China Unblocks Wikipedia

The online interactive reference site Wikipedia announced Tuesday that the site had apparently been made accessible in China, after being blocked for just over a year by the country's government....

The most recent blocking was the third such outage reported by Wikipedia.

"We'll see how long this lasts," said the company on its site. "Chinese Wikipedians have expressed fears about the detrimental effects that a permanent ban would have. First of all, the block deprives a useful resource from the majority of Chinese speakers in the world. Moreover, since Mainland Chinese form a significant portion of the Chinese Wikipedia community (46% of all users in March 2005), a long-term block could severely stunt the growth of Wikipedia similar to the block in June 2004."

We'll see how long this lasts, indeed.