Wikipedia blocked, again. - Now unblocked!

[imron]

Citizendium was also setup by one of the founders of Wikipedia over general dis-satisfaction regarding the direction Wikipedia had taken/was heading. There are several articles on citizendium about the similarities and differences from wikipedia.

[madizi]

Wow, seems like small step for internet community, but big step for humanity. Or something like this......

[dermur]

I guess you've seen these stories telling how a "wikiscanner" caught various large intelligence agencies and religious organizations (among others) making some interesting edits to wiki pages!

I hope someone at wiki is keeping all those logs - it'd make a great book some day.

[ruich]

I've just heard of a tool which should be able to "break" the Great Firewall. I can't test it since I don't live in China..

give it a try:

http://pici.picidae.net/

It makes an image of the page you want to visit and sends you this data. Therefor it shouldn't be recognized as a blocked page.

And no I don't have anything to do with this project, just saw it on TV and thought it's interesting..

[liuzhou]

It works, but doesn't always render the page correctly. There are better ways round the firewall.

[outcast]

Wierd, wikipedia (the english part of it anyway) is working ok for me without any proxies. Typepad is also ok.

[liuzhou]

Not weird. It was only blocked for a couple of days.

[outcast]

Why?

[Lu]

Why?

As Wikipedia says, if you've found the answer you are looking for, please consider coming back to write about it here...

[liuzhou]

The Chinese site is unblocked this morning.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/

[gato]

Must be getting ready for the big national party meeting on Oct. 15.

[madizi]

I don't know, maybe because tomorrow begins a new school year.

[liuzhou]

maybe because tomorrow begins a new school year.

The nanny unblocks a site for good educational purposes? That would be a first!

[alkizmo]

Englih Wikipedia.org works for me in Shanghai

tested just now

[anonymoose]

Looks like it's blocked again! At least I can't access it now. Anyone else finding this?

[onemoretime842]

Yeah, yesterday night it stopped working.

I use Firefox, and previously I could see the English pages, but not not any "sensitive" ones or any of the Chinese pages, which was really annoying. I'd just get the 'connection timeout' message, and then I wouldn't be able to see any new sites for 20 seconds or so. I guess until it resets.

But here's a question, when I use anonymouse proxy I can see all the English entries, but the standard unacceptable political entries and all the Chinese entries are still blocked! Does anyone know why this might be? Or is this just some weird problem with anonymouse?

[alkizmo]

yup blocked again.

oh well

[yingguoguy]

But here's a question, when I use anonymouse proxy I can see all the English entries, but the standard unacceptable political entries and all the Chinese entries are still blocked! Does anyone know why this might be? Or is this just some weird problem with anonymouse?

AFAIK there are two different types of blocking that the great firewall uses.

In the first the government says "We don't want anyone going to www.wikipedia.com at all". Any requests for webpages are blocked from leaving the country and you get a "Address not found" message. Proxies will get round this because your request goes to the proxy first instead of the blocked site.

In the second the government isn't currently blocking wikipedia so your request goes through and wikipedia sends you back a reply. However as your reply enters China the firewall monitors it and if it spots any keywords (for example a reference to an infamous incident in that square in the center of Beijing in the 1980's) then it cuts off the article , often halfway through. Hence wikipedia itself can be unblocked, but you still can't see the main entry on China. You usually don't get an error message, just a blank page. The proxy can't help you here as the content (and hence the "bad" words) are the same as they would be from wikipedia.

[adrianlondon]

If you could use a proxy which used HTTPS instead of HTTP then you'd get around that issue, too.

When I was in Beijing I noticed that I couldn't download any of my POP3 emails if there was one aprticular email in my inbox from the local council (in London) which dealt with elections and the meetings they were having in my area. Dunno whay keywords were tripping the Great Firewall but something was.

I switched to secure POP3 and could download everything fine. Obviously, the GF scans plain text. Or maybe a proxy could get the web page, create a bitmap image from it, and send you that ;)

[gougou]

Or maybe a proxy could get the web page, create a bitmap image from it, and send you that

Which is exactly what ruich recommends in post #24 of this thread.