They got the statement translated by themselves: https://qiuwen.wmcug.org.cn/archives/403/on-wmf-office-action-en-1/
Interesting. They, if I remember correctly, already got conduct warnings against them, as mentioned by them during the FRAM case. https://archive.is/3Tffv Regards, William Chan On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 16:30, Andreas Kolbe <[email protected]> wrote: > Here is a machine translation, by DeepL.com (Google Translate produces > gobbledygook by comparison!) > > Qiuwen - Wikimedians of Mainland China > > Drop the illusion and prepare for the fight - a comment on the > Foundation's region-wide lockdown of Chinese Wikimedians and Maggie > Dennis's "statement" > > Posted by Qiuwen on September 14, 2021 in Drop the illusions, prepare for > the struggle - A comment on the Foundation's region-wide targeting of > Chinese Wikimedians and Maggie Dennis' "statement" > > [This commentary, by Lu Zu, takes the form of an open letter and will be > translated into English shortly.] > > September 13, 2021 will be remembered by all Chinese Wikipedians. > > The Wikimedia Foundation has locked out all Chinese Wikipedians, including > members and liaison members of my group, for no apparent reason, and has > removed the administrator and administrative privileges of many more > Wikipedians. This decision was made by the Foundation at the instigation of > some people in the Chinese wiki community, without any consideration, > without listening to the views of the community, and without any basis for > believing the slander of a small group of people. > > It is no accident that the Foundation has decided to take action at this > point in time. The Foundation has torn off its mask of hypocrisy towards > us, and indeed towards the entire mainland Chinese community, and has > revealed its green fangs. Following the Foundation's decision, the > perpetrators of this farce are rejoicing that their imagined greatest > rival, our own Wikipedians of Mainland China (WMC), has been knocked off - > just as they were four years ago when they were region-wide locked out at > Watchtower Ai Meng. > > The Chinese government and the Communist Party of China have been > criticized for blocking foreign websites and suppressing Wikipedia's > development in China. But the Foundation has done what even the Chinese > government has failed to do - the Chinese government has not stopped us > from organising meetings or events, and has not declared our grey area, > university club-like organisation an "illegal group". Zero Wikipedians have > been arrested, threatened, or in any way obstructed by the Chinese > government, and the Foundation has banned seven people and removed the > administrative powers of 12 others with a single move. > > These people have done the dirtiest and toughest work in China, a country > where Wikipedia has been blocked until now, to grow the community to its > current size. Now, they have to be slapped backwards and bitten back by the > Foundation. > > The Foundation has clearly learnt its lesson from when Fram, the > administrator of the English Wikipedia, was banned in 2019. At that time, > Fram's administrator was pulled from his post and was also banned from the > English Wikipedia. This caused an uproar in the English Wikipedia community > at the time. The Foundation never dreamed that the community would react so > strongly to the banning of Fram. The foundation may have had an external PR > team, but they didn't realise that it was the community that needed PR the > most. It took the Foundation over a month to put out the fires in the > community. Even though the vast majority of the English wiki community > objected to the Foundation's forced involvement in the community, the > Foundation did not budge: the Fram, who had his administrator privileges > removed for no good reason, was not reinstated after weeks of protest and > opposition from the community. > > We know that there are many people in the community who care about us, who > want Wikipedia to be unblocked in China, who want the Wikimedia movement to > grow in China, who recognise the efforts and even sacrifices that WMC has > made for the development of Wikimedia in China, or at the very least, who > think that the Foundation should not have banned so many administrators > overnight and without warning. You may also be under the illusion that the > Foundation has the possibility to admit its mistake or to retract their > decision. The truth, dear friends, may have disappointed you. Like you, we > hope that today is just a nightmare. However, I am here to give you a > precautionary note: lose your illusions and prepare to fight. > > Having seen what happened with Fram, this time the Foundation accompanied > the lockout and de-prioritisation with a "statement" in an attempt to > obfuscate and justify its unjustified actions before the community could > react. This "statement" by Maggie Dennis, the Foundation's community > development officer, also officially sounds the death knell for the > Wikimedia movement in mainland China under the Foundation's leadership - > I'm not saying here that the Wikimedia movement is dead in China, I'm > saying that the Foundation I am saying that the Wikimedia movement under > the leadership of the Foundation is dead.. > > The Wikimedia movement is much more than the Foundation: it is about > opening up one's copyright, respecting the copyright of others, being > willing to share, treating everyone with courtesy, and so on. This is the > reason why many mainland Wikipedians have abandoned Baidu and switched to > the wiki. Wouldn't you like to have an entry for every protected cultural > heritage unit in mainland