Help:Censorship

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Wikipedia is generally not censored by the editors but there may be censorship of some or all of Wikipedia content by individual governments.

The editors of Wikipedia decide by community consensus as to what content is added. The only censorship by the community of note is the decision to blacklist certain images and restrict the visibility of various articles. Depictions of Muhammad, which cause offence to some Muslims, have not been censored.

A number of methods can be used to prevent a computer from showing images contained in Wikipedia. If you wish to do this, see the options at Help:Options to hide an image.

Circumventing external censorship

Wikipedia supports https for all pages. Sometimes this can interfere with page blocking or reduce the risk of repercussions.

Some possible ways to circumvent censorship by outside forces according to page name:

• Copy the location of the blocked Wikipedia page into Google Translate
• Transclude the page name into an arbitrary page that you preview. WP:Sandbox may be a good page to use, assuming it is not blocked. (Do not save these transclusions or other test edits, except in a Sandbox.) It might be safest to preview in a location that you do not normally read, in case the censor begins blocking that page.

  • Example: enter {{:Nazi Party}} into a page to preview.

  • Note: If your IP address has been placed under a "schoolblock" from the Wikipedia end, you will not be able to preview most pages; instead, try hitting the "talk" option beside your IP address. You may have access to edit (and thus to preview) that one page.

Some possible ways to circumvent censorship targeting pages containing specific named images:

• Help:Options to hide an image
• Use or write a Lua module to deliver content with some or all images removed, e.g. {{#invoke:Page|getContent|Nazi Party|nowiki=yes}}

These methods do not protect users who may be subject to threats to their employment or freedom for viewing certain types of content. For them, a very careful exploration of HTTP tunnels, virtual private networks, The Onion Router protocol, or "sneakernet" may or may not be appropriate.

See also

• Censorship, the encyclopedia article about the topic
• Censorship of Wikipedia, an article about the history of Wikipedia censorship by different countries.