[Foundation-l] Wikipedia Inaccessible In China - story hits the news cycle

--- Rick <giantsrick13(a)yahoo.com> wrote on WikiEN-l: They specifically mention that the Wikimedia Foundation has not responded yet. Could somebody who can speak for the foundation do that? I have a feeling that this story may get big due to the recent rash of censorship in China. Wikipedia could be lead part of many of those stories since it is hard to feel sorry for blocked porn and gambling sites but Wikipedia is cute and cuddly and now the Chinese version has been effectively squashed (with about a hundred contributors not able to contribute and many thousands disconnected from their favorite reference site - not to mention hundreds of millions of potential readers who will never know of us if this block is permanent). I think it is fairly serious when a very substantial part of the world's population is cut off from us. So we should have an official statement about this before the media starts to demonize the PRC's censorship policies. IMO, such a statement would need to say something to the effect that "Wikimedia wants to work with the PRC and we think that our NPOV policy should take care of any fears the PRC may have." Hopefully that will give the Chinese contributors a chance to work this out in a soft way first and give the PRC a way to back off without losing face. We could very well have been blocked due to bureaucratic misjudgment. --Daniel Mayer (aka mav) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/