[Wikimedia-l] Chinese Wikipedia inaccessible in mainland China

[Benjamin Chen]

Hi guys,

This is an update that since this morning (local time), Chinese Wikipedia is no longer accessible in mainland China from all major ISPs in all regions (that I've received reports from). 

zh.wikipedia.org is now a censored URL keywords on HTTP. Meaning any foreign domain that contains these strings will be blocked, such asgoogle.com/?q=zh.wikipedia.org, or even microsoft.com/zh.wikipedia.org. 

Also, any users who attempts to connect to Chinese Wikipedia will get their connection to *.wikipedia.org reset for several minutes.

HTTPS connection is still working. All other language versions, such as English Wikipedia are also accessible for now (but there is still keyword censoring).

As a bit of history, Chinese Wikipedia was blocked from 2005 to 2008. Shortly before the 2008 Beijing Olympics in July 2008, the block was lifted. Jimbo paid Cai Mingzhao, Vice Director of China's State Council Information Office a visit in September that year [1] and Cai visited the WMF office some time in 2009 (not sure of the date). Despite some keyword-specific blocks on sensitive articles, Chinese Wikipedia had been generally accessible until yesterday. 

As for the other projects, Chinese Wikisource has been blocked since late 2010, and Chinese Wikinews since early 2012.

Hope that the block this time may as well be temporary.

[1] http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2008/10/jimmy-wales-mee.html

Regards,

Benjamin Chen / [[User:Bencmq]]