A conspiracy by the University of Adelaide against WUWT

By all accounts (that is, one (1) account), one of my alma maters, the University of Adelaide, has "throttled" access to WUWT. There's a whole article about it.

Anthony Watts asks politely:

Can anyone check out this claim of suppressed access?

He posted the text from a reader, who complains that it is taking 10 to 15 minutes to load a WUWT page, and then wrote (my emphasis):

I have had similar emails from time to time, but I’ve never had any interest in following it up since such things can often be flukes. But this time, maybe not, so I’ve decided to ask if users are seeing similar things when they try to access WUWT via government networks and university networks. I’m really interested to find out if anyone at University of Adelaide can corroborate this story. 

Sadly, there is only one reader (out of the tens of thousands of staff and students), who is trying to access WUWT from the University of Adelaide, so the throttling can't be confirmed by anyone else.

From the WUWT comments

WUWT readers are split on whether the university has bothered to throttle access to one of a couple of dozen dumb denier blogs. On balance, most people think it unlikely.

Ursus Augustus is in the "it's a conspiracy" camp and blames it on the all-powerful John Cook from the University of Queensland:

May 6, 2015 at 7:50 pm
Sounds like an internet eco-nazi einzatsgruppen is at work.
Could this be a ‘dividend’ from the COOKMOOC at University of Queensland?

Max Photon doesn't know about the University of Adelaide, but he did make an observation about the speed of WUWT commenters:

May 6, 2015 at 7:58 pm
I’ve certainly noticed that some of the commenters are slow.

wayne Job admits a tendency to conspiracy ideation:

May 6, 2015 at 8:03 pm
Being an Australian and watching the verbal machinations emanating from our universities, this would not surprise me if true. 

dbstealey is a hard core conspiracy theorist (and a mod at WUWT). His "proof" is a link to a rabid conspiracy theorising website, infowars, where it's alleged that Amazon's Alexa has been "fixing rankings". His link had nothing to do with the subject at hand, but if you've got a good conspiracy theory why not add it?

May 6, 2015 at 8:17 pm
Really, it would surprise me if it wasn’t true.
Someone (can’t recall who) posted this link here recently, saying the same thing:
[redacted the direct link - you can see the archive here, Sou] 

pauline young swears her local library, which is "under government control", has blocked access altogether to two denier blogs. Good thing if it has :)

May 6, 2015 at 9:55 pm
I currently live in Tasmania and cannot access WUWT or Jo Nova from the computers at the local library which are under government control. 

There were a few calmer heads at WUWT, for example, Ian H asks, who could be bothered, really and truly...

May 6, 2015 at 9:05 pm
Not a problem at my University. I would be surprised if this was deliberate throttling. The academic staff at Universities have nothing to do with running the networks. And the IT people are simply too busy. Who has time to police the internet for political correctness.
Have you asked the IT people at Adelaide why the site is loading extremely slowly? That would be the first step. Chances are this is not deliberate.

All this reminds me of the time that deniers went "barking mad" claiming that the White House had deleted a tweet from some useless denier. As if the White House controls even Twitter - or has the time or energy to read every silly tweet from a science illiteratum!