orgtheory vs. scatterplot: the great firewall challenge
Shamus, I accept your challenge. We shall race to see who gets banned from China first. The rules:
- Goal: The winner is to be the first website that, according to The Great Firewall of China, cannot be reached from servers in the five areas of Beijing, Shenzen, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, and Yunnan. We’ll use these url’s: “orgtheory.wordpress.com” and “scatter.wordpress.com.” At present, the orgtheory URL is still accessible from all monitoring stations.
- Rules: You can’t directly ask to be banned or have a friend alert the censors. You can’t just rename your site “facebook.com” or otherwise pretend to be an already banned website. The spirit of the game is to be banned for the ideas found on orgtheory and scatterplot.
- Starting time: We start at midnight (EST) on a day that we agree on. We’ll be on the honor code We’ll take the word of the first blogger or commenter who finds that the site can’t be reached via The Great Firewall website.
- The stakes: If orgtheory wins, Shamus Khan donates $50 to the Hoosier Hills Food Bank. I will make a similar donation to a charity of his (or Scatterplot’s) choice.
You in?
I would like to plea that cooler heads prevail. If orgtheory and scatterplot needlessly provoke PRC and Iran into blacklisting them, sure this will be an entertaining little jaunt and make some kind of point about liberty. However I’m thinking of the poor Chinese and Iranian readers who will be denied access to informed commentary about the K-street condo, rulz for grad skoolz, NC+WI state politics, grade inflation, somebody somewhere having said something racist, Monopoly, the debate over whether fanny packs are nerdier than interactive fiction, performativity, and ferrets.
We, the management at Codeandculture, will not be taking any part in this pointless and reckless exercise. We believe in engaging repressive regimes so that they can develop a strong middle class and then liberalize from within. And we can see no better way to accomplish this goal than by respecting Chinese and Iranian law so that their citizens can continue to enjoy unfettered access to the best in clunky code and dilettantish commentary on ancient Rome which absolutely nobody reads.
I am putting out an open plea to other soc bloggers to sit this one out. I can only imagine how horrible it would be for enlightened people everywhere if thesocshrine provoked the great firewall, thereby denying Chinese readers access to opaque non sequiturs and youtube clips selected by a random number generator.
gabrielrossman
June 26, 2011 at 3:27 am
Geez, I never thought about it that way. It’s cruel to deprive one billion human beings of the privilege of our views on journal rankings. Just cruel.
fabiorojas
June 26, 2011 at 3:30 am
“I am putting out an open plea to other soc bloggers to sit this one out.”
Was it a serious call?
Guillermo
June 26, 2011 at 3:32 am
Did the USA just blow a huge lead over Mexico?
fabiorojas
June 26, 2011 at 3:33 am
So now I feel really foolish for reading CodeandCulture. Party of one?
Jenn Lena
June 26, 2011 at 3:38 am
Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.
Guillermo
June 26, 2011 at 3:42 am
Jenn,
I meant nobody reads the posts about Rome, not nobody reads the blog period. On the other hand you could feel flattered that I write the blog just for you.
gabrielrossman
June 26, 2011 at 3:44 am
At least Wikipedia has the decency to be banned in China.
fabiorojas
June 26, 2011 at 3:45 am
Whatever you do, make sure you don’t get censored at my workplace. It’s one of the few sites I can read at work, thanks to a piece of censorship software written in the US.
Guillermo
June 26, 2011 at 3:50 am
If we are a lifeline of truth to a billion people, maybe I will swallow my pride and allow Shamus’ challenge to go unanswered.
fabiorojas
June 26, 2011 at 3:58 am
I am happily on vacation. I will decide my response by Tuesday. And believe me, you will know if it’s on!
shakha
June 26, 2011 at 2:19 pm
@Shakha: If you’re worried about getting scatter banned, we can try to get some other site banned (e.g., scatterforchina.wordpress.com). It will definitely help Guillermo.
fabiorojas
June 27, 2011 at 3:04 am
民主革命 民主运动 天安门广场 64 641989 1989年6月4日 艾未未 刘晓波
There. At least this particular page should now come up with connection reset. You’re not likely going to get the whole site banned, as the restrictions tend to happen at the main domain level, not subdomains such as orgtheory. Then again, WordPress was blocked back before the Olympics.
Graham
June 27, 2011 at 4:11 pm
哎呀!!!!
Guillermo
June 27, 2011 at 7:03 pm
I am in China and I can still come here.
passerby
June 28, 2011 at 6:41 am
Wiki is not blocked in China now.
The most troublesome thing is that, they have blocked Gogglesites completely, so I cannot obtain some latest working papers as many professors have put their professional webpage to Googlesites.
passerby
June 28, 2011 at 6:43 am