China Compiles Its Own Wikipedia, But Public Can't Edit It

NBC New Mexico ^ | Louise Watt

[nickcarraway]

It'll be free. It'll be uniquely Chinese. It'll be an online encyclopedia to rival Wikipedia — but without the participation of the public. And don't expect entries on "Tiananmen Square 1989" or "Falun Gong spiritual group" to come up in your searches, either.

Scholars and experts hand-picked by Beijing to work on the project say only they will be able to make entries — the latest example of the Chinese government's efforts to control information available on the internet.

The scholars say truth is their guiding light, and their editing and review process is a rigorous one. If there is a difference of opinion, a committee should figure it out, said Zhang Baichun, chief editor of the history of science and technology section.

[BenLurkin]

The public’s editing option was taken away from the “for the common” good

Now the information is “curated” like the Democrat Party wants to do here

[RedWulf]

Like it matters. The public can’t edit Wikipedia here either. It’s controlled by a small group of progressive editors. Wikipedia is like the damn new speak dictionary from 1984. Every year the articles good shorter and lose detail, unprogressive hate facts are removed, and human knowledge is reduced.

[nickedknack]

Dog: “A delicacy enjoyed by 1.3 billion of our countrymen, and also by a certain mulatto Kenyan-Malaysian former USA imperialist president.”

[Captain Rhino]

If I remember my undergraduate Chinese history classes correctly - and it has been decades, so I could be wrong - during the pre-republic period of China’s history, the imperial government maintained an official encyclopedia meant to collect, consolidate, and record information on all topics for use by the court in its deliberations. Although it’s mechanics were never discussed, I assume it was maintained by Confucian scholars, much the same as this Chinese version of Wikipedia will be maintained by academics. And it is only fair to assume that it will also reflect the existing regime’s bias in reporting topics it is sensitive about. And it will be about as useful as Wikipedia is on controversial topics except there won’t be the prominent warning labels about unbalanced reporting/over reliance on myoptic or self-interested sources.

Full disclosure: I make a small monthly contribution to Wikipedia because their reporting on non controversial topics is useful when I need to look up some obscure bit of information (like the actor or actress who played a minor character in some old movie, the number produced of some
warplane, etc,). I DO NOT rely on it for impartial information on controversial topics. Although I do acknowledge that the subject area
editors do at least flag and banner entries with questionable material.

Going back to the Imperial Encyclopedia, it would probably be interesting to read the entries it contained (in translation) on key events in Western history that may have been of interest to the court. However, given Chinese ethnocentrism, especially during the imperial period, westerners might be shocked at how little there was outside the immediate periphery of China that made into the imperial version of the world. Well, at least an effort was being made. Outside the Vatican, I know of no really long term effort in the pre-modern West to comprehensively collect information on all topics. Not that the Vatican was without its own biases and exclusions in reporting.