Talk:Great Firewall

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 October 2018 and 12 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): CensorshipStudent123!.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:39, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

"Not to be confused with Golden Shield Project."

I don't understand the meaning of this hatnote:

Not to be confused with Golden Shield Project.

According to Golden Shield Project, these terms do in fact refer to the same thing. If the intent is to indicate that we have separate articles for the term "Great Firewall" and for the Great Firewall itself, it would be better to write something like:

This article is about the term "Great Firewall" itself. For the project most often known by that name, see Golden Shield Project.

(or, better wording to that effect).

—Ruakh_TALK 19:04, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Golden Shield Project includes many sub-projects (e.g. security management information system, exit and entry administration information system, etc), and GFW is just only one of its sub-projects. -- Yejianfei (talk) 08:00, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Questionable

I think this article is questionable. It uses words like "suspicion" and "purportedly". All of its sources seem at least 10 years old.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:57, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that this article is about a form of censorship. Those who are censored are less able to find sources, those who are not are less motivated to find sources. It's the purpose of censorship, isn't it. :) --Ahyangyi (talk) 14:02, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Here's an archive of selected research papers in the field of Internet censorship: https://censorbib.nymity.ch/ A few of them are about the Great Firewall. It could be useful as a resource to bring this article up to date. The archive's maintainer has said that "at this point, [researchers] have a pretty good understanding" of what the GFW blocks, how the GFW blocks what it blocks, and where the GFW is topologically.[1] --Dodi 8238 (talk) 16:12, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

This needs more exploration and explanation. When I was in China in 2012, I was able to find information (in English) on the Dalai Lama, including from Wikipedia.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:16, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

No one had and can do a public scientific survey to show when and which sites can be reached in PRC. Only personal experiences reported repeatedly, typically: (1) Uncensored web 2.0 and search engines cannot be reached, like Google Search, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter (2) Wifi hotspot from global branding hotel is more likely not being filtered.--05:59, 26 June 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.244.126.24 (talk)

So what is the basis of all these accusations? Political opinion? Xenophobia? Fantasy?--Jack Upland (talk) 08:49, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

There seem to be major problems with this article. It's simply not factually accurate. Anyone who visits China can refute a lot of the claims made. Secondly, a lot of the key sources are about 10 years old. If they were accurate, they refer to a situation long past and need updating. Thirdly, a lot of the claims don't have citations or have citations that don't actually support them. Fourthly, and related to what I've said, the tone is simply not neutral. It is accusatory, rather than factual.--Jack Upland (talk) 11:13, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Unclear Language

This article currently contains the phrase, "Given the gaps in , the central government of China relies heavily on its administrative body, the State Council, to determine what falls under the definitions... " I'm not 100% sure what was intended to come before that comma, but something seems to be missing.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikaselm (talk • contribs) 18:16, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Trade protection

User:Should use email you need to explain your objection to trade protectionism, which is sourced content. Jytdog (talk) 00:39, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

User:Jytdog, the explanation of the removal was provided in the revision history: "remove description of GFW as trade protectionism since it introduces a bigger topic and related issues. Just keep the facts about the creation of China's internet giants."

The previous version of the statement was: Opponents would describe this as a form of trade protectionism, whereas proponents would assert that this is part of "Internet sovereignty".

But now I see that the "internet sovereignty" concept was moved to the "Origins of Chinese Internet law" section. So, as long as both concepts "trade protectionism" and "internet sovereignty" are included in the article, I'm ok with it.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Should use email (talk • contribs) 06:59, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

References

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GFW now knows how to block a website via Server Name Indication (SNI)

Please add informations regarding this, thx. --218.68.229.85 (talk) 07:07, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Merge blocking methods

Merge everything under blocking methods header into three categorizes. 1. IP blocking (includes proxy distribution) 2. DNS poisoning 3. Deep Packet Inspection (includes active probing, quality of service, URL SNI blocking, and TCP reset)— Preceding unsigned comment added by BitBee555 (talk • contribs) 02:47, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I second this! NomJay007 (talk) 19:58, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

History Sub-header

I suggest there should be a history sub-header. Reading about the history of the Great Firewall would be pretty interesting and would really contribute to the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.158.156.189 (talk) 19:54, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Ambiguous text should be changed.

In the section Impact on people in China, the last sentence in the last paragraph says:

"She claims that, in the past 10 years, it has been increasingly difficult to access second opinions on events, meaning that students rarely have the opportunity to learn diverging viewpoints — only the correct thought of the Communist Party."[2] (FYI, this is a great source article to read!)

Even though the source material states this, saying "in the past 10 years" is ambiguous because this is dated material. The reference is already almost 2 years old. -- Ubh [talk... contribs...] 08:55, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - RPM SP 2022 - MASY1-GC 1260 200 Thu

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 February 2022 and 5 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Garrygan10086 (article contribs).— Preceding unsigned comment added by Garrygan10086 (talk • contribs) 23:11, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Questionable certainty and arbitrary wording

Questionable certainty

In this article it says:

"On 26 January 2013, the GitHub SSL certificate was replaced with a self-signed certificate in China by the GFW.[57]"

[57]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5124784

Looking further into the source, there is nothing conclusively to ascertain this as something done by GFW specifically or Chinese government. I would suggest removing the "by the GFW" or providing a better source.

Arbitrary wording

In the article it says:

"The Tiananmen Square Massacre and other ethnic issues"

The full title of the referred article is "1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre", and other names are "Tiananmen Square protests", "June Fourth Incident", "Tiananmen Square Massacre", "'89 Democracy Movement", "Tiananmen Square Incident".

It seems rather arbitrary to use "Tiananmen Square Massacre" over any other ones. It is possible the referenced article has updated since this was written.

I would suggest rewording the sentence to "events of Tiananmen Square" in order to avoid any need for future updates in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.202.8.229 (talk • contribs) 04:54, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

I've made the first requested change regarding "by the GFW".

For your second request, I've deleted the "and other ethnic issues" phrase. Which was not the core of your request, but was a confusing phrase to use here.

There are three sources at the end of the bulleted list, did you check how they refer to the June Fourth incident? As you point out, there are many ways to describe the protests and the suppression of them, some of which are geographically/linguistically bounded (in that regard I often highlight the issues discussed in WP:Global). Note however that it will usually be a viable view that the wikilink text should match the destination article (we generally want to have link clarity and avoid re-directs) JArthur1984 (talk) 13:30, 25 April 2024 (UTC)