Baidu Baike
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Baidu Baike (Chinese: 百度百科; pinyin: bǎidù bǎikē) is a Chinese collaborative online encyclopedia hosted by the major Chinese search engine Baidu. The test version was released on April 20, 2006 and three weeks later the encyclopedia already had more than 90,000 articles.
Description
According to the first article,[1] which is about the encyclopedia itself, the encyclopedia is an open net encyclopedia holding equality, collaboration, and sharing as principles. The article also states that the encyclopedia, with two other services provided by Baidu ("zhidao" and "post") would form a trinity system and complement the search engine.
The articles are written and edited by registered users and reviewed by backstage administrators before release. There is no formal way to contact the administrators.
Registered users' contributions are rewarded in a credit point system.
Although the earlier test version was named "Baidu WIKI", the current version and official media releases say the system is not a wiki system.
Criticisms
According to testaments from Chinese Wikipedia users on the discussion page of Baidu Baike's Wikipedia entry, Baidu Baike has been massively copying content from Wikipedia, removing the edit history, and placing it under the copyright of Baidu, violating the GFDL license.
References to the words "Falun Gong", "Tiananmen Square protests", and "democracy" are also removed. According to reports of Chinese Wikipedia users, if users look up these words' Chinese translations, they will immediately be temporarily blocked from using Baidu Baike, even if they live outside mainland China.
Style and interface
The system supports "edit", "comment", "historical version", and "print".
The system support these edit functions:
- The system allows users to upload a picture file (less than 2M) for the articles.
- The system supports a category system called "open category" (similar to folksonomy). One article can be tagged with at most 5 categories.
- The system provides an independent edit box for references and external links.
The style of the encyclopedia is simple. Only boldface and hyperlinks are supported.
Comments are listed at the bottom of the page.
Fast growing
The number of articles exceeded 10,000 in two days, and reached 40,000 in six days. On May 5, the number had passed 82778, and on May 8, the number has passed 93399.[citation needed]
Principle of the encyclopedia
According to Baidu Baike's policies,[citation needed] these kinds of articles or comments would be deleted:
- pornographic or violent articles
- advertising
- politically reactionary content
- personal attacks
- unethical content
- malicious, meaningless content
The third point is particularly notable, as the content of the encyclopedia will have to satisfy Chinese government censors. There are no articles about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, "六四" (literally "six four", a common acronym for the protest), human rights ("人权"), democracy ("民主") or Falungong ("法轮功"). In fact, due to the effects of Great Firewall of China, attempts to search for these terms from some domains lead to denial of access to the Baidu search engine for several minutes, even for users outside China.
Copyright
On the source materials
On the help page[2] the encyclopedia states "users shall not violate [. . . .] intellectual property" ("百度百科的用戶不得侵犯…知識產權"), and declares:
- 3. 百度百科的用户在百度百科上发布的内容引用自适用CC协议(“创作共用”协议,保证作者署名权。不得用于商业目的。保证作品完整性。参见http://creativecommons.cn/,http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/cn/ 中文版)和/或GFDL协议(GNU自由文档协议,必须注明该文章是在GNU自由文档协议证书下发布的,也不得阻止别人自由取得该文章或其他GNU FDL所赋予的权利。参见http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)保护的作品的,应按照上述协议的规定,合理使用他人作品。
- [rough translation]3. The Baidubaike's users' contributions that quote from works under the Creative Commons (Attribution, Noncommercial and No Derivative Works. See http://creativecommons.cn/, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/cn/ the Chinese version) and/or GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License), shall follow the restrictions of the licenses mentioned above. [emphasis added]
- 7. 百度百科用户发表、转载的所有内容及其它附属品(如示例代码、图片等)的版权归原作者所有。若作者版权声明的或发表内容从其它站转载而附带有原所有站的版权声明者,其版权归属以附带声明为准。
- [rough translation]7. The copyrights of Baidubaike's users' contributions belongs to the original authors. If there is other statesment, the statesment apply.
The help page also provides a postal address for notification of rights violation.
On Baidu Baike itself
The help page declared that Baidu has the rights to re-license the original contents on the encyclopedia:
- 8. 对于用户发表到百度百科上可公开获取区域的任何原创内容,用户同意百度在全世界范围内具有免费的、永久性的、不可撤销的、非独家的和完全再许可的权利
On the bottom of every page of the encyclopedia, "©2006 Baidu" was written, with a link to the copyright page.[3] The copyright page declares that Baidu owns the copyright of all data on the website.
The name
The name Baike is composed of the characters bǎi (百) meaning "hundred" (also the first character of Baidu), and kē (科) meaning "branch of knowledge".
The word "百科" is used in combination to form other words to express "encyclopedia", such as "百科全书/百科全書" (bǎikē quánshū, literally "encyclopedia book") in Chinese, or "百科事典" in Korean and Japanese. The word "bách khoa toàn thư" in Vietnamese is a cognate of the Chinese term.
See also
- Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China
- Baidu, a Chinese search engine.
- Everything2, a large collaborative Internet community.
Sources and notes
Further reading
- Baidu Baike Mainpage Template:Languageicon
- BBC article on Baidupedia's growth
- Shanghai Daily article Baidu Baike aims to be main reference published May 12, 2006
- asiamedia.ucla.edu article on Baidu Baike ownership, finances, and share of the Chinese search market
- Baidu Baike: A Baidu's Wikipedia
- Slashdot comments on Baidu Baike
- Chinese censorship in action – how to be blocked by Baike (including example banned phrases that can be pasted by people unable to input Chinese)