Wikipedia denies blocking Qatar

After Techcrunch and BBC wrote about blocking of Qatar at Wikipedia here and here respectively saying that users from Qatar have been banned from posting entries on this open source website, Wikipedia has denied the news.

 

In answer to Techcrunch saying that,

Apparently Qatar has a single ISP, Qtel, with a single IP address shared by the entire country.

 

Tech2.com has reported that

Founder, Jimmy Wales has now clarified that a certain IP number in Qatar was temporarily blocked for less than 12 hours, but reports of having blocked the entire nation were untrue.

Also a post denying the hoax has been made over Wikipedia with following message –

 

Attention:

 

If you came here from a news headline saying that Wikipedia has banned all of Qatar, please pop right back over there and post in the comments that the story is not true. This IP number was temporarily blocked for less than 12 hours, and a block of an entire nation would go absolutely against Wikipedia policy.

 

In all language Wikipedias, such an action would require a series of administrative processes, and would never ever be undertaken lightly, nor without extensive attempts at direct negotiation with the ISP and/or nation in question.

 

To any and all reporters, from Slashdot, TechCrunch, mainstream media, etc.: You may email me and ask me for my personal cellphone number, which I will answer 24 hours a day to confirm or disconfirm any such story of this type.

 

Does this mean that Techcrunch was unaware of Wikipedia policy when the post was made by Michael as he didn’t mention about policy anywhere?  On the other hand, he didn’t refrain from making following suggestion –

One answer to this problem is for Wikipedia to end anonymous editing and force user accounts on anyone that wants to contribute.

 

To me. it has put question mark on the reliability of news delivered by Techcrunch and Slashdot. Then they haven’t posted any clarification at all, so far.

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