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How the Chinese Wikipedia Differs from the English
bulled writes "News.com is running a story on differences found in Wikipedia's Chinese site content, as compared to content on the same subjects from the English site. The article goes into a discussion about how the 'sanitized' information is so prevalent in Chinese education that it is seen as the 'truth'." From the article: "[Some] say the object should be to spread reliable information as widely as possible, and that, in any case, self-censorship is pointless because the government still frequently blocks access to Wikipedia for most Chinese Internet users. 'There is a lot of confusion about whether they should obey the neutral point of view or offer some compromises to the government,' said Isaac Mao, a well-known Chinese blogger and user of the encyclopedia. 'To the local Wikipedians, the first objective is to make it well known among Chinese, to get people to understand the principles of Wikipedia step by step, and not to get the thing blocked by the government.'"
It's in Chinese rather than English.
News.com is running a story on differences found in Wikipedia's Chinese site content, as compared to content on the same subjects from the English site.
An easy example: On the english site, we can learn that the population of elephants has tripled in the last six months. On the chinese site, we can learn that the population of elephants has tripled in the last 12 solar terms.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The USA, a decadent, capitalistic society, that enslaves its people through corporations, and calls itself a Republic, is in North America, between Canada and Mexico. Their Government is run by decadent wealthy politicians who use their political power for more gain. Unlike your illustrious leaders here in China, they do not care about their constituants.
It is recomended that all Chinese citizens ignore these people for they have been corrupted by their capitalist owners. And also beware, they will tell you lies about working in sweatshops! They are lies told by their proletariat in order to keep their position in their society and to convince their workers that they are paid the best in the World. Ignore them! You are paid best in the World!!
Beware of the Americans!!! They are liars!
How the Chinese System of Government is the best in the World - elected by you, the people of China:
All of the memebers of Government are freely elected by the people of China. Being a Democracy of the highest order, China.....
...has been edited to comply with Slashdot's policy of not "judging the existing national system with malice."
"To publicly suggest that Taiwanese have any historical basis for asserting their independence from China would be a career-ending offense for anyone in academia or in the news media."
A career-ending offense exicts in this country too, but just on different subjects. Try publicly saying that whites are smarter than blacks, or that teenage girls should have have hands-on sex ed in junior high, or that ice floes are a good way of relieving the social security crunch, and see what happens to your career. ( The previous three ideas or - similar forms of them - have been considered obvious truisms in other places and times. I'm not expressing these opinions myself, just mentioning them as examples )
Try putting any of these on english Wikipedia, and see how long they last.
HAH! I love all the discussion about Chinese censorship. The argument is that we are free, and see things objectively---but that is not true. We are merely free to choose the censorship we prefer.
I do not mean that we don't have access to "uncensored" information. Nor do I mean that it is forced upon us by anyone. I mean that we prefer censorship; we prefer to see things through filters that support what we want to believe. If you do not think this, just spend a week on Digg, or other "self-policing" sites. People do not want objectivity, they want the prominence of their own subjectivity.
The Chinese government merely provides this as a government service, so the widest possible audience is sated. It's not worse. It's not even different. Consider first whether people are really, truly unhappy.
(Note, I don't actually believe we should have government-sponsored censorship. There is some hyperbole here by design. But really, this is not as far from reality as you may think.)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
After reasding it, your hungry for more information an hour later...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
oh ho ho ho, sometimes I make myself laugh.....
this is true of everyone who has ever lived. including you. including me. it's simple human nature
however, this self-censorship, whether by individuals or cliques, is a different subject matter than censorship by a government entity. one is organic, from below, for the purposes of protecting the ego. the other is artificial, from above, for the purposes of maintaining power
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They are from Taiwan or Hong Kong, where education is fairly liberal and there is very little censorship compared with the Mainland.
Note, most of the articles on Chinese Wikipedia are in traditional Chinese script (used in those places) as opposed to simplified, used on the mainland.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
With China, it's a choice ... allow access to more data in a filtered/censored medium, or block access altogether. Since censoring typically deals with deleting data, and not actually changing it, I'd rather see the Chinese use a watered down version of Wikipedia than not have access at all. I fully expect that increased knowledge and affluence amongst the Chinese people will eventually drive the Communists from power.
... so it's just a matter of time.
