It might however prevent or deter contributors living in Italy from contributing. And those are, quite obviously, the vast majority of the people contributing to the localized wikipedia.
You seem to suggest that a geolocation-based "blocking" of Wikipedia would have been more effective, but that would mean this appeal wouldn't have reached any of you - including myself, an Italian student in an exchange period abroad.
Besides, I can't really see wikipedia doing geolocation-based blocking of anything. It's just not coherent with the project of a global, free, libre, neutral, universal corpus of knowledge.
You seem to suggest that a geolocation-based "blocking" of Wikipedia would have been more effective, but that would mean this appeal wouldn't have reached any of you - including myself, an Italian student in an exchange period abroad.
Besides, I can't really see wikipedia doing geolocation-based blocking of anything. It's just not coherent with the project of a global, free, libre, neutral, universal corpus of knowledge.