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Archived discussions
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Different types of police
[edit]@The dog2: Why is it useful for travellers to understand the differences between different types of police? The text in the article doesn't give any indication of how someone would use this information, and in more than two years in China, the only time I had to worry about what kind of police I was talking to was when going to the PSB for registration. I would assume travellers should act the same way around all police – should I act differently around PAP compared to PSB police? Is it only okay to ask some types of police for help and not others? —Granger (talk · contribs) 22:25, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
- I don't think it's important to know the details about the differences, but since both the PSB and PAP have law enforcement powers, I think it is useful for tourists to be able to recognise both of them by their uniforms. If you look at our articles on the United States of America, Canada and Australia, we also describe the different kinds of police you are likely to encounter. If you are the victim of a crime, it is certainly helpful to know what uniforms police officers wear so you can approach them for help. And also, if one type of security officer is more likely to be professional and less likely to be corrupt than another, it is certainly helpful for tourists to know that when they need to seek help. The dog2 (talk) 22:33, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
- Okay, makes sense. I think the section may be more detailed than necessary but I can see the value of what you're saying. —Granger (talk · contribs) 22:48, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
- I've tried to make some tweaks to focus on what is important for travellers to know. 廣九直通車 was the one who originally wrote that section, so I'm also pinging him here to have a look and give his opinion. The dog2 (talk) 01:23, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- I think the current version still isn't very helpful. The section says that private security officers dress similarly to the police and that the city police wear uniforms varying by city – I guess some of them have peaked caps and blue shirts like the civilian police (although not identical ones). I would like some definite way of recognising the "helpful and professional" corps, such as (I assume) images of their badges.
- What about other people in uniform, such as bus and train station officials, are they also helpful? What about private security guards? I assume the city police should be avoided, and probably private security guards in some contexts A discussion on this would be useful: if you need help and see a uniformed person, when should you approach them and when should you turn elsewhere?
- –LPfi (talk) 06:20, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- Oops, I didn't see "the characters 中国武警 at the top of the insignia patch on their left sleeve". A bit difficult for those not reading Chinese, but still something. –LPfi (talk) 06:26, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there are good pictures of Chengguan on Wikimedia commons. Chengguan have some law enforcement responsibilities, but aren't actually police officers and aren't allowed to arrest people. They mainly do things like asking street hawkers to move when they are blocking the way. Unfortunately, there have been incidents of Chengguan using violence to get these street hawkers to move, including at least one where the hawker was beaten to death.
- Oops, I didn't see "the characters 中国武警 at the top of the insignia patch on their left sleeve". A bit difficult for those not reading Chinese, but still something. –LPfi (talk) 06:26, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- I've tried to make some tweaks to focus on what is important for travellers to know. 廣九直通車 was the one who originally wrote that section, so I'm also pinging him here to have a look and give his opinion. The dog2 (talk) 01:23, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- Okay, makes sense. I think the section may be more detailed than necessary but I can see the value of what you're saying. —Granger (talk · contribs) 22:48, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
- @STW932: Since you live in China, would you by any chance have a good photo of a Chengguan officer that we could use so people can recognize them? The dog2 (talk) 11:51, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- Well, I wouldn't normally take photos of law enforcement officers but I happen to have a friend who works as a Chengguan officer so perhaps I may be able to get a photo of him in uniform later. I'll let you know if I do. He works in another city, so it may be a while before I see him. STW932 (talk) 12:32, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- @STW932: And by the way, what's your view on the way the section on law enforcement is written? I don't think we should paint a board stroke over all Chengguan, because there are certainly good ones as well, but it seems that there are more complaints about chengguan brutality than public security police brutality. Also, do you have advice on how can an English-speaking foreigner communicate with police officers if they need help? It's hard for me to give advice on this because I speak Chinese so I don't have the communication issue that most Western tourists visiting China will have. The dog2 (talk) 12:59, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- In general I don't have a problem with the way that section is written but I too wonder whether we could reword the paragraph about Chengguan slightly so as not to appear to be painting them with a broad brush, though it's certainly true that Chengguan have