we tracked down yan, one of them. he lives abroad now, but used to organise events in china, teaching citizens there how to edit wikipedia. he denies misusing the platform and says that the removal of active pro beijing editors is detrimental to the neutrality of wikipedia as a whole. wikipedia, especially chinese wikipedia, is a balance that anti beijing forces and the pro beijing forces must maintain a balance and people agree on a compromise in order for the project to proceed. and the thing is you re removing one side from you re removing the pro beijing voices for from this platform and of course, the balance is going to tilt towards the anti beijing forces within wikipedia. as it turns out and i have deep experience talking to people all over the world and meeting wikimedians the idea that people in china, for example, are so brainwashed that they can t even conceive of the idea of neutrality is just completely false. so many people are able to say ok, here s my view of
but i understand there are other views of the world and that an encyclopaedia should present an explanation of all these various viewpoints in a fair way. the way wikipedia works is that while anyone can edit an article, higher level administrators act as the ultimate decision makers. they are vetted and elected by a community of writers within each country, which wikipedia says is crucial to preserving the integrity of the people s encyclopaedia. but yet, in recent weeks, 12 administrators from mainland china have each had their wikipedia privileges revoked. those administrators that were elected fair and square, even years ago or decades ago, they were elected by the community. from yan s perspective wikipedia is still missing the beijing viewpoint, so he is setting up an alternative to wikipedia in china albeit one that will be censored. we are going to do basically use all wikipedia s content
now on bbc news, it s time for click. this week hong kong is changing and so is its wikipedia entry, but who is responsible? bringing the vikings to life for schools. and, i mean, how many ljs do you need on a song? for many of us, wikipedia embodies the true spirit of the internet an enormous source of information created, edited and policed by volunteers around the world. and while it s certainly possible to tweak an entry about yourself or your company
more aggressive in droning up this information. it s now unfixable without external interference because they are trying to rewrite history. while these editors may use state registered e mails and vpns to get across the internet that s otherwise banned in china, john says it s not a straightforward situation of beijing ordering the edits. there seems to be an overflow of patriotism in china and these changes are being carried out by people loyal to the communist party, but they are not paid for by the government and they are not all based in china, either. and in contrast tojohn in hong kong, there are others continuing their work editing wikipedia articles both in english and in chinese, but importantly from the safety of another country. dave lives in britain but as a pro democracy editor, he fears for his family and friends back home, so he spoke to us anonymously. when i started doing my edits,
pro beijing editors were ganging up to undo my edits. when i took my concerns to a higher level in wikipedia, the pro beijing editors tried to use their numbers to crowd me out, so my voice did not get heard. we put all of this to wikimedia, the foundation responsible for wikipedia, to askjust how long they think the largest encyclopaedia can survive when it s become a battleground. we come at it from a very, very hardcore ideological perspective about neutrality, about freedom of expression, about quality, and we ll stick to that, and we ll stick to that no matter what. wikipedia s global. wikipedia is not localised to particular countries. as soon as we identify someone who is not behaving appropriately, we ban them, so it s quite simple. and that is exactly what wikipedia did last month when it banned seven pro beijing editors.