Is it mine or...

[Dave]

dear Friends

I have been trying to acess Wikipedia for ages now, my girlfriend in Switzerland has no problem in acessing it, as for me...I have given up. Is it the school server or is it blocked in China?

I understand if you block porn and western propaganda ...whatever that is, but wikipedia???

I was hoping to use it to prepare some classes. Alas!

I would like to know if there is any way around it?

Thanks and stay well.

[Ferno]

Something I pulled up from wiki itself

hope its not too long

The People's Republic of China and internet service providers located in mainland China have adopted a practice of blocking contentious Internet sites in mainland China. (The territories of Hong Kong and Macau are not affected.) Wikimedia sites have been blocked at least three times in its history, with no warning beforehand or explanations after. The erratic and uncoordinated nature of these blocks reflect the procedure by which similar blocks are usually administered in mainland China. Currently, Wikimedia appears to be undergoing the third block in its history.

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First block

The first and so far most significant block lasted between June 2 and June 21, 2004. It began when access to the Chinese Wikipedia from Beijing was blocked on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Possibly related to this, on May 31 an article from the IDG News Service was published [1], discussing the Chinese Wikipedia's treatment of the protests. The Chinese Wikipedia also has articles related to many controversial articles relate to China, such as Taiwanese independence, written by contributors from Taiwan and elsewhere [2], Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989, and so on. A few days after the initial block of Chinese Wikipedia, all Wikimedia sites were blocked in Mainland China.

In response to the blocks, two sysops on the Chinese Wikipedia, Shizhao and Mountain, contacted their respective ISP's, and confirmed that Wikimedia sites had been blocked. Shizhao's ISP, China Science & Technology Net, expressed willingness to submit an appeal to lift the block. Shizhao and Mountain then drafted an appeal, which was submitted on June 15. The appeal stated that Wikipedia was an encyclopedia that does not serve any political bias, strives to be neutral, and provides an avenue for foreigners to understand China and Chinese culture. The appeal also compared the Chinese Wikipedia's coverage of controversial topics to coverage in existing encyclopedias in China, and suggested that the blocking of Wikipedia would prevent sysops from removing undesirable content. All Wikimedia sites were unblocked between June 17 and June 21, 2004.

There was no explanation for the block, either before or after its occurrence. The block had an effect on the vitality of Chinese Wikipedia, which suffered sharp dips in various indicators such as the number of new users, the number of new articles, and the number of edits. In some cases, it took anywhere from 6 to 12 months in order to regain the stats from May 2004.

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Second block

The second and less serious outage lasted between September 23 and September 27, 2004. During this 4-day period, access to Wikipedia was erratic or unavailable to some users in mainland China — this block was not comprehensive and some users in mainland China were never affected. The exact reason for the block is a mystery, but it may have been linked with the closing down of YTHT BBS, a popular Peking University-based BBS that was shut down a few weeks earlier for hosting overtly radical political discussions. Refugees from the BBS had arrived en masse on Chinese Wikipedia. Chinese Wikipedians once again prepared a written appeal to regional ISPs, but the block was lifted before the appeal was actually sent out; the reasons of which are, once again, a mystery.

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Third block

The third block began on October 19, 2005, and once again there is no indication as to whether this block is temporary or permanent, or what the reasons or causes for this block are.

In response to the block, the Main Page of the Chinese Wikipedia added a message at the top directing any Mainland China user who succeeds in getting through to a special status page. According to the status page, the Florida and Korea servers are blocked, while the Paris and Amsterdam servers are not.

Dozens of editors from across Mainland China have reported on the talk page of the status page that they can only access Wikipedia using proxy servers. So far, only a few Mainland China users have sporadically reported being able to get through without using a proxy or some other circumventing technique.

Initially, some Hong Kong users also reported problems, such as being led to the error page of Wikimedia, raising fears that the central government is censoring the Internet in Hong Kong despite the fact that internet censorship laws in Mainland China do not apply to Hong Kong or Macau. However, users from Toronto and New York reported the same problem, and access returned to normal in Hong Kong soon after. It is now believed that the problems experienced by Hong Kong users were due to Wikimedia server outages at about the same time the block occurred.

On October 21, Shizhao once again submitted an appeal to his ISP, and stated, "If nothing goes wrong, the block should be lifted within one week." On October 24, Shizhao posted, "The block will be lifted by Wednesday [October 26]. According to procedure (the details of which are unknown), after the appeal is submitted, a reply will come within 3 business days, and my appeal has already been submitted by the ISP on Friday. My ISP has said that so far they haven't encountered a case where an appeal has failed. This should be good news, but it's still impossible to know the reason for the block."

The appeal submitted strove to be closer to the position of the Chinese government than the first appeal submitted in 2004. It stated, "... [t]he most effective approach is not to reject [this project] outside our borders, but to participate in it actively. If we block Wikipedia, we lose the opportunity to speak with the world with a Chinese voice, and allow forces such as evil cults and Taiwanese independence control the development of content in the project, thus presenting to the world a twisted [image of] China; as users, we lose a channel through which we could access knowledge, a channel whose importance is rising constantly; such an act [i.e. blocking] is no different from cutting away our own voice and tongue, or shutting our own eyes and ears; it is isolationism in the age of the Internet." (Original text)

In the morning of October 31, 2005, Chinese Standard Time (UTC +, Wikipedians from all parts of mainland China began to report that they could access Wikipedia without using proxies. It was initially thought that the block had indeed been lifted, but later on the apparent "unblocking" was linked to the deployment of an LVS load balancer in front of the squid in the Korean server cluster, which changed the IP address of Wikimedia sites for users in China, thus circumventing the block. In any case, within a few hours normal access to Wikipedia was once again impossible.

As of November 14, the block has not yet been lifted. Chinese Wikipedians have expressed fears about the detrimental effects that a permanent ban would have. First of all, the block deprives a useful resource from the majority of Chinese speakers in the world. Moreover, since Mainland Chinese form a significant fraction of the Chinese Wikipedia community (46% of all users in March 2005), a long-term block could severely stunt the growth of Wikipedia similar to the block in June 2004. Finally, as the presence of contributors from multiple communities and viewpoints has helped in ensuring neutrality in some controversial topics (e.g. Taiwanese independence), the sudden removal of one community could exacerbate systemic bias on the Chinese Wikipedia.

There has been much speculation over the cause of the block. Possible reasons offered include controversial articles in Wikipedia itself, recent controversial events in the news that Wikipedia has covered, and even a competing wiki-based encyclopedia in China which is said to be linked to the Chinese government, though as of now none of these is confirmed.

[Dave]

This one goes out to Ferno.

What can I say, gloomy days hover over mainland china.

I thank you for your exhaustive explanation on the above mentioned question.

Take care and thanks again.

[johnd]

English Wikipedia articles are reproduced at http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/ and I've had not problems opening this site.