On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Another problem is that forking of a large Wikipedia edition has proven to be extremely difficult, regardless of the availability of image dumps, so the threat is very weak. The Chinese experience should tell us how hard it is: Baidu Baike and Hudong were able to thrive only with the Chinese Wikipedia completely blocked in Mainland China.
-- Tim Starling
There is a relevant anecdote to go with this. A physics teacher was telling his students how compared to the other fundamental forces, gravity was comparatively very very weak. Just as he said that, a wall attached speaker failed its mountings and came crashing down behind him. Without missing a beat he continued. "Weak, but non-neglible."