Also, China can't block/censor everything without ruining their prospects to shift away from a manufacturing-based economy
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
I don't think the average (western) user of wikipedia understands "the principles of Wikipedia"
Yes, in america he majority of people are never mislead by falsehoods. Consider for example the Iraq war. It is definitely not the case that the majority of people were mislead into supporting the war by purposefully misleading information about Saddam's WMDs and ties to terrorists. Something like that could never happen here. Was that not down to your cultural core enough? How about the american dream and social mobility?
Philosophy.
Dude, which country would you choose to live in?
Country #1 where people have free access to information and some choose to self censor that access?
Country #2 where the government censors information and unapproved distribution of censored information is a crime?
"If there is a buck to be made, do it. Screw everyone else. Screw the planet."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
How many paedophilic images do you find on the English Wikipedia?
How many homosexual rape HOWTO entrees are there? Just how detailed are the Wikipedia's meth cooking/ricin making manuals?
When was the last time our Govt declassified a blueprint for a nuclear warhead?
A detailed travel schedule and the layout of alarm circuits in dubbyas house perhaps? No?
What, those are all illegal in US, you say?
Well, in China, all politically subversive public speech is illegal.
We all have our reasons for outlawing certain things. Are China's laws just? Who knows...
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
How could there possibly be any free exchange, ever, in a culture where censorship in the media is a fact of life, just like fluoride in the water. It just IS --no matter how many "parallel" projects there are. This makes me sick.
.. even out to the rural areas. More and more chinese are able to afford and are buying cars and other things that improve their quality of life. China is the fastest growing market for cars, the rate of their median income growth is so huge that the government is being accused of actually understating the growth rate to keep their yuan undervalued and other things.
...As a poster below me pointed out .. to some extent we have censorship here too (not as bad as China's though) .. spend some time on digg or slashdot. Any post that expresses a strong viewpoint is censored down. I am not just talking about "first posts" or flagrant GNAA stuff. I am talking about "extremist" political viewpoints.
.. now look at the number of Chinese students in the US. They also used to prevent people from visiting there. Now it's pretty easy to go to China.
As their economy there is improving it's getting harder and harder to censor. Because of a shortage of workers, companies over there are having to offer better and better benefits to attract workers. It takes a massive workforce to supply the rich with everything they want. Keep thinking the myth with zero some game economics that the Chinese people are doomed to remain broke and backwards. The Chinese people are no longer starving like they were in the sixties, go for a visit there sometime
As for a "culture of censorship"
You can only censor people for so long. After a while the government officials themselves will see no point in censorship and decide to spend money on other crap projects. China is slowly opening up, they used to prevent people from leaving China
The way to defeat state censorship of this kind I think involves getting as much information as possible out there. If they want to ban access to it, let them. Web-savvy Chinese will find a way to get to it. The word will spread. The truth is more persistent and resilient than cockroaches. Once it gets out it is difficult to stop.
I sure would hate to think the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or "June 4th Incident" as it is known in China, will go down in history with a Chinese-govt spin on it.
Already the English version of wikipedia calls it the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989. I wonder what they call it on the Chinese version? Tianenmen Square - nothing happened, don't ask perhaps?If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
while those with less to lose fight at the front, let those with more to lose fight with finesse. Don't brow-beat your allies.
It takes both fighting from the outside and from the inside. Fighting from the inside has different rules, requires somewhat of a concilliatory approach, involves understanding things from a different point of view, provides different opportunities for corruption.
(And, yes, fighting from the outside does have its own opportunities for corruption.)
Country #2 where the government censors information and unapproved distribution of censored information is a crime?
Country #3, which is like Country #2, but the punishment of unapproved distribution is dressed up as "copyright infringement" of someone's "valoooable innellecdual properteeeee"?
Country #1 sure isn't the USA or Europe right now!
Sigh, our wiki has the same problems.
Nice attempt at changing the subject. Please answer #1 or #2. Be an adult. Do it straight up and unambiguous and then I'll switch topics with you and address intellectual property.
To host content that in any way differs from the truth discredits wikipedia.
If the Chinese people want a wikipedia that won't get banned, they should make their own. It's a shame to see the wikipedia name get so discredited.
No information is better than false information.
