Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales gets friendly with the censors

Jimmy Wales and Cai Mingzhou

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia was found last week on a picture, having a friendly chat with China's top censors, raising many questions among his online following.
Fortunately, Rebecca McKinnon caught up with Jimmy Wales and has posted their conversation on her weblog.
Wikipedia - both the English and Chinese editions - have been blocked and unblocked at different times. Now since the Beijing Olympics both are unblocked, but China's more sophisticated filter systems for the internet make full url-blocks less needed.
Google organized themselves a lot of bad publicity by colluding with China's censors in the past as they created a censored - and seldom used - search engine. Wales made clear he had been in China to open up communication lines, would listen to anybody including the Chinese censor, if they disagreed with entries on Wikipedia. Rebecca:

MacKinnon: Am I also correct in understanding that you are open to making changes if they point out content that does not comply with NPOV ["neutral point of view"] standards?

Wales: Yes, the same as with such concerns from anyone. If content is not in keeping with our policies, we appreciate people pointing it out to us.

MacKinnon: I understand that in your conversation with Cai, you welcomed the unblocking of Wikipedia in China and said you hoped it would stay that way, correct?

Wales: I mentioned that there have been problems of access in the past, though things are currently good, and we hope that things will remain good going forward.

Rebecca McKinnon

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