pemburung
02-15-2006, 12:06 AM
I'm posting this here because it's more political than SE per se.
All I hear about is how China has censored G - when you check it for Tiananmen Square on western G you get tanks, articles about the massacre etc for the first how many pages, either SERPs or images, but on google.ci nice pictures of the square. Personally, I'm not sure the Chinese haven't got it right and the rest have it wrong.
The TS stuff went on from about mid April to early June; up until late May the demonstrations went unchecked, the majority of the time the whole event unfolded, then martial law but no stopping the demonstrations, then June 6 and the massacre. Fair enough. But Tiananmen Square was first created in about 1420, then rebuilt pretty much as we see it today in 1620. So for nearly 600 years, 400 as we it is now, it's been a center, an important place for Chinese to go, and for at least a couple of hundred years an important place to visit for even tourists from way back. As it has become again. Why would one event, lasting a few days, be the focus of every reference by the west to this ancient place? What sort of percentage of the square's place in Chinese time and history does this represent. To my mind, the emphasis placed on the events of June 6, relative only to Tiananmen Square, not to democracy in China, etc, just the term Tiananmen Square, are the ones that are off kilter.
How would we feel if every search on The White House resulted in pictures of Nixon and wiretaps, and nothing else? Or if every search on California only resulted in pictures of Japanese in internment camps?
Would we feel that this was not balanced? I know that these are unbiased results, but are they really? Or does the west's preoccupation with the massacre, resulting in an inordinate amount of articles, reprinted and rewritten forever on sites that have a lot of authority within the SE's algos, mean that such articles will be seen highly ranked, while lesser known articles from poorly ranked sites, regardless of relevance, fail to emerge? It happens on every other topic.
All I hear about is how China has censored G - when you check it for Tiananmen Square on western G you get tanks, articles about the massacre etc for the first how many pages, either SERPs or images, but on google.ci nice pictures of the square. Personally, I'm not sure the Chinese haven't got it right and the rest have it wrong.
The TS stuff went on from about mid April to early June; up until late May the demonstrations went unchecked, the majority of the time the whole event unfolded, then martial law but no stopping the demonstrations, then June 6 and the massacre. Fair enough. But Tiananmen Square was first created in about 1420, then rebuilt pretty much as we see it today in 1620. So for nearly 600 years, 400 as we it is now, it's been a center, an important place for Chinese to go, and for at least a couple of hundred years an important place to visit for even tourists from way back. As it has become again. Why would one event, lasting a few days, be the focus of every reference by the west to this ancient place? What sort of percentage of the square's place in Chinese time and history does this represent. To my mind, the emphasis placed on the events of June 6, relative only to Tiananmen Square, not to democracy in China, etc, just the term Tiananmen Square, are the ones that are off kilter.
How would we feel if every search on The White House resulted in pictures of Nixon and wiretaps, and nothing else? Or if every search on California only resulted in pictures of Japanese in internment camps?
Would we feel that this was not balanced? I know that these are unbiased results, but are they really? Or does the west's preoccupation with the massacre, resulting in an inordinate amount of articles, reprinted and rewritten forever on sites that have a lot of authority within the SE's algos, mean that such articles will be seen highly ranked, while lesser known articles from poorly ranked sites, regardless of relevance, fail to emerge? It happens on every other topic.