Jimmy Wales co-founded Wikipedia, a website that relies on the good faith of its users to edit online content. But its crowd-sourcing model took on a new dimension at a conference in China on Thursday, as comments from Mr. Wales were edited when translated to make them reflect local Internet policy.

During a panel discussion at the Chinese government’s ongoing World Internet Conference in the city of Wuzhen, Mr. Wales predicted that advances in machine-driven translation might someday make it “no longer possible” for governments to control flows of information.

Yet, when the comments were reproduced on the conference’s official website, they read as if put through a translation machine programed to reflect Beijing policy. Mr. Wales’s statement was translated to say coming technology improvements will allow authorities to better analyze online communications.

The incongruous comments appeared to demonstrate gaping differences between Western and Chinese views about controls over information. Mr. Wales is a free-speech proponent who has said would rather have no Wikipedia than a censored version. But he was speaking at the premier venue for Chinese authorities to promote their philosophy that governments have full rights to control what appears online within their borders. Wikipedia's websites are often blocked in China, a nation where at least one report grades the Internet as “not free.”

The twisted wordage credited to Mr. Wales emerged from a panel discussion he participated in Thursday about how media and mobile technology will ultimately converge. The Wikipedia co-founder riffed on machine-driven translation, a technology that both versions of his comments agree he thinks will improve global person-to-person communications.