I'm having zero ability to access the wikipedia over the last few days too... it used to be that I could use it just fine during the Australian daytime, but once the sun rose in America I couldn't do anything because there was too much traffic and everything timed out. This week access speed has dropped down to zero 24/7...
I hope that whatever's going on can be fixed quickly... because if it's stopping us from working on the pedia it's also stopping anyone from accessing articles through Google and using them for research purposes.