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In the media

Wales in China; #Edit2015

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By Gamaliel and Andreas Kolbe

Wales' comments on censorship in China edited for public consumption

Jimmy Wales was one of the attendees at the second annual World Internet Conference in Wuzhen. Given the state of Internet censorship in China, a number of groups called for boycotting the conference, including Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders. Charlie Smith of GreatFire, an organization devoted to monitoring and opposing Chinese Internet censorship, told The Hill that conference attendees "should be ashamed of themselves". (In September, Smith published an interview with Wales.) Representatives from Western technology companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Netflix, and LinkedIn were in attendance, but heads of state from the West were absent, and reporters from the New York Times were banned. Of the heads of state or government leaders in attendance – Dmitry Medvedev (Russia), Nawaz Sharif and Mamnoon Hussain (Pakistan), Karim Massimov (Kazakhstan), Temir Sariyev (Kyrgyzstan), Kokhir Rasulzoda (Tajikistan), Rustam Azimov (Uzbekistan), and Siaosi Sovaleni (Tonga) – a number were from countries which practice internet censorship themselves.

The Wall Street Journal reported that some of Wales' comments on a December 17 conference panel were altered in a Chinese-language transcript posted online. Wales, an outspoken proponent of free speech and opponent of Chinese censorship of Wikipedia and the Internet, said,

In the Chinese translation, his comments were altered to make it appear he was in favor of Chinese government censorship:

Gizmodo quipped "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is familiar with people putting made-up bullshit online." G

Wikimedia Foundation releases year in review video

#Edit2015

On December 15, the Wikimedia Foundation released its year in review video, #Edit2015, created by Victor Grigas. A blog post announcing the video said "#Edit2015 celebrates the individuals all over the world who’ve invested thousands, if not millions, of hours in curating Wikimedia sites." The video included highlights of world news and cultural events and how Wikipedia and Wikimedia project recorded and responded to those events. Engadget wrote "Wikipedia continues to chronicle human history in real time". Vice reflected that "Maybe that's part of the point of the Wikipedia Foundation's #Edit2015 montage: History is always feeding back through the present. It is always subject to edit." G


In brief

  • Flights of fancy: The Malay Mail Online, Free Malaysia Today and other Malaysian news outlets report on a press statement by 1MDB requesting that members of the public ignore "fake information circulating on social media regarding the setup and operations of a so-called 1MDB Airlines Berhad. It's from a fake Wikipedia entry. We confirm that there is no such company owned or operated by 1MDB." The article 1MDB Airlines was deleted shortly after the news story appeared; it had been nominated for deletion on December 14. The deletion log shows that there were two prior instances of the article, deleted on November 30 and December 4. (Dec. 18) AK
  • Trailblazers: A blog post by consultant Anne Loehr, "5 Women Blaze a Trail Toward the Future of Work", included Rhiannon Ruff (16912 Rhiannon), co-founder of the consultancy firm Beutler Ink. Loehr wrote that Ruff "has written about content biases and the gendered patterns of editing on Wikipedia, as well as the issues involved in encouraging more women to participate in such a male-dominated space." Ruff co-wrote a recent Signpost op-ed on paid editing. (Dec. 18) G
  • Sunshine: The New York Observer looks back on this summer's Sunshine Sachs Wikipedia editing controversy (see previous Signpost coverage), wondering "How could they do it?" (Dec. 17) AK
  • GLAMorous librarians: The ACRLog, the blog of the Association of College and Research Libraries, discusses why librarians should partner with GLAM and Wikipedia. (Dec. 15) G
  • Too much information: Liberty Ballers, the blog dedicated to the Philadelphia 76ers on SB Nation, offers a lengthy discussion, with multiple charts, of the "Outrageously Overwritten Wikipedia Page" of NBA player Nik Stauskas. They write that "This is frankly a ridiculous level of detail for a 22-year-old's Wikipedia page, particularly one who played two notable seasons in college and is now in his second year of pro basketball, playing limited minutes for bad teams." Among the data presented is that the article, at 5,568 words, is longer than that of Yuri Gagarin and John Stuart Mill, but shorter than that of John the Baptist and Taylor Swift. (Dec. 15) G
  • Summa cum laude: Times Higher Education reviews "a ranking of the world's most influential universities, based on an analysis of the number of times that higher education institutions are mentioned on Wikipedia". UK universities topped the list, with the universities of Cambridge and Oxford taking first and second place respectively, ahead of Harvard, Columbia and Princeton. (Dec. 15) AK
  • High school success: Sports media are reporting on a tweet from basketball player Justise Winslow about donating money to Wikipedia: "Might have to do it. Wouldn't have gotten thru high school without it." (Dec. 14) G
  • Rights and wrongs of Wikipedia: In The Times, Giles Coren humorously listed a number of people he would ban from the UK, including London resident Jimmy Wales. Coren wrote "With the invention of Wrongopedia [sic] this man made people think it was okay not to be educated, because now anyone can pretend to know anything just by getting it off a website. Then, by ensuring that everything on it was wrong, he basically killed knowledge itself, which is quite a feat. Like something Lex Luthor would try to do." In a letter to the editor, John Julius Norwich responded "As a writer of history I resort to [Wikipedia] at least a dozen times a day. I could never have written my last two books without it, and I have never caught it out yet, which is more than I can say of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Its range is astonishing: it is almost impossible to find a person, place or subject that it has left uncovered." (Dec. 12–13) G

