How to avoid Wikipedia blackout

As most of you may know the website Wikipedia is down in protest over SOPA. While I find the issue critical and applaud Wikipedia for the steps they are taking in alerting the general public about the threats of this government overreach I also frequent the site dozens of times a day. Assuming there are others like myself who would be frustrated with a 24 hour Wikipedia blackout I thought it would be good for them to know you can avoid the blackout completely.

Upon opening a Wikipedia page it will not go dark until the page is fully load plus about one second. Seeing as how you will want an entire page loaded I recommend first opening the Wikipedia page, allowing it to go dark, hit backspace, then re-enter it and once the page reappears immediately hit your escape key to black it from switching over to the blackout.

I do not want people to think I take the SOPA issue lightly or do not appreciate what Wikipedia is doing but people still need to use the site.

reply to post by Misoir


Thank You! I loaded this like everyone else earlier to wonder at the novelty of it. Neat huh? I've since hit the screen 3 times while actually needing what Wiki had to show. I didn't even realize I was using it that much until hitting THAT screen to announce the fact. It's an interesting realization for that alone, but thanks for the info on how to bypass once we get the point they are conveying. I do intend to do some research today.

reply to post by Misoir


ha... thats a bit lame, not really a blackout is it. Not like if google decided to deny searches for a day. And wiki are not actually anything important, just useful. Nothing you can find there you cannot on a typical search.

More of a silent protest... waving a placard while still doing business. If they had been serious, it would not have been hard to deny any access to their server and put up a "protest" banner.

small man carries a big stick... made of rubber..

Also, you can search Google for the article in classic mode and hit the cashed link instead of the main result link.

If you click the "Learn More" link, under Questions and Answers there is this:

Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?

The Wikipedia community, as part of their request to the Wikimedia Foundation to carry out this protest, asked us to ensure that we make English Wikipedia accessible in some way during an emergency. The English Wikipedia will be accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. Because the protest message is powered by JavaScript, it's also possible to view Wikipedia by completely disabling JavaScript in your browser.

Just go to m.wikipedia.com and search from there.

I don't think the fact we are getting around it diminishes the message at all. We already know about SOPA, it's Joe Public that needs to be informed and they will all hit the main page.

reply to post by aaron2209


That does not seem to work on my laptop probably for the reason the poster above you stated; JavaScript. I could always just look it up in another language though but English is so much easier than dealing with all the translating.

reply to post by Misoir


Strange. It works for me in Chrome and I haven't disabled Javascript.

yeah the wikipeadia going down is in my opinion OVERKILL ...

but their are allowed to protest .... but doing it this way .. i dunno

You can download the entire wikipedia onto your computer, there are ways to do it but it is a difficult project and there are many resources you can use to begin on your quest, just search 'wikipedia dumps'