Talk:Blocking of Wikipedia by the People's Republic of China

message: The site is again available in English as of May 12th 2008. Falun Gong, Tiananmen 1989 and a couple of other ones on the english wiki are blocked. Also Chinese wiki is almost completely blocked with the exception of the main page. More or less.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.231.61.34 (talk) 05:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Available again in the PRC (China Netcom)

message: I changed one sentence by inserting "most of" because not the entire site is available. For example, this very article is impossible to reach except through VPN, at least in many parts of the country.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.121.99.210 (talk) 06:50, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Regarding Wikipedia

message: I was in China a few weeks ago, and Wikipedia was blocked in Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Beijing. 76.102.62.11 04:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Currently Blocked in China

message: This article is amazing. I started the french one. I think this is amazing because the Chinese wikipedia is the only one which can become stronger than the English one, and it's chinese gouvernement itself whom destroy this good chance. Other gouvernements should be happy of that : chinese people will be 10 years slower in knowledge, compare to other countries. Yug  19:45, 20 December 2005 (UTC
:I don't think it could. Chinese speakers are not drawn from all over the world like English speakers. There is a lack of variety of perspectives among them, and most of them are trained to strictly follow the Chinese Communist Party line, which makes the concept of a "neutral point of view" alien to them. 62.31.55.223 19:33, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have seen so many people like you who are claiming others are biased while their own claims are purely ungrounded. Let me ask you: How many Chinese have you ever met? And how many wikipedia pages created/modified by Chinese have you ever read and classified as biased? So far, your claim is purely an insult to the intelligence of Chinese people and a discrimination based on country and origin indeed.--Leo 23:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that, ironically, this very way of answering (something along the line "you don't know chinese" instead of simply counter-arguing any point claimed as wrong), is a very common, almost preditive one among chinese net poster. You should avoid as possible answering this way, as it can be quite irritating and therefore may contribute to maintain this wrong idea regarding the intelligence of Chinese peopleBenji2 (talk) 20:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Members of the Communist Party of China constitute only about 5.5% of the total population of mainland China. There is no proof that a "neutral point of view" is alien to the Chinese. Just because they are trained to follow the Chinese Communist Party line does not mean that they share the same views with the party – they may disagree with them while still following them; China is not a democratic nation, so the views of the ruling party are not necessarily the views of the public. --Joshua Issac (talk) 19:31, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  French view ... 

message: I recently found the following website, which is intended to browse Wikipedia. The Gollum 'browser' (a web application, not a true browser) should/will work around the 'great firewall of China'. Is this worth noting in the article?
http://gollum.easycp.de/en/
82.168.187.228 18:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd not mention any specific workarounds. This may just lead in having Gollum blocked as well. Chinese Internet users usually know how to circumvent the blocks - it is widely known by Chinese that the government blocks sites. 01:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree although its quite true in some parts...some chinese,I have seen and believe me, would say better things about their system more than the Chinese people themselves, not because their bias but because well they do have this odd respect for history which is OKAY but as we all know, they have the wrong history.....Not the true history —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.155.120.176 (talk) 11:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gollum browser - 'workaround' 

message: Did the Chinese government issue an offical reason for the ban? Or are the reasons for the ban all speculation? If it is all speculation then why don't we ask the Chinese government regarding the reason for the ban? Pseudoanonymous 02:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All speculation. As far as asking is concerned, I don't think they've figured out which agency is responsible for this yet, so who would they ask? -- ran (talk) 13:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Offical Reason 

message: This article is very well written and fascinating. That said, it incorporates and makes use of a lot of information which could not reasonably be cited to source other than referring to internal wikipedia pages or asking users. I think that the appropriate solution—rather than attempt to remove information—is to move this article into the project space (perhaps Wikipedia: Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China). I know a lot of people worked hard on this article, and I don't want to denigrate their efforts in the slightest. Can anyone who has been active on this article respond to this? savidan(talk) (e@) 13:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good. See Wikipedia:Avoid_self-references.  JianLi 21:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I've moved it JianLi 21:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hold your horses everyone! There's no need to rush into anything. I've already expressed my thoughts on the mailing list so I won't repeat them here. Suffice it to say that there's no need to move this out of mainspace, although any content which is really not encyclopaedic can easily be split out of the article and into the project space. --bainer (talk) 13:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Move to project space 

