On 6/30/07, Bennett Haselton bennett@peacefire.org wrote:
Re-greetings,
A few months ago I was here for a very interesting discussion about Wikipedia vs. Citizendium and in particular about the idea of having teams of identity-verified "experts" who could take custody of articles to help prevent errors and vandalism. This time I'm asking about something less controversial. Well, maybe :)
Peacefire runs a network of proxy sites like https://www.StupidCensorship.com/ for getting around Internet filtering; unlike most proxy sites which are widely known and get blocked quickly, we encourage people to sign up to receive e-mail updates whenever we create new sites, and since it usually takes a few days for newly mailed sites to get blocked, most of our users are usually able to use the latest one we've mailed out. One of the most frequent comments from our users is that they're glad that they can get on Wikipedia through the proxies. So how can we help get the word out to more Wikipedians -- many of whom are undoubtedly not aware of the easy methods for accessing Wikipedia from censored networks? (That is, they probably know about proxies, but may not know how to get an unlimited supply of proxies so the latest one is always unblocked.) Our organization's whole purpose is to help people get around Internet blocking, so every time we help someone gain access to Wikipedia, we're achieving our mission and, presumably, helping Wikipedia achieve theirs as well.
We're willing to spend the money on the hardware and the bandwidth for the proxies to help people get access, so how can we do it in a way that benefits Wikipedia users the most? (Disclaimer: we do get some money back from the ads that runs on our site, but not at a profit; we just barely break even on the ads right now. So there may not be quite the same "halo" around these services as there is around the bandwidth and hardware that's donated outright to Wikipedia for free :) However, to be constantly setting up new dedicated sites to help people get around Internet blocking, requires creating new accounts with different hosting companies all the time, and it would be impractical to try and get each of them to agree to provide pro bono services each time we set up a new site, which is why we have to spend money for that and why the ads help to pay for it.)
Since Wikipedia does have articles about subjects such as sexuality that are often blocked in schools, I recognize there might be a minority of Wikipedia supporters who nonetheless feel that the site *should* be blocked from students, but I'm hoping that the vast majority of Wikipedians would not feel that way. First of all, most blocking programs claim not to block sites that deal with those subjects in an "educational" context, which means the vast majority of articles on Wikipedia, even those about topics like sex, should not be blocked, by the companies' own stated criteria. Second, I think most reasonable people would agree that virtually every teenager could read almost everything on Wikipedia without "harm", and that the educational benefits are enormous. (Well, they would be if you had experts sign off on the articles. *ducks*)
So, what can we do to help? If we had an unlimited budget for circumvention services, how could we best use it to help Wikipedia? (Whatever the answer to that would be, there's probably a way we can achieve some part of it, even on a limited budget.) In addition to just providing the sites, there might be times when if a new Wikipedia feature is being released, for example, we could do cross-platform testing to see if it's compatible with our proxies so we can alert users to any issues. What do you all think?
-Bennettbennett@peacefire.org http://www.peacefire.org (425) 497 9002
Well, in theory open proxies are blocked from editing. In practice, especially with the Peacefire proxies, I have found this is not the case. ~~~~