[photopress:issa12a_1.jpg,full,alignright]Wikipedia is one of the treasures of the Internet. It is an encyclopedia which is maintained by unpaid users and is infinitely more comprehensive than, say, the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Currently about 1,500,000 articles. However, with this freedom to create entries comes a problem. Entries can be edited to push a political point. And sometimes are.
For some time the Chinese government has blocked the site. Now it appears that the site had been restored. How long this will last is open to debate. The most recent blocking was the third such outage reported by Wikipedia.
There was a block in 2004 allegedly in response to an article posted on the site as the country approached the 25th anniversary of the Tienamen Square incident. But no one knows.
Wikipedia itself wrote: ‘There has been much speculation over the cause of the block. Possible reasons offered include controversial articles in Wikipedia itself and recent controversial events in the news that Wikipedia has covered, though as of now none of these are confirmed.’
For the moment it appears to be unblocked. Which is excellent for it is a most wonderful site.
Source: Editor and Publisher