[Wikipedia-l] Re: Korean Wikipedia under National Security Law?

[Anthere]

Puzzlet Chung wrote:
> I am Puzzlet Chung, one of the administrators in Korean Wikipedia.

Hello Puzzlet,

Several points in your message

> User:WonYong (also in en.wp) in Korean Wikipedia claims that Korean
> Wikipedia should follow South Korean National Security Law so that the
> contents potentially able to threat the nation (i.e. South Korea)
> should be censored. He made National Security violation templates, to
> tag "anti-State" articles which should be deleted:
> 
> http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:National_Security
> http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:National_Security2

You mention that WonYong is also an english editor.
Less than 2 weeks ago, I was informed on my en.wiki talk page of the 
creation of a template, to be used apparently for similar reasons.

The template has been deleted since then : 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Security_Risk&action=edit

See 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthere#Dealing_With_Information_That_Presents_A_Security_Risk

it strikes me that the creation of the korean template, which seems very 
similar to the english idea, was created just a few days later.

I presume the english template was deleted after a vote. It may be 
interesting to find the discussion about the deletion...

In any cases, it seems generally a bad idea.



> WonYong insists that it is South Korea that try to conserve Korean
> language and protect it from extinction, hence both administration and
> contents of Korean Wikipedia should follow South Korean laws, and
> Korean language speakers who is not South Korean citizens don't have
> anything to do with it. He states that North Korea is not recognized
> by South Korea as a nation but a "band of mafias," (the statement of
> which is not true, since North Korea is a member of UN, and relation
> between two Koreas has changed), and doesn't deserve for Korean
> Wikipedia to reflect its POV.

The comment you report seems to me very rude.
But even though South Korea was not recognising North Korea as a nation, 
most of the world do, and people living in North Korea do exist as 
humans and have their own history, culture, opinion... no matter what 
South Korea would claim, North Korea has a right of existence and a 
right of participation to the korean wikipedia.

If WonYong does not agree with this, I think he just should not edit 
Wikipedia. And if he insists on excluding other koreans pov, he should 
be banned.

> The problem is that some users would agree to his point of view. Out
> of two Korean [[names of Korea]], some South Koreans relate "Chosŏn"
> with North Korea and Communism. They think equal juxtaposition of two
> names, (juxtapose the names when they have to, of course), as not
> satisfying Natural Point of View as in South Korea, where the majority
> of the Korean Wikipedia users live in, and where the server is located
> as well. Although "Chosŏnmal" is the name of Korean language called
> not only by North Koreans, but majority of Chinese Koreans and some
> Japanese Koreans, some find "Chosŏnmal" aggressive and inappropriate
> to use it in some articles.

Yes. This is a common dispute on many wikipedia.
I have seen it many time on the english wikipedia as well, for american 
and british do not always use the same word to qualify a thing.
I have seen it on the french wikipedia, between canadians and europeans.
We regularly hear similar issues on the portuguese wikipedia (between 
the south american and the european portuguese speakers)
Same for some scandinavian languages...

*this* is unfortunately frequent, and difficult to handle, in particular 
if one instance of language can appear "rude" to the speakers of the 
other instance.

In most projects, the two general rules used are
* if one instance was used in an article, do not change it to the other 
instance. Keep it as originally used. It is more polite to the original 
author... does not make him feel as he wrote something "erroneous".
* if one instance is rather used in one country, and the article is 
related to that country, keep the instance used in that specific country.

For example, French from France use the word gay to qualify homosexuals. 
Canadians use gai.
If the article is about Toronto (Canadian city), we'd rather use gai. If 
the article is about a famous french actor, we'd rather use gay.

Indeed, sometimes, some instances may appear aggressive or 
inappropriate, but this is something we have to learn to live with.


You raise another very important point : the servers.
Yes, the korean wikipedia is served by the Yahoo servers in Korea.
This should absolutely NOT be an argument for Koreans in Seoul to push 
their POV ! The location of the servers should not matter. This is just 
a technical decision and should NOT imply any domination of one Korea 
over the other ! Just as americans are not supposed to dominate the 
british or the australians.


> I am a South Korean citizen myself, but as far as I understand
> Wikipedian policy of NPOV, WonYong's activity threats NPOV more than
> the "Evil Wikipedia" would threat the existence of South Korea, not
> like what he might think, as long as Wikipedia is not a some kind of
> Communists' propaganda. But I've started to seriously consider about
> moving DB server back to Florida and "foreigning" the site,
> contributed by so-called foreigns and South Koreans who's not afraid
> of South Korean laws.

We should try not to censor ourselves thinking of what our countries 
could censor. This is something most of us have weaknesses in, I the 
first. Best to wait until our government really complain about rather 
than trying to comply to rules they never intended to inforce in the 
first place.


Ant


> Regards,
> 
> Puzzlet Chung