The Chinese Wikipedia has options to switch between traditional and simplified version of the article, done automatically. ~~~~
This is one of the most insightful posts I have ever seen on slashdot, or anywhere else. I have noticed the same phenomenon for several years.
It is also rather well written, unlike if I tried to write it.
kudos
no big sig
What we need is some kind of text based indicator that shows somebody's being sarcastic. That'd ruin China's attempts at any sort of censorship. Say there's an article about China's wonderful human rights record. There could be a little ;-) at the end of it so when you get to the end you go 'Ohhh! They were being sarcastic. Bloody Chinese government and their clearly horrible human rights record, I'm changing my vote!'
;-)
Beating China's oppressive regime is pretty easy when you think about it
I don't own a snook, and if I did I wouldn't leave it cocked.
If the Chinese government wants its view to be represented, it should allow free access to Wikipedia from within China itself. That way, its people will do the censorship for it. Consider the case with the Vietnamese Wikipedia, which I'm currently a bureaucrat. At the beginning, its only participants are outside of Vietnam itself, and users from Vietnam created a made-in-Vietnam version of the encyclopedia for fear of "counterrevolutionary ideas". After featured in several articles in high-profile publications in Vietnam and even recommended by the government-funded encyclopedia, the encyclopedia saw a surge in registration and a noticable skewing of view. Now I'm even being accused by my family of being used by the government to spread their propaganda.
You won't be able to access the English Wikipedia site from China. This is disgraceful. I can't imagine any party or leadership would block information flow as the communist does. China is so corrupted that people in China would not know how to live if the country suddenly becomes a country of freedom. So, don't be suprised by the difference. Guess what? If they don't differ, there won't exist Chinese Wikipedia either... Peking University, one of the best higher institutions, won't allow students to surf any websites not hosted within China unless specially authorized. Suprised?
what's with this mainland bull, taiwan has never belonged to china, that's like Saying Japan is mainland for china and korea, they were the ones afterall who screwed everyone over (comfort woman)or enslaved them, taiwan is the only country that came off"lightly" from their years of rule, something else that is also very irritating is translations on hollywood movies, and how their names get changed into chinese, with results that have nothing to do with the former name or words in the movie, total bull and sheep *
OK. I went to American schools. Growing up, I was, in so many ways, encouraged, forced or "educated" into think those Soviet bastards were communist scum bent on nuking the good'ol USA.
Cold War ends. I become seriously involved with a Russian model, her mother and father was given a free ride to the US on some kind of genius grant. Speaking to her father, everything Americans were taught about the Soviet Union was mirrored in Soviet schools about America. Down to the common bed-time anxiety of wondering if tonight you'll have to use your bomb-shelter (which lots of Soviets also had in fear of an American preemptive strike.) And so, while neither country ever really had that many nuclear weapons, what the corporations/state did have was massive public opinion inline for support to develop more and more on claims that "they" had ten or twenty more nuclear weapons. Arms race... come time to use the arms, we find we only have two and so do they. The irony of it all.
Point is, American education is no less bias/brainwashing/false/misleading than China's. This might be a big bite to chew for many of us, but it's true. Let's take for instance...
What do you know of World War II? It might come to a surprise to many of us... but unless you have to have a nurse help you defecate, odds are you don't know anymore than what was TOLD TO YOU. Faith of compliance, and from lack of critical, cold and cruel analysis presents no options for the guy next to you. Germans were the bad guys... do I know that for fact? No. I strongly assume so, because as far back as I remember, that's what I was told; and if I differ from public opinion, then I'll be an idiot.
The force of ignorance is so strong and compelling, that it's no wonder that those who veer successfully from the flow stand out so much and always have a aura about them that would permit one to predict they would "change the world". For the better, for the worst... depends on their opposing force and if they win or lose. If you win, patriot, revolutionary, resistance... all beautiful titles to hold to be sure. During your efforts, your a terrorist or criminal... if you lose, those titles stick. Doesn't matter your cause, doesn't matter your agenda. Powerful people, are just that, powerful and they aren't going to give up their crown, right or wrong, just because you're walking down the hall.
