China and Taiwan Clash over Wikipedia Edits
How can this even be news?<p>The editing war has been around since the very beginning, back in 2004 or so, and since then, in the endless wars, a very sophisticated tradition of &quot;Code of Conflict&quot; has already been established as a robust basis of solving conflicts. It&#x27;s not actually a Code, but a consensus of how the official policies of Wikipedia, such as <i>Neutral Point of View</i>, <i>No Original Research</i>, <i>Citing Sources</i>, should be enforced regarding to the articles about China, the guidelines are clear, and there is no question.<p>For example, on whether Taiwan should be seen as an independent country - The resolution is simple: <i>Neutral Point of View</i>. If a government claims it&#x27;s a legitimate government, its official title should be used by default, whether the claim is justified or not is another matter of fact to be described within the articles. Thus, all references to the government of Taiwan is by default, Republic of China, and all references to the government of PRC is by default, People&#x27;s Republic of China. If there are political questions involved, all the major opinions and important minority opinions should be presented, backed by citations. The same rule applies to all other governments, Wikipedia has no problem of calling the terrorist group the &quot;Islamic State&quot;, and then described it as a illegitimate terrorist group within the article.<p>This system has been kicking around for more than a decade, and any cooperative Wikipedia editors have no problems accepting it, nobody will be offended by &quot;Republic of China&quot;, even if the editor is a member of the CPC.<p>It&#x27;s not to say that conflicts don&#x27;t exist. Of course, strong conflicts occur daily, but the conflicts are about the matter of facts and their interpretation (whether the inclusion of this opinion fits the policies of Wikipedia, whether or not the overtone of the article is biased towards the United States, etc). For example, you should expect to see heavy conflicts on articles related to the protests in Hong Kong, on what opinions should be included in the article and how to interpret the sources. But what the policies should be is clear to all editors, the argument is mainly about their treatment and interpretation.<p>On the other hand, there are people that doesn&#x27;t know what the community is about, refuse to read the policies, or don&#x27;t want to follow the rules, these people will start editing wars, indeed, but their edits will be reverted, with their accounts banned when enough people have been annoyed. The constant influx of these people are a daily phenomenon, and warning and banned them is the most underappreciated job. We have seen these people coming from all geographical area and political camps, including PRC, Hong Kong, ROC, Singapore, or the U.S. However, these are mostly trolls, not Wikipedia editors, and these conflicts should not be confused with the actual conflicts within Wikipedia.<p>Some of the most infamous trolls are from Taiwan, it&#x27;s not related to the geopolitics, they always exist regardless of political camps. On the other hand, I&#x27;ve even seen literal followers of fascism from PRC that has no problem of following the Wikipedia policies and writing unobjectionable articles... The trolls from PRC contribute the greatest number of unhelpful edits, though.<p>It&#x27;s not to say that articles actually follows the official policies as well. Of course many articles are biased. They exist, because there aren&#x27;t enough people willing to improve them. It&#x27;s similar to contributing a controversial feature to a FOSS project, the argument can go for months, with a lot of revisions, so it&#x27;s not a job that many people want to hold. Nevertheless, it&#x27;s doable, at least for the most notable topic that there are a lot of potential contributors.<p>Power struggles are common, because everyone has (1) a personal opinion over the subjects, (2) an opinion over how the subject should be described in Wikipedia, (3) an opinion over the existing articles, (4) an opinion over the personal opinion of another Wikipedia editor&#x27;s opinion, etc, so it&#x27;s unavoidable. Yet, life still goes on.<p>Personally, I see the greatest success story is <i>1989 Tiananmen Square Protests</i> [0]. It&#x27;s always the most controversial article of all on the entire Chinese Wikipedia, the conflicts have been ongoing forever. The &quot;this article is biased&quot; template was here for 13 years or so. Yet, a few years ago, all conflicts have been settled, all perceived issues have been fixed in the article, and now the content of the article has been accepted by most to be an objective and comprehensive description of the events.<p>Finally, I must point out that the Chinese Wikipedia don&#x27;t have the culture of deletion, unlike the English version. Some experienced Chinese editors went to edit the English version, only to find many edits have been reverted and canceled.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zh.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;六四事件" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zh.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;六四事�...</a>