From The South China Morning Post, via Asia Media:
Jimmy Wales, founder of the open-forum internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, vowed yesterday he would not go down the same path as search engine Google by bowing to pressure from Beijing to censor sensitive articles.
Wikipedia, whose open invitation to write and edit articles has become increasingly popular in China, has been blocked by mainland censors since October. Mainland internet users have had to rely on a similar, but heavily censored clone, put together by Chinese Web portal Baidu, which puts a positive spin on events politically sensitive to Beijing such as the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989.
Mr Wales, chairman of the charity behind Wikipedia, told the first gathering of all-China Wikipedia users he is eager to make the encyclopaedia accessible on the mainland, but not at the expense of sacrificing its independence or its culture of allowing users to add to and modify its pool of knowledge. [Full text]
