While you are discussing this, note that such a dialogue may not be easy to establish. The following is a message posted at zh.wp by Mountain (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E4%BA%92%E5%8A%A9%E5%AE%A2%E6%A0%88), (roughly) translated into English as follow:
"The BBS that was recently closed in China is very similar to wikipedia in that it was completely organized and supported by volunteers. I have tried to get some information from some sysops of that BBS; they indeed tried to talk with the government but they can at best do so indirectly through the ISP or the school in which the site is running. No one seems to know or is willing to tell which organization is making the decision. After the blocking in June, Shizhao and I tried to ask our ISPs who to talk to, but to no avail. We are currently talking to our ISPs again and see what we can do. - Mountain 9-23-2004 "
On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 09:04:43 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com wrote:
I wonder whether and what extent W should open a dialogue with the Chinese government to figure out what their content guidelines are, and whether we can help them understand our NPOV guidelines.
I would like to remind people that the Chinese are a very proud people (just like Americans) and don't like to be told what to do. Generally, though, they listen to reason and are eager to look at new ways of doing things.