a bad reputation. Regarding your last question, I speak Chinese too, having learnt the language back in the 1990s, and I'm not sure what I'd do if I didn't except maybe get help from friends and colleagues. STW932 (talk) 01:40, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- When I lived in Shenzhen, a couple of non-Chinese-speaking family members visited me, and they had some success using Google Translate to communicate with store clerks etc. Something like that might work for asking police for help too, at least in simple situations. —Granger (talk · contribs) 06:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Mx. Granger: This might be a bit antithetical and feel free to ignore, but should we specifically recommend certain translation apps that are more accurate than others? For Italian, per se, I wouldn't hesitate to use DeepL even though it can produce some mistakes, but as someone who knows almost zero Chinese, I would feel left in the dark if I had to interact with police with the advice simply being use online translation (or something similar – I think you get what I mean). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- I think the development in this field is quite rapid, so our recommendations may miss current developments. There is also a risk that the tools that are best at translating have other problems, such as spying on you and your environment. I would prefer to use more general language on translation apps, such as pointing out common pitfalls, which one might be able to check for or at least watch out for. This might be best done in a travel topic article on such apps (perhaps also touching on machine translated material – I note many Finnish sites have substituted their English pages with a link to a translation engine). –LPfi (talk) 08:26, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- I guess we could do a bit of both? From what I've heard, Google Translate does a rather funky job when translating between English and Chinese (which is why I'm not fond of overly vague wording). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:29, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- I think the development in this field is quite rapid, so our recommendations may miss current developments. There is also a risk that the tools that are best at translating have other problems, such as spying on you and your environment. I would prefer to use more general language on translation apps, such as pointing out common pitfalls, which one might be able to check for or at least watch out for. This might be best done in a travel topic article on such apps (perhaps also touching on machine translated material – I note many Finnish sites have substituted their English pages with a link to a translation engine). –LPfi (talk) 08:26, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Mx. Granger: This might be a bit antithetical and feel free to ignore, but should we specifically recommend certain translation apps that are more accurate than others? For Italian, per se, I wouldn't hesitate to use DeepL even though it can produce some mistakes, but as someone who knows almost zero Chinese, I would feel left in the dark if I had to interact with police with the advice simply being use online translation (or something similar – I think you get what I mean). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- When I lived in Shenzhen, a couple of non-Chinese-speaking family members visited me, and they had some success using Google Translate to communicate with store clerks etc. Something like that might work for asking police for help too, at least in simple situations. —Granger (talk · contribs) 06:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- In general I don't have a problem with the way that section is written but I too wonder whether we could reword the paragraph about Chengguan slightly so as not to appear to be painting them with a broad brush, though it's certainly true that Chengguan have a bad reputation. Regarding your last question, I speak Chinese too, having learnt the language back in the 1990s, and I'm not sure what I'd do if I didn't except maybe get help from friends and colleagues. STW932 (talk) 01:40, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- @STW932: And by the way, what's your view on the way the section on law enforcement is written? I don't think we should paint a board stroke over all Chengguan, because there are certainly good ones as well, but it seems that there are more complaints about chengguan brutality than public security police brutality. Also, do you have advice on how can an English-speaking foreigner communicate with police officers if they need help? It's hard for me to give advice on this because I speak Chinese so I don't have the communication issue that most Western tourists visiting China will have. The dog2 (talk) 12:59, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- Well, I wouldn't normally take photos of law enforcement officers but I happen to have a friend who works as a Chengguan officer so perhaps I may be able to get a photo of him in uniform later. I'll let you know if I do. He works in another city, so it may be a while before I see him. STW932 (talk) 12:32, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- @STW932: Since you live in China, would you by any chance have a good photo of a Chengguan officer that we could use so people can recognize them? The dog2 (talk) 11:51, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
What kind of article do we want this to be?
[edit]For a long time, the Hong Kong article became a dumping ground for all sorts of excessive derail, trivia, repetition and personal opinion. This is not useful for travellers. It took a lot of work to cut out the excess. It looks like the China article is going the way of the Hong Kong article, too.
