[enzolovesbacon]

Yes, I understand that. I mean, why don't these censors block the whole wikipedia.org access then?

If they don't want their population to access a Wikipedia topic/article and can't block/determine if someone is accessing it, the easiest thing to do would be just block it right away. So why they won't do it?

(PS: I'm in no way in favor of censorship, I'm just trying to understand such mindset)

[hannob]

If you censor too much people may be pissed. It's much easier to decide "we censor specific articles about specific subjects" than "we censor all of wikipedia". Censoring a popular mainstream webpage may cause too much opposition. Maybe even the politicians who make the decision and their families like to look up things on wikipedia.

[jasonkostempski]

Then https will force them to either extreme which I think is a good thing. No option to slowly raise the temperature so the frogs won't jump out of the pot.

[SomeStupidPoint]

But can't they just download the Wikipedia backup, purge the articles they don't like, and redirect the DNS lookup to a local copy?

To the average citizen, it won't look much different than going to actual Wikipedia.

[FreeFull]

This is feasible, assuming the government is willing to pay for the hosting.

[kijin]

As well as forge an SSL certificate for *.wikipedia.org.

Last time I checked, Wikipedia had HSTS enabled. So trying to forge their DNS without also forging their SSL certificate would be equivalent to total censorship for anybody who has previously visited Wikipedia.

[gjjrfcbugxbhf]

Assuming the government in question has access to a root certificate this should be possible.

[sqeaky]

Even presuming it is possible, it still raises the cost of censorship. Simply raising that cost is a good thing.

[Bakary]

They are currently creating a Wikipedia clone in China so I'm guessing they are allowing wikipedia only on a temporary basis.

[foota]

Probably because they recognize the utility of Wikipedia.

[mirimir]

As with GitHub.