New subject: helping access Wikipedia from censored connections

1 Jul 2007

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