English Wikipedia unblocked in China
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(InfoWorld) - Wikimedia Foundation's English-language site was accessible in China again on Friday, although its simplified Chinese-language site remained blocked. China censors Internet content that it finds objectionable, usually political material that relating to Taiwan or Tibetan independence, the Falun Gong cult, and occasionally pornography. Although the Web sites of most Western news outlets are available, the British Broadcasting Corp.'s news site remains a noteworthy exception. The English Wikipedia site has been available for various periods over the last three years, and has kept a record of those periods on its site. "Wikipedia is such a popular Web site that almost every foreigner who visits China may try to visit Wikipedia pages. I believe someone at [the Ministry of Information Industry] or another government ministry realized what bad PR a Wikipedia block produces," said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org, a Beijing-based media and Internet site. "Once they had figured out the elegant solution of keeping the Chinese version blocked, and filtering out English Wikipedia pages about Tibet and other 'sensitive' subjects, they were happy to let us access the rest of Wikipedia," Goldkorn said. While English Wikipedia was unblocked, Yahoo Flickr photo service remained accessible from China. However, most photos on the site were blocked and could not be viewed by Chinese users.
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(InfoWorld) - Wikipedia's English site is blocked again in China, after over two months of being accessible, continuing a saga of on-again, off-again availability. Users in Shanghai and Beijing confirmed Wednesday and Thursday that they were no longer able to visit the site. Wikipedia's own account states that the block resumed on Aug. 31, although some users in China said the site has only been unavailable starting this week. China regularly blocks access to Web sites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects such as the Falun Gong religious cult and independence for Taiwan and Tibet, along with some pornographic sites. The Chinese government does not announce or comment on when a site is blocked or made available. Because the version of events or political views expressed on Wikipedia are not necessarily in line with those of the Chinese government, the government may be blocking access to the site. The current blocking may be related to the upcoming Communist Party Congress, which begins Oct. 15 in Beijing. Held once every five years, the meeting is the Chinese government's most important political gathering, used to create five-year plans, which are the bedrock of China's centrally-planned economy. It is also often used to reshuffle government positions or for leaders to consolidate their power. WhileÂ Wikipedia's English site is occasionally available, its Chinese-language sites are almost permanently blocked, although access is sometimes permitted for one or two days at a time. "Right now there seems to be an intensive government-mandated freeze on the Internet in China, particularly on Web sites with user-generated content," said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org, a Beijing-based blog that covers China's media. "It seems that the attitude towards Web sites hosted abroad is also hostile right now, which may explain the latest block on Wikipedia." Â
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SEARCH ENGINE giant Google seems to have agreed to block access to sites that the Chinese authorities think will corrupt their citizens.
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The Internet in China is not as  restricted as sometimes believed in the West, with most  controls actually coming from sites practicing self-censorship,  an academic who studies the Chinese Web said on Thursday.
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A new Chinese news service launched by Google displays no results from websites banned by China's officials. The search engine that promises to do no evil says why include links that come up empty? anti-censorship advocates are watching.
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Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)  Yichang, Feb.
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Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai said attempts to access Google Inc. and other search engines were successful Friday, despite claims on a U.S. blog that traffic to these sites was redirected to Chinese search engine Baidu.com Inc.
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Yesterday China Herald tipped me that the Yahoo.com website (the English version) didn&#8217;t resolve. I checked, saw that it was true and thought I would check back the next day if the situation had changed.  At times these things happen here in China and it could have been a technical problem instead of a block. [...]
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Search engine Baidu.com, which has risen rapidly as Internet use expands in China, launched a Japanese-language site on Wednesday.
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Wikipedia's English site is again blocked in China--possibly due to upcoming Communist Party Congress.
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Wikipedia has started to hit the big time.  Accordingly, several critical     articles have come out, including "The Faith-Based     Encyclopedia" by a former editor-in-chief of Britannica and a very     widely-syndicated AP article that was given such titles as "When     Information Access Is So Easy, Truth Can Be Elusive".    These articles are written by people who appear not to appreciate the merits of Wikipedia fully.  I do, however; I co-founded Wikipedia.  (I have since left the project.)    Wikipedia does have two big problems, and attention to them is long overdue.  These problems     could be eliminated by eliminating a single root problem.  If the project's     managers are not willing to solve it, I fear a fork (a new edition under new     management, for the non-techies reading this) will probably be necessary.
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Google is building its own version of communally-constructed online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which consistently ranks among the most visited websites in the world.
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The popular Wikipedia online encyclopedia cracked the top ten list of most popular Web sites in the U.S. for the first time in January.
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Answers.com has completed the first stage of integrating content into WikiAnswers, a Wiki Q&#038;A service. The content on WikiAnswers is an ongoing collaboration of shared knowledge, using the &#8220;wiki&#8221; methodology best known for its use on Wikipedia (where a great deal of Answers.com content originates from). Answers.com says that the quality of the Q&#038;A WikiAnswers is [...]
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Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, the Web encyclopedia's reliability varies wildly. Now a computer science professor hopes to give users a better baloney detector: software that flags questionable lines in Wikipedia entries.
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The number of Internet users in China soared past 200 million in 2007, a new report from the country&#39;s quasi-government Internet overseer said Thursday.China&#39;s Internet population&#160;stood at 210 million at the end of last year, up 53 percent from the same time in 2006 when there were 137 million, the China Internet Network Information Centre said in its semi-annual report on Internet use here.That figure puts China just 5 million users away from becoming the world&#39;s largest wired nation -- and with only about 16 percent of the population online. At its current growth rate, China will become the world&#39;s top Internet market sometime in the next few months.The greatest growth came from users under 18 and over 30, CNNIC said. One of the most surprising statistics from the new report indicates that about 40 percent of users added over the last year, over 29 million, came from rural areas. Even in the January 2007 report, the vast majority of Chinese Netizens were based in major urban areas such as Beijing and Shanghai.Also surprising among the new results is that China&#39;s most popular Internet application is online music, used by 86.6 percent of those surveyed, followed by instant messaging with 81 percent. E-mail placed only fifth, with 56.5 percent using it.CNNIC&#39;s survey provides the most reliable information about Internet use in China, although its methodology is translucent at best. It does not reveal its sample size, nor does it reveal what consists of an Internet user except that the person used the Internet at least once in the month prior to when the survey was taken.While the new statistics may seem impressive, it highlights how Internet usage in the country still lags behind mobile phone use, and how even greater usage could be spurred by more access through wireless devices. &quot;China&#39;s admittedly impressive user statistics hide an important fact: only a fraction of those users have regular access to a PC,&quot; said David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based technology consultancy.Despite limited PC access for some users, Chinese Internet users have embraced the Internet as a means of expression. &quot;In addition to an increase in overall numbers, you also see a rise in the number of Netizens creating content on BBS and blogs, making Chinese Netizens some of the most active participants in the Web 2.0 phenomena in the world,&quot; said Sam Flemming, founder and CEO of CIC, an Internet word of mouth monitoring firm based in Shanghai.
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'You will use Baidu' It looks like China is hijacking web traffic from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!.â¦