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Wikipedia Blocks Qatar [Updated]
GrumpySimon writes "Wikipedia has blocked the entire country of Qatar from editing pages. Whilst the ban is due to spam-abuse coming from the IP address in question, the fact that this belongs to the country's sole high-speed internet provider has the unintended consequence of stopping Qataris from editing the wiki. The ban has raised concerns about impartiality — the majority of Al Jazeera journalists operate out of Qatar, for example. This raises a number of issues about internet connectivity in small countries — what other internet bottlenecks like this exist?" Update: 01/02 13:32 GMT by Z : Jim Wales wrote in the comments that the story is 'completely false'. Either way, the ban has been lifted and anonymous editing is once again possible from Qatar.
It's situations like this that should make small countries upgrade to IPv6. What surprises me is that they haven't already.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
That an entry from a block log is all it takes to make Slashdot these days. This also means that any concerns have, so far, been raised only in the head of the submitter. Note also that the block was re-tooled to allow account creation, so that only anonymous editing is prevented. Finally, the block is in place for one month, not indefinitely. Nothing to see here, move along.
No statement is true, not even this one.
If Wikipedia's information on the linked page is correct, the reason that the entire Qatar is blocked, is that it is the ip of a proxy server...
It is common practice for ISP's in countries with limited bandwidth to transparently proxy all HTTP traffic in order to save bandwidth
South Africa's SAIX does the same. However they have several proxy servers doing load sharing, which cause even more problems with sites that associate session information with one's IP. Online games preventing the trading of items by users on the same IP is also problematic.
Sites offering access on an alternative port in addition to 80 would offer a solution.
Wikipedia has blocked anonymous contributions from one IP, which happens to be a proxy from that country.
Users can still edit wikipedia throught this proxy by creating an account and logging in.
Creating a wikipedia account only requires a (throw-away) email, and is actually more anonymous, since your IP will not show up in the public logs if you are logged in.
Lots of people have tagged this story with 'uae'. Well contrary to what you might think Qatar is not part of the United Arab Emirates. It is an emirate and an independent state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar
If you agree that Qatar is not part of the UAE, please tag this story 'notuae' and mod this comment 'Informative' so everyone will see it.
Let's show Qatar that unlike Wikipedia, Slashdot is not a haven of ignorance.
So, the problem appears to be fixed. Users can now register for accounts. Thank you slashdot front page (Kjkolb) ;)
The problem came from QTel censorship. Every connection passes through a QTel proxy server, which uses some simplistic rules to determine whether you should be protected from your own surfing habits. If you hit blocked pages too often, your phone rings and when you answer in English you get "I'm sorry, I must have a wrong number. CLUNK." Thus your voice has been recorded for posterity.
The shambles of Qatar's connection might be fixed soon. Q-CERT has just been set up and (hopefully), someone with a bit of influence will be in charge. It is obvious that a single point of failure for an entire population's internet connection is not sensible, but whether this means a better censorship system or the scrapping of censorship remains to be seen.
Before this story appeared on the front page of slashdot, Qataris were also prevented from creating new user accounts - thus preventing anyone from posting.
... Qatar has a vastly different government than Saudi ArabiaYou are correct in that there is more freedom of expression in Qatar than in Saudi, and the Ministry of Information was abolished in 1996. Unfortunately, QTel has not yet realised that there is no censorship in Qatar.
IT DOESN'T, YOU TARDS!
I'd complain about the lack of editing skills on the part of the Slashdot guys, but we already know that when they say "editor", what they really mean is "monkey trained to click a button when a text blurb makes him grin."
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Exactly. The same happened for my school district; I wrote a note that it was a school proxy server on the IP's talk page, and they modified the block to only apply to unregistered users. Make a note and I'm sure they'll do the same for you.
Omnes stulti sunt.
Slashdot blocks logins from the UAE as well most of the time. I have to use an http proxy to post comments. Several other sites do the same thing. The whole country's traffic goes through a handful of proxy servers, which are used by UAE's infamous monopoly ISP to censor content and block VoIP calls.
I can't speak for Wikipedia's spam blocking process, but I operate a Wiki that is well known enough to get a lot of spam. I block that fairly effectively. Seven pieces of true spam have gotten through over the two and a half years since I implemented the first version of my spam blocking, but I had almost half my site overwritten at one point before that, so I take it pretty seriously. I fully understand why many Wiki owners have decided to make their Wikis read only rather than deal with it and why others have resorted to required logons, confirmations of the existence of a human, and other measures. Some useful factoids:
I don't want to make any great claims, at least in part because I don't want to increase the attack frequency on my site or get slashdotted, but my software has been very effective in blocking almost everything that the spammers throw at me. I don't currently block any countries and am reluctant to publicly reveal the rules I use for the blocking, but do block about a dozen IP addresses that have been used enough to suggest that they are directly associated with individual spammers.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
No - we only blocked one IP (I was implicitly involved in the blocking process). However, from time to time we do block IP ranges when we get a lot of vandalism/spamming from dynamic address. We allow multiple offences in many cases so that we can warn the user, in the hope that they will change their ways. In this case, we saw an IP address with over 150 edits, mostly spam, and 4 or 5 previous blocks. We tend to increase blocks in length each time we have to repeat, so this IP had spammed often enough that we issued a 1 month block (at thi stage not knowing that it was the whole of Qatar). Later, after those affected by the block contacted us, and we verified their claims, we adjusted and ultimately removed the block.
I don't know what else to say about it. Wikipedia is not blocking Qatar. An IP number was blocked for about 12 hours. There was an admin discussion about the issue. The IP number was unblocked.
Move along, nothing to see.
--Jimbo Wales
Wikia