The English analysis points out where Chinese wikipedia is "wrong". It's points ONLY assume it's wrong, basing their assumptions on the fact their wording is not as harsh/critical/favorable to the way WE want China to look. Who is right? Americans? Chinese? Most logical tendancy I have... if I want a German opinion, I'll talk to a German. Why would America have any more accurate information on China than China itself? (But this is where people will try to claim they have controlled information sources... as if the information in America isn't equally controlled. At least Chinese leadership have the dignity to admit their concern for the information given to the public. Americans are left to realize that anything printed and sold in Barnes and Nobels is pre-approved and must conform the a social agenda and anything that won't will either be black-listed, banned or edited to hell and back by publish-house editors.) Any fool that thinks Fox News isn't controlled..... bottom line, China knows China better than America does. Don't kid yourself.
"And the sinister students jumped under the tank wheels in the hopes of jamming the wheels with their bodies and blood. They ruined the Great Machinery of Our Motherland and stained Our Great Floor Tiles with their dripping evil flesh. May the reverent ghosts of our ancesters be pissing on them now and forever in their afterlife."
Table-ized A.I.
Get over your self loathing.
Yes the U.S. has plenty of corrupt leaders. Yes the U.S. has plenty of lazy and apathetic people who do not think for themselves.
BUT:
We found out that we were lied to.
We have people on national television and in national publications expousing as matter of fact that we were and are being lied to and misled.
It is commonly reported public knowledge that more citizens disapprove of the current regime than approve of it.
The competence of the administration is openly ridiculed in national broadcasts and publications.
WE VOTED OUT THE PARTY IN POWER. I hope you appreciate how important this. In some countries past and present this is the thing of revolutionary dreams.
Why do I care that people appreciate how good they have things here? Not because I want them to be nationalists or even to be proud of what we do have. But rather because if people do not see the great freedom and opportunity they have, they may fail to take hold of it and use it to better themselves and our society as they can and should.
You do not think we are in a position to criticize suppression of freedom in other countries? You aren't if you can't see past your own problems. You aren't if you are more concerned about your own national pride than you are about freedom at home and around the world. Start standing up for your fellow human beings, and stop limiting yourself by your national pride or shame. I don't know about you, but my nationality is human being.
same story was months ago on /. and the replies were reassuring that all information will be available through digital libraries.
Please choose:
Be an adult and don't change the subject, please answer #1 or #2.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Honestly, I've found articles in the English version that are no better. Just look at any article involving Ayn Rand. In those articles, Rand's followers make up the majority of editors, thus allowing them to get away with deleting any facts (even if they are cited) that they don't agree with. The articles about her are constantly censored simply because 1) Wikipedia is unequipped to deal with a biased mob attacking one or more articles, and 2) the sources that make Rand look bad are often deleted, thus making it look like the "truth" is that Rand has very few detractors.
In the Chinese Wikipedia, the government's bias censors the text; in the English Wikipedia, editorial mobs are glad to use their own bias to censor it.
Before the 2004 US elections there was no politics section. Quote The FAQ:
Politics
This section is for news relevant to United States government politics. It was created primarily to cover the 2004 US Presidential Election, but today exists for occasional stories that fit the bill.
My brothre is in China, currently, and we've talked about this. Our concensus is that the Chinese Wikipedia censors pretty much anything pertaining to freedom, democracy, and the political history of the West - specifically, the US.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I was just gonna say, anyone here read 1984? I'm sorry, I thought that book was fictional for some reason.
While wikipedia articles that have strong "popularity" (however you describe that term) are more likely to be balanced, there is a tendancy for particularly some of the more obscure articles to have a few strong defenders with a manifestly strong point of view and bias, where any changes to those articles moving away from that bias and point of view is met with out right hostility and anger, invoking every obscure rule of Wikipedia behavior to justify their words and discouraging any compromising edits. Often these "article tzars" have support of Wikipedia administrators and others in supposed position of authority.
/. post about U.S. government censorship of Wikipedia alone would have thousands of replies in a matter of just an hour.
That said, I have been successful in making some rather substantial changes in some articles explicitly by showing the paper tigers for which some of those POV biases can be seen. And given enough time and eyeballs, most of these problems do eventually get ironed out. But it takes time and much of what you see on Wikipedia is a work in progress.
