Baidu Baike

Baidu Baike
百度百科

The main page, on 1 February 2016
Web address	baike.baidu.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Internet encyclopedia project
Registration	Optional (required to edit pages)
Available in	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^[2] (Chinese: 百度百科; pinyin: Bǎidù Bǎikē; literally: "Baidu Encyclopedia") is a Chinese-language collaborative web-based encyclopedia provided by the Chinese search engine Baidu. 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 the Chinese Wikipedia. By 2008, Hudong.com had surpassed both in article count, but Baidu Baike then became number one again. The encyclopedia censors its content in accordance with the requirements of the Chinese government.^[3][4][5][6]

As of January 2016, Baidu Baike has more than 13 million articles.^[7]

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."^[8]

Content restrictions

Articles or comments containing the following types of content are removed:^[9]

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

Censorship

Being in the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, Baidu is required to censor content on their encyclopedia in accordance to relevant governmental regulations. All editors need to register accounts using real names before editing, and administrators filter edits before they go public.^[10] Users on microblogging platforms generally perceive Baidu Baike as similar to a governmentally sanctioned information source due to the censorship of its content.^[11] As of August 2013, there exist no articles for the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests, the Xinjiang independence movement, or the Falun Gong on the encyclopedia.^[4]

PCWorld states that complying with Chinese censorship laws gives Baidu Baike an advantage over its competitors. Since the Chinese version of Wikipedia does not censor its own content, the government may block it while keeping Baidu Baike accessible.^[10]

Formation

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 include calling cards, texts, and other supporting information. An earlier version allowed users to comment on pages, but the feature was removed after September, 2008.^[12] The main language used is Simplified Chinese; posts written in Traditional Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, or Japanese are 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 declaration of exemption. The earlier version of the entry can only contain one image, 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 pieces of supporting information are located at the bottom or the right of the page, except scientific terms, which are pushed to the top. Usually, supporting information is automatically generated by the system, with some edited by hand. Pieces of 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,^[13] 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.

A user can see at the bottom of each article a database, the Baidu Dictionary, related entries, users recommendation, collaborated editors. Celebrities' articles have appended databases that list their single songs, albums, and videos of them. When terms or phrases are listed in one product of Baidu, Baike will also give links to the explanation. The user recommendations section is used to collect feedback about the article, or the number of vote to "this enty is helpful to me".

Scope

Contents and categories

Unlike a traditional encyclopedia, the information on Baidu Baike is broader, similar to Chinese Wikipedia and Hudong Baike. Baidu Baike also includes food recipes, film products, 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 and common phrases.

In addition to articles, Baidu Baike includes several special pages:

• A Sandbox, or “编辑实验” entry, which gives users a chance to practice editing.
• 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 does anyone have the privilege to form ones own.^[14]

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,^[15] 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 increase of about 3,800 entries per day. 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.^[22] However, on the bottom of each page, the copyright "©2016 Baidu" is displayed, contradicting its own terms of use.

Baidu Baike has been criticized for violating the GFDL when using Wikipedia content, violating Hudong.com's copyright policies through inappropriate usage of copied content, and generally not doing enough to prevent plagiarism.^[3][10]

See also

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

References

External links

• Baidu Baike (Chinese)