Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-05-07/News and notes

Discuss this story

PLEASE NOTE the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is NOT under the same regime as the People's Republic of China. The Internet in Hong Kong is not filtered through the Great Firewall and is considered very free access. -- Fuzheado | Talk 15:55, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Funny the announcement about the location of Wikimania 2013 comes at the same time as this AN thread (read the whole thing). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:05, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let me be the first to say that I will not be attending Wikimania 2013 unless the host government first removes internet restrictions that prevent almost all potential contributors from adding to many pages. I'm sure some people think this is a minor issue - I have helped a well known editor overcome this censorship within the last 24 hours, so no it is not a joke. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:01, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Don't hold your breath on that; I've occasionally believed six impossible things before breakfast, but I think even Lewis Carroll, were he alive today, would find that too implausible an example. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:05, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I guess you'll be there, or I guess you can't explain what you mean. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:11, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What I mean is, if your plan to go there is contingent on their lifting of censorship laws, I wouldn't count on going. Incidentally, there's no way I'd be able to go; even on the off-chance I could get a scholarship I'm loathe to leave the New York area behind and miss my baseball. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:17, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Great Firewall of China doesn't apply in Hong Kong... -- KTC (talk) 13:13, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks KTC for jumping in before me :)

On the other hand, this seems to be a bit of a tradition: around this time last year there was a discussion about schoolblock-ing all of Georgetown University where Wikimania 2012 will be hosted. Der yck C. 16:45, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure where Demiurge1000 gets his facts about China, but having recently spent a semester in Beijing, I can tell you from personal experience that I didn't have any trouble editing Wikipedia when I was able to access it. I did however have trouble accessing it in the first place; it, along with many Western sites, would go down for random 15 minute increments several times a day. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:06, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
From people in China (but not, as pointed out by others above, in Hong Kong) who suffered not only from the "random 15 minute outage" problem, but also (they said) from being barred from even viewing certain specific enwiki pages. (Often for no fathomable reason - the examples they raised weren't pages about democracy or human rights or whatever, for example.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:32, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Since the Great Firewall re-allowed access to Wikipedia about a year ago, filtering of Wikipedia is done automatically by machines using methods such as keywords. It is therefore unsurprising that false-positives occur, blocking otherwise unsensitive pages for no obvious reason. Der yck C. 22:14, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedians can always help people in this colony to defend their contracting autonomy and civil liberties. And it is indeed a good occassion for Wikipedians to learn about the colonial or territorial status of Hong Kong, that it is separate and distinctive enough from the communist People's Republic. Articles around Wikipedia should be properly corrected to avoid mispresentation of Hong Kong's status. 203.145.92.161 (talk) 11:37, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]