[Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan

[James Salsman]

> The question this list would need to find agreement on is: should the Uzbek
> Wikipedia be set up in a way that makes access via the HTTPS protocol the
> canonical one?

Certainly. There is already widespread agreement on supporting HTTPS
in the archives, and no question that it should be canonical when ISPs
or governments seek to block the HTTP access. Any government taking
those measures is likely to take other measures which might put
editors using HTTP instead of HTTPS at risk, so it makes abundant
sense to do this if we have any respect for our editors' safety at
all.

I wish that  http://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa and
https://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa would work, too, but the
foundation apparently can't or chooses not to afford separate IP
addresses for each language's Wikipedia.

The Foundation in years past would take advantage of the end of the
annual fundraiser to write a thank you letter to donors which included
other less well funded charity foundations and organization which the
leadership would recommend endorsing.  One of those foundations, the
EFF, publishes this page with helpful background information:

https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

One of the reasons that donor response was so strong this year is
because this past January, the Foundation decided to join with the EFF
and others in support of what turned out to be a very popular activism
campaign against the proposed U.S. SOPA/PIPA legislation, primarily in
the interest of the Foundation's legal and office actions staff which
would have been substantially burdened with the task of removing links
to external sites deemed infringing in ex parte court applications had
the legislation become law.  Can you imagine what would happen if the
Foundation decided to support more than just their own staff and take
action to support the nearly one fifth of long time editors who toil
in near-poverty or impoverished conditions by with an activism
campaign based on Chart 4 of
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/berg.htm or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Employment_growth_by_top_tax_rate.jpg
or  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Yz3W7LVnwne79wiwxdqKiRuFRAyQX-JXIAbAeuWuVXk/edit#slide=id.p10
?

Best regards,
James Salsman