Chinese language Wikipedia
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| 自由 的 百科全書 / 自由 的 百科全书 - "The free encyclopedia" | |
| Internet encyclopedia | |
| languages | Chinese |
| operator | Wikimedia Foundation |
| editorial staff | Wikipedia community |
| Registration | Possible |
| On-line | October 2002 (currently active, but blocked in the People's Republic of China since May 2015.) |
| https://zh.wikipedia.org/ | |
The Chinese-language Wikipedia ( Chinese 維基 百科 / 维基 百科 , Pinyin Wéijībǎikē ) is the Chinese-language version of the international Wikipedia project. As of April 13, 2018, the encyclopedia consists of over 1,000,000 articles. The Chinese-language Wikipedia is the third largest Chinese-language online encyclopedia after Hudong and Baidu Baike . The Chinese-language Wikipedia has been accessible in the People's Republic of China since May 2015blocked. Access to all other Wikipedia language versions in the People's Republic of China has also been blocked since April 2019.
history
The Chinese language Wikipedia was set up in October 2002.
Traditional and simplified script
The Chinese script exists in two different ways of writing, the so-called traditional or “traditional characters”, which are used in Taiwan , Hong Kong and Macau , and the simplified “ short characters ”, which were introduced in the People's Republic of China from the 1950s and also in Singapore and in Malaysia were taken over.
People who have learned one form of writing cannot easily or only with difficulty read the other form. Originally there were therefore two Chinese-language Wikipedia versions under the language abbreviations “zh” (or “zh-cn”) for the simplified script and “zh-tw” for the traditional traditional characters. This led to a parallel development and some articles were written twice and differed in content between the two font versions. In order to remedy this situation, which was perceived as unsatisfactory, a server solution was implemented from January 2005 with which characters were automatically displayed in the writing system that the user had specified in his settings.
In order to take regional characteristics into account, 6 different writing systems were provided:
| Font variant | adapted for | Chinese name | Iso | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abbreviation | - | 简体 | zh-hans | |
| Traditional script | - | 繁體 | zh-hant | |
| Abbreviation |
 People's Republic of China
|
大陆 简体 | zh-cn | |
| Traditional script |
 Taiwan
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台灣 正 體 | zh-tw | |
| Abbreviation |
 Singapore
|
新加坡 简体 | zh-sg | |
| Abbreviation |
 Malaysia |
大马 简体 | zh-my | |
| Traditional script |
 Hong Kong
|
香港 繁體 | zh-hk | |
| Traditional script |
 Macau
|
澳門 繁體 | zh-mo | |
| For more information, see: Automatic conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese script . |
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- ↑ a b Since mid-2018 there has been a separate font version for Malaysia. Previously, Malaysia was listed under "zh-sg".
Blockade of the Chinese-language Wikipedia in the People's Republic of China
The People's Republic of China and Internet Service Providers have introduced a practice of blocking in the People's Republic of China , and controversial Chinese websites and Wikimedia sites have been blocked at least four times in their history.
First blockage
The first block lasted from June 2 to June 21, 2004. It began with access to the Chinese-language Wikipedia being blocked from Beijing on the 15th anniversary of the Tian'anmen massacre .
It is possible that an article was published by the IDG News Service on May 31st, which addressed the treatment of the protests by the Chinese-language Wikipedia. The Chinese language Wikipedia also has articles related to Taiwan independence that have been written by users from Taiwan and elsewhere. A few days after the first blockade of the Chinese-language Wikipedia, all Wikimedia websites in the People's Republic of China were blocked. In response to the blockade, two administrators filed an appeal for the blockade to be lifted and asked their regional Internet service provider to pass it on. All Wikimedia websites were blocked between June 17 and June 21, 2004. A month later, the first meeting of the administrators of the Chinese language Wikipedia was held on July 25, 2004.
The first deadlock had an impact on the vitality of the Chinese-language Wikipedia, which suffered setbacks on various issues such as the number of new users, the number of new articles, and the number of edits. In some cases, it took six to twelve months before the values of May 2004 were reached again.
Second block
The second and less serious outage lasted from September 23 to 27, 2004. During the four-day period, access to Wikipedia was not possible or only temporarily available for some users in the People's Republic of China. This blockade was not complete and other users in the People's Republic of China were never affected. The exact reason for the blockade remained unclear. The Chinese-language Wikipedia again appealed to regional Internet service providers, but the blockade was lifted for an unknown reason before the appeal was actually dispatched.
