By Dan Satherley
Wikimedia, the organisation behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, says it is tired of people assuming it also runs controversial whistleblowing site WikiLeaks.
In an interview with the Guardian, executive director Sue Gardner says the non-profit trust has nothing to do with Julian Assange's WikiLeaks, which has come under fire from the CIA and US government for leaking Afghan war documents.
"My mother asked me if I ran WikiLeaks," says Gardner. "I told her I did not."
WikiMedia runs Wikipedia, a collaborative encyclopaedia written and edited by its users, and other similar sites such as Wikiquotes, Wiktionary and Wikibooks.
Gardner says WikiLeaks shouldn't use the prefix 'wiki', as it is not collaborative and it causes confusion.
"It's not a collaboratively created product," she told the Guardian. "It's not fundamentally collaborative in nature. It's more of a classic leaking project. It used to be a brown manila envelope on your doorstep at three o'clock in the morning. Now it's a leak on the internet."
WikiLeaks is incredibly secretive, in direct contrast to Wikipedia's mostly open nature.
One thing the two groups have in common however is a reluctance to compromise to censorship.
"We haven't, for example, made any concessions to the Chinese government and we were blocked there up to the Olympics," says Gardner. "As a result, our share is still very, very small in China."
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