Ilario Valdelli wrote:
On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 9:23 AM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
I stand by what I said, but I don't think this is the best place to discuss Syrian politics.
It's a political matter because Wikipedia cannot be controlled and the simple control is to block IPs.
The arabic people cannot oppose resistance because it's not a democracy, the simple solution it's to use the same workaround followed in the China scenario.
In China, members of the local Wikipedia community wrote letters to the people in power there, encouraging them to unblock Wikipedia. They talked to the press and put their case forward. This was briefly successful, Wikipedia was unblocked for a few months, until orders came through from a higher authority for it to be reblocked.
As a result, Wikipedia is not popular in China. It won't become popular unless it is unblocked, or unless the block ceases to be enforced.
Technical workarounds are only available to a technically competent and sufficiently motivated minority.
-- Tim Starling