France Tries to Censor Article on Military Communications Facility—Hilarity Ensues
April 7th, 2013Via: Wikipedia:
The military radio station of Pierre-sur-Haute is a 30 ha (0.3 square kilometre) site used for French military communications. It is located on the Sauvain and Job communes, with the boundary between the Rhône-Alpes and Auvergne regions passing through the site.
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In April 2013, the radio station attracted attention after the French interior intelligence agency Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur (DCRI) attempted to have the article removed from the French language Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation asked the intelligence agency what precise part(s) of the article were a problem in the eyes of the intelligence agency. The DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for total deletion of the article. The Wikimedia Foundation refused to delete the article, and the DCRI pressured a volunteer administrator[5] of the French language Wikipedia and resident of France into removing the article.[6] The administrator obeyed.
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Later, the article was restored by another Wikipedia contributor.[7][8] The French ministry of the interior told the Agence France-Presse that for the moment it did not wish to comment on the incident.[9] As a result of the controversy, the article became the most-read page on the French Wikipedia.[10][11] It was translated into multiple other languages.[12]