message: Where is the "with users from around the country on Chinese-forums.com reporting" reference coming from?  I see it mentioned in the article http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/online/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003251388 but no credit is given.  If the information is abtained directly from said forum, I expect a link.  — Ming Hua 10:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference in the recent unblocked status 

message: I am a user in mainland China,I have compelling evidence to suggest that the block is due to topics related to Falun Gong and Tian'anmen Square Incident.The blocking has been lifted because the central government is now technically able to partially block wikipedia entries without interfering with pure-scholastic ones.Attempts to access entries of Falun Gong and Tian'anmen Square Incident will result in immediate "drop out",a phenomenon quite similar to the technic used in google censorship.Also,the user will be denied access to wikipedia for a brief moment.
Suffice it to say,the government has realized wikipedia's importance as a knowledge base,and now has the ability to filter certain contents,that is why they have come to the conclusion of partial-unblocking.
If you are outside mainland China,try those entries through a Chinese proxy server,that should prove my point.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Photonboi1988 (talk • contribs) on 12 October 2006
:I've just rewrote the section using some of the weakest sources I've ever imagined.  At least it's better than the previous external source, which was entirely based on a previous version of this page.  Hopefully, some credible sources will be published soon to replace the basically hearsay that I have cited. - BanyanTree 19:44, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I also live in Mainland China, and I am currently on Wikipedia (if you haven't noticed).  I agree that this section should be improved.  I know that this is a current event, but the fact that one can use Wikipedia in china, since four days ago, is huge news.  I will no longer need to use factbug.org; sweet.  ABart26 04:35, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I too am a user in Mainland China; personally, it's obvious that the hand of the "great People's Republic of China" is behind this, subjecting its citizens to what we prefer to call call 愚民教育 (translates literally to "stupid people education", which means to feed false information and propaganda to its people to make them "stupid" and "ignorant" of the woes around them). The hypocrisy is vile, and I think this article should be improved upon and given more attention so that we can all give a good laugh at this country; perhaps then they will realize the foolishness of their ways.  -"7th Pen" 15:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was in China last week (Shanghi and Beijing) and couldn't get on en.wikipedia.org even though the news reported that Wikipedia was no longer blocked.Mrcsparker 04:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I just recently came from mainland PRC and can tell you that they block specific articles now, like those related to Tibet, the article on the PRC Ministry of Security, and even this article itself. This needs to be reported in the article. Noraft (talk) 06:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lifting of ban is incomplete 

message: Unblock wikipedia in english is a good thing for chinese people, allow chinese people to build their own one will be greater ! All my encouragement to RPC web checkers to allow full acces to Wikipedia en and zh (chinese). Chinese are the only ones able to build a wiki bigger than this english one. Good luck China ! Yug (french student, studying chinese and history)
:I beg to differ. Since most mainland Chinese lack the diversity of perspective and liberal education, the completely uplift of the ban could serve more for Chinese government and harmful to NPOV policy of Wikipedia. Image numerous Chinese wiki'ers flooded into every Taiwan-related articles and vow to annex Taiwan by any means. Since a larger proportion of English-speaking mainland Chinese people receive better education and suffer less penalty of Chinese propaganda and lack of international perspective, I suggest adminstrators of Chinese Wikipedia translate more China-related articles of English Wikipedia to 中文 wikipedia. plarq
::The fact that you can say this with a straight face amazes me.  The pro-Taiwan view is a point of view, it is not NPOV.  The pro-reunification-even-if-by-force view is likewise a point of view.  Neither by itself is compatible with NPOV, and if the people on the mainland are not allowed to contribute, the result will not be an NPOV Chinese Wikipedia.  Shame on you for supporting the ban just because it makes it easier for you to shape zh into a mouthpiece for your political POV.  As someone who spent many years on the mainland, I can assure you that propaganda is not nearly as effective a tool as you seem to think it is, anyway.  Many perspectives exist, even in "Red China".  70.132.14.22 03:24, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Encouragement to RPC gouverment to lift fully the ban 

message: I think China shouldn't block Wikipedia because this is a free speech world. Thank you.
Chris 03:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  China shouldn't block Wikipedia 