Third blockade and its temporary lifting
The third blockade began on October 19, 2005, with no announcement or subsequent explanation, and there was no indication as to whether this blockade would be temporary or permanent. According to the status page maintained on the Chinese language Wikipedia, the servers in Florida and South Korea were blocked, while the servers in Paris and Amsterdam were not affected. Dozens of users from across the People's Republic of China reported that they could only access Wikipedia via proxy servers , although there have been individual reports to the contrary. Most of the Chinese users could not connect to Wikipedia.
During October and November 2006 it seemed for the first time that the blockade of the website would be lifted again. Many contradicting reports from bloggers and Wikipedians reported a possible, partial or total lifting of the blockade on Wikipedia. Some reports indicated that the blockade would be lifted completely, others indicated that some sensitive topics remained blocked, and still others indicated that the Chinese-language Wikipedia would be blocked while the other language versions were unblocked. As of November 17, 2006, the total blockade came into force again. On June 15, 2007, the People's Republic of China lifted the blockade on some articles and then blocked an increasing number of articles again. On August 30, 2007, all blockades were lifted, but a blockade for all language versions of Wikipedia was imposed again on August 31, 2007. Language versions of Wikipedia were blocked on January 26, 2008, and the blockade was lifted on April 2, 2008.
Until April 5, 2008, Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong made it difficult to access the Chinese-language Wikipedia.
The connection to the Chinese-language Wikipedia was completely blocked on April 6, 2008. Any attempt to access it resulted in a blocking of access to Wikimedia websites. However, you could access the Chinese-language Wikipedia via HTTPS . All other language versions could be used, but politically sensitive lemmas like Tibet were still blocked.
On July 3, 2008, the government lifted the blockade of the Chinese-language Wikipedia, but some parts were still inaccessible. On July 31, 2008, the BBC reported that the Chinese language Wikipedia was not blocked in the People's Republic of China that day; the day before it was still blocked. This happened in the context of the upcoming Summer Olympics , to which many foreign journalists were expected. Internet sites such as the Chinese language edition of the BBC were also released during this period.
Fourth block
On May 19, 2015, access to the encrypted and unencrypted Chinese language version of Wikipedia was blocked. The lockdown came without notice and occurred two weeks before the 26th anniversary of the Tian'anmen massacre . The blockage continues until the present time.
Since April 2019, all Wikipedia versions in other languages are no longer accessible from the People's Republic of China.
User numbers
| Edits in the Chinese-language Wikipedia by country (2012-2013) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| country | percent | |||
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Taiwan
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39.1% | |||
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Hong Kong
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25.0% | |||
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People's Republic of China
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20.7% | |||
 United States
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3.9% | |||
 Canada
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1.9% | |||
 Australia
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1.9% | |||
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Macau
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1.8% | |||
 Japan
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0.9% | |||
 UK
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0.9% | |||
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Malaysia
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0.8% | |||
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Singapore
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0.6% | |||
 Germany
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0.5% | |||
| Other | 0.6% | |||
| Source: Wikistats, Oct. 2012 to Sept. 2013 | ||||
Even before the Chinese-language Wikipedia was blocked in the People's Republic of China, users outside the People's Republic of China, especially from Taiwan, had a disproportionately large share of the total page edits.
Wikimedia
The operator of the Chinese-language Wikipedia and all other language versions of the free Internet encyclopedia is the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco (USA).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ lupa.cz
- ↑ Wikipedia founder defends decision to encrypt the site in China. The Verge , accessed April 5, 2018 .
- ↑ a b China is now blocking all language editions of Wikipedia. Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), April 2019, accessed on January 17, 2020 .
- ↑ [Wikipedia-1] new language wikis. Accessed November 26, 2018 .
- ^ A b c Steven Schwankert: Wikipedia Blocked in China Again , IDG News via PCworld. September 6, 2007. Retrieved January 26, 2008.
- ↑ PCworld.com . PCworld.com. June 4, 1989. Retrieved May 29, 2012.
- ^ Sylvie Barak: China uncensors Wikipedia , The Inquirer. April 3, 2008.
- ↑ Beijing unblocks BBC Chinese site , BBC, July 31, 2008.
- ^ Thomas Brewster: Wikipedia Disturbed Over Fresh China Censorship. Forbes, May 22, 2015, accessed November 25, 2018 .
- ↑ Li Yuan: A Generation Grows Up in China Without Google, Facebook or Twitter. The New York Times, August 6, 2018, accessed November 25, 2018 .