Turkish Press
March 30 2008
Asimed Urges Wikipedia To Remove "semi-protection" Over Article On
Armenian Allegations
Published: 3/30/2008
ERZURUM – The Turkish Association for Fight Against Unfounded
Genocide Allegations (ASIMED) launched an e-mail campaign against
Wikipedia urging it to remove the "Semi-Protection" lock over the
article on Armenian allegations concerning the incidents of 1915.
Chairman of Asimed, Assistant Professor Savas Egilmez, said the best
thing about Wikipedia was its feature allowing users to edit (make
corrections, deletions and additions) in articles published on the
website.
"When you browse the English version of Wikipedia which publishes its
content in various languages, one notices an issue in complete
contrast with the Wikipedia principles. In the english website while
the article on Armenian allegations concerning the incidents of 1915
contain all the thesis of the Armenian diaspora, the Turkish thesis
are excluded," said Egilmez.
"The web site allows users to make editions in all subjects, but it
does not allow edition of the article on Armenian allegations. The
site only provides the theses of the Armenian diaspora. This is a
great injustice against the Turkish Nation."
Egilmez said they started an e-mail campaign to stop this injustice
and asked Turkish nationals to support it by sending e-mails to the
web site`s administrators (wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org) .
Wikipedia has a "Protection policy" allowing administrators to
protect a page to restrict editing or moving of that page, and remove
such protection.
"Editing or moving of a page can be restricted by administrators. As
Wikipedia is built around the principle that anyone can edit it, this
should only be done in certain situations," says the policy.
Under the policy there are four types of protection.
-Full protection,
-Semi-protection ,
-Creation protection,
-Move protection.
Though the policy says "Semi-protection in particular, should not be
used to settle content disputes" currently there is a
"Semi-protection" lock over the article on Armenian theses concerning
the incidents of 1915.