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Wikipedia:Nations and Wikipedia

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There are many ways nations and Wikipedia interact or could interact. This page aims to serve as a way to accumulate and help organize such ways and for the Wikipedia community to establish policies and guidelines.

It is not there yet and hence contains no community policies but is on its way towards such. It is under development and more participation would be needed for it to become an established community reference and policy-index.

Contrary to an often held belief nations are allowed to and sometimes even encouraged to get involved with Wikipedia. However national representatives should not attempt to edit this page directly. Concerns and discussions about this page may be opened on Wikipedia Talk:Nations and Wikipedia.

Interactions

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  1. Censorship
    • Censorship of Wikipedia
    • Wikipedia is not censored (policy)
    • For proper deletion that is in accordance with Wikipedia policies and practices see: Wikipedia:Guide to deletion and Wikipedia:Revision deletion
    • For proper change of content nations may make requests for edits / start discussions on the respective talk page/s.
    • When Wikipedia gets censored anywhere Wikipedians all over the world are encouraged to react by inquiring the reasons for censorship, examining them, making sure that Wikipedia is following its policies and guidelines, to engage in diplomatic discussion with censoring parties and – if that doesn't help – to help affected users with Internet censorship circumvention
    • Furthermore Wikipedians and FOSS people are working to make Wikipedia more censorship resilient to make future censorship technically impossible.
    • Censorship by a nation may prevent or reduce participation by its citizens. This will reduce representation in Wikipedia of that nation's point of view, knowledge, and experience. The loss of national participation will diminish that nation's impact on the rest of the world, and reduces its influence on future generations. A nation can harm its own interests when attempting to censor Wikipedia.
  2. Manipulation
  3. Integration of Wikipedia into national or subnational education programs
    • Wikipedia:Education program
    • Scholarly papers on this
    • Students contributing to Wikipedia (expanding articles, fact-checking articles, creating new articles, creating feedback/comments for articles, writing Wikipedia-related software, uploading photos etc)
      • Students might be more motivated to learn if they know that their learning has an immediate, concrete, constructive purpose and if they get feedback (see also: Interactive Learning, Active learning, Digital learning)
      • Time spent in education would be put into more constructive use
      • Students may gain media literacy and literacy in how to use the Internet for research
      • Students may learn how to contribute to Wikipedia so that they can participate on their own
      • Students may have more fun learning, gain more insights into differing views and angles and be able to research independently within and towards areas they are interested in and discover their interests
    • Students and teachers making use of Wikipedia
      • Using Wikipedia for student-side research (see also: Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia)
      • Wikipedia:Wikipedia games / contests
      • Using Wikipedia as a teaching material: students might be more interested to learn from Wikipedia than from textbooks and the like. Furthermore when issues arise or errors are found they can be debated in class and changes to the page be suggested and implemented. This in turn could make lessons more interesting, interactive and constructive.
  4. Increasing and supporting citizen participation
    • It is not okay if nations instruct their citizens to alter specific pages in certain ways but it is encouraged that they encourage and help their citizens to participate in general. Policies and guidelines for everything in between are in the process of being found.
    • See also #3
    • Participating in / supporting / promoting Wikipedia contests such as Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth
    • Programs and partnerships to have relevant institutions collaborate with Wikipedia such as libraries and museums properly licensing and uploading material to Wikimedia (see also: Commons:Partnerships, Wikipedian in residence)
  5. Research, development and funding
    • Nations may provide resources for Wikipedia-related research, development and funding. Wikipedia content can be used by all sorts of innovative commercial and (especially) uncommercial products and services. And many kinds of research, development and funding could improve Wikipedia itself or its usage such as accessibility.
      • Wikipedia Zero is a project by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) to provide Wikipedia free of charge on mobile phones via zero-rating, particularly in developing markets.

Reasons for why nations should constructively get involved with Wikipedia

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  • Wikipedia is humanity's one and only "global brain"-encyclopedia - it is the most organized, effective and potentially long-term way to pass on knowledge, information and culture to future generations. Citizens of every nation should participate in this project and help it to incorporate the world's diverse national memories, national cultures, national heritage, national views and experiences and national histories.
    Wikipedia is a long-term and global project.
    It is beneficial to many sectors of national societies in many ways.

Reasons for why nations should not try to manipulate or suppress Wikipedia

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  • Transparency and accountability: Wikipedia and its processes are open and transparent. Any misconduct can be directly examined by current and future generations.
  • Adaptive: Wikipedia is highly flexible and adaptive. It is not bound to any one organization, such as the Wikimedia Foundation. The active and tech-savvy community can transfer the open-licensed content to any technology or organisation necessary to keep Wikipedia functioning.
  • Values and progress: Progress can be challenging in the short term. However there is a long term benefit in informed citizens, collaboration, and open comprehensive knowledge.

Response to threats or disruption

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Wikipedia may respond to threats or disruptive interference. Possible responses include:

  • A blackout of the site for an entire country or of an entire language-Wikipedia for a specified duration. The blackout may publicize the reason for the blackout. (See: Protests against SOPA and PIPA)
  • A block of edits to the site for an entire country or of an entire language-Wikipedia for a specified duration, which may also publicize the reason for the editing block.

Blackouts or editing blockages may be inherent side effects of technology used for censoring Wikipedia. (See:Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia)

Self-identification

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Shortcuts

Individuals participating on behalf of a government should clearly disclose that relationship on their user page, and in relevant discussions. The {{Flag}} template be helpful for this purpose.

No direct editing

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Shortcuts
Rewrite this section. Only an individual can edit. Effectively apply COI standards. Perhaps include links to WMF legal and to Administrator's Noticeboard for urgent attention.

It is suggested that when nations want to alter contents of pages or add content to them they are required to make a suggestion on the talk page first. If, under normal conditions of Wikipedia operation, they get no replies there over a reasonable span of time (typically 15 days at a minimum) or get support for the suggested changes only (after typically 15 days at a minimum), they are allowed to edit the page directly. If there also is opposition to suggested changes or if people request further discussion / information only non-nation Wikipedia users may implement suggested changes. As with any other Wikipedia edits such can be reversed or altered by other users. Self-identification in talk page entries would be useful for such discussions as it may cause more users paying more attention to the request and participate. Furthermore there could be a page that indexes such talk-page requests.

Paid contributions without disclosure is prohibited on Wikipedia.

For instance if a government objects content that meets Wikipedia guidelines including WP:RS instead of removing they can expand it by adding information on their point of view if such would be WP:DUE. If no reliable sources properly cover such they can release a public statement which does so.

Who or what is referred to as "nation" on this page?

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On this page nation refers to the collective entity as well as its relevant actors that are coordinated directly or indirectly by its government such as intelligence agents or any actors carrying out legal/political decisions.

See also

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