Attention:
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.
To any and all reporters, from Slashdot, TechCrunch, mainstream media, etc.: You may email me and ask me for my personal cellphone number, which I will answer 24 hours a day to confirm or disconfirm any such story of this type.
Hi! I'll add important, but removed (by Jimbo, see this, this and by Alphachimp: here [note m, isn't it sweet?]) information, written by other users:
As one who was affected by the block, I'd like to clarify. On 30 December 2006, a Wikipedia admin placed a one-month block on the IP address 82.148.97.69 for reasons of chronic vandalism and spam. The IP address turned out to belong to a QTel proxy server, and thus anonymous posting from the whole of Qatar was blocked. Account creation was also blocked, but this condition was later relaxed after the ban was widely reported across technology sites. Ngourlay 11:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
re the above: Be aware that the story that Jimbo is asking you to propagate to various news sources across the internet is inaccurate. The duration of the block he's claiming actually occurred is false. Anyone can verify the length of recent blockage by viewing this, the block log of this IP address. Attempts were made to block it for 1 month, and it was indeed blocked for over 20 hours between 30 Dec 2006 and 1 Jan 2007. The ban was then lifted for under a minute and then reapplied to last for 1 month again. The block effectively lasted for about 26 hours and 41 minutes in this instance. There are further blocks in the log that show it as having been successfully blocked for a lot longer over the last couple of months. So, which story was it that's not true again? ◄ИΞШSΜΛЯΞ► 07:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)