Since I’ve gotten so many inquiries on the fate of the dog in the last post, you’ll be glad to hear that it’s been adopted by someone in the complex until the owner can be found.

Apologies for the long hiatus, but my first post in weeks is to bring good news — Wikipedia’s foreign language editions are “back” and accessible in the PRC. That is, all except for the Chinese (zh.wikipedia.org).

Users in the PRC probably noticed access went away a few days ago to the entire universe of Wikipedia/Wikimedia content. After my notifying the Wikimedia tech team about the outage, it was simply a matter of them restoring the previous DNS lookup scheme and things work fine.

The good news: The Wikipedia block in China is partially lifted

The bad news: The Chinese version is still not generally accessible, and the Western media reporting has been poor

Editor & Publisher magazine put out an article October 11 saying:

Well not quite correct. Reports started coming in on October 10 from different parts of the PRC, saying that the English Wikipedia was now accessible. A friend using an open Wifi in Beijing emailed me saying he could suddenly start using Wikipedia again. Some folks in Hubei said it was still blocked. Shanghai and Guangdong users said parts were accessible.

From a Beijing China Netcom’s residential DSL connection, the English language and other foreign language versions are now accessible, but the Chinese version is still blocked (zh.wikipedia.org).

It’s important to know there is no monolithically operating Great Firewall of China, even though it is a cute and useful moniker.

The “GFW system” depends on a distributed system of checks and filters that depends on the particular ISP, the type of connection being used, and the geographic locale. A commercial connection in Hubei is different than a residential DSL in Guangdong is different than an academic network in Shantou. Something blocked in one area of the country may be totally fine in another. A keyword that is filtered in one place could be allowed in another.

So for folks in China’s tech circles, it’s pretty frustrating seeing blanket “China blocks” or “China unblocks” declaration without specifics or accurate reports.

Filtering also happens on different levels between the domestic network and the greater Internet, so even though Wikipedia is generally accessible in English, it’s still subject to:

• URL-level filtering - host header or keyword in URL rejected
• Text-stream level filtering - offending keyword in Web page

More info as it arrives, but let’s not forget that for now the most important part of Wikipedia for PRC users - the Chinese version - is still not generally accessible.

UPDATE: After posting this entry, several folks contacted me with some results:

• China Telecom DSL, Shanghai - en:OK, zh:OK
• CETC-CHINACOMM COMMUNICATIONS Co.,Ltd., Beijing- en:OK, zh:OK
• Various ISPs, Anhui - en:OK, zh:BLOCKED

Apologies for those who have made bookmarks here or to the RSS, but I’ve just moved the blog to http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/ to make room for other projects. I pledge not to move this for a while!