Editing Wikipedia from China

DaSilva

Hey, I'm living in China at the moment and wikipedia is blocked. I can view it by using a free proxy, but most of the free proxys are also blocked, and those that aren't get blocked very quickly or don't allow you to login to websites unless you purchase a premium account which I'm not going to do since the site could be blocked the next day.

There is a page on wikipedia that showed a workaround but thats now fixed and doesn't work anymore.

Any ideas? I like contributing to a certain page and lots of changes have been made since I got to China that I would like to "correct". Browsing wikipedia is even hassle as the proxys are often very slow.

Karoma

You might want to update your Location.

It may be advisable to refrain from accessing site blocks enforced by law, and ..stuff... :
http://www.zensur.freerk.com/

Alternatively, just wait until you leave.

DaSilva

Karoma wrote:

You might want to update your Location.

It may be advisable to refrain from accessing site blocks enforced by law, and ..stuff... :
http://www.zensur.freerk.com/

Alternatively, just wait until you leave.

You're right, wikipedia can do without me for the summer. It's obviously blocked for a reason they consider important. It's just somebody deleted criticism on a page and got me going lol.

Karoma

Take the summer off.

calex71

big brother is watching DaSilva , they are probably blocking boards.ie as i type this, I hear they even censor text messages to moblies over there.

Hobbes

If your not Chinese they generally won't bother with you unless your actively looking at anti-chinese information and even then has to be a lot of it and you have be giving it out to others.

Ponster

DaSilva wrote:

It's obviously blocked for a reason they consider important....

So that the People of China don't find out the truth about their country maybe?

Sam Vimes

Ponster wrote:

So that the People of China don't find out the truth about their country maybe?

this may be true

http://images.google.ie/images?hl=en&hs=CUS&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=N&resnum=0&q=tiananmen&spell=1&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&tab=wi


http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen&hl=zh-CN&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87

legologic

Commander Vimes wrote:

this may be true

http://images.google.ie/images?hl=en&hs=CUS&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=N&resnum=0&q=tiananmen&spell=1&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&tab=wi


http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen&hl=zh-CN&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87

Wow! :eek:

netwhizkid

DaSilva wrote:

Hey, I'm living in China at the moment and wikipedia is blocked. I can view it by using a free proxy, but most of the free proxys are also blocked, and those that aren't get blocked very quickly or don't allow you to login to websites unless you purchase a premium account which I'm not going to do since the site could be blocked the next day.

There is a page on wikipedia that showed a workaround but thats now fixed and doesn't work anymore.

Any ideas? I like contributing to a certain page and lots of changes have been made since I got to China that I would like to "correct". Browsing wikipedia is even hassle as the proxys are often very slow.

Email out whatever you need to be uploaded to Wikipedia and I'm sure someone in the west would post it up for you As a fan of communism I condemn the censorship, I favour democracy and if the people are given a choice they would choose democracy and communism together. However Capitalism is treated to be to much of a risk by the Chinese I suppose.

DaSilva

Commander Vimes wrote:

this may be true

http://images.google.ie/images?hl=en&hs=CUS&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=N&resnum=0&q=tiananmen&spell=1&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&tab=wi


http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen&hl=zh-CN&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87

I've seen this posted before on another forum. The thing is, that this may not be the government surpressing it. Tiananmen is famous here for other reasons, not just the student -v- tank. However outside of China, Tiananmen is famous mainly for the student -v- tank thing. So I would imagine google is just page / image ranking based on what people in China usualy searched for, and the same elsewhere.

I say this because I can load both links here in China, and with the .ie one, I see the tanks, and with the chinese one I see gardens, etc..
And if you go to page 4 of the image results you will begin to see the famous photos.

Pronster wrote:

So that the People of China don't find out the truth about their country maybe?

Hmmm, you do realise that many "West" countries also censor stuff, usualy it's not political though.

netwhizkid wrote:

Email out whatever you need to be uploaded to Wikipedia and I'm sure someone in the west would post it up for you As a fan of communism I condemn the censorship, I favour democracy and if the people are given a choice they would choose democracy and communism together. However Capitalism is treated to be to much of a risk by the Chinese I suppose.

If I didn't know this country was communist before I entered it, I would have a dificult time believing it was in terms of everyday life. Except of course if you ignore the hammer & sicle, Marxist statues and other Communist icons. Everyday life here, is alot like everyday life back home.

SeanW

My advice, get the hell out of that communist dunghole as fast as you can.

DaSilva

SeanW wrote:

My advice, get the hell out of that communist dunghole as fast as you can.