In defense of the Chinese Wikipedia, they are a couple of years behind and a fair bit under-represented in comparison to the Chinese speaking population to what the English Wikipedia has going for it. That and "official actions" by the PRC that tends to discourage participation on Wikipedia. Those that do participate operate under a "Sword of Damocles that could be lowered at any time by the PRC government. As I've pointed out myself on many occasions, it would be an incredibly inept Chinese government that would not know exactly who the major Wikipedia participants are, even those who don't necessarily live in China proper (like being a Chinese speaker in the USA, as an example). I'm talking the full names, addresses, and other identifying information about these people. The use of psuedonyms does not hide this information from the Chinese government.
There is justified concern in term of avoiding prison or even losing their life if they try to push too hard for the NPOV that the English Wikipedia enjoys. As for the U.S. government keeping track of its citizens, I'm sure that happens as well, but there would be a nearly instant and major outcry if there were such a similar crackdown within the USA. I'm sure the
After doing a cursory skimming of the posts in this thread so far I've discovered something amazing: no one has yet to call for the overthrow of China's totalitarian regime.
China's government denies its citizens their God given rights. It is therefore illegitimate. It is the duty of every man and woman who would be free to work towards its dissolution and the subsequent creation of a new government founded upon the principles of individual freedom and public accountability.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
After reading your comment, I have decided to do a little survey. Entries for (Mao), (CMP) are in simplified script. While other entries are in traditional. I read both and generally don't prefer one over the other. Today's opening page has links to entries written in both scripts. While I agree that most user are probably from non-censored TW and HK, there are still fair amount of simplified script articles. BTW, Singapore uses simplified Chinese as well.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&q=Tiananme n+Square&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87
and in US
http://images.google.com/images?q=Tiananmen+Square &ndsp=18&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&start=0&sa=N
Imagine that, China censors things. File this under "Duh, I like pie"
First of all, contributions to many of not-so-controversial entries (and that's usually the majorities of entries anyway) are often written or being written by translation. See for example, this entry for Perturbation Theory. So The differences between the two wikipedia are often small for most of my search/contribution need (I study physics and mathematics, and often contributes to both of these subjects in English and Chinese).
Of course, there are also controversial topics such as Mao, representative government, and democracy. I tend to think that wikipedia (WP) is at its best at those issue precisely because of ability for each sides to edit the article because at the end of the day, it demands compromise from all side in order for a particular edit to stay. WP is at its worst with respect to obscure topics that nobody check and few people are knowledgable enough in a particular narrow direction to check. Then again, if you believe everything with a single source, be it WP or any other encyclopedia, you are not doing serious research anyway.
Finally. Is it really that shocking that different culture/political upbringing can reach a different conclusion on a topic? Grew up in China, I have heard both praising and condemnation of the ruling party (in private of course) as well as Western government/culture. Capitalism is perceived no more an foreign evil in China now a day than communism a savior of the nation. Educated class in China (consider how many were illiterate before the communist took over) has a much more critical eye for the government than many in the West give credit for.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Translation: "I cannot answer #1 or #2 because neither is true!"
But... the future refused to change.
Maybe what they really need is a chinese version of Wikiality
Likewise an article about homosexuality written in a hypothetical English Wikipedia from the 1930s would likely have a very different angle on it than we have today, even without any active government censorship.
If the Republican party had its own Wikipedia written by its members and the Democratic one its own, no censorship would be needed for them to have very different articles on president Bush. A similar difference would apply for the hypothetical state Wikipedias by Massachusetts and Utah residents on Bush.
Neither do Korean and Japanese Wikipedias always agree on what is accurate information when it comes to history.
The great thing with Wikipedia is that it makes it so much easier to see what is written in other languages about a subject. Just click on the link in the lower left for the language you want. Some differences will probably stay for ever, but the easy access to other languages to some extent diminishes national misunderstandings.
HAH! I love all the discussion about Chinese censorship. The argument is that we are free, and see things objectively---but that is not true. We are merely free to choose the censorship we prefer.
I'm honestly not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that it's somehow just as bad to be able to choose how one filters one's information as it is to have somebody else impose such filtering on you? That seems a little like saying that spending your money and having somebody steal it are ethically equivalent.
"WE VOTED OUT THE PARTY IN POWER."
