Baidu Baike

Baidu Baike

Baidu Baike's website on 29 July 2008
Web address	baike.baidu.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Internet encyclopedia project
Registration	Compulsory
Available language(s)	Chinese
Owner	Baidu
Created by	Robin Li
Alexa rank	5 (along with all other baidu.com sites) (February 2013)[1]
Current status	Active

Baidu Baike or Baidu Encyclopedia^[2] (Chinese: 百度百科; pinyin: Bǎidù Bǎikē; translation: Baidu Encyclopedia) is a Chinese language collaborative Web-based encyclopedia provided by the Chinese search engine Baidu. Like Baidu itself, the encyclopedia is heavily self-censored in line with government regulations.^[3]

The test version was released on April 20, 2006, and within three weeks, the encyclopedia had grown to more than 90,000 articles, surpassing that of Chinese Wikipedia. By 2008, Hudong.com had surpassed both in article count.

As of October 2013, Baidu Baike has more than 6.2 million articles, which is more than the English Wikipedia.^[4]

Conception

Baidu's William Chang said at WWW2008, the conference of the World Wide Web Consortium, "There is, in fact, no reason for China to use Wikipedia ... It's very natural for China to make its own products."^[5]

Functions

The site is an open Internet encyclopedia espousing equality, collaboration, and sharing.^[6] The encyclopedia, with two other services provided by Baidu ("zhidao" and "post") would form a trinity to complement the search engine.

The articles are written and edited by registered users and reviewed by behind-the-scenes 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", official media releases and pages on the encyclopedia itself state that the system is not a wiki. However, its operation is akin to a wiki and they occasionally use the word "wiki" internally.^[7]

Style and interface

The visual style of the encyclopedia is simple. In articles, only boldface and hyperlinks are supported. Comments are listed at the bottom of each page. Among its wiki-like functions, the site supports editing, commenting, and printing of articles, as well as an article history function.

Editing

Users can access multiple extended editing functions, including:

• An image uploading system where files less than 2 MB can be added to articles in the Encyclopedia.
• A keyword tagging system called "open category" (similar to folksonomy). One article can be tagged with at most 5 categories.
• A separate edit box for references and external links.

Principles

Articles or comments containing the following types of content are removed:^[8]

1. Pornographic, violent, horrible and uncivilized content
2. Advertisement
3. Reactionary content
4. Personal attacks
5. Content against morality and ethics
6. Malicious, trivial or spam-like content

Formation

The Front Page

The present front page of Baidu Baike was put in use in September 6, 2012, and on the top of the page marked the slogan "Let all humanity learn the world equally", the present volume of users, net volume of entries; on the bottom-left of the front page presented selected knowledge contents, and the bottom right relative announcement, plannings and projects, etc. the front page information are usually of current hot topics, often related to featured news and other appendix. Beside those hot topics, there are also one sentence summaries to the news. Other than the front page, Baidu Baike also adds channels such as nature, culture, geography, and special topics such as core-users, digital museums, etc.

Entries

The entry pages of Baidu Baike includes calling cards, texts, and other supporting information. The earlier version allows users to comment on the page, but was nullified after September, 2008.^[9] The language used are mainly simplified Chinese; traditional Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese will be automatically translated into simplified Chinese.

Calling Cards and Texts

Baike calling cards contain two parts: the description of an entry and the basic information. The former is similar to the preface of an article, which gives general introduction to the whole texts; the latter uses table to summarize basic information and statistics. Both are edited separately from the main body. The main texts are limited to 40 thousand bits, which is equivalent to 20 thousand Chinese characters. There are two possible levels of title, and the system will give a content accordingly. At the end of the article is the deceleration of exemption. The earlier version of the entry can only contains one image,^[10] but now 20 images and 20 albums. The entry can also link to Baidu map, dynamic screenshots, and videos. Information cited are listed beneath the main text, which does not distinguish footnote from others. However, the image cited are not specified the source, but contains image directories.

Supporting Information

Most supporting information are located at the bottom or the right of the page, except scientific terms, which are pushed to the top. Supporting information are usually generated by the system automatically, with some edited by hand. Supporting information are presented as modules, such as scientific terms, Douban film commentaries, etc.

