Wikipedia, a Web-based free content encyclopedia, has recently been blocked again in China according to the Information World Review. Despite the fact that Wikipedia is now accessible throughout most of China, there are reports that is still completely blocked in certain areas of China.
Wikipedia was originally blocked in October of 2005 and has been coming back on line in spurts. These spurts most likely involves fine tuning the filters for “unauthorized content”.
Reporters Without Borders applauded the move as a victory for Wikipedia’s refusal to censor itself, and called on other large internet companies to follow its example in the region.
“While Yahoo, Google and Microsoft harp on about how it is impossible to negotiate with the authorities, and that if they refused to censor their search engines they would be expelled from the country, the Wikipedia example proves the contrary,” said a spokesman for Reporters Without Borders.
Correction:
Thanks to the commenters below, including Jimbo Wales founder of Wikipedia, who tell me Wikipedia is now currently blocked throughout most of China and refer me to the Wikipedia story that sorts out the confusion and point out that the Information World Report is outdated.
David Temple
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Thanks guys I completely missed that.
Well, maybe you should use Wikipedia as a source of news, since you have the story wrong. You write “Despite the fact that Wikipedia is now accessible throughout most of China, there are reports that is still completely blocked in certain areas of China.”
That is just wrong. Wikipedia is NOT now accessible throughout most of China. The RSF report is quite old now.
And has since been unblocked and will probably be blocked again. Arwel, that’s exactly why I posted about spurts and didn’t list any dates. Besides I don’t consider Wikipedia to be a source of news and rely instead on dozens of news sources listed on Google, Yahoo and MSN as well as friends in China. And I list those sources as I did in the above post.