{"id":8439,"date":"2006-09-12T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2006-09-12T16:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8439.html"},"modified":"2006-09-12T12:00:52","modified_gmt":"2006-09-12T16:00:52","slug":"the-power-and-principle-of-wikipedia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-power-and-principle-of-wikipedia\/","title":{"rendered":"The power and principle of Wikipedia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Guest Post by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.the-reaction.blogspot.com\/\">Michael J.W. Stickings<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Google <a href=\"http:\/\/the-reaction.blogspot.com\/2006\/01\/googling-china-censorship-or.html\">caved<\/a>, but Wikipedia is <a href=\"http:\/\/observer.guardian.co.uk\/world\/story\/0,,1869074,00.html\">standing up<\/a> to the forces of totalitarianism, &#8220;[defying] the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Google and Wikipedia aren&#8217;t the same thing. The one has shareholders, a share price, and market competitiveness to keep in mind. The other is, well, unbridled internet democracy, an amazingly successful experiment in online communication and content.<\/p>\n<p>I still contend that Google, which perhaps can&#8217;t afford to take uniformly principled stands, did the right thing and that, <a href=\"http:\/\/the-reaction.blogspot.com\/2006\/02\/google-in-crosshairs.html\">however controversial<\/a>, its censored presence in China may yet be the thin end of a wedge that is essential to opening up that country to alternatives to its brutal totalitarianism. And yet I credit Wikipedia for remaining true to itself.<\/p>\n<p>One wonders which approach will prove the more successful in China, that is, which online power will end up doing the most to liberate China from its censorious oppression.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps &#8212; and hopefully &#8212; the Chinese people will benefit from both in their own way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings Google caved, but Wikipedia is standing up to the forces of totalitarianism, &#8220;[defying] the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries&#8221;. Of course, Google and Wikipedia aren&#8217;t the same thing. The one has shareholders, a share price, and market competitiveness to keep in mind. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}