China? Wouldn't you want China's astronautical > centres to disclose the copyright of their images like NASA does in the US? > Don't you want to use the keyboard in your own hands to document your own > hometown and your own profession? This is the purpose and the original > intention of writing the wiki, this is what the Wikimedia movement is all > about. The Foundation, on the other hand, should only be a handyman, > helping to fix the server. The Foundation has done very little to help the > development of the Wikimedia community in mainland China in any way. Our > gatherings, our "editathon" and our "Wikimedia loves China" events are all > our own efforts, and we don't take any money from them. We don't owe > anything to the organisation that rides over the heads of the volunteers, > and we don't need to have anything to do with them as we continue to fight. > Rather, we can certainly thrive without the shackles of the Foundation. We > continue to develop in the true spirit of the Wikimedia movement; and the > Wikimedia Foundation is not necessary for the development of the Wikimedia > movement. > > Mainland China, arguably the most unique place to develop Wikimedia, also > faces the most unique pressures. Our first priority is to ensure that > mainland Wikipedians have proper access and editing. With the help and > support of the WMC, we have helped to open up access to QQ mailboxes to > receive emails from the wiki system, we have provided free wall servers and > mirror sites, pushed for a relaxation of the threshold for applying for IP > Blocking Exemptions (IPBE), and created tutorials on walling and applying > for IP Blocking Exemptions. "tutorials. There have been countless other > gatherings and "editathon" events. > > We have done a lot of down-to-earth work for the mainland community. > However, the Foundation has never shown any compassion or support for the > mainland Chinese community, and when the Chinese Wikipedia was blocked in > 2015, before the WMC was established, the Foundation issued a "statement" > in 2019 when all language Wikipedias were blocked. The "statement" > "condemned" the Chinese government, and so on and so forth. But has the > Foundation done anything practical other than issue a "statement" with its > mouth? Nothing. We bought the wall software ourselves, the mirror site is > our own server, and the "IP blocking exemption" is only added in layers, > and you are going to do some "IP masking" to make it more difficult for > administrators to distinguish proxy IP addresses. Also, if the development > of Wikipedia in mainland China is as dangerous as you say in your > "statement", then isn't the statement issued by your foundation > "condemning" the Chinese government pushing us mainland Wikipedians into > the fire? We are doing the most "dangerous" work in China, and you want to > destroy our community and our user groups in turn. > > Some of you may be thinking, "Since WMC has been branded as an "illegal > organisation" by the Foundation overnight, I can just create another one! > You are so naive. The Foundation has been ambivalent about developing > mainland China (or even giving any help to mainland users). But in Maggie's > "statement", the Foundation's attitude is clear - they are abandoning > mainland China. In the "statement", Maggie says > > Speaking of removing administrator privileges, we hope to be able to > contact Chinese speakers overseas in the near future ...... to ensure that > people do feel safe when working on the Chinese Wikipedia. > > See? That's the only thing in Maggie's "statement" that is even remotely > relevant to the vision of the mainland community, apart from the polite > words. The Foundation wants to abandon China, that's all. The Foundation > may have grand ambitions of its own, "to be the infrastructure of knowledge > for all mankind", but for China, which has a fifth of the world's > population and a quarter of the world's internet users (you could say China > is a "local area network", but at least it has the infrastructure to access > the internet), they just gave up. Leaving aside the consequences of letting > overseas Chinese whose Chinese language skills have deteriorated > dramatically and whose words don't make sense write Chinese Wikipedias that > create nothing but piles of G13 entries, isn't the abandonment of mainland > China worth talking about? I don't know whether Maggie is saying that it is > because the Chinese government has blocked Wikipedia that it is "unsafe" to > contribute to wikis on the mainland, or that it is because of the existence > of our "triad" organisation, the WMC, that it is "unsafe" to contribute to > wikis on the mainland. In the former case, I hope that the Foundation will > immediately withdraw its statement "condemning" the Chinese government; in > the latter case, I hope that Wikipedians who have attended our WMC > gatherings will come forward and tell us whether it is safe to attend WMC > gatherings or not, and whether anyone has a hard time when someone says at > a gathering "I don't want to join the WMC, I want to stay independent". > > The Foundation has abandoned mainland China. They don't care if our > community lives or dies. I don't know what the Foundation's Vision 2030 > plan is, and I don't know where their steering committee is going to steer > the ship, but it certainly seems to be "as far away from China as > possible". Despite the fact that China's NGO Law has clear procedures for > setting up branches, and despite the fact that there are still private > non-institutions and other types of organisations in China, the Foundation > simply gave up without even trying. If the world was shocked when Google > withdrew from