References

  1. ^ 互联网文化与传播论坛：互联网时代文化传承与创新 (in Chinese). 17 December 2015. Event occurs at 147:00. Retrieved 20 December 2015. 我觉得非常难说，很难预测，因为大家都提到了很多很好的观点，可能想到的就是我们会看到能够有更好的这种机器的翻译，这样会更好的提高人员之间的这种交流的效率。还有就是政府能够在各自的领域当中对人们互相之间的沟通进行很好的分析。



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  • Great quote from Giles Coren. It would be interesting to see more of a discussion about the dynamic between knowledge and education and what Wikipedia can do to bridge the gap in the future. Knowledge without education is just data, which is useless. Viriditas (talk) 20:34, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • And even a greater quote from Chinese .translation of Wales. I say it was not a distortion, but rather a Freudian slip :-) - üser:Altenmann >t 20:43, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Kazakh premier Karim Massimov, who attended the conference in China, also makes an appearance in this ongoing discussion on Jimmy Wales' talk page. This goes back to the jaw-dropping episode where Wales awarded the inaugural "Wikipedian of the Year" award to the functionary running Wikibilim's Kazakh Wikipedia project, which, "under the auspices of the Government of Kazakhstan and with the support of Prime Minister Karim Massimov", completely overhauled the Kazakh Wikipedia and imported the state-published Kazakh National Encyclopedia's content into it. Wales said at Wikimania 2012 that he would go to Kazakhstan, a country labouring under one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world, to "give the award in the presence of the President and Prime Minister" ( https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/File:Wikimania2012-Opening2.ogg time code 23:45 onward). The present discussion was sparked by Kazakhstan's efforts to replicate China's Great Firewall, as discussed in the New York Times. Andreas JN466 21:36, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding Jimmy Wales in China. Result as expected, but is boycot the answer? I can not see that much has come out of various boycots over the years. So I don't support shaming of people for going this or that place, the important thing is that they support freedom of speech, as Jimmy Wales clearly do. Ulflarsen (talk) 22:00, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Jimbo even going to the conference is naivete and delusion in the extreme. Nothing will change, with or without Jimbo. He just let himself be exploited by the Chinese government for their own ends.—azuki (talk · contribs · email) 23:23, 19 December 2015 (UTC) (edited 23:23, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please remember that the translation was made on-site by a simultaneous translator while Jimbo was speaking, not after the conference. In the official video I have cited in the article, the simultaneous interpreter clearly stuck for a moment thinking how to translate the the comment. To AGF, I'd say that the translator may have missed what Jimbo said and attempted to deduce his meaning from what she had heard. By the way, feel free to edit my reference if it doesn't meet Signpost's house style. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 05:16, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you very much for finding the video and adding the reference, Zhaofeng Li. Andreas JN466 09:43, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Jayen466: Now the headline is kind of debatable, as apparently the translation has been wrong right from the beginning. Either it was a honest mistake (possibly under the influence of a Freudian slip), or it was intended (i.e. the interpreter may be "quite experienced" ). But anyway, it wasn't "edited for the Internet". Perhaps the headline and the article should be changed to reflect this? Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 14:33, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • Zhaofeng Li, does the written version on the internet, as shown in the WSJ article, exactly follow the conference interpreter's version? Andreas JN466 14:43, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
          • @Jayen466: Yes, the translated version on WSJ matches the interpreter's one. However, this does not rule out the possibility of the government editing both the video and the transcript (i.e. asking the interpreter to record again after the conference), if we seriously need to assume bad faith. I have not watched the live stream, but such allegation is unfounded, at least for now. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 15:03, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Jayen466: Thank you for making the change. However, I still think the current headline implies that the translation has been changed ("edited") since the conference was over, which is not true (or at least unproven). Maybe something like Wales' comments on censorship in China mistranslated is more neutral? Additionally, the body content may also need editing to be reflect this. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 15:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Editing" is also used to describe what an interpreter does when they are not relaying all of what the speaker said, so I think the word is okay here. Andreas JN466 00:49, 21 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]


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