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Well, if all worked properly, admins would simply block obvious vandalism and delete obvious spam links (no offense, but we can't have a separate article for every 7-11 location - there is a limit)

Why that is not happening, I do not know. Clashes of "new blood" and "old blood" have been interesting. We are seeing "wars" of people wanting to delete stuff and those wanting to restore stuff. Sometimes, it's damn handy to be able to browse Wikipedia with the "view deleted edits" button - you do get the other side of the story on that odd great article that someone decided to delete.

http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/19/the-pownc e-update/ and http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/10/unwanted- new-articles-in-wikipedia/ by Andrew Lih, a prominent WP admin does shed a little light on things and would be a useful read in light of things.

Well, if all worked properly, admins would simply block obvious vandalism and delete obvious spam links (no offense, but we can't have a separate article for every 7-11 location - there is a limit)

Why that is not happening, I do not know. Clashes of "new blood" and "old blood" have been interesting. We are seeing "wars" of people wanting to delete stuff and those wanting to restore stuff. Sometimes, it's damn handy to be able to browse Wikipedia with the "view deleted edits" button - you do get the other side of the story on that odd great article that someone decided to delete.

http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/19/the-pownc e-update/ and http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/10/unwanted- new-articles-in-wikipedia/ by Andrew Lih, a prominent WP admin does shed a little light on things and would be a useful read in light of things.

The short version:

November 9, 2006 saw the complete unblocking of Wikipedia in China, resulting in a four-fold increase in new user registrations. Though it is still subject to URL- and page-level keyword blocking, the vast majority of the site is freely accessible.

Why was it unblocked? No one can know for sure. But in the end, I believe consensus among the Chinese authorities found the benefits of Wikipedia far outweigh the risks, and signals their understanding of a read-write Web.

China wants to read it, the world wants China to write to it.

With Wikipedia blocked, China suffers because its ranks of knowledge workers cannot access the top reference site in the world, and the world suffers from not having China's expertise and input in Wikipedia. Sound familiar? This is Wikipedia as the ultimate implementation of "read-write" culture, ala Lawrence Lessig.

And in the end, if you think about it, doesn't it make complete sense that the People's Republic of China would embrace the people's encyclopedia of Wikipedia?

The short version:

November 9, 2006 saw the complete unblocking of Wikipedia in China, resulting in a four-fold increase in new user registrations. Though it is still subject to URL- and page-level keyword blocking, the vast majority of the site is freely accessible.

Why was it unblocked? No one can know for sure. But in the end, I believe consensus among the Chinese authorities found the benefits of Wikipedia far outweigh the risks, and signals their understanding of a read-write Web.

China wants to read it, the world wants China to write to it.

With Wikipedia blocked, China suffers because its ranks of knowledge workers cannot access the top reference site in the world, and the world suffers from not having China's expertise and input in Wikipedia. Sound familiar? This is Wikipedia as the ultimate implementation of "read-write" culture, ala Lawrence Lessig.

And in the end, if you think about it, doesn't it make complete sense that the People's Republic of China would embrace the people's encyclopedia of Wikipedia?

The short version:

November 9, 2006 saw the complete unblocking of Wikipedia in China, resulting in a four-fold increase in new user registrations. Though it is still subject to URL- and page-level keyword blocking, the vast majority of the site is freely accessible.

Why was it unblocked? No one can know for sure. But in the end, I believe consensus among the Chinese authorities found the benefits of Wikipedia far outweigh the risks, and signals their understanding of a read-write Web.

China wants to read it, the world wants China to write to it.

With Wikipedia blocked, China suffers because its ranks of knowledge workers cannot access the top reference site in the world, and the world suffers from not having China's expertise and input in Wikipedia. Sound familiar? This is Wikipedia as the ultimate implementation of "read-write" culture, ala Lawrence Lessig.

And in the end, if you think about it, doesn't it make complete sense that the People's Republic of China would embrace the people's encyclopedia of Wikipedia?

It was based on charts and research I did from Beijing.

Cheers.

The good news: The Wikipedia block in China is partially lifted

The bad news: The Chinese version is still not generally accessible, and the Western media reporting has been poor

Editor & Publisher magazine put out an article October 11 saying:

"The online interactive reference site Wikipedia announced Tuesday that the site had apparently been made accessible in China, after being blocked for just over a year by the country's government. "

From a Beijing China Netcom's residential DSL connection, the English language and other foreign language versions are now accessible, but the Chinese version is still blocked (zh.wikipedia.org).

There is no monolithically run Great Firewall of China, even though it is a cute and useful moniker.

The "GFW system" depends on a distributed system of checks and filters that depends on the particular ISP, the type of connection being used, and the geographic locale. A commercial connection in Hubei is different than a residential DSL in Guangdong is different than an academic network in Shantou. Something blocked in one area of the country may be totally fine in another. A keyword that is filtered in one place could be allowed in another.

So for folks in China's tech circles, it's pretty frustrating seeing blanket "China blocks" or "China unblocks" declaration without specifics or accurate reports.

Filtering also happens on different levels between the domestic network and the greater Internet, so even though Wikipedia is generally accessible in English, it's still subject to:

• URL-level filtering - host header or keyword in URL rejected
• Text-stream level filtering - offending keyword in Web page