14 DAY TRIAL // Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia based on an open-source project that allows any user to contribute to the service by posting new information on multiple topics. Because every anonymous user, even without an account, was able to edit the articles, Wikipedia encountered big problems from the persons that were looking to spam the service. It seems like one of the countries with the biggest number of spammers was Qatar, a country that was finally blocked from anonymous editing of the articles.
TechCrunch, a company that writes articles about any technology related topic, said that all users from Qatar were banned after Wikipedia recorded a huge amount of spam. "Qatar, home to nearly a million people, has been blocked from editing any entry on Wikipedia due to a large volume of spam and vandalism," the company said. Qatar has only one internet service provider, Qtel, so Wikipedia banned the entire class of IPs provided by the ISP.
After the article written by TechCrunch was published, Jimbo Wales from Wikipedia posted a message on the official website to mention that "If you came here from a news headline saying that Wikipedia has banned all of Qatar, please pop right back over there and post in the comments that the story is not true. This IP number was temporarily blocked for less than 12 hours, and a block of an entire nation would go absolutely against Wikipedia policy. In all language Wikipedias, such an action would require a series of administrative processes, and would never ever be undertaken lightly, nor without extensive attempts at direct negotiation with the ISP and/or nation in question."
So, it seems like Wikipedia blocked Qatar users only for 12 hours and removed the anonymous editing feature, registered users remaining the only clients that are able to edit, modify or post new articles.