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The Chinese government is recruiting 20,000 people to create an online encyclopedia thatwill bethecountrys own, China-centric version of Wikipedia, or as one official put it, like a Great Wall of culture.

Known as the Chinese Encyclopedia, the countrys national encyclopedia will go online for the first time in 2018, and the government has employed tens of thousands of scholars from universities and research institutes who will contribute articles in more than 100 disciplines. The end result will be a knowledge base with more than 300,000 entries, each of which will be about 1,000 words long.

The Chinese Encyclopaedia is not a book, but a Great Wall of culture, Yang Muzhi, the editor-in-chief of the project and the chairman of the Book and Periodicals Distribution Association of China, said. He added that China was under pressure from the international community to produce an encyclopedia thatwill guide and lead the public and society.

The need for an online reference encyclopedia is in part a result ofthe Chinese governmentblocking access to Wikipedia. Chinese internet companies like Baidu and Qihoo 360 operate their own online encyclopedias, but none are capable of matching Wikipedia in terms of scale and breadth of information.

The aim of the new version of the Chinese encyclopedia is to showcase Chinas latest science and technology developments, promote historical heritage, increase cultural soft power, and strengthen the core values of socialism, according to Yang, who stressed thatthe goal isnt to mimic Wikipedia: We have the biggest, most high-quality author team in the world. Our goal is not to catch up, but overtake.

At over 720 million users, China has the worlds largest internet population by a large margin, but it also has some of the worlds most restrictive internet laws.

President Xi Jinping has publicly called for greater cooperation among nations to develop and govern the internet, but he and his Communist Party have overseen ever-growing efforts to control what information and services Chinese citizens have access to online. The so-called Great Firewall of China is the most sophisticated censorship tool in use anywhere in the world today, blocking the parts of the internet the government deems unsavory.

It is unclear just how much the Chinese government will influence the topics being covered in next years edition of the Chinese Encyclopedia, but one of the scholars invited to take part believes the system needs to be updated to reflect the current era.

The original system is too outdated, Professor Huang Annian, a historian currently based in the U.S.,said, adding that the new encyclopedia needs to adapt to the development trend in 21st century, respect history, and face the future. I think it is necessary to emphasize the globalization of the world economy, political democracy, and cultural diversity.

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China is recruiting 20000 people to write its own Wikipedia - VICE News

The "Wikipedia" logo seen on a tablet screen. On Saturday, the site was blocked in Turkey. Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

The "Wikipedia" logo seen on a tablet screen. On Saturday, the site was blocked in Turkey.

Turkish residents were unable to access Wikipedia on Saturday after the government blocked the site, citing content "showing Turkey in coordination and aligned with various terrorist groups," according to the Anadolu news agency.

The government has not officially commented on the outage. But the Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications Ministry told the state-run agency, "Instead of coordinating against terrorism, (Wikipedia) has become part of an information source which is running a smear campaign against Turkey in the international arena."

Ankara had asked Wikipedia to remove the content, but according to the Ministry, the site refused; if the site meets Turkey's demands, the ban will be lifted.

Turkey Blocks, a censorship monitoring group, said the the blackout occurred at 8 a.m. local time in accordance with an administrative blocking order, with a full court blocking order expected in the coming days.

NPR's Peter Kenyon reports, "The government has lashed out at the posting of sensitive images or comments deemed insulting. Officials regularly impose news blackouts after terrorist attacks and other major incidents."

Saturday's move is the latest in what critics describe as Turkey's crack down on free speech following last summer's coup attempt, with dozens of media outlets shuttered and journalists jailed.

Wikipedia is a widely-used online encyclopedia, whose content is largely written by anonymous, unpaid volunteers.

Juliet Barbara, a spokeswoman for the Wikimedia Foundation, tells NPR, "We are committed to ensuring that Wikipedia remains available to the millions of people who rely on it in Turkey. To that end, we are actively working with outside counsel to seek judicial review of the decision affecting access to Wikipedia. We hope the issue can be resolved promptly."

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Turkey Blocks Wikipedia, Accusing It Of Running 'Smear Campaign' - NPR

Posted May 02, 2017 15:00:30

Media organisations are having to regain the trust of their audiences as "fake news" spreads and faith in established institutions erodes, according to Wikimedia Foundation executive director Katherine Maher.

The foundation manages the Wiki-branded websites, including online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which is among the most visited sites in the world.

Ms Maher said in the era of fake news and "alternative facts" it was critical for websites that spread information to "shore up" trust among their followers.

"With great respect for the press, for a very long time now there has been an assumption of trust," she told News Breakfast.

"What I'm really seeing from many outlets is a conversation that they're having with their readers around what do we need to do in order to regain your trust?

"That's not just about providing transparency into the newsroom or where information comes from, but really thinking about what is it that people are looking for and how can we provide things that actually matter and resonate in their lives in a way that offers value."

Since it was established in 2001, Wikipedia has grown enormously to include more than 40 million articles in more than 250 languages.

One of its defining features is that anyone can edit the articles and it is managed largely by a community of volunteers called Wikipedians who self-regulate entries.

This has led to criticism among academics, particularly that it's not a reliable source on its own, despite its popularity making traditional encyclopedias increasingly obsolete.

Ms Maher said each Wikipedia article relied on citations to secondary sources, including trusted media reports, and she encouraged a healthy level of scepticism among the website's readers.

"We don't think of ourselves as citizen journalists. We know that secondary sources can be wrong," she said.

