The IWF’s failure: being noticed.

Internet Watch Foundation chief interviewed on Wikipedia and Internet Archive blocks; Bennett Haselton’s attempts to get sense out of them.

The IWF was established for one purpose: to get the government off the ISPs’ backs. It successfully did so for many years. Unfortunately, the people currently at the IWF have lost sight of this and now think they have to actually do stuff to justify their existence. Fatal error when your supposed function is technically impossible and socially unworkable. Everyone who knows about the IWF despises them.

Please test the Wikipedia mobile gateway.

See Brion Vibber’s post — we need more testing on the mobile gateway for English Wikipedia. Brion’s slipped in some JavaScript which intermittently pops up a link if it detects an iPhone/iPod Touch or Android device. There’s also gateways for the German and Wikipedias.

(I must say, I really like the mobile skin — I was running the “classic” skin on Wikipedia for ages, but it was too ill-maintained and I had various wacky user JavaScript that didn’t work well on anything but Monobook. The mobile skin doesn’t allow editing as yet, but is great for viewing.)