Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
...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...
How many of those people signing up are government agents there to just delete and change everything to what the government wants.
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jim can't read it so can't remove articles he doesn't like
I hope nobody was hurt...
This guy's the limit!
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?
That title sounds like the climax of a bad erotic novel.
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.
Did you know that the number of Tiannenmen Squares has tripled in the past six months?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Sooo essentially what's being said is that a Chinese-language website has more users now that it's widely accessable from inside China than when it wasn't accessable from widely China.
Does this really come as a suprise to anyone? (apart from the ban being lifted, that is).
In other news, websites around the globe realise that people are more able to read their content when their servers haven't been slashdotted out of existance.
No injuries were reported. Working together, the users were able to delete all the harmful parts of the explosion. Of course, there was a lot of debate first on whether or not to delete them, since some argued that both the harmful and non-harmful parts should be represented, but in the end the 'delete' votes outnumbered them.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
"No one's sure how long this will be available to the People's Republic of China"
...and the guys are done clubbing dogs. THEN we're gonna see some real head-banging :)
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!
1 Library of Congress == 6.19 * 10^17 fortune cookies
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
contrary to all the ill effects conspiracy and communistic type reasons some of you are citing. The fact remains information wants to be free and people the world over want access to it, to better their lives and to be connected to the global community.
even if there are govermental red herrings in those articles, in a population of 1billion ppl the design of the WWW is on the side of the latter and i believe this chinese wikipedia will let the peoples voice be heard in a resounding way the chinese goverment can't ignore.
Its a new day and the chinese goverment reaslises that. capitalism and freedom [of speech] is slowly creeping in. The peoples voice will be heard, china can't ignore it anymore. this is just an example of that- the other for example is the allowance of a capitilistic style approach to some businesses.
I truly believe China wants to join the global community they just don't want to be assimilated by Western Culture and mindsets and to be honest i can't totally blame them. They will come to, if ever cautiously.
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
While it is good for some reason I don't really get :), what is the future of Wikipedia as such in China? Especially when Wikipedia itself hardly manages to stop Vandalism, how will it stop the content addition of controversial subjects? Won't that prompt China to have a say in Wikipedia content?
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.
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
Heh.
See it zh.wikipedia.org/
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, 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?
--
make install -not war
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
This article has been marked for deletion. Reason: "Doesn't exist".
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianemen_Square9 %97%A8%E5%B9%BF%E5%9C%BA
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E
I'm not so sure about assuming the quality of Chinese censorship. If you're only watching mainstream news feeds, it looks like "another day, another protest" in China. In the Washington Post via MSNBC this morning, it's One-dog policy resisted in Beijing crackdown where in these near-daily articles, juicy quotes like this one are increasingly common, too:
"More and more people own dogs. It is pointless to restrict dog-raising. The stricter the government is, the more people will love to own a dog," said Liu Tao, 26, who was at the unauthorized protest Saturday. "We are not blocked from the outside now. With the Internet, we can see how Western countries treat dogs well. It's hard to stop us from communicating with the outside."
Aside from the groundswell of Western ideals changing China, and back to their Wikipedia: Chinese officials might believe they can handle it. In addition to the drumbeat of articles in our free press indicating their people's increasingly free access to information, I also have known many friends and colleagues in China who have effectively unfettered access. Party-types might think they can handle it, but I would not assume they actually can. BG
First laptop batteries, now wikipedia ... when will the chaos end? :)
Why have censors when anyone can edit the article and provide dis-information or dispute the validity?
It's much more effective to work within the system than outside of it.
Censorship from the outside is the least of the worries in this case.
It was based on charts and research I did from Beijing.
Cheers.
Hundreds dead, thousands wounded.
Developing...
Sony has recalled all their batteries used in Wikipedias in China. Sony stock fell another 3.75 on the news.
I smell some re-education torture in the near future.
Taiwan may be a de facto separate state, but definitely not a separate nation.
A lot of the upper class in present Taiwan are actually those who fled from mainland China during the establishment of the PRC. And that's less than 50 years ago.
"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."
Where were you when the voynix came?
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 [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 and use to/from Chinese-trad for best-but-still-poor results. Remember to translate your search words into Chinese-trad before entering.
Yes, 1200 new every day. That would perhaps be a significant part of the Lichtensteinian populace. What country are we talking about again?