"The types of sources we want to have in Wikipedia are publications and outlets that engage in fact checking and issue corrections when they get things wrong.

"Even when you have contested facts or contested information, Wikipedia tries to provide you some sort of consensus amidst all that complexity."

Despite Wikipedia's attempts to remain a neutral source of information, it is not immune to exerting a level of control and curation over what information it presents.

Earlier this year, the Wikipedians made the call to ban the Daily Mail as a source that could be cited in articles, arguing it had a "reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication".

Ms Maher acknowledged this was an unusual intervention by the Wikipedia community.

"I use the Daily Mail example with some trepidation because it is one of the only sources that I know that has been explicitly, as a source, currently blocked from being used in Wikipedia articles," she said.

"The way they [the Wikipedians] normally do things is they assess on an individual basis the reliability of a source."

Ms Maher has previously been critical of Facebook for the way it curates what people see, telling news website Value Walk: "When I'm looking at a Facebook feed I don't know why information is being presented to me. Is it because it's timely? Is it because it's relevant? Is it because it's trending, popular, important? All of that is stripped out of context."

She said Wikipedia did not seek to curate or control.

"It's not about maintaining a list of credible sources and a list of blocked sources, which I think is ... the more blunt-force approach we're seeing from social networks," she said.

"We do see different things when we log into social networks, but on Wikipedia you see one version of an article."

Topics: internet-culture, media, australia

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Wikipedia aims for 'consensus and trust' as fake news spreads, boss Katherine Maher says - ABC Online

Turkey blocked access to Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, on Saturday, through a court measure used to block access to pages or entire websites to protect national security and public order.

The Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) said an Ankara court ordered that a protection measure related to suspected Internet crimes be applied to Wikipedia, a collaborative online reference work.

In response, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tweeted his support for those who labeled the decision censorship of social media: Access to information is a fundamental human right. Turkish people I will always stand with you to fight for this right.

Turkey Blocks, an internet censorship monitor, said users in Turkey have been unable to access all language editions of Wikipedia since 8 a.m. local time Saturday.

The loss of availability is consistent with internet filters used to censor content in the country, the monitor said.

TURKEY BLOCKS POPULAR SOCIAL NETWORKS

Turkeys official news agency, quoting the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications, said Saturday the site was blocked for becoming an information source acting with groups conducting a smear campaign against Turkey in the international arena.

The state-run Anadolu Agency said officials had warned Wikipedia to remove content likening Turkey to terror groups but the site persistently did not.

Turkey had demanded that Wikipedia open an office in the country, act in line with international law and abide by court decisions and not be part of blackout operation against Turkey, according to the agency.

Anadolu said if these demands are met and the content removed, the site would be reopened.

HACKERS HIJACK TWITTER ACCOUNTS WITH SWASTIKAS, 'NAZI HOLLAND' MESSAGES

Turkeys status is listed as not free on the 2016 Freedom on the Net index by independent rights watchdog Freedom House. It says over 111,000 websites were blocked as of May last year.

The country on Saturday also banned television dating programs. The decree banned radio and television programs for finding friends and spouses by adding a clause to the article on protecting children in Turkeys media law. The shows will not be allowed to air without television content rating symbols.

Dating programs, which draw high ratings and large ad revenues, have been a hot topic this year. Petitions have called for their bans and lawmakers across the political spectrum have criticized the programs as having a negative influence on families. Government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus has described them as contrary to Turkish customs and religion.

The state of emergency that followed last summers coup attempt has allowed the Turkish government to rule by decrees. Since then, more than 47,000 people have been arrested and 100,000have been purged for alleged connections to terror organizations.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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Turkey blocks Wikipedia in dissident clampdown - Fox News

A parody of the famous We Can Do It! poster. Aderivative work by Tom Morris via Wikimedia Commons.Public domain.

The Wikipedia article on Gender bias on Wikipedia states matter-of-factly that numerous studies and surveys have found that a dominant majority of Wikipedia editors are male, citing the figures of anywhere between 85-91.5%. Its a cause for concern for both the community at-large and the Wikimedia Foundation, the entity that manages the worlds largest free online encyclopedia, because this demographic disparity may contribute to a systematic bias found in its content.

The Wikimujeres (Wikiwomen) project has been working in Spanish and Catalan-speaking countries to help change those demographics. According to their website:

Somos un grupo de usuarias de Wikipedia preocupadas por la diversidad y la neutralidad de la Wikipedia y dispuestas a trabajar para disminuir (y en un futuro eliminar) la brecha de gnero y culturas que existe en la enciclopedia ms consultada en internet.

We are group of Wikipedia users concerned about the diversity and neutrality of Wikipedia and we are willing to work to reduce (and in the future eliminate) the gender and culture gap that exists on the most widely consulted encyclopedia on the internet.

Their goal is to involve more women as active editors who can also contribute more content related to women, such as biographies, as well as content created by women editors in the developing world. Holding weekly meetings in two locations in Madrid and Barcelona, outreach plays an important role in the form of trainings and edit-a-thons, which are organized, often in-person events designed to work collaboratively on creating new or improving Wikipedia articles.

Photo by Montserrat Boix via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Recent edit-a-thons focused on adding new articles about women photographers and women scientists were co-organized by Wikimujeres and wereheld at the Medialab-Prado in Madrid.

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Wikimujeres Wants More Women Editors to Fix Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance - Global Voices Online