When editors add in personal opinions about table tennis with no information about how travellers can watch table tennis, then we know this is becoming an article of "stuff I have heard about China that I am going to write down" instead of a travel article. If someone thinks this is important to add to Wikivoyage, it should be in a branch article about Sport in China, or Table Tennis in China, not the main article for the country, which is already one of the longest articles we have. I doubt that many people travel to China to watch table tennis. A long article full of details about everything in a country of 1.3 billion people does not serve the traveller. Ground Zero (talk) 15:38, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Internet censorship and Wikipedia
[edit]STW932 wrote "Wikivoyage is no longer being blocked. In fact, I can now access virtually all Wikimedia sites without a VPN with the exception of Wikipedia":
- "The only Wikimedia site that remains inaccessible without a VPN is Wikipedia"
and later "Updated info on accessibility of Wikimedia sites (the situation changed again)":
- "Only Wikipedia is consistently blocked on all networks".
I am confused. I've understood that WMF forces https, which means a man-in-the-middle cannot see what page is requested. For me, at the moment, both Wikivoyage and Wikipedia are served by 185.15.59.224 and 2a02:ec80:300:ed1a::1, so requests to the one or the other shouldn't be distinguishable. Has China broken the encryption – I hope not. Are the other sites (sometimes) served by servers that don't serve Wikipedia? Is this specific for China, which would imply that WMF has agreed to do so? Or is this about Chinese devices, which (acting as man-in-the-middle) filter content themselves?
–LPfi (talk) 07:43, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
- I have no idea about the technical details. I'm just writing based on my personal observations as a Wikimedia user in China. Basically, when I turn off the WiFi connection on my phone, I can access all Wikimedia sites except Wikipedia. But when I reconnect to the WiFi, I cannot access any Wikimedia sites at all. However, just recently there were a few days on which I was able to access all Wikimedia sites regardless of which network I was using, with the exception of Wikipedia (that's the reason for last week's edit; unfortunately it didn't last). STW932 (talk) 08:23, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
- Do you have a foreign SIM? That could explain the difference between using mobile data and using a (Chinese) Wi-Fi. Is your phone Chinese? Then it might cooperate with the firewall.
- The technical matters may be complicated (and I cannot easily figure out what might be going on), but if the encryption is end-to-end between a trustable device and the web server, and the same server serves pages from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, then the firewall shouldn't be able to block one without blocking the other (or to block just certain pages) – that's one main reason for encryption, and why WMF started to force https.
- –LPfi (talk) 08:37, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
- You might be right about devices filtering content. I've found that (most of the time) my computers cannot access any Wikimedia site even when connected to my mobile network. However, if I connect my iPad to my mobile network, I can get the same degree of access that I have on my phone. STW932 (talk) 08:43, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
- For your information, I'm using a Chinese phone with a Chinese SIM. STW932 (talk) 08:44, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
- China Firewall Test finds that the English versions of Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, and Wiktionary are all blocked. From my recollection, the blocked sites sometimes vary by ISP, and in some cases the local (Chinese) device seems like it must be involved (e.g. some Wikipedia articles blocked but not others; unless the encryption has been broken I think this filtering must be happening on the user's device). For blocking Wikipedia but not Wikivoyage, is it possible the firewall or censorship rules interfere with DNS resolution and allow some URLs to be resolved but not others even when they're served by the same IP address? —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:34, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
- For your information, I'm using a Chinese phone with a Chinese SIM. STW932 (talk) 08:44, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
V2ray
[edit]The article suggests using a "VPN (…) or V2ray proxy" to get access to blocked sites. Can the reader be assumed to know V2ray? It isn't mentioned in Internet access, nor does Wikipedia know about it. The front page of its site is in Chinese, and the assortment of languages (which includes English) is a bit odd. Is it a mainstream tool? can we recommend it? –LPfi (talk) 08:01, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not certain we should recommend any tool & if we do, the obvious one would be w:Psiphon.
- There is more v2ray info including source code on Github Pashley (talk) 14:20, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
- See also Surveillance Self Defense and China's Global Reach from EFF which I'd rate an extremely credible source. Pashley (talk) 14:25, 2 October 2024 (UTC)