Supporting information on the right of the page contains personal information, statistics, today in history, contribution of honor, current trends, and pop-links. Statistics are of page viewed, numbers of editing, latest update, creators information, etc. Contribution of honor features complex editing,^[11] user ID who has made excellent editing, and its links. The honor gives different kinds of medals. Current trends are used to present some current activities, and the pop-links are of advertisement, which generate some profits form Baidu company.

The supporting information on the bottom contain database, Baidu Dictionary, related entries, users recommendation, collaborated editors. Database are usually present at the film star's, which lists the single songs, albums, and related videos of them. When terms or phrases are listed in one product of Baidu, Baike will also give links to the explanation. Users recommendation are used to collect and count the positive response of the entry, or the number of vote to "this enty is helpful to me".

Image Page

Baidu Baike image page was put in use in September 2009. The left of the page is the image, the bottom is the explanation and user who up load the image but not necessary the author. However, the page give not source of the image, copyrights, or external database, etc.^[12]

Formation and regulation on entries

Contents and categories

Unlike traditional encyclopedia, the information on Baidu Baike are broader, which is similar to Chinese Wikipedia and Hudong Baike. Baidu Baike also includes food recipes, film products, digital goggets, internet programs, and video games as its contents. However, unlike Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu Baike never gives strict definition on the difference between an encyclopedia and a dictionary. There are also many explanations on dictions, phrases, for example, "缠绵" (which can mean "lovers staying together"), "一心一意" (which can mean "devotion"), poetry, literature, such as "《池上》", "《紫藤萝瀑布》", and enormous commercial products (such as "欧莱雅欢颜高水润醒肤乳" (A brand of Oley Cream), "利福喷丁胶囊" (a sort of medicine pill)) and other influential news (for instance "甜筒男", "内裤男"). Different from Wiki policy which has made clear guidance on attention,^[13] Baidu never gives clear guideline on what can be written or not, except it does not take subordinaries of an organization or a major of a particular college, private phone numbers. This often results in dispution, particularly on persons or books, etc.^[14]

Beside formal contents, Baidu Baike also includes special entries,

• Sandbox, or “编辑实验” entry, which gives user chance to practice.
• Help, which gives terminologies, basic settings, regulations, user titles, etc.
• User page, which is called "Baidu Authorized ID", similar to the one in Wikipedia. However, it is viewed as an encouragement of advanced users, and rarely did anyone have the privilege to form ones own.^[15]

Baidu Baike holds open policies on the edition of entries, an support categorized search functions. The categorization is based on the characteristics of an entry but not the quality,^[16] and there is no limit in categorization. Baidu Baike has now an elementary categorized page and tree, part of the open categorization can be set according to levels, but catalogs having similar meaning could not be merged or redirected.

Numbers of entries

According to the latest list of entries, Baidu Baike has an about 3800 increase in entries per day, which now has succeed 6 million. Here are some milestones:

Copyright

Baidu Baike's copyright policy is outlined in the 'terms of use' section of its help page. It states that by adding content to the site, users agree to assign Baidu rights to their original contributions. It also states that users cannot violate intellectual property law, and that contributions which quote works held under the Creative Commons and/or GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) must follow the restrictions of those licenses.^[23] However, on the bottom of each page, the copyright "©2014 Baidu" is displayed, contradicting its own terms of use.

Unlike Wikipedia which most editors are volunteers, Baidu Baike has its unique motivate mechanism which gives more rights to high level users. This may encourage and drive the editors easily violate the copyright rules to earn more points.

Baidu Baike has been criticized for violating the GFDL when using Wikipedia content, as well as other copyrights such as those belonging to Hudong.com, and encouraging plagiarism generally.^[3][24]

See also

• Chinese encyclopedias
• List of online encyclopedias
• Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures

References

External links

• Baidu Baike (Chinese)
• "Site launches 'Chinese Wikipedia." BBC. Thursday 11 May 2006.
• Liao, Tan-Heng. "Wikipedia in mainland China: the critical years of 2005-2008." Oxford Internet Suite. Oxford University.