Baidu Baike

Baidu Baike (, also known as Baidu Wiki ) is a semi-regulated Chinese-language collaborative online encyclopedia owned by the Chinese technology company Baidu. The beta version was launched on 20 April 2006, and the official version was launched on 21 April 2008. In November 2019, it had more than 16million articles and 6.9million editors. it has more than 25.54million entries and 7.5million editors. It has the largest number of entries in the world of any Chinese-language online encyclopedia.

Baidu officially stated that the Baidu Encyclopedia also serves as the information storage space provided by Baidu for netizens. Baidu Baike advocates "equality, collaboration, sharing, and freedom" in spirit. It combines Baidu Baike with its search engines. When searching using the Baidu search engine, if Baidu Baike has included the entry corresponding to the search term, its link will usually be ranked at the top of the search page.

Baidu Baike has been criticised for its censorship, copyright violations, commercialist practices and abundance of unsourced information. Only registered users can edit the articles. In April 2024, Baidu announced that the dedicated Baidu Baike app, but not Baidu Baike itself, was to be shut down in June.

History
Baidu Baike was founded by Robin Li in April 2006, following the Chinese government's decision to censor Wikipedia in 2005. The beta version of Baidu Baike was launched on 20 April 2006. 5 to 20 April was used for a period of internal testing. According to the serial number in the entry address bar, the first 10 entries were: Baidu Baike, "Entries", an edit experiment (a sand table page, which has been deleted), Mántou (steamed buns), orchid cultivation (deleted due to typos), Yandang Mountain, Lingfeng, Dalongqiu, Wudafusong and Red Food. After 20 days, it had more than 300,000 registered users and more than 100,000 articles, surpassing the number in Chinese Wikipedia.

During the conference WWW2008 of the World Wide Web Consortium, Baidu's William Chang said, "There is, in fact, no reason for China to use Wikipedia ... It's very natural for China to make its own products." When searching with the search engine Baidu, the link to the corresponding entry in Baidu Baike, if it exists, will be put as the first result or one of the first results. The Chinese government has cut off access to the Chinese Wikipedia since 2019.

In March 2021, Chinese netizens claimed that South Korean netizens changed their entries related to Chinese history on a large scale through the historical version comparison function of Baidu Baike. Baidu Baike stipulates that the historical version function is only available to users of the "Baike Expert Group" with a level 4 encyclopedia and a pass rate of over 85% and professional users with a level 6 encyclopedia and a pass rate of over 85%. Open, ordinary users no longer have the right to view historical versions of entries and use the historical version comparison function. Baidu Encyclopedia officially claims that this is to "ensure that the majority of netizens obtain the accuracy of entry information and avoid interference from outdated information in various historical versions".

On 24 April 2024, Baidu posted an announcement on Baidu Baike that it would end support for the dedicated Baidu Baike application on 30 June to focus on "better user experiences".

Features
Articles are written and edited by registered users and reviewed by administrators prior to publication. Contributions from registered users are evaluated under a scoring system. Although the test version was called the Baidu Wiki, official press releases and pages from Baidu Baike itself stated that the system for this was not a Wiki. Baidu Baike does not use MediaWiki.

The editors are divided into 15 levels based on their experience points. In Baidu Baike's articles, headings, bolding text styles and hyperlinks are supported. Each heading can be listened to (播报; ) separately. The references that are used are listed at the bottom of each page. The site supports editing, commenting, printing articles and viewing an article's history. Users can access multiple editing functions, including:
 * an image upload system where files weighing less than 2MB can be added to encyclopedia articles;
 * a categorization system called "open category", where an article can be categorized into up to 5 categories; and
 * a separate edit box for notes, references and external links.

Copyright
The copyright policy is outlined on the Help page in the terms of use section. In it, Baidu states that by adding content to the site, users agree to waive the copyright of their contributions to Baidu. It also states that the content must not violate intellectual property law and that content using the Creative Commons and/or GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) must respect the limitations of such licenses. Despite this, Baidu has received criticism for violating the GFDL license when using content directly from Wikipedia, infringing copyright on Hudong.com and tending to plagiarize other sites.

Community
There are a few organized groups within the Baidu Baike community. The Baike Elite Team consists of about 340 core contributors that are directed by Baidu and serve as community liaisons. There is also a group of campus ambassadors made of students and an expert team with over 2,500 members, including university professors.

Partnerships
Baidu Baike engages in partnerships with cultural institutions in China and abroad to digitize cultural heritage. In late 2017, Baidu signed an agreement in China to create "2,000 online digital museums" in the next three years. In early 2018, partnerships were expanded to cover 1,000 Spanish cities and tourist sites, including the Camino de Santiago, the Sagrada Família and the Prado Museum.

Controversies and criticism
Baidu Baike has been accused by some critics of censorship and by the former chair of the Wikimedia Foundation of copyright violation. Additionally, Baidu Baike has also been accused of commercialization. Due to unsourced information in Baidu Baike, there are also concerns over its correctness.

Censorship
Critics of the encyclopedia note that it censors its content in accordance with the requirements of the Chinese government. Being in the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, Baidu is required to censor content on their encyclopedia in accordance to relevant laws and regulations such as the Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China and the National Intelligence Law. All editors must register accounts using their real names before editing, and administrators review all edits before they become available to the public. This censorship has attracted criticism.

In 2013, Citizen Lab released a report saying that censorship is known to take place on Baidu Baike but "identifying outright instances or patterns in censorship can be difficult due to the (mostly) user-generated nature and oversight of the content."

Copyright infringement allegations
In 2007, Florence Devouard, then Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, said that "They [Baidu Baike] do not respect the license at all, [...] That might be the biggest copyright violation we have. We have others." Users of the Chinese Wikipedia created a list of entries allegedly infringing Wikipedia's copyright. The Wikimedia Foundation decided not to pursue any legal action. In response to criticism, Baidu stressed that Baike is a platform for user-generated content.

Baidu Baike users often fail to list the source and mark the original author or the copyright statement of the original website when reprinting content from copyrighted websites or official publications, or ignore its license terms, causing infringement of the copyright of others. For example, Wikipedia entries use Copyleft's free content licensing terms, while Baidu Baike’s copyright license is not free. Baidu Baike’s use of Wikipedia’s entry content is copyright infringement. Some even copy all Wikipedia entries, which violates the copyright law of mainland China. Due to copyright issues, the content of Baidu Baike does not meet various accepted definitions of openness or freedom.

Unsourced and inaccurate information
In addition to copyright concerns, criticism of Baidu Baike mainly focuses on its academic merits and lack of neutrality. The former is manifested in the lack of detailed and clear source references for the entries it contains, leading to the accuracy of its content being questioned. Baidu Baike does not limit entries based on notability.

In 2011, an online poll involving 561 Baidu Baike users showed that the main criticisms of users on Baidu Baike included "insufficient review and proliferation of wrong content", "too much plagiarism and copy-pasting and too little original work", "information contained on the entries" and "lack of authority and credibility".

Vandalism and spoof entries
Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures was a humorous hoax and internet meme originating from Baidu Baike.