[Foundation-l] Blanking a Wikipedia, a very bad idea

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2011/10/4 emijrp <emijrp at gmail.com>
>
> Hi all;
>
> The events regarding Italian Wikipedia blanking[1][2] of all its content are
> a serious precedent IMHO. They can make a lot of noise using other
> procedures, like a big blinking site notice, but giving no choice to read
> the content is against the main goal of Wikipedia.[3]
>
> Italian Wikipedia has about 500,000 page views per hour,[4] and readers are
> getting worried about how long is this going to last. A global encyclopedia
> managed in these ways is not trustworthy. This is worst in public image than
> any gender, global south or image filtering media flame war.
>
> Furthermore, this only make me more concerned about the missing updated,
> secure and trustworthy mirrors of Wikipedia content.
>
> Fortunately, you still can read the mobile version, but it is "limited".[5]
> (Please, spread the word about this)

1:
In 1995 the famous Russian TV journalist [[Vladislav Listyev]] was
murdered. A day after the murder most Russian TV channels were blanked
for a whole day in protest against the rampaging lawlessness and
violence. As far as i know, most people who watched TV in Russian - in
Russia, as well as in Israel, Germany and elsewhere - identified with
the protest.

2:
A few weeks ago the Israeli court required the Channel 10, a Hebrew TV
channel, to apologize to the millionaire [[Sheldon Adelson]] after
broadcasting a journalistic investigation that showed him in negative
light. The channel tried to claim that the investigation was
well-based, but broadcast an apology nevertheless. A few minutes after
the apology the news presenter Guy Zohar told the viewers that he
quits his position in Channel 10 in response to the events; in
addition, the news bulletin ended with blank credits list. The whole
thing took about 30 seconds and received wide attention iring the few
days after that.

3:
Is this Italian law proposal as bad as a murder of a journalist? As
bad as a court-forced TV apology? Maybe it is and maybe it is not. I
know too little about this affair to state an opinion here; I am just
giving a couple of cross-cultural points of comparison.

--
Amir