Baidu Baike

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."

Content restrictions

Articles or comments containing the following types of content are removed:

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 their real names before editing, and administrators filter edits before they go public. Users on microblogging platforms generally perceive Baidu Baike as similar to a governmentally sanctioned information source due to the censorship of its content. As of August 2013, no articles on the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests, the Xinjiang independence movement, or the Falun Gong appear on the encyclopedia.

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.

Front page

The current front page of Baidu Baike was put into use on 6 September 2012. At the top of the page the slogan "Let all humanity learn the world equally," as well as current information on the number of users and entries. On the bottom-left of the front page selected contents are presented; the bottom right contains announcements, plans and projects, etc. The front page information usually includes current hot topics, often related to featured news. Beside those hot topics, there are also one-sentence summaries of the news. Other than the front page, Baidu Baike also includes 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 this feature was removed after September 2008. The main language used is Chinese, written using the Simplified script; posts written in Traditional Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, or Japanese are automatically translated.

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 provides a general introduction to the whole text; the latter uses a table to summarize basic information and statistics. Both are edited separately from the main body of the article. The main texts are limited to 40 thousand bits, which is equivalent to 20 thousand Chinese characters. 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 can be included in an article. The entry can also link to a Baidu map, dynamic screenshots, and videos. Information cited is listed beneath the main text, which does not distinguish footnotes from other details. However, the images cited do not specify the source, but contain 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. Supporting information on the right of the page contains personal information, statistics, today in history, contribution of honor, current trends, and pop-links. Statistics include the number of page views, the number of editors, latest updates, creators information, etc. Editors who contribute complex articles are also mentioned and honoured.

A user can see a database, the Baidu Dictionary, and related entries at the bottom of each article. Celebrities' articles have appended databases that list their single songs, albums, and videos. The user recommendations section is used to collect feedback about the article.

Contents and categories

Unlike a traditional encyclopedia, the information on Baidu Baike is broader, similar to Chinese Wikipedia and Hudong.com. Baidu Baike also includes food recipes, film products, internet programs, and video games as well as its encyclopedic content. However, unlike Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu Baike never gives a strict definition of the difference between an encyclopedia entry and a dictionary entry. There are also many explanations on diction and common phrases.

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

Baidu Baike holds open policies on the addition of entries, and support categorized search functions. The categorization is based on the characteristics of an entry but not the quality, and there is no limit to categorization. Baidu Baike now has an elementary categorized page and tree. Part of the open categorization can be set according to levels, but catalogs having similar meaning can 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.