Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Larger suggestions/Explore evasion methods of state-level censorship across Wikimedia movement

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Explore evasion methods of state-level censorship across Wikimedia movement

  • Problem: As WMF's HRIA suggests, censorship is a major threat to Wikimedia movement, whose goal is to provide free educational content for everyone. Some governments, like China, have blocked access to Wikipedia entirely. This has significant impact to us:
    • Reading: People from censored states (especially China) have to use 3rd-party proxies or manually configurate their device to access Wikipedia normally. This discourage users from accessing Wikipedia.
    • Editing: Due to Wikimedia's block of open proxies and the complexity of IPBE requesting process, newcomers may feel frustrated and discouraged from participating in Wikimedia projects.
  • Proposed solution: The WMF can explore methods and provide official technical support for people from censored states (e.g. China) to read and edit Wikimedia projects directly without a VPN. This can solve both problems. If it is not feasible, we can refine our no open proxy policy and make it more friendly to newcomers, which can solve the user-engagement problem.
  • Who would benefit: People from censored states
  • More comments: I know fighting with state-level censorship is a cat-and-mouse game and requires a lot of resources, but I still believe there are some actions we can take rather than simply watch all sites get blocked finally.
  • Phabricator tickets: phab:T327286 (probably)
  • Proposer: Diskdance (talk) 08:37, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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