Wikipedia denies banning Qatar

THE ONLINE encyclopaedia Wikipedia has denied censoring the entire nation of Qatar for vandalism.

Qatar, being a one ISP country, suffered when Wikipedia's bots decided that the ISP's IP address should not be allowed to post because it was used for vandalism.

The story was taken up by Slashdot, which wondered if the action was the result of the fact that George Bush's favourite Arabic news station Al Jazeera operates out of the country.

Finally the yarn got a highly miffed denial from Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales who confirmed that the IP number was temporarily blocked for less than 12 hours.

He said that the block of an entire nation would go absolutely against Wikipedia policy. He said that such an action would require approval of at a minimum the English Arbitration Committee and him personally.

Wales said that this would never be undertaken lightly, nor without extensive attempts at direct negotiation with the ISP and or nation in question.

Wikipedia last year told the world that the Everywhere Girl did not exist, and now claims that this correspondent is actually a retired middleweight Canadian boxer and admits its definition of reality has a few problems.

More here. µ