Russian Wikipedia

Russian Wikipedia
Type of site
 Internet encyclopedia project
Available in Russian
Headquarters Miami, Florida
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Website ru.wikipedia.org
Commercial Charitable
Registration Optional
Launched May 20, 2001 (2001-05-20)
Content license
 Creative Commons ShareAlike License 3.0

The Russian Wikipedia (Russian: Ру́сская Википе́дия) is the Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of August, 2017, it has 1,411,656 articles. It was started on 11 May 2001.[1] In October 2015 it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of articles. It has the fifth-largest number of edits (99.2 million).

It is the largest Wikipedia written in any Slavic language, surpassing its nearest rival, the Polish Wikipedia, eightfold by the parameter of depth.[2] In addition, the Russian Wikipedia is the largest Wikipedia written in Cyrillic[3] or in a script other than Latin script. In April 2016, the project had 3,377 active editors who made at least five edits in that month, ranking third behind the English and Spanish versions.

Policies

Difficult issues are resolved through the Arbitration Committee, which handles content disputes, blocks users or prohibits certain users from editing articles on certain topics.[4]

Administrators (currently 84) are elected through a vote; a minimum quorum of 30 voters and 66% of support votes are required if the request is to be considered successful. Administrators who have become inactive (i.e. have not used administrative tools, such as "delete" or "block" buttons, at least 25 times in six months) may lose their privileges by an Arbitration Committee decision.[5]

History

Celebration logo for 500.000 articles plays a pun as "half a lemon" means "half a million" in Russian jargon.
Awards of RuWiki. "Golden site" prize (2007) and four Runet Prizes (2006, 2007, 2009, 2010)

The Russian Wikipedia was created on 20 May 2001 in the first wave of non-English Wikipedias, along with editions in Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, German, Esperanto, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

The countries in which the Russian Wikipedia is the most popular language version of Wikipedia are shown in red (CIS).[6]

The first edit of the Russian Wikipedia was on 24 May 2001, and consisted of the line "Россия – великая страна" ("Russia is a great nation"). The following edit changed it to the joke: "Россия — родина слонов (ушастых, повышенной проходимости — см. мамонт)" ("Russia is the motherland of elephants (big-eared, improved cross-country capability, see Mammoth.")[7]

For a long time development was slow (especially after some participants left for WikiZnanie), but in the 12-month period between February 2005 and February 2006 it surpassed nine editions in other languages – the Catalan, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Hebrew, Finnish, Norwegian, Chinese, Esperanto and Danish Wikipedias. In 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010[8] the Russian Wikipedia won the "Science and education" category of the "Runet Prize" (Russian: Премия Рунета) award, supervised by the Russian government agency FAPMC.[9]

Content

As of 1 June 2012, some of the biggest categories (which contain more than 5,000 articles) in the Russian Wikipedia are:[10]

10,340 articles contain material from the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary.

More than 11,000 articles were translated from the English Wikipedia.

Namespaces

In addition to common Wikipedia namespaces, the Russian Wikipedia has three custom ones: "Incubator" (# 102–103) – which is used as a training camp for new users and their first articles, "Project" (# 104–105) – for Wikipedia projects and "Arbitration" (# 106–107) – for arbitration requests.

Criticism

In 2015, Roman Leibov, a professor at University of Tartu, in an interview opined that articles related to humanities in the Russian Wikipedia are of considerably inferior quality compared to English Wikipedia, and some articles even deteriorate with time. He suggested that this effect is due to overzealous policing of intellectual property rights by the community and bemoaned poor editing skills of some Wikipedians.[11]

Timeline

Number of Russian Wikipedia articles in 2005–2010 (thousands).
Russian Wikipedia logo on 11 May 2013

Blackout

Russian Wikipedia Main Page during 10 July 2012 blackout.

On 10 July 2012 Russian Wikipedia closed access to its content for 24 hours in protest against proposed amendments to Russia's Information Act (Bill No. 89417-6) regulating the accessibility of Internet-based information to children. Among other things, the bill stipulates the creation and country-wide enforcement of blacklists, which would block access to forbidden sites. Several aspects of this amendment drew criticism from various civil rights activists and Internet providers. In particular, the blacklist inclusion criteria were characterized as "too vague" and "paving the way for Internet censorship".[15]

Supporters of the amendment stated that it is aimed only at widely prohibited content such as child pornography and similar information, but the Russian Wikimedia chapter has declared that conditions for determining the content falling under this law will create a thing like the "great Chinese firewall". They further claimed that existing Russian legal practice demonstrates a high likelihood of a worst-case scenario, resulting in a country-wide ban of Wikipedