Exactly this.
If the government of any given country wants to redirect certain
articles,
or all of Wikipedia, to a page saying "This content blocked by the
Ministry
of Knowledge", people will know they're being censored. If instead they
reach a "sanitized" version of the article reflecting the government's
preferred spin, we're putting that government's spin in our voice. That's
not at all acceptable.
Let them censor, let them make it obvious, and let them deal with the
fallout. But we should absolutely not help them in any way whatsoever.
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 9:30 PM, Austin Hair <adhair(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think that if you stop to think about it
another way, you'll find
that this would do the opposite of what you intend, to wit: allowing
"various courts" to impose editorial control.
Imagine Circletine, once a popular childhood beverage but now the
issue of some controversy regarding its tendency to cause tooth loss.
Although banned from sale in Europe and the United States, an
aggressive marketing campaign has made it the best-selling soft drink
in the nation of Elbonia. Equally aggressive lobbying in the Elbonian
parliament has resulted it in being a crime to disparage Circletine in
any way, or even to mention the controversy in print.
And so we have our article:
'''Circletine''' is a <bannedin
country="elbonia">controversial</bannedin> milk flavoring product
made
from malt extract, curds, and whey, <bannedin
country="elbonia">once</bannedin> extremely popular worldwide
<bannedin country="elbonia">Although it enjoyed several decades of
success as an inexpensive beverage marketed mostly for children,
concerns over an increased risk of tooth loss led to its withdrawal
from sale in most western countries.</bannedin>
(I think you can see where this is going.)
Censorship is awful, but partial censorship is worse than simply
saying "I'm not allowed to talk about it. Ask your government why."
Austin
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 9:50 PM, Yuri <yuri(a)rawbw.com> wrote:
I submitted the proposal to be able to eliminate
certain parts of the
articles in certain countries, where the local governments find those
parts
illegal:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62231
But it got rejected, and I am not sure I am clear why.
The problem is that there are countries that lack the freedom of
speech
(most of the countries), and some of them get
very aggressive about
banning
materials that most reasonable people
wouldn't find objectionable. The
very
recent example, provided in the bug report above,
is banning of any
references of Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" in Russia. While this
case
may seem not as important, but I don't see
why users outside Russia
should
be affected by such decision, when they may not
even support any
decisions
or values of the said government. Yet,
everybody's version of
wikipedia
page
is affected, and materials are hidden.
My suggestion, if implemented, would allow to hide certain parts of
the
articles in the country (or area) of jurisdiction
of the corresponding
court, while allowing users not living there to still see the original
version.
If such governments get their way in banning materials globally, this
will
effectively make wikipedia biased, and reflecting
various POVs of
various
courts, which has never been intended by
wikipedia.
Yuri
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