[Wikipedia-l] wikipedia in China

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

Christopher Mahan wrote:
> No, not ditto for the Tiananmen stuff. Yes it's horrible, but did you
> know that a 1850 rebellion cause 50 million deaths in China? Where's
> that article? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_Ping_Rebellion

> Yes, the US government (bombmaking, etc),

There is no law in the US which would prevent Wikipedia from
publishing detailed bomb-making instructions, despite Senator
Feinstein's (D-California) ongoing efforts.

If the US government does attempt to ban speech that properly goes
into our encyclopedia, we should disboey that law.

> the UK government (a very recent letter on this very mailing list,
> or is it the other? about the academy for gifted kids),

I think that can *hardly* be classed as an attempt to censor
wikipedia, by the UK government.  It was a routine complaint about a
bad article, and a request for assistance in understanding the best
way to fix it.

But to be clear: if the UK government does attempt to ban speech that
properly goes into our encycloepdia, we should disobey that law.

>the French government (Nazi stuff),

Again, I have been sharply critical of French government censorship
policies, but I do not think that their laws directly impact us.  But
again to be clear: if the French government does attempt to ban speech
that properly goes into our encycloepdia, we should disobey that law.

Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right.  And the subcategory
of speech that we call NPOV is even _moreso_ a fundamental human
right.  To outlaw advocacy is deeply wrong, but to outlaw information
itself...

--Jimbo