Personal Musings from Simon Jones

Wikipedia’s so called black out is a bit of a damp squib for techies… rather than bringing the site down, they’ve added a little bit of javascript to popup a blackout screen.

You can either try the refresh/stop trick on each page. When you see their black screen, hit F5 on your keyboard (Apple+R for Mac), and then the Esc key. If the black screen comes back, you were too slow. A white screen means you were too quick.

Alternatively, follow these for your browser. Disabling Javascript should only really be done for this purpose and re-enabled afterwards as many popular sites rely on javascript to run properly.

To bring back Wikipedia in Chrome:

Click the spanner top right, and click options.
Click ‘Under the bonnet’ on the left,
Click ‘Content Settings’ next to Privacy
Next to Javascript, click ‘Manage Exceptions’
Type ‘Wikipedia’ and choose block.

Close and browse Wikipedia just as you would have.

To bring back Wikipedia in Firefox:

Unfortunately in Firefox you need to disable Javascript completely for Wikipedia and re-enable it for other sites.

Click Tools -> Options
Click the content tab
untick ‘Enable Javascript’ (or tick to re-enable)
Click Ok and browse Wikipedia

To bring back Wikipedia in Safari

Safari, like Firefox is a blanket block/enable.

Click the Spanner and click ‘Preferences’
Click the Security tab
Untick/Tick Display Javascript (not Java)
Click ok and browse. 

To bring back Wikipedia in Internet Explorer

A slightly more complicated one. Again it’s global or nothing.

Click Tools -> Internet Options
Click Security tab
Click ‘Custom Level’ button
Scroll through the list until you find ‘Scripting’
Tick ‘Disable’ or ‘Prompt’ underneath ‘Active Scripting’

Summary

Chrome is by far the easiest to configure as you can set permissions by site whereas on the other browsers, it’s all or nothing. One option is to download a second browser with Javascript disabled so you can continue to access the wealth of information that is Wikipedia.

They may have done it this way to keep their Google rankings, as they’re displaying different content to Google than to a user, they are however technically violating Google’s T&Cs…