Free wikis for China
Published 4:00 am, Sunday, July 29, 2007
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But I gained a lot of respect for Wikipedia after founder Jimmy Wales told me that he had no idea why the Chinese government chooses to block or unblock his site -- after a year and a half, the site was unblocked in China last week, but may not stay that way -- but he has no intentions of doing anything that would undermine Wikipedia's goal, which is "to have a free encyclopedia for every person on the planet, in her own language."
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I'm not the only person who has been inspired by Wales' stand, either. Wales estimates that Wikipedia's Chinese language encyclopedia is the 12th largest of all the languages, and the project boasts more than 100 committed contributors. Some of those contributors are Chinese speakers who live in other countries, but he said that there's a committed core of Wikipedia contributors who post entries from within China -- no doubt putting themselves at risk for government reprisals.
These contributors, he said, are passionate about providing their countrymen around the world with information. "Even when we were blocked, the contributor base was growing," Wales said. "There's a lot at stake for them. It would be devastating if we agreed to censor."
Of course, Wikipedia is a nonprofit foundation, not a public company such as Yahoo or Google. Wales doesn't have to answer to shareholders; even when you add up the sum total of all his wiki- oriented endeavors (Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikicommons, and the for-profit Wikia are just a few examples), he still has only seven paid employees. But Wikipedia is in the top 20 most-visited sites on the Internet; the number of visitors doubles every four months. Wales has clearly chosen to pursue an ethical course because he wants to, not because there would be no gain for behaving otherwise.
Wales said it's helpful that the purpose of Wikipedia "isn't to maximize profit, it's to maximize knowledge," but he thinks his strategy will one day make good economic sense as well. "I think some of the other companies are being shortsighted," he said. "They're damaging their brands by going along with the Chinese government in this way, and when this short period in Chinese history is over, people will remember that they censored." (Wales gives the Chinese government another 5-10 years to continue censoring its citizens. "It's a hopeless task, the firewalls are porous, and people are understanding that it's ridiculous," he said.)
I hope he's right about that 5-10 year time frame. Even if he's not, it's terrific to see such a prominent player in the American technology industry that hasn't gotten so transfixed by the promise of 1.2 billion consumers that it has forgotten its morals. As China has morphed into a powerhouse on the world stage, it has made many American workers and consumers feel as if they're victims. But even with all of its flaws and failures, America is still a democracy, and Americans still enjoy certain basic freedoms that are unknown to the average Chinese. In our panic over economic questions, we've forgotten that many, if not most, Chinese citizens are still living in desperate conditions under a repressive government. Jimmy Wales hasn't forgotten that. May the founders and executives at Google, Yahoo and others learn from his example.