New users still high on Chinese Wikipedia

Chinese Wikipedia was widely blocked again in China on Friday, November 17, somewhere between 9am and 10am China Standard Time.

New registrations took a dive after that point, but, curiously, they are still much higher than before October 10 when a full block was in place.

Here are some averages:

• Before Oct 10: 400 new users/day
• Before Nov 9: 600 new users/day
• Before Nov 17: 1300+ new users/day

But the registration numbers since the “reblocking” are still very high, despite the widespread reports Wikipedia is largely inaccessible in PRC. I have not heard of anyone from any municipality or ISP being able to get through to zh.wp successfully. But look at some numbers for the days ending:

• Nov 18, 0000 UTC: 764
• Nov 19, 0000 UTC: 589
• Nov 20, 0000 UTC: 811
• Nov 21, 0000 UTC: 826

So this is quite curious – the new user numbers have not dropped all the way back to pre-October 10 days of a full block. In fact, these numbers are still much higher than after the first unblock. Without more information about new registered users’ source IP address, we can only speculate.

It’s possible the news coverage of the unblock/reblock has led folks to visit Chinese Wikipedia from other locations outside the PRC and register. I don’t think that alone explains the large numbers. It is possible there are still folks in the PRC that can access Chinese Wikipedia and are still registering.

Related posts:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 at 3:45 am and is filed under China, GFW, Wikipedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.