I don’t need to point out how big is Wikipedia since it is already the biggest encyclopedia on the internet. What If I say you can get it safe and securely on the dark web. Wikipedians are under serious thoughts about giving its users the ability to access it by letting them avoid much of the surveillance.
The Idea behind creating a dark web .onion site for Wikipedia that will be only accessible using Tor Browser was proposed by Former Vice President of Wikimedia Italy, Cristian Consonni.
We are already able to access the World Wide Version of the site in Tor Browser but the connection is less secure than a hidden service on dark web mainly due to the censorship of web traffic in certain countries that could potentially leak the traffic which would be encrypted in Tor.
Moving to dark web skips the use of ‘Exit Node’ that would potentially be the bridge between the Tor network and the regular world. A point where the traffic generates and vulnerabilities are much higher.
Consonni shared the proposal on Wikimedia-L, a listserv where prominent Wikipedians discuss the future and internal politics of the site.
The Idea was endorsed by many Wikipedians like David Cuenca Tudela but the controversy every Wikipedian didn’t agree is the ability to edit the articles by the Tor users due to a high volume of known abuse from that vector.
The reason is simple if any problematic user is there Wikipedia blocks the IP avoiding such nuisance but in Tor, if you block one IP he has the ability to get a new one in the encrypted browser.
Countries like China, Iran, and Russia were the Internet censorship is high and moving Wikipedia to the dark web not only gives access to it more securely but It will also help improve Tor’s reputation. Since Tor is most popularly used as a tool for Drug Trafficking, Frauds and other Cyber criminal activities often happen.
Moving to Dark Web helps it avoid surveillance of the government and as well as increase the awareness of the technology for protecting the privacy of the users.
Even Facebook has a .Onion Address and building a site on Darknet isn’t a terrible idea.Consonni told,”I think that all major websites should serve a version over Tor”.
If the project comes alive hoping Wikimedia Foundation will operate its counterpart on the dark web rather than giving it to a 3rd party organization that would snoop and bug its users.