Flumesday.com - Wikipedia Blocked Again in China

Wikipedia Blocked Again in China
Friday, the Chinese government reblocked the online reference site Wikipedia after having lifted a year-long ban on October 10th. Not surprisingly, there is no word from the Chinese Ministry of Information as to why the site was dangled in front of China's internet users for a little over a month and then rescinded so abruptly. There is also debate as to whether the block is, in fact, a calculated reinstitution of the ban or just a temporary glitch in the "Great Firewall." While the details surrounding what happened are somewhat sketchy, the story that broke last week was not altogether factually correct. As reported by the AP and published by CNN, "China's easing of a ban on the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia appears to have been short-lived. Users reported Friday that the site was unavailable in several parts of China, barely a week after it suddenly became accessible." And with all due respect to the AP, this is simply untrue. I will do my best to make things a bit clearer. What the AP seems not to fully understand is that there are two separate issues at hand. One is the blocking of the Chinese Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org) and the other is the blocking of the English version of Wikipedia within China. The English version of Wikipedia was unblocked on October 10th and was censored on November 17th. It was accessible for over a month, not "barely a week." And the Chinese site was unblocked on October 10th as well, and remained accessible in Shanghai and other parts of China for over a month as well. However, in some parts of China, the Chinese version had remained blocked and was only accessible between Nov. 10th and November 17th. And if you are thinking, "why should I believe this stupid website over the AP and CNN?", I'll tell you why. First, I live in China and use Wikipedia frequently. And second, because this stupid website reported the Oct. 10 unblocking of Wikipedia before the AP, CNN or any other news source. A Beijing blogger who is currently writing a book on Wikipedia in China wrote late Saturday, "Wikipedia is still inaccessible for most everyone in PRC. The current block is actually a bit more restrictive than before October 10, since any mention of the string “zh.wikipedia.org” in any URL seems to be blocked." Also, he notes that in the 24-hour period right before the block, there were a record 1,823 new user registrations for the Chinese Wikipedia site. Perhaps the number of Chinese people trying to learn things was getting out of hand. As the Chinese Wikipedia expert points out, "The Great Firewall is a distributed system, and not a monolithic one. It will take some time to figure out the state of affairs, and it is not unusual for access to be in flux over a number of days." In the meantime, those of us living in China should be on our best behavior so that maybe we can get our Wikipedia back.

•Editor and Publisher: Wikipedia Back Offline in China