So SOPA news will be bursting from your Internets today what with Wikipedia (and others) disappearing till tomorrow. It’s a pretty bold message but it only directly affects the English-language page. But how might users of Wikipedia’s non-English pages be experiencing today’s protest?
On Monday, Wikipedia chief Jimmy Wales tweeted:
@jimmy_wales
Jimmy Wales@guenterhack English only, although the Germans will run a banner, and other languages will make their own decisions.
1 day ago via web · powered by @socialditto
And the people maintaining the German-language Wikipedia page made good on the promise:
The German Wikipedia wasn’t by any means alone, though. Other large language Wikipedias – those featured around the main logo on Wikipedia’s homepage – also demonstrated their support:
Wikipedia Spanish.
Wikipedia Polish.
Wikipedia Chinese (the second image is the translated banner since it was less obvious).
Wikipedia Portuguese.
Wikipedia Russian.
Wikipedia Japanese.
Wikipedia Italian anted up big time on their support and actually threw in a complete splash page denouncing SOPA (you can still access the site once you click through it).
Okay, so with the English page completely shut down, that’s all ten languages featured on Wikipedia’s homepage and ten pages standing in solidarity with… er. Wait. That’s only nine. I only counted nine. Who are we missing here? Let’s check the list.
…..France.
Sigh. Uh, hey France? Nous devons parler.