China in 2009, and a commercial company gave the Chinese > government the middle finger, in contrast, the Wikimedia Foundation > announced its withdrawal from China in 2021, the core of which was > sandwiched in the middle of a "statement" that did not even dare to > acknowledge it explicitly. > > I hope that Maggie will come out and rebut my misinterpretation of her > "statement". Please come out and tell us how to develop the wiki in > mainland China in the future, and tell us whether the foundation is giving > up on mainland China because the wiki is blocked. This way, after the fall > of our WMC, the next group of mainland Wikipedians can take two steps less. > > There is much to say in Maggie's 'statement'. Due to space and time > constraints, I will continue in the next few open letters. There are, > however, two other points that I must make in my first editorial since the > event to set the record straight. One is that Maggie's "statement" > desperately tries to belittle the status of my group, repeatedly using the > term "unrecognized user group" and even "unrecognized group" throughout the > statement. unrecognized group", emphasizing that our group is not > recognized by the Foundation's Affiliation Committee (AffCom). This use of > Maggie's "statement" is extremely confusing and gives the impression that > our WMC is informal. > > I should mention here that our WMC is far more active than many, if not > more than half, of the user groups recognised by the Foundation. This year > alone, we have had four or five online 'editathons' and four or five public > gatherings across China. We are not recognised because we have not formally > applied for your recognition. According to the Foundation's rules, a user > group can be recognised if it has at least three members and has been > active for a year. We have 300 people in the WMC and have been active for > over four years, so we have been recognised by AffCom hundreds of times. We > did not apply for AffCom recognition because China's NGO Management Law > restricts us from being recognised as a branch of a foundation and > therefore unable to carry out activities in China. In other words, we are > deliberately not recognised by your AffCom. In contrast, when we discussed > with AffCom between 2017 and 2018 whether there was a way to skip the "you > have to be a recognised user group before you can be upgraded to > affiliate", AffCom's discussions with us were ineffective, did not respond > to our emails for weeks, and were full of bureaucracy --We reckon that this > was partly because there was still the Wikimedia User Group of China > (WUGC), a dead group that had been occupying the seat of a recognised user > group in China but was never active. They didn't bother to look into it, so > they just pretended they couldn't see the emails and delayed it again and > again. In the end, we gave up communicating with AffCom and started to > develop community activities such as parties instead of asking for AffCom's > recognition. > > This is one of the reasons why I think that the Foundation, encouraged by > some people, has finally gone after us at WMC - we are finally clear of the > Foundation, and we can finally give up all our illusions about the > Foundation and focus on the development of the mainland wiki. In order to > set up a branch of the Wikimedia Foundation in mainland China in accordance > with the NGO Management Law, we would need, let's say, the Foundation's > business license on the US side and other documents. With AffCom's > efficiency of only answering one email in a few weeks, how long would we > have to wait? According to the original plan, we were caught in the middle > of the Chinese government and the Wikimedia Foundation, and we had to serve > both sides, meeting all the rules and regulations of the Foundation, such > as "the user group must be established for one year", "the user group must > be recognised before it can apply for a chapter", and so on, as well as the > business licence required by the Chinese government. Now that we are no > longer connected to the Foundation, we can do whatever we want. > > This is one of the reasons why we have such a problem with the Foundation > and AffCom, because so far it has been the Foundation that has stuck us, > been inefficient, and refused to give us the materials we need, while the > Chinese government has never come out to stop or harass us. We would like > to blame the Chinese government for the NGO Law, but the problem is that > the foundations don't even give us the materials, so we don't even have a > chance to complain to the Chinese government. If our plan to set up a > branch organisation had been rejected by the Chinese government, then we > would have accepted that we had at least tried, and we would not have been > so hostile to the Foundation. > > Another thing in Maggie's 'statement' that we must point out right now is > that it refers to what we at WMC are doing on the Chinese wiki as > 'community capture' (community capture). Maggie uses the Croatian Wikipedia > as an example. The Croatian Wikipedia, as is typical, is full of entries by > neo-Nazis and the like because of community issues. I'm sure you know that > the Japanese Wikipedia entry for "Nanking Massacre" is called "Nanking > Incident (1937)" instead of its Japanese equivalent "Nanking Massacre". > What? And the Japanese wiki entry for "Nanking Incident (1937)" doesn't > even have a picture of Chinese people dying. The Croatian language is even > worse than that. > > But the problem is that I still don't understand how we "seized the > community". "Taking over the community" is one of the key accusations > against my WMC in Maggie's "statement". As I understand it, they think we > are hijacking the community, that we are in charge of the whole community, > and that we are "canvassing" (the term "canvassing" appears repeatedly in > Maggie's "statement" and in the "warning emails" of those who had been > "warned" by the Foundation for no good reason). > > First of all, thanks to the Foundation for the lift. Before the Chinese > wiki was blocked from mainland China in 2015, the last valid statistics > showed that the Chinese wiki was split between mainland Chinese editors, > Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, each accounting for about a third of the > editors and visitors. We at WMC are called the Mainland Chinese Wikipedians > User Group, and it took more than a third of the people scraped from the > sky to allow us to dominate the community? I don't even know how WMC does > it. I was in a hurry to write this open letter, so I didn't have time to > delve into it, but I was under the impression that the number of "neo-Nazi" > editors in Croatian must be more than half, right? > > The Foundation (and the people behind it) are still making the same old > accusations against the WMC, but it is clear that because the WMC has > always considered those unfounded accusations to be worthless, they assume > that the WMC has no grounds to refute them. The accusations of "canvassing" > against the WMC in Maggie's "statement" are pure nonsense. Leaving aside > the fact that "canvassing" has long been in line with Chinese Wikipedia's > guidelines, and was only officially banned earlier this year - how does > your foundation come to control something that is not even banned by local > guidelines? Furthermore, what evidence do you have that canvassing actually > happened? Because of irregular voting results? And should I show your > foundation a few examples of other user groups and chapters that we at WMC > think are canvassing? (Save that for the next open letter.) Maggie's > "statement" and some of WMC's editors perpetuate this accusation of WMC > canvassing as if they were extreme Republican supporters who voted for > Donald Trump in last year's US presidential election. At the time, they > were screaming "Stop stealing [votes]!" at polling stations because they > thought the vote was abnormal, but in fact it was Biden who won those > states. But the problem is that the mob that broke into the US Congress on > 6 January succeeded and Trump was re-elected. > > These people who scream about democracy are the most anti-democratic of > all. In their eyes, it is only democratic when the vote goes their way, and > when they vote for a candidate they don't like, they are told to "stop > stealing". > > The administrators who were removed and banned across the board were all > elected through a formal, democratic process. Some of them had been > administrators for several years, only for the Foundation to suddenly come > out and remove their administrator privileges. Is the Foundation saying > that these elections several years ago were unjust? Why is the Foundation > dragging its feet on removing the rights until now? Has the Foundation seen > evidence of the use of stooges and real-life puppets? Why did the > Foundation, for some of them, only de-prioritise and not ban the whole > area? Is it because they are "close, but not too close" to the WMC? And in > that case, what is the practical purpose of removing their access? Is it to > force them to have a "fair" election again? > > The Foundation and the people who started this fiasco can fabricate all > the evidence they want that we are canvassing, harassing, etc. They can say > that they only target WMC as an organisation and users who are, by their > supposed standards, closely associated with it. But no matter what they say > on the surface, the real target behind them is the mainland wiki community > as a whole, not us, the WMC, and anyone who doesn't listen to them will be > beaten up. I know that there are many people in the community who are not > happy with the WMC, but what I am about to say is not about whether you > support the Chinese government or not, or how you feel about the WMC. If > you are a person of conscience, you will not agree with what the Foundation > is doing. > > One, the Wikimedia Foundation has an annual budget of $100 million. In at > least the past five years, the Foundation has never spent a single penny on > mainland China. Nor has the Foundation ever provided mainland editors with > wall-wall servers, wall-wall tutorials, mirror sites, and any other tools > that could be implemented outside of China that would facilitate their > editing (you may have heard that Google, Microsoft, and other companies > have no walls in their Chinese branches), despite the fact that the NGO > Management Law states that the Foundation cannot fund activities inside > China; the Foundation has not taken the initiative to adapt its servers so > that they can bypass the GFW blockade ; nor has the Foundation made any > fixes to the MediaWiki software to improve its operational processes so > that editors can contribute via a proxy server. Although the Foundation has > a number of lawyers, they are probably too busy raising money or dealing > with US politicians. This is because, as far as we know, the Foundation has > never had a lawyer study the NGO Management Law to see if there is a viable > path in the Chinese policy environment. Let me repeat: the Foundation's > annual budget is $100 million. Zero dollars of that is spent on the Chinese > community. > > Secondly, knowing that Wikipedia is being walled and that there may be > difficulties with contributions from mainland Chinese editors for "white > left" reasons, there is a user group called WMC that is active but not yet > recognized by AffCom, and it is unlikely that the Foundation and AffCom are > unaware of WMC's existence. The contact details of the WMC have also been > publicly available on the site page. However, the Foundation is outwardly > "concerned" about mainland users (just read Maggie's "statement" and the > statements made by Foundation staff in public, but without being held > accountable for what they say), but never in any way concern for mainland > users. We at WMC have never received an email from the Foundation or AffCom > asking us if we need any help with our situation. One email came from them > asking "I heard that the wiki is being walled in China, are you having any > trouble? Do you need any help?" I'll count them as having made an effort. > > Thirdly, users who use proxies to edit the wiki may encounter a bug known > in the community as "auto logout", which we suspect may be related to the > handling of proxy IPs in cross-project bans and cross-site cookies. This > bug is likely to be encountered by one in five newcomers to the mainland. > Now the bug is at a level where no one cares about it at all, and it does > not even have the triage needed to fix it as a first step. > > Fourth, roughly twelve hours have passed since the first foundations acted > and this open letter is being written. During these twelve hours, from my > own investigation and from reports and communications from other users, it > appears that all known users who have been locked out, debarred, or > "warned" for unfounded reasons were not aware of this news in advance, nor > have they been contacted by the Foundation. I don't care how you do it. I > don't care how you conduct your so-called "investigation", you don't have > any solid evidence, you don't even give people a chance to explain or > debate, you just cover everything up as much as you can. The Foundation > does not consider in any way whether the people who reported and submitted > the so-called evidence behind the scenes have any conflict of interest with > the WMC, or whether their political ideology is so "Hong Kong-independent", > "Taiwan-independent" and "anti-communist" that they need to suppress the > WMC, which is politically neutral in terms of policy, but whose editorial > team is actually biased towards supporting Beijing. I need to point out: > these people, whether they are de-prioritised or region-wide locked, are > better at writing entries and countering sabotage than at wheedling and > sniping. > > Fifth, according to my rough statistics, according to the ranking of > admins' activity on XTools, the top thirty active non-robot admins (meaning > those who handle site affairs and other site contributions) on the Chinese > wiki ranking, ten, or one-third, have been de-privileged or domain-wide > locked. One-third! And four of the top ten most active administrators have > been de-prioritised. This includes the most active admin from Hong Kong, > "Buggy Fly". What are you going to do about the site administration mess? > The Chinese Wikipedia is not a small project, and the amount of work it has > to do and the amount of work it has to do is considerable. What is your > foundation going to do about it? Have you researched it before you go > ahead? Have you considered the consequences? > > At the end of the day, I'm sure there are some newbies, especially those > who have just made dozens or hundreds of edits, who want to ask: "If the > Foundation is so uncomfortable with the mainland community, why are we > still writing a wiki?" > > What I want to say to you is: you are the future of the mainland > community. We write about the wiki because we agree with the idea of > sharing and opening up the wiki, and we write for your home town, your > profession and what you love, not for the WMC or the Foundation. Tell > everyone with your practical actions that the mainland community is not > made of clay, and the more they suppress, the more we resist. It is time > for you to stand up for yourself. Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, > fight again ...... until victory! > > In closing, I, on behalf of the Wikipedians User Group and the Wikimedia > community in mainland China, would like to shout out to the Wikimedia > Foundation: our door is always open, and it is your foundation that is not > willing to talk to us. If there are problems, we can discuss them; if there > are misunderstandings, we can clear them up. If you want to discuss issues > on an equal footing, we are ready to do so. We all have a weighing scale in > our hearts. You are doing it, the community is watching. > > On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 7:05 AM William Chan <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> Of course I am not from WMCUG, but they issued a statement regarding the >> series of serious office actions: >> >> https://qiuwen.wmcug.org.cn/archives/390/on-wmf-office-action-zh-1/ >> >> Of course there is an archive.is link so as not to , you know, they may >> just take down: >> https://archive.is/EE6AD >> >> Interesting to see if they really translated this to English. >> >> Regards, >> William >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], guidelines >> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >> Public archives at >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/BZ6YRH72IJTG6SITGGLIMH2W7NAR2EJX/ >> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], guidelines > at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/DWJCAMHF76E6DXS33PDIO7FZHPFVOR6P/ > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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