Chinese government had blocked Chinese Wikipedia for a week now, and they blocked the
whole Wikipedia project since 9 June at least in Beijing. By now we have confirmed that
Wikipedians in Beijing, Shanghai, Hunan, He'Nan, Sichuan can't access Chinese
Wikipedia; obviously it is a national-wide ban.
I'm the first contributor of Chinese Wikipedia and an administrator of it; I'm
very worry about the situation now. The fast growth of the Chinese Wikipedia before the
ban showed that Wikipedia project have been accepted by the Chinese people, but now how
can you image that the door lead to the interesting Wiki world which had opened to us must
be closed so easily. It's really a pity for us.
My ISP is the top-level sub-node of the CERN (Chinese Education and Research Network). I
had visited administrators there. They told me that the Chinese National Security Bureau
is responsible for such ban issues, but they only give you an order to ban, and you have
no way to give them feedbacks. We, administrators of Chinese Wikipedia in Beijing, decided
to contact the administrators of the whole CERN this week, and if it is needed we will try
to contact the Chinese National Security Bureau. Before we get more information about the
ban, please don't release a press about it, maybe it is only a several-weeks ban.
Formulax and Daniel Mayer hopes that a press release will make them feel shame and then
cancel the ban. I really don't think so. Maybe an unthoughtful press release will make
things worse and worse.
If the worst happens, the ban is a long-term policy; I think we still have a choice: we
can setup a mirror inside P.R.China. The mirror uses the mediawiki software, and is under
GNU FDL also. Because the wiki page is editable, we must develop some tools to keep the
mirror and the Chinese Wikipedia consistent each other. The mirror is under the management
of the Mediawiki Foundation also. To assure the accessibility to the Chinese people, we
had to filter out some sensitive information from the mirror. It is not idealistic, but it
is realistic.
Mountain
Show replies by date