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?
-Bennett
bennett(a)peacefire.org
http://www.peacefire.org
(425) 497 9002