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Wikipedia Blocks Qatar [Updated]

Posted by Hemos on from the the-law-of-unintended-consequenceas dept.

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.

2 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Wikipedia also blocks a Canadian School District by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The entire Calgary School District 192.139.27.18 is blocked and they are the biggest School District in Canada
    yes it is because of vandals (at other schools) but still I cannot do anything and Im not trying to vandalize but only add good content

  2. Regarding others blocked, there's Slashdot/Bahrain by Shipwack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was stationed in the Kingdom of Bahrain for a few months, and apparently most of the country's internet goes through its University, which is (or was) blocked by Slashdot for some reason. I could access the site, but not login, even after I sent email to the Slashdot admins as instructed. Not very important in the grand scheme of things, just annoying at the time.