Wikipedia rejects Chinese censorship

 

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By Simon Aughton

Posted on 11 Sep 2006 at 12:21

The founder of Wikipedia has refused to bow to the Chinese government and censor entries on the world's biggest online encyclopaedia.

James Wales is to meet government officials in an attempt to persuade them to lift the ban on the site which is currently blocked by the country's 'Great Firewall of China'.

Wales is determined to maintain Wikipedia's independence, insisting that entries on events such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 are not altered to fit with the Chinese authorities' version of events.

'We have internal rules about neutrality and deleting personal attacks and things like this,' Wales told the Observer newspaper. 'We're far from being a haven for dissidents or a protest site. So our view is that the block is in error and should be removed, but we shall see.'

The Observer is backing Irrepressible.info an Amnesty International campaign for an end to Internet censorship.

Wales said that one 'ironic side-effect' of the ban on Wikipedia is that China and Chinese culture is under-represented.

'One of the points that I'm trying to push is that if there's a small town in China that has a wonderful local tradition, that won't make its way into Wikipedia because the people of China are not allowed to share their knowledge with the world,' he said.

Wales also called on companies such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft to justify their claims that they can do more good than harm by making concessions to censorship. The companies have argued that by agreeing to restrict some content, they are able to provide Chinese Net users with services and information they would otherwise not have access to.