message: SummerThunder:
You're making identical additions to the Chinese Wikipedia article and here. Are you going to address my concerns over the POV slant of your edits that I've already brought up over there, as well as your deletion of my edits?
More importantly, why are your edits in the scope of this article? Shouldn't they be in the scope of the Chinese Wikipedia article? -- ran (talk) 06:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I don't see the connection, even SummerThunder insists. Is there a source for the connection? Otherwise I am going to remove the section altogeter again. -- Skyfiler
Go ahead. In the meantime, I've NPOVed what is essentially the same content over at Chinese Wikipedia. -- ran (talk) 00:44, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SummerThunder's edits 

message: "Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China" is a great descriptive title, but it doesn't sound like the title of an encyclopedia article (at least that's how I felt after I rewrote the lead). There has to be a better name for this article.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 06:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't seen the mailing list posts referenced above, but major parts of this entry rely on self-referencing of WP, and as a whole, the encyclopaedic content is already extant at Internet censorship in mainland China. Is there any reason that we shouldn't maintain this extremely helpful page in Wikipedia-space? TewfikTalk 23:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename 

message: Can anybody find out what www.wiki.cn is all about?
So far it seems to be that this is a copied version of Wikipedia located in China. Because when I access it here in Britain and search for Tiananmen Massacre for Falung Gong, it goes blank just as if I were in China (I've been there and it looks just like that). 亮HH 02:05, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiki.cn 

message: Hi. First of all, one of these articles (Chinese Wikipedia) says that it is unknown when the next unblock will be. However, I read from a link that I saw from Wikipedia that it was blocked for 11½ years. I can't remember the exact link, though. Secondly, the article suggests that users from within China are not able to access any language version. However, I'm not sure if this is true, but apparently people from China are able to edit the English Wikipedia. Thirdly, this is not Wikinews. When info changes and new updates are added, the old info is rewritten in the past tense and only the most recent and current piece of info is in the current tense. I know to be bold, but my brain has had too much Wikiradiation exposure to edit very much presently. Please clarify this in the articles. Thanks. ~AH1(TCU) 22:01, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A few things here... 

message: Should Wikipedia help Chinese with telling them how to break the law? Maybe the paragraph must be removed or changed. 
And EDP policy follows 'the law of countries where the project content is predominantly accessed (if any)'. Does that count for only EDP? Why? Maybe Chinese Wikipedia should close (if the majority lives in China). Or maybe the EDP policy and all other policies should be based only on the law of where the servers are located. Helpsloose 20:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Circumvention of the block 

message: Has WP descended to the moral level of moping about being censored by an opressive dictatorship in its own territory? Has WP's maturity sunk that much? C'mon, really. 75.157.191.45 (talk) 18:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, this topic is hardly notable. Internet censorship in China as a whole is notable, but really, the specificity of this article is pathetic. 2birds1stone (talk) 08:37, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Uggh...

message: It is difficult to understand when the sites were blocked or unblocked, and by the way is it blocked now or not ? What happened after the Olympics ?
I suggest creating a green/red timeline showing unblocked/blocked. It would probably be two timelines, one for the Chinese Wikipedia and one for the English one.
Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:06, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Chinese Wikipedia is still can be used in Mainland China.I think the Chinese Government would blocked it after the Paralympics at once.--Gzdavidwong (talk) 20:09, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Timeline

message: Has anyone got a reliable source for the post-Olympic block? Currently I still have free access to Wikipedia in mainland Fuzhou. --GnuDoyng (talk) 08:54, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Post-Olympics Block?

message: There is actually keyword censorship, meaning some sensitive words, such as 胡锦涛(Hu Jintao), 法轮功(Falun Gong) will trigger a temporary IP block lasting approx. 1~2 minutes. What we need now is the source...—Bencmq (talk) 12:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh dammit YES!! This whole article feels kind of outdated to me now. 2007, 2008 ... but what about the current year, 2010? We get a LOT of information what happened immediately after the Beijing Olympics, but that's not enough! There's a huge 2-year gap which will definitely arouse people's questions like "Where are we now?" -andy 77.7.97.125 (talk) 21:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Update of the situation

message: Hello, maybe someone here wants to check this out Study of Zhang and Zhu about the effects of the blocking of 2005. --Ziko (talk) 14:11, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zhang and Zhu