Brion Vibber wrote:
Wikipedia was blocked ENTIRELY in China for years; people interested in *reading* as well as contributing used circumvention tools (VPNs etc) to more securely access the site, and just got generic errors if they didn't.
This is an acceptable trade-off which we've allowed the Chinese government to make for us before, and here we're talking about a much smaller effect (on contributors only).
Again, it's not our business to fix China. China has to fix China.
I completely agree with China fixing China.
But I think the Wikimedia community has to decide whether this trade-off is acceptable. I'm not sure it's a decision that sysadmins and developers can make alone.
From my understanding, zh.wikipedia.org is currently available via HTTP in
China, but not HTTPS. If we change all sites to require HTTPS for logged-in users, we'll certainly increase site security and enhance the user experience for most users, but is that worth losing every zh.wikipedia.org contributor who lives in China? Or do we expect anyone blocked from HTTPS to simply edit without an account?
I think the concern here is that some projects may be decimated (in terms of number of contributors) if HTTPS is forced for all users.
MZMcBride