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
A "significant part of the populace" in China is 10 million people. Anything less does not count.
The short version:
Special Report / China and the internet
The party, the people and the power of cyber-talk
Apr 27th 2006 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
At present the party has the upper hand. It is starting to sweat, though
IMAGE
“DO YOU know how serious a mistake you’ve made?” Yan Yuanzhang recalls an official asking him not long ago. Mr Yan had been summoned to Beijing’s Internet Propaganda Management Office to talk about his websites. They were causing, he was told, the Communist Party to lose face. They were providing material that foreign media could use to attack China. They were illegal and must be closed down within 24 hours.
“Farewell, worker comrades,” wrote Mr Yan in notices posted that day on his China-based websites, China Workers Net and Communist Net. Visitors could hear a lugubrious rendition of the communist anthem, the Internationale, through their computer speakers as they read. “Whether there is any hope of starting again, heaven knows.” He says now that he will relaunch one of the two sites on May 1st, this time on a server in Taiwan.
It is remarkable that the websites lasted as long as they did. Mr Yan, who is not a party member, launched them on May 1st last year to mark Labour Day. The aim, he says, was to provide platforms for a “leftist” critique of China’s embrace of “Dickensian capitalism”. They did not, as he tried to explain to the city government, attack the party itself or its leaders. But they did provide something the party abhors: uncensored news about worker unrest. In September he launched a bulletin board on which visitors could directly post their comments. Messages complained about corruption, the privatisation of state-owned enterprises and the hardships of unemployed workers.
As Mr Yan talks, he gets a text message on his mobile phone. It is from Tan Jiaming, a university student in southern China who has been running a website of similar outlook, Revolutionary Marxism. It too, the message says, has been closed. The student had posted a notice entitled “Strongly Protest the Snuffing Out of the China Workers Website by the Beijing Authorities”. He was summoned to hear a dozen officials threaten him with expulsion from his university for backing Mr Yan.
IMAGE
Six years ago Bill Clinton described China’s efforts to restrict the internet as “sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall”. But as China’s web-filtering technology has grown more sophisticated, and the ranks of its internet police have swelled, some have begun to wonder. A report in 2003 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace suggested that, despite the difficulties the internet posed to authoritarian regimes, it could also be used to fortify them. China, the authors concluded, had been “largely successful at guiding use” of the internet. At a congressional hearing in February on American companies involved in internet business in China, a Republican congressman, Christopher Smith, said the internet there had become “a malicious tool, a cyber sledgehammer of repression”.
Some of the companies testifying at the hearing—Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!—deserved a grilling. Why, for instance, had Microsoft, at the request of Chinese officials, removed a popular site in December from its Chinese version of MSN Spaces, a service for personal diaries and blogs? Yahoo! too had questions to answer about reports that information it provided to the police about its e-mail services had helped put dissidents behind bars. More recently Reporters Without Borders, a human-rights group, said that a Hong Kong unit of Yahoo! had given the police a Chinese
You are at step 2. Steps 3 and 5 are ongoing and it's not really funny when those in jail might be executed for their organs. Yes, Microsoft is still "committed" to business in China.
Trade with Communits Countries like China endorses crimes against humanity and makes the criminals stronger and richer.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
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.
an ill wind that blows no good
The article said that the government might discover people enjoy having it. If they weren't already aware that people enjoyed it, they wouldn't have bothered to ban it to begin with. Why do you think there's no ban on smashing your thumb with a hammer?
Nope, no sig
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)
Better known as 318230.
The famous photo of the lone protester standing in front of the tank column IS on the page in the Chinese wikipedia site. Under it is the following caption... if someone can offer a better translation, I'd be interested... it sounds like the page denies the idea he was crushed... which misses the point of his protest anyway.