What a choice! So now America is free to get a new welfare statist, imperialist big government intent on monitoring every activity of its citizens, disarming them, and aiding the de facto conquest of the USA by Mexico through the lack of any open border policy.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Wikipedia is based on the principle of "relevance by consensus". While there is a requirement for providing references, there is no mechanism for objectively accepting or rejecting a reference or a theory. This leads in many cases to fringe theories of some interest group getting more attention than they should. The english wikipedia has the benefit of being international so that the diversity is larger and hence the process of reaching consensus is more complicated.
In China those same principles yield different results as the Chinese consensus on many political issues is not the same as the western/international consensus.
To be fair this plagues mostly the social sciences. Politics is largely based on opinion (and you can find whatever references you like, there are plenty of them) and history is has always been subjectively inclusive.
You've managed to talk yourself into believing that either A) there is no such thing as censorship (after all, if China, which has a blatant govt program of censorship, doesn't qualify, then who could?), or B) that everyone has censorship, so it's only normal (after all, _we_ have censorship just like China does, because we _self_censor_, in effect, by choosing to pay attention to information we are inclined to believe).
I think that for you to appreciate the difference, you would need to live in China for awhile.
Look, I'm no conspiracy theorist or libertarian nut, and I realize that browsing the news at aljazeera.com probably isn't Gitmo material. But, does anyone here have trouble believing the government might be using some kind of monitoring not unlike bayesian spam filtering, where simply sharing similar browsing patterns to known terrorists (or known residents of Gitmo) lands you on the watch list?
You mean something like this?
Of course, there are also controversial topics such as Mao, representative government, and democracy. I tend to think that wikipedia (WP) is at its best at those issue precisely because of ability for each sides to edit the article because at the end of the day, it demands compromise from all side in order for a particular edit to stay.
When one of those parties is the government, it isn't compromise anymore, it's a veto. It isn't about interpretation of facts, the issue is the facts themselves. The censors deny that events have happened, when they obviously have.
I think the Chinese version ought to simply delete the articles that are subject to censorship so that it's obvious there was disagreeable information in them.
The Chinese government merely provides this as a government service, so the widest possible audience is sated. It's not worse. It's not even different. Consider first whether people are really, truly unhappy.
Well no. They censor to promote the idea that their monopoly of power is seen as legitament. They censor to promote the belief in their policies are unerring. That they know best. That they have the populace's best interests at heart, for the populace is incapable of acting in their own best interest. It's a way to maintain power. The fact that many in China see nothing wrong with this, and in fact BELIEVE, with these government lies are the real story. (It's not all that surprisng though.)
Whether the people are happy or unhappy is irrelevant. Many of the beliefs fostered by the regime are factually and demostrably untrue. People are always happy when they have no alternative, because they just accept it. Only when you have the ability to make a comparison can preference truly be established.
Self-policiing systems are completly different because I'm ultimately in control. If I don't like the group think, then I'm free to leave. And I can recognize the group think and form an opinion on it because I have access to multiple sources of information. If all I had was the Flat Earth Society Times-Piccayune, then I'd be happy with it, but that doesn't mean that I have a legitamate position.
How to define the so-call "truth" in wikipedia. It only just the different opinion between chinese and amerincan on seeing a thing. First of all, I don't think the chinese authorities would really engage energy on editing the chinese version of wikipedia, and *BLOCK* it in the same time. Even they did, the amercian authorities and individuals also can do the same thing as well. My point is, the reason why there is the different between chinese and english wikipedia is the education background, their various life experiences. I don't there is a "truth" on political issues. They only have *FACT*. Even than there is a censorship in china, I also can get most of the "bad news" from the website in chinese, and furthermore, I got them ealier than the western meida. And I also didn't have any problems to do that when I'm in china, of course, sometimes it need some tools for assistance. This means at least people who can edit chinese wikipedia can access free uncenored information freely.
The German Wikipedia, although totalling less articles, seems to be hundreds of times more accurate, informative and useful on many articles I've read lately (the AJAX article is a good example).
:D
Does this mean the English wikipedia is sanitized and modified to remove all that sensitive information? Is the DoHS or GCHQ actively removing aspects of technical articles so we don't turn into a nation or two of hackers and bomb-builders?
Come on this is just bullshit. An Encyclopedia is meant to be comprehensive, sure, but whining about how "different" the information is, is just not relevant. Some people don't care about the information they get; a lot of information is also culture-specific (the German Wikipedia articles on things that are fundamentally German are a lot more comprehensive than the exact same English articles, but I hardly think that means that we are being denied information about Germany)
Also, like this.