Thanks, though I'm having trouble finding the dunghole, see if you can find it in some of my photos.

http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0012sn.jpg
http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0151mu.jpg
http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0167wm.jpg
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0624lv.jpg
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0706cy.jpg
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0714sr.jpg
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0721bi.jpg

stormkeeper

Wow, impressive. Makes me want to go visit China more now...

pantar_dubh

This is all very interesting, and I applaud the person in China's efforts, but Wikipedia is an open source programme without editorial review, consequently, it is neither valid or reliable.

There have already been numerous news articles showing misleading to bold face error contributions, and now a related court case.

In terms of contributions from China, the government there could very well start rewriting history. Yes, you can say, then I will rewrite what they rewrite, but when does it stop, and when do you know which version is accurate when you log on?

A better model would be to adopt the one they have at FireFox, where there are open source contributions, but the code is not changed until after editorial review (of course, now someone is going to ask, who is qualified to edit or unbiased...ha!).

dbnavan

Suprised you can access boards.ie if they are so strict, anyone can post anything here, to a point......

You could always email your ammendments to the wikipage to someone and they can post it for you,

Hobbes

DaSilva wrote:

Thanks, though I'm having trouble finding the dunghole, see if you can find it in some of my photos.

http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0012sn.jpg
http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0151mu.jpg
http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0167wm.jpg
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0624lv.jpg
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0706cy.jpg
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0714sr.jpg
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0721bi.jpg

Yea, some of the cities in China far surpass anything I've seen in other countries. Try going to Xian if you can. Very impressive. Although some are the reverse. Try Chengede. Still a nice town and I was surprised at how safe it was and how friendly people were.

Hobbes

pantar_dubh wrote:

This is all very interesting, and I applaud the person in China's efforts, but Wikipedia is an open source programme without editorial review, consequently, it is neither valid or reliable.

Actually it does have editorial review. Generally by the people who have the most interest in the subject although random crap posted it removed fairly fast. You can even see the editorial review in the discussion pages of said subject.

It is about as valid or reliable as print based encyclopedias.

What court case are you going on about? Only one I am aware of is the German one and that got thrown out of court.

Rollo Tamasi

what are you doing in China DaSivla, just out of interest.
Government spy?

ShiverinEskimo

I'm visiting (irish) friends in Shenzen (sp?) outside Hong Kong in October and simply cannot wait to see that part of China. Those pictures DaSilva have made October seem ages away..looks fantastic.

DaSilva

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

what are you doing in China DaSivla, just out of interest.
Government spy?

My family are living here for 2 years, sent by my dad's company, and I'm over here for the summer to work in an Irish bar which is just an excuse to be able to spend the whole summer here.

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

I'm visiting (irish) friends in Shenzen (sp?) outside Hong Kong in October and simply cannot wait to see that part of China. Those pictures DaSilva have made October seem ages away..looks fantastic.

I'm in Shanghai, I'd love to visit other cities but the vastness of this country is hard to understand, can take days by train to go to other major cities. I'm definetly going to head to Beijing though to check the great wall, but other than that I doubt I will be going too far from Shanghai simply because it takes so long that you nearly need to fly which costs.

dbnavan wrote:

Suprised you can access boards.ie if they are so strict, anyone can post anything here, to a point......

You could always email your ammendments to the wikipage to someone and they can post it for you,

I imagine they leave everything open and then restrict case by case, rather than restrict everything and unban case by case. I doubt boards would need to be banned. And they aren't that strict. Stricter than Ireland for sure, but like, my mother goes to catholic mass every Sunday, theres MacDonalds and KFC's everywhere, most things banned that I have noticed, have been more of the political edge of things, like Wikipedia, or BBC news website seems to only allow me to load uncontroversial internal (England) stories, no World news from that site seems to ever load.

Just tested Foxnews, and it seems to be loading which is a bit of a shock, but it's loading very slow so I don't have the time to see if all news stories will load.

Dathai

http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0721bi.jpg

The LOTR comes to mind in that image.

My apologies for going off topic.

stormkeeper

Dathai wrote:

http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0721bi.jpg

The LOTR comes to mind in that image.

My apologies for going off topic.

I see it too now... it is an impressive picture though.

DaSilva

Dathai wrote:

http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0721bi.jpg

The LOTR comes to mind in that image.

My apologies for going off topic.

It's the same building as the one in this picture at the far left of the photo. It's even cooler when you realise the building has a gap at the top and the sun is shining through that gap, the photo was purely accidental, as my brother just wanted to take a picture of the building, and wasn't paying attention to where the sun was at the time
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture0624lv.jpg

ai ing

When I was over in China last summer I used Firefox and SwitchProxy to get around the blocks. Its great for importing and switching between loads of proxies. Handy when the proxies keep getting shut down.

riptide

It seems we're all a little overcome by all the big shiny buildings in China... Great isn't it... I wonder how the folks in this video are getting on now... no doubt they also live in a big shiny glass high rise... http://www.247show.com/watch-videos-online.cfm/cid/17/sid/52