Google sponsored Wiki in China ?
Monday, 24. October 2005, 20:36:29
I hope all the Chinese netizen will soon have a free accessing ,trouble free Wiki mirror site in China (It will be two way updated but with some restrictions)
The lettle I wrote to Jimmy..
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Hello Jimmy and other board members:
I am a Chinese blogger and a big fan of Wiki's global Wikipedia project. Wikipedia has been growing so fast during last several years.I noticed that in last three years Wiki's page views had been soared about 3 times .More and more people start relaying on Wikipedia website to get latest , updated knowledge and information.
However, the Chinese version Wikipedia ,especially simplified Chinese version (mainly China Mainland visitors) is underdeveloped for some reason. By far , it only has 44,002 items available for checking. Obviously , China has special political situation and in this sense, some necessary censorship mechanisms are unavoidable at the moment.Main while , China also has huge potential for developing wiki Chinese content. Globally , there are more than 1.5 billion people speak Chinese as the first langague ,plus , there are more than 30 million Chinese learners all over the world.Apart from this , China also has longer then 5000 years civilization and history.This all advantages can be the driving force for wiki Chinese site.
Under this circumstance, in order to develop the content on Wiki Chinese site, I want to propose a project with the sponsorship of Google China , to speed the content construction on wiki Chinese site. Based on this thoughts , I've exchanged some ideas with Dr. Kaifu Lee, the president of Google China. He said in our conversation that he will be considering the possibility of cooperation with Wikimedia Foundation and he's asking for my advice on what google can do to promote wiki site in Chinese world.
Briefly,my idea was:
1.With the help of Google China, to establish a branch of Wiki organization.
2.Mirror all the Wiki Chinese as well as other language content in China (Omit some of the political sensitive items)
The reason for building the mirror site is because most of the Chinese college student could not access oversea websites, suffering oversea sites will be resulting unaffordable expenses.
3.Sacrifice small fragment of political sensitive to exchange the FREEDOM OF KNOWLEDGE (to some extend, Which is considered more important then rights of free speach)
Other details are all negotiable , I hope to see the day Chinese culture and history can be universally accessible by outside the world. I hope Google and your org can ultimately reach the agreement.
Looking forward your reply..and comments on this topic.I'd like to serve as a intermedia of this process.
sincerely ..
Leo