I am from China. As an active contributor (with 16384+ edits) at English Wikipedia for almost three years. I don't see this a serious problem at Chinese Wikipedia. This is in fact a POV on region and nation. I see English Wikipedia does no better than its Chinese neighbor. For example, English Wikipedia claims a British man reached the source of Yangtze river in 19th century, while Genghis Khan's people had done the job 500 years before. People from UK and US always see us as autochthon. So if we do something, they will not count, so in westerners' view, before their arrive of America, no people live there (this is what you actually think, don't you?) English Wikipedia has many lists of these, lists of those, most of the lists never include non-Western stuffs, even it is far more notable in East Asian countries. (For example, almost everything in Category:Lists_of_fictional_things) English Wikipedia claims itself the largest encyclopedia in the world one year ago, but they still have http://en.wikipedia.org/Yongle_Encyclopedia , Chinese paper encyclopedia completed in 1407 almost as large as now Wikipedia as a stub. So my 3 years of experience at English Wikipedia shows me a very very emptiness of East Asia (or say CJK) cultures among average western people. I've corrected many POV things at Wikipedia, but I can't beat other 1,000,000+ contributors who created more at a much higher speed.
As an European, I'll try to answer.
I think that based on what I know I would rather choose to live in the US than in China. However, both have their good sides. In a sense I would prefer to live in a country where people know they are being indoctrinated than in one where the news sources are as ridiculously biased as they seem to be in the US and where the people think they are getting the truth because they feel they live in the most free and best and almost perfect society.
Good point. In fact, the false image that most people associate with China is quite indicative of censorship and misinformation in Western cultures. Just because misinformation is distributed and presented differently in the West than in China does not mean the information is any more accurate, and anybody who has been on the Net for a while can attest to the misrepresentation of tech issues such as DRM and "hacking" -- or more recently, net neutrality -- by the Western media.
However, I must contest one statement in the parent:
Please. Anybody who has been to China has seen the massive amount of unemployed people and the massive amount of over-employment (hiring more people than necessary for a given position). In one hotel I stayed in, they had some ten people behind the reception desk pretending to look busy 24 hours a day. There was an army of maids on each floor -- including a manager with each group -- that assaulted each room. Half of the maids were pretending to work whenever I happened to interrupt them. Department stores were filled with idle clerks.
I am not saying that people are not well off, but there is certainly no shortage of labor in China.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
This is nothing more than a fallacy. First of all, you assume that all the people writing articles on Chinese Wikipedia were born in or live in Mainland China. If you have walked around town -- anywhere in the world -- recently, you would realize that there are a lot of Chinese people outside of China. Many, if not most, of these Chinese people were born outside of China. Further, there are very large populations of Chinese people all throughout South East Asia. Anybody who has been on IRC would know that nearly every Chinese person in South East Asia has a computer. This is not mentioning massive populations of Chinese people in Canada and Australia. I have heard that Vancouver has many areas where only Chinese can be heard on the street.
In short, there are a lot of Chinese people outside of China. As usual with Chinese society (and many others I suppose), these overseas Chinese have a plethora of differing opinions (in fact, even in Chinese culture, I rarely encounter people with anything but dissimilar viewpoints). All of these people are likely to be contributing to Wikipedia. If they are, and their viewpoints are somewhat of a consensus of Chinese world views, maybe Westerners should be looking upon their own news media derived "knowledge" with some skepticism.
In my opinion, the biggest division is caused by encoding systems. The separation of Chinese writing into Simplified and Traditional, and Wikipedia's initial choice to support Simplified as "Chinese" forced one version of people's perception to dominate. However, even though many articles are now in Traditional Chinese, this artificial separation still affects the exchange of information greatly.
The real solution is that software has got to stop treating Simplified and Traditional Chinese as separate languages. Which glyphs are viewed should be a simple matter of user preference. I should never have to see Simplified or Traditional Characters if I do not want to. This way, virtual borders between "Communist China" and "Traditional China" will not exist. Chinese will be one unifying (and unified) writing system again -- as it has been since 221 BC.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
I have friends in China that I IM frequently; and I occasionally have to use Babelfish to translate english to chinese from time to time... Babelfish.altavista.com used to routinely confuse moon / month which share the same chinese monosyllable (yue).... I wonder if someone pasted the english text into a chinese transator and got this result
To the main point of the article... This article makes a really bad asumption that does not appear to be true. I am sitting in a hotel room near the location of the 2008 Olympic games and I CANNOT access either en.wikipedia.org or zh.wikipedia.org from China... therefore I find it hard to attribute the differences in the sources to Chinese government activity.
Well, he's really talking about places where immigrants would actually go, Eastern Europe isn't one of them. And the lack of Chinese in Eastern Europe has no bearing on the fact that a lot of Chinese have left China.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
How interesting, I don't see you getting a -1. You haven't even been modded yet, and chances are, when you're modded, it'll be +5 Insightful.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Interesting. I've seen the exact opposite. Abject hatred of Wikipedia is the second-easiest way to get free karma on Slashdot. (The easiest is abject hatred of "the evil Slashdot moderation system" and stating that you'll surely get modded down for your next post.)
Just because you got modded down for supporting Naziism doesn't mean that they're censoring your opinions.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Dude, which country would you choose to live in?
Being a citizen of neither the US or China, and having spent some time in both countries, I can honestly say that with the exception of being afraid of the almost constant threat of physical violence or death, I would prefer to live in the US. This choice however is almost due almost entirely to pollution and sanitation. China is filthy, and incredibly polluted.
However, the question was about access to information. Most of the Chinese people I met were very interested in the world at large, and believe it or not, that information is often freely available. It's information about China that is censored and distorted. Most of the American people I met are blissfully unaware of the world at large, and the little information they do know is some of the most bizarre one-sided propaganda I've ever heard.
This is truly the strangest thing about the USoA. Access to (accurate) information is unparalleled, and yet ignorance and misinformation is so widespread. Still, for the intelligent, curious, rational individual, the US is an information wet dream and I personally would travel there for that purpose if it didn't require giving DNA and my travelling papers to the gestapo at the border.
- Nothing to see hear.
"WE VOTED OUT THE PARTY IN POWER"
No you didn't, you just voted in the understudy.
You can't win a fight.
There is not a 1-to-1 relationship between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. It would require very sophisticated software to examine Simplified Chinese characters and determine what Traditional Chinese characters have identical meaning. In several cases multiple Traditional Chinese characters were merged into a single Simplified Chinese character.
Your post just gave me the beginnings of an idea.
Might it be useful/reasonable in some cases to have "direct translation" pages in additional to the two native language pages?
What I am thinking for example is there being the regular Wikipedia English language article on Tiananmen square, the regular Chinese language article on Tiananmen square, PLUS a Chinese page strictly traslating the English page PLUS an English page strictly translating the Chinese page.
In theory the only acceptable edits to the translation pages would be (1) to clean up the translation itself with no addition/subtraction/modification of meaning in the original, or (2) updating the translation page to match a newer date revision of the source page.
It might also be advisable for translators to refrain from making any edits to the either of the primary language pages. It is probably *not* desirable for translators to attempt to "fix" discrepancies between the two primary pages. It would be up to the home language contributors to evaluate discrepancies and decide how (or even whether) they want to resolve them.
If possible it might also be desireable for translators to be exclusively responsible for translating their first/home language into the foriegn language. For example an American would translate the English page into Chinese, and a Chinese would translate the Chinese page into English. That would probably best ensure preservation of their repective home content and home viewpoint.
It would involve signifigant extra work, but it might be useful and it would certainly be facinating.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
It's an interesting ideas, but the very act of translation (in any language) is a form of bias. If you've translated anything, you realize that to make it actually make sense you need to phrase it in "colloquial" English (or whatever); in this way, you are changing the diction, the word choices, etc. Furthermore, words have different implications in different languages. Basically, there is no completely 1-1 translation.
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. Vladimir Nabokov
the very act of translation (in any language) is a form of bias
Agreed. This is exactly what made me suggest that native Chinese do the translation from Chinese to English, and Americans do the translation of English into Chinese. That way any translation difficulties and tendency towards bias would tend to be in line with the point of view of the native version.
Unfortunately my translation abilities are effectively nonexistant, unless Wikipedia suddenly pops up new versions for various computer programming languages. Chuckle.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.