Why are 3 UK blocking Wapedia? (updated)

I sometimes think I’m like ‘Jonny 5’, the robot out of the cult 80’s movie ‘Short Circuit‘. Need input.. information, information and more information. That’s why I like Wikipedia – once you’ve done with browsing the usual mobile-tailored news portals you can pass many a dull journey on public transport by typing in something random into Wikipedia and seeing what comes up.

I started using Wapedia the other day. Whilst it’s been around since 2004, I’ve never really stumbled across it. Run by Taptu.com it gives you a nice fast way to access Wikipedia on the go – and, in my humblest opinion, looks nicer than Wikipedia’s native mobile interface.

Anyway, when I clicked on my Wapedia bookmark on my E71 a day or so ago I got the following message:

Blocked? Eh? Maybe I’d bookmarked it wrong, so I typed in wapedia.mobi into the browser. Again, the same message. So I left it a day or so, and tried again. Still blocked.

I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of a reason 3 would block Wapedia. Is it an adult site? Not that I know of – besides, from what I’ve seen there’s a different message for that (if you’ve got a 3 phone try firing up something like www.thepiratebay.org on your browser). Is it dangerous? Well, if you believe everything you read on Wikipedia, maybe. But seriously though, it worked for a few days then BANG! – blocked for no apparent reason.

I’ll fire an email to 3’s PR team and Taptu (the people behind Wapedia) shortly – hopefully it’s a simple mistake and not something more sinister.

UPDATE: Less than 24 hours after I wrote the above, Wapedia mysteriously got unblocked. Chris over at Taptu says they’ve asked 3 to look into it – but doubts they’ll get to the bottom of this little mystery. Still – all’s well that ends well.