Comment by tokenadult

14 years ago

The time delay in implementation of the black-out on my system (via JavaScript) probably helps make the point more. I went to the main page (the link here) not by following the link from this thread, but from my browser history. I saw a brief glimpse of today's main page, and then the screen image changed to Wikipedia's black-out page. I went to the information page, and there it still shows all the headings a Wikipedian will see when logged in: the user's own user page, and user talk page, and so on. So I followed the link to my user page, and it too displayed for the briefest tantalizing moment before showing the black-out page. Slick. I tried some other stored URLs from my browser history, and they all briefly displayed the appropriate Wikipedia page before being overwritten with the black-out notice. This will get attention.

The black-out information page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn...

says "The Wikipedia community has blacked out the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours on January 18th to raise awareness about legislation being proposed by the U.S. Congress," but I see it also includes advice for residents of other countries about what to do about the legislation.

The information page even includes a response to the question "In carrying out this protest, is Wikipedia abandoning neutrality? Can I still trust Wikipedia?" The response is "We are staging this blackout because, although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence actually is not. Wikipedia depends on its existence for a free and open, uncensored Internet." This immediately suggests some other countries that it might be important to draw more attention to on Wikipedia. I wonder if that will happen. If it doesn't, I may indeed start doubting the neutrality of Wikipedia even more than I already do.

Mobile devices are exempted from the black-out, according to the information page, and anyone can turn off the black-out by disabling JavaScript. (I enable JavaScript on Wikipedia to take advantage of various Wikipedia editing tools.) I'll have to experiment with viewing the site some more, and I'll be curious to see what the worldwide reaction is. Again, I wonder what users will suggest what other countries to protest about with regard to Internet censorship.

AFTER EDIT: In another experiment, I posted a Wikipedia link to Facebook to tell friends about the background to my new favorite pop song. The link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_This_Kolaveri_Di

still shows correct summary text when embedded in a Facebook comment. That the links are still pasteable and still have usability when submitted to discussion forums is an especially nice aspect of how Wikipedia implemented its blackout. (P.S. The direct link to the official video for the new song, which is rapidly going viral around the world, is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR12Z8f1Dh8

from Sony Music India hosted on YouTube.)

15 comments

tokenadult

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colanderman  14 years ago

"Wikipedia depends on its existence for a free and open, uncensored Internet."

Gah... that should be "Wikipedia depends, for its existence, on a free and open, uncensored Internet.", but of course editing that page is disabled! :)

  • tommorris  14 years ago

    The moral of the story: don't let engineers write copy, and don't make them write copy on a deadline while trying to fix bugs.

    (I'm in the IRC channel where the SOPA blackout was planned and executed... the engineers are running on adrenaline, caffeine and sugar.)

  • abecedarius  14 years ago

    Yeah, I wanted to edit it too: in "the Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout the English version of Wikipedia" it should be "black out". Curses!

hammock  14 years ago

I did not realize how much I used Wikipedia until now. I've run into the page four times in 20 minutes (reverted to google cache to get what I needed). I'll make it a challenge for me not to block it with noscript.

  • icebraining  14 years ago

    I actually still had Wikipedia blocked by noscript, so it took me a while to understand why I could access it normally ;)

    • eschulte  14 years ago

      Same here, it is surprising how many sites rely on javascript for content blocking e.g., the nytimes monthly article limits.

bobbles  14 years ago

When you are on the 'glimpse' of the page you want to see you can press the stop button on the browser and it will stop the blackout page from appearing.

r00fus  14 years ago

On mobile site it's showing up like a banner ad.

Once I moseyed over to the nonmobile version I saw the blackout... It's done well and (I hope) it will be effective.