"By western media widespread report picture: It is said that the name calls "the Wang Wei forest" (status until now to be unable to confirm that, Wei Jingsheng called investigated this person according to it to be run over and die in an afterwards same action by tank, but Wei was unable to provide correlation evidence to prove its view) the young people stood in leave in front of the square tank motorcade, prevented the tank advance. According to the CNN scene photography picture, after afterwards the tank several times was attempting not to detour the fruit not again the forward motion behind, after but the soldier only was finds out to hint the tank motorcade to remove. The Chinese official view was hereafter removes the motion fully to prove the army certainly not recklessly slaughtered the resident and the student. "
It is certainly a separate state in reality, as the granparent stated. A nation when distinguished from a state is a cultural entity, and insofar as Taiwanese consider themselves Chinese culturally, Chinese consider Taiwanese culturally, they share a common language and history, they are part of the same nation despite being part of separate de facto states. Now, its certainly true that since the split of the ROC and PRC into separate functional entities ruled by separate regimes, there has certainly also been some degree of divergence of culture and history and erosion of shared "Chinese" identity, and certainly one might validly debate whether or not they remain a common nation despite not being a common state, but that has nothing to do with foreign recognition, either de facto or de jure, of the separate political regimes.
Wikipedia Explodes in China. Oh, the humanity!
30 Million people dead! News at 11! :p
Splitting hairs, don't you think? Democracy is dead in Hong Kong. The UN resolution was used as a fig leaf by Thatcher for withdrawl. But if Hong Kong was good to give away to the communists, what about Singapore? You can't really blame Thatcher. What was she going to do, fight it out with China on their home turf? But it was a sad loss for the free world and a windfall for the slimy maoists. All the more reason to not let ot happen again with Taiwan.
What a hoot! Who besides China would ever present a threat to British-aligned Hong Kong.
an ill wind that blows no good
Something I didn't see at the top of every Chinese Wikipedia page:
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!
Conspiratol, another product of I.G. Farben Pharmaceuticals. Possible side effects include nausea, sweating, paranoia, diarrhea, constipation, headaches, toothaches, and death by firing squad. Talk to your doctor today!
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Iran and North Korea are beneficiaries of the Pakistani AQ Khan network. He hawked a Chinese plan for a nuclear weapon. Are you ignorant are do you choose to be obtuse?
The Chinese are duplicious, siding with and opposing the world community where it suits them. This is not new. Without China there would be no North Korea or Kim Jong Il.
Yes, very successfully colonized, prosperous, and well administered. If that was conquest the world needs more. And that was thrown away because...?
an ill wind that blows no good
I think I read this data as: Wikipedia has been unblocked in China, but nearly nobody has actually noticed yet. Those that have signed up don't seem to be as active as the older members. Nothing very surprising here.
They still argue on the talk page about reliable sources.
that enough to convince me that wiki rules are flawed from the root.
Cragen
Now they too can look up highly suspect "facts" and even submit their own "facts" to create a wonderful world of urban myths and political slander.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
It'd go something like this...
- Original article would cite the 2000-3000 number.
- Another visitor would edit this to say 23.
- Authors would re-edit back to 2000-3000.
- Another edit changes it back to 23.
- Irate users re-edit again back to 2000-3000.
- Talk page would get filled up with debate over the issue. Number would be tagged with "citation needed" and the language would be softened to make the figure seem less reliable and acknowledge the 23 figure.
- Vandal would replace the whole article with various rude comments about foreigners.
- Sneaky bastard would claim to be reverting the article to undo the vandalism - but sneak in a change that makes the 2000-3000 figure sound completely unbelievable.
- New vandalism would go unnoticed for some time - even in future vandalism/revert cycles by other editors.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
You sound very, very confused. Less than 25 countries recognize Taiwan's independence (and the US isn't one of them.) The ROC isn't allowed any representation in the UN, and no member nations recognize Taiwan (because China threatened to leave the UN if Taiwan were allowed to become a member.)
Is that something Tesla was working on that was recently discowered and developed for use over shorter distances?
FRA: STFU GTFO
"You sound very, very confused. Less than 25 countries recognize Taiwan's independence (and the US isn't one of them.)"
You sound very confused. The only reason there is more than one country that does not officially recognize Taiwan's independence is because of extremely strong objections by one particular nation that is a neighbor of Taiwan (China). If not for the pressure from China, everyone would recognize the obvious fact that Taiwan is an independent nation. Also, despite few countries "officially" recognizing it, almost everyone treats it as an independent country (as much as they can without angering the imperial dragon next door).
Where were you when the voynix came?
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?
China, in fact, is very fragile.
How Do I Eat Your Lunch?
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..
I clicked on the link you gave me, and ... I was reset the connection to Wikipedia, and I could not access it any more. I believe no one in my company can access it in this workday now.
How devilish you are!
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!