
By the way, if your local government sics police dogs on you every time you question their choices, that's not a failing of socialism either--that's a police state, and it would be that way regardless of who is in charge of building roads. The state does whatever the hell they want, to make sure that they can keep exploiting you.
If you're going to be a libertarian, at least get fscking clue. Oppression is the inevitable consequence of a monopoly on power. The monopolist will use their position to fight dirty against anybody who challenges them. This goes for politics and a free market economy. A real libertarian knows that a one-party state run by capitalist oligarchs is far more dangerous and oppressive to its citizens than a socialist democracy, because a socialist democracy has accountability and can change anytime the people are motivated.
This kind of behavior is exposed by Orwell on Animal Farm and, guess what? The average citizenry, in total absence of further information will take the government discourse as true.
The worst scenario is when the "West" starts to take their version as truth as well. See what happened to Tibet! What about the Goguryeo antiques found in China? In the latter case, the Chinese government spent a lot of money paying "scientists" to deliberately rewrite documents and papers about the history of that region to hide the fact that Goguryeo also was part of ancient Korea!
And screw the scientists as well (academical independence my ass!) Once the Chinese version of stuff hits Britannica, Larousse, the west will also start to believe in them.
It's "Self-Censoring-before-artificial-deletion".
"Houston, we have a problem."