We should wait a few days to find out how widespread the "block" is
first before coming up with an official response. This was discussed
in the #wikimedia IRC channel as well.
In the long run, hopefully the Internet authorities will realize that
having Wikipedia accessible in the PRC is generally a good thing. This
is basically why Google was unblocked two years ago. So instead of a
complete ban, general URL-based "blocking" by their filters would be
good enough to cut out what they find problematic. PRC Internet
blocking takes place in different tiers - DNS blocking entire site
names, URL-based blocking based on keywords, E-mail screening for
keywords, etc.
As I mentioned to Jimbo in June's London meetup, the Internet
authorities work in a way that resemble how administrators work in
Wikipedia - it is a distributed team of folks making decisions, and
one department may disagree with another and have a block lifted.
I'm not sure WP admins like being compared to the PRC authorities, however. :)
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 12:05:05 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote:
Maybe, but there may be an article, [[censorship]].
What goes in that?
Fred
From: Christopher Mahan
<chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com>
Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 10:46:55 -0700 (PDT)
To: wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia in China
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote:
All the things you suggest are good and no
problem for the
government. I
have absolutely no problem with writing about all those good
things. But the
focus of the government is going to be on things like that BBS that
got shut
down. Should there be no article? A syncopathic article explaining
why it
was necessary to shut it down from the government viewpoint? Or an
article
from a Neutral point of view?
No article at all.
It is truly insignificant, if you think about it.
When there are 350,000 articles in Chinese about Chinese history,
politics, culture and religions, then, a small blurb about efforts by
the central govt to curb radicalism that impacted a small number of
computer users (anything less than 10 million is small in china.)
would be called for.
Let's not focus on the twisted twig while standing in a large forest.
=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com
chris.mahan(a)gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/
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