[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikinews-l] Re: Chinese Wikinews: thoughts

[Anthere]

Craig Franklin <craig at halo-17.net> wrote:
Scríobh Eric Moeller:

> There has now been a vote, organized by Formulax, among Chinese language
> Wikimedians on whether there should be a Chinese Wikinews.

I think it's interesting, but I hope that the board would withdraw support
for a Wikinews that would have as a central plank of policy, a rule which
conflicts with NPOV. Unfortunately, the Chinese government suppressing an
NPOV Chinese-language news site is a very real possibility. I think that no
zh.wikinews is still a better option than a zh.wikinews that panders to the
communist government.

--------------
Hello 
I do not think any of us in the board would support a site which would not follow the neutrality rule.

If I had a couple of words to define what is in common with all of our projects, it would be

* libre
* gratis
* unbiaised
* community built

Any of these four failing would sign the failure of our project ihmo.


The first two ones are the only way we can insure that anyone can access the information. Libre information can circulate without restriction. It does not matter very much that some of the content is not free of charge on other websites or on cdroms... what matters is that there is at least one accessible gratis version somewhere, so that financial issues do not become a bottle neck in the access to information. We can be that gratis version.

The third one is somehow part of our mission statement. We are not activists (but for the point we all believe knowledge should be freely accessible), we do not support one religion or on political party or whatever. Staying neutral is the best choice for us to prosperate, the best choice for us to be able to work together without to get stuck on philosophical issues, the best choice for anyone reading us to make informed consent and make the best decisions. This might be the hardest point to respect, the hardest to understand, but we should not, ever, agree voluntarily to go on a path where it is so easy to get diverted already.

The fourth point... is not only about us all having fun together. The fourth is also a requirement for the number three to get respected. We need to be open and to work together, because it is the only way to get really fully neutral. As soon as we start to give more authority or more rights to a certain group, be it for political reasons, for expertise reasons, we fail in this that we accept a certain view of the world to have more weight than other views. For example, if we start "protecting us" by removing all the people who do not fit in a certain frame, we might very well end up eliminating any editor from african or asian countries, we might end up building a resource for them to use, we might impose them our resource instead of letting them built it.

This is why the chinese wikinews stuff is so tricky.

If we open it, we might end up either with a closed site, in particular full closing of all wikimedia projects => hence failing in our will to inform anyone
If we open it, we might end up with a site agreeing to self-censorship => hence failing in our will to be neutral

But if we do not open it, we end up not allowing chinese editors to build up their own resource, we force them to only rely on the english resource for example => hence failing in our will to inform anyone since not all of them understand english.

I might also suggest chinese editors to join the english speaking wikinews to ensure balance of views... but again... that requires fluency...

At that point, I think it is to the chinese community to decide, because I think they should balance the risk of self censorship to happen, the risk of full closing of project... with the benefit of having their view points better taken into account if they think they are not.

A tricky temporary solution might be (if enough chinese are good speaking), that more chinese editors participate to english wikinews, and that an independant website translate en.wikinews in chinese every day.

People might scream as I suggest this I suppose :-) But here is what *I* think. And what *I* fear a little bit...

Contrarywise to wikipedia, wikinews is much more "localized". The best proof of it is the number of editors who want to build a geographically localised portal page (such as scandinavian wikinews) to inform scandinavian editors. I fear that if we are not careful, wikinews slowly slip from being based on languages to being based on countries or ecoregions. The result of it might be possibly that more and more people focus on their local news... and of course report common local frame of mind. 

It might be that ... a geographical bias or cultural systemic bias will be much much much stronger on wikinews than any other wikimedia projects. The opposite on the scale being wikicommons. This suggest to me that it could make sense to favor more a few languages where participants of many languages and countries and cultures participate, and then that articles are translated in other languages.

At the same time, this is so english-centric that it is scary :-)

Anthere

 



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