Dubai: Can the world live without Wikipedia for a day?
When some of the most popular global websites decided to switch off in protest against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the world found quirky ways to deal with their temporary loss.
Internet users in the Middle East were also affected by the blackout initiated by the online encyclopedia.
Saleh Al Beloushi, a UAE resident, said in his comment on the Gulf News Facebook page: “I really needed an answer for one of my questions today but tried hard and couldn’t get it. :(”
Others found ways around Wikipedia’s shutdown.
Yasir Afaque posted a solution on the Gulf News Facebook page: “Simple way to avoid the blackout - press ESC just after loading a page.” If done just in time, the blackout screen does not appear.
The Twitter community was abuzz with tweets related to the blackout.
Some of the trending topics included #FactsWithoutWikipedia, “Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge” and “End Piracy”.
Some tweeps took the blackout in their stride and imagined a world without fact verification. They posted humorous one-liners such as: “Wind is caused by trees sneezing. #FactsWithoutWikipedia”.
So when answers were needed, where did people go for information?
US- and UK-based news organisations such as The Washington Post, National Public Radio (NPR) and The Guardian tried to fill the void that the blackout had created by starting their own campaign on Twitter.
If anyone had a question, they could simply post it, followed by the hashtag #altwiki.
The media outlets promised to then try and provide answers to as many questions as possible.
In one humorous twitpic, a journalist posted a picture of an entire set of hardbound encyclopaedias he was manually trolling through for information.
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