Wikipedia Co-Founder Refuses to Comply With China's Censorship
blogs.wsj.com
blogs.wsj.com
Although Wales serves as a sort of public face of Wikipedia and has some persuasive authority, the headline implies (the article less so) that he's running the show, i.e. in a position where he could "agree" or "refuse" to comply with censorship on behalf of Wikipedia. He used to make those kinds of decisions, but has long since turned over control to a more stable, less benevolent-dictator-for-life kind of setup. Nowadays policy is ultimately set by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees (where he's one of ten trustees), and day-to-day decisions would be up to the Wikimedia staff, in consultation with people on wikis and the mailing lists, overseen by executive director Sue Gardner.
In any case, I do think he is accurately conveying the general sentiment held by all those parties, so the substance of the article is right. But I think the current setup actually makes that view even stronger, because even if Wales somehow changed his mind and argued for censorship being the least-bad option, he would probably have a hard time pushing that through; hence Wikipedia's position doesn't depend on any one person.
Wikipedia was formally launched on 15 January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, using the concept and technology of a wiki pioneered in 1995 by Ward Cunningham.
Here is Sangers collection of "evidence".
http://blog.larrysanger.org/role-in-wikipedia/my-role-in-wik...
I find this paragraph most interesting.
Wikipedia’s first three press releases (2002, 2003, and 2004), including two that I had nothing to do with, all credited me as founder. It was not until later, in 2004 that Jimmy Wales began omitting mention of my involvement at the start of Wikipedia to the press, and he didn’t start denying that I am co-founder until 2005 or 2006, just when Wikipedia began to enter the public eye.
Wales claims that Sanger was simply an early employee and does not warrant founder status. Sanger claims that Wales is a suit whose primary early function in WP was to provide funding and that he himself (Sanger) not only originated the idea, but did all of the work, and is entitled to the label "co-founder".
In the US we tend to look at the parallel Chinese Internet largely as a political question, censorship. But a primary reason China encourages homegrown products is simple economics. China isn't content to be a US economic colony, they build their own successful businesses.
It is very easy to take a stand against China, and get props for it, when what one is doing is risk free and frankly irrelevant. I cant see the Chinese government crying at night that they cant get wikipedia. I cant see the Chinese rising in revolt because they cant easily get wikipedia. There is no consequence for Wales and co.
I say big deal. Try being Snowden. Try publishing information that breaks US law. Try circumventing US internet security.
Frankly Im tired of China being a whipping boy for westerners who want to show how right on and freedom loving they are they are. It is as useless as signing an online petition.
Don't get me wrong, think wikipedia is one of the best resources on the internet, I use the site a hell of a lot. I would like the Chinese people to have access to it. I fully appreciated the stand against SOPA. I very much respect the guys who set wikipedia up and all the contributors to it. But really, this "stand" amounts to not a lot, except some easy publicity.
Oh, and he has complied with censorship. He had a choice: censor, or withdraw everything. Both from a Chinese POV, both achieve the exact same thing. The info they don't want their people accessing is not officially available. The Chinese people still lose out.
Lastly, I understand that the Chinese people can get round the firewall in various ways and still get wikipedia in full, and that people out side China help greatly in that. Now, imagine that this was the US we were talking about. Imagine that some one helped Americans get information the US government didn't want Americans to see. Can we speculate on how far the American government might go to stop it and deal with the people involved?
China is an easy, risk free target.
Yeah yeah, I know I know. China "evil", m'kay? So, fine to abuse their laws and customs. But just one thing, its hardly going to speed them up in to the arms of the oh so free west. Attacking them just makes them more defensive, and it slows up their journey towards us.
China is 100 times worse than the USA on freedom and censorship, whatever you guys are complaining about over there, don't get the wrong impression that it is even close to what we get here. I'm neither for attacking or appeasing china on censorship. Frankly, there is enough internal pressure that change is inevitable, they'll deal.
This is not true. It varies on time and place, but it is usually blocked in at least some regions. It's currently blocked [1] in Beijing and Inner Mongolia. It was blocked when I was in Jilin Province two weeks ago. During that visit, it was hit-or-miss whether my Digital Ocean mail server was reachable.
[1] http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=zh.wik... (same for en.wikipedia.org)
The other link you gave me is blocked, though. So is Wikipedia https. Zh.wikipedia is blocked also (not any other Lang though). Zh does work on my phone though (china Unicom).
It's complicated, even beijing doesn't have a single GFW.
Although this is true for mindless, nationalistic attacks, we need to attack, or any other country, where the ad-hoc censorship and manipulation of news is larger than a threshold (note that I'm not saying where they exist, since they exist in some form in all countries). Viewed in this sense your assertion is clearly wrong. As a single counterexample, consider the case of Tombstone (and related books about the Great Chinese Famine). In the NYTBR review (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/22/china-w...) it says
"But just as China is undergoing a spiritual revival today, its people are also beginning to revive history. Xinyang is now home to two tiny memorials to the famine.6 More striking, earlier this year a national newspaper ran a multipage supplement on the famine—an unprecedented recognition of this disaster.7 When I asked an editor at a leading Party newspaper why this was, he had a one-word answer: “Tombstone.” "
Conclusion: Well-intentioned and -placed and continuous push can bring about change of attitude. Even in China.
So what do you think about it? How shall we (if we can at all) change anything?
Wikipedia has long had a principled policy of opposition to censorship. For some examples, see the Virgin Killer article, which touched a nerve in Western society, a petition to remove depictions of the prophet Muhammed that was signed hundreds of thousands of times, and the very recent attempts by French intelligence services to have an article on the French Wikipedia deleted.
I do not see this latest public stance as deviating from their previous ones.
Do you really think that Google, MSFT, FB etc. went "against" the government in the public because they are "not at all about money"? I like the wishful thinking, but unfortunately, if I were running one of those companies I would do the same thing so that I get to keep my customer and user base, because their confidence in my company and product is the driving force of my continued revenue. How much money is / can the government going to give me anyway? They are not MSFT or GOOG or FB's customer!
Who specifically is attacking who specifically?
http://gizmodo.com/5446712/google-refuses-to-continue-censor...
I lived in Shenzhen which borders Hong Kong. Facebook is huge in HK, so there was a demand for access in SZ. Surprisingly many people asked me for my facebook and I saw many coworkers using it too. When I was in Beijing and Shanghai, I didn't see it used as much except with the young, wealthy international crowd.
For wikipedia, the engineers loved to use it. I even introduced a few of them to Tor when they asked me how they could use it outside of the office.
Setting up the bridge takes about 5 min: https://cloud.torproject.org/#get_started
Setting up the PPTP server another 5 min: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PPTPServer
If you want facebook on your phone, you'll need to setup a L2TP VPN, since China Unicom blocks PPTP. Instructions can be found here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/L2TPServer
NOTE: A bridge is not the same as an exit node. Exit notes attract attention from authorities, not bridges. If you are just running a bridge, you are only helping people circumvent government firewalls to join the Tor network. The default EC2 Tor Cloud images only run as a bridge.
Not sure if this were actually the case, but my friends were pretty firm about this. If it were actually true, lol, the whole world is fooled. Let's go figure out how to make Tibet free so that Google can go back to China. =P
Surprisingly, google maps is doing ok.
... participation in the creation of 'the human story' is a right that can’t be dictated by authorities.
I'm happy to give Mr. Wales credit due for consistently leading WP in that direction. It is certainly one of the prime examples of the web's potential for collaborative synergy and self-education. It's a moving success.