I earlier posted that China blocked and unblocked Wikipedia and that it was now available in most of China. That information was wrong and none other than the founder of Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales, set me straight. I won’t try to sort it out here but I do recommend you go to this entry at Wikipedia and see for yourself.
I’m sure there are still ways to get to Wikipedia in China but the average surfer doesn’t have the knowledge or doesn’t want to bother. Baidu jumped on the opportunity and released ” Baidupedia” in May of this year. I’m sure they are watching with great interest. My feeling is that China is using the unblocking to discover the type of content dissenters are interested in and using that information to “adjust their filters”. As usual only time will tell.
The lesson, check Wikipedia’s Portal Current Events to verify stories that I read on the web.
