Zh.wikipedia.org, the domain name for Wikipedia's Chinese-language website, has been keyboard blocked and DNS poisoned since yesterday or possibly the day before.
China Digital Times explains:
Keyword blocking drops a user’s connection to a URL containing a certain keyword, such as “1989.” DNS poisoning causes the server to return an incorrect IP address, making it impossible to reach the targeted website.
GreatFire.org’s Great Firewall monitor confirms that Chinese Wikipedia was blocked on May 19 and 20.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has refused to censor Wikipedia in order to stay viable in China. “While many of us around the world enjoy the fruits of the information revolution, we must not leave behind the people who are still subject to oppressive regimes and are restricted from freely enjoying it.”
Before this week, Chinese Wikipedia was only selectively censored, with articles on sensitive on sensitive political issues and historical events blocked from mainland web users.
Although the standard Chinese-language version of the site has been blocked, however, the English version is still accessible - and so, too, are the classical Chinese and Cantonese editions.
This is what we got when we tried accessing the Chinese Wikipedia entry for ice cream:
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However, we were still able to access the English, classical Chinese and Cantonese entries for the same subject:
Time to brush up on your languages, netizens. Or, you know, buy a VPN like the rest of us. Whichever is less effort.
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