Because of it’s essential nature as a “free to edit” site, Wikipedia is often referred to in jokey terms as an information resource.
But many of its articles, supported by references, are hugely useful to a wide variety of people. The project has vastly contributed to the free flow of information and opinion around the world.
While you read this, Wikipedia develops at a rate of over 1.8 edits per second, performed by editors from all over the world. Currently, the English Wikipedia includes 5,854,311 articles and it averages 564 new articles per day. This amount of data can be analysed in a huge number of ways.
What is certain is that it is a highly valuable resource to make world conversations better informed.
Which is why it is so sad that for one-third of the world’s population, it just disappeared.
Wikipedia is now blocked in China.
All language editions of Wikipedia have been blocked in mainland China since April, the Wikimedia foundation has confirmed.
Internet censorship researchers found that Wikipedia had joined thousands of other websites which cannot be accessed in China.
The country had previously banned the Chinese language version of the site, but the block has now been expanded. Wikimedia said it had received “no notice” of the move.
In a statement, the foundation said: “In late April, the Wikimedia Foundation determined that Wikipedia was no longer accessible in China. After closely analysing our internal traffic reports, we can confirm that Wikipedia is currently blocked across all language versions.”
The free community-edited encyclopaedia has been intermittently blocked by authorities around the world.
In 2017, the site was blocked in Turkey and it has been blocked intermittently in Venezuela this year.
Experience shows that there is one thing that authoritarian regimes detest more than anything else, and that is losing control of the flow of information to their citizens. And experience shows that nothing forces them to back-track on these incursions into people’s freedom than their embarrassment at being found out and criticised.
The answer? Make a fuss. Stand up for the freedom of our Chinese brothers and sisters. Re-blog this article, put a link to it on Facebook, and on Twitter, and on any other platform you use regularly. Just hit one of the buttons at the end of this article.
Those in power in China will notice.
And if you want to know more about how important Wikipedia now is, go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
Well, This Is What I Think 
Wikipedia exists on donations from people who use it. I can’t send them much but I try to at least send a little every year.
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I love that you always tackle the issues that NEED to be discussed.
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Thank you Stacie
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