On 1/6/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
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…
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthere#Dealing_With_Information_Tha…
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.
I've found the discussion for deletion here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion&…
We've put the templates at the Votes for Deletion, and so far WonYong
is the only one who wants to keep it:
http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%9C%84%ED%82%A4%EB%B0%B1%EA%B3%BC:%EC%82%AD…
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.
One of WonYong's points is that most of the people who prefer to call
Korea "Chosŏn" must have been not able to access the Internet.
However, according to User:Yonghokim, as many as 20% of netizens of
whom Korean language is the mother tongue prefer "Chosŏn" to
"Hanguk."
However, another user refutes that if Wikipedia speaks with what most
of the 80% would find aggressive, the site would eventually be
isolated. I'm not sure about how many Korean language speakers would
think so -- maybe we should have straw polls in Korean Wikipedia to
find out.
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
Puzzlet Chung