[Wikipedia-l] about Chinese government's blocking Wikipedia

Sun Jun 13 15:20:17 UTC 2004

Chinese government had blocked Chinese Wikipedia for a week now, and they blocked the whole Wikipedia project since 9 June at least in Beijing. By now we have confirmed that Wikipedians in Beijing, Shanghai, Hunan, He'Nan, Sichuan can't access Chinese Wikipedia; obviously it is a national-wide ban. 

I'm the first contributor of Chinese Wikipedia and an administrator of it; I'm very worry about the situation now. The fast growth of the Chinese Wikipedia before the ban showed that Wikipedia project have been accepted by the Chinese people, but now how can you image that the door lead to the interesting Wiki world which had opened to us must be closed so easily. It's really a pity for us.

My ISP is the top-level sub-node of the CERN (Chinese Education and Research Network). I had visited administrators there. They told me that the Chinese National Security Bureau is responsible for such ban issues, but they only give you an order to ban, and you have no way to give them feedbacks. We, administrators of Chinese Wikipedia in Beijing, decided to contact the administrators of the whole CERN this week, and if it is needed we will try to contact the Chinese National Security Bureau. Before we get more information about the ban, please don't release a press about it, maybe it is only a several-weeks ban.

Formulax and Daniel Mayer hopes that a press release will make them feel shame and then cancel the ban. I really don't think so. Maybe an unthoughtful press release will make things worse and worse.

If the worst happens, the ban is a long-term policy; I think we still have a choice: we can setup a mirror inside P.R.China. The mirror uses the mediawiki software, and is under GNU FDL also. Because the wiki page is editable, we must develop some tools to keep the mirror and the Chinese Wikipedia consistent each other. The mirror is under the management of the Mediawiki Foundation also. To assure the accessibility to the Chinese people, we had to filter out some sensitive information from the mirror. It is not idealistic, but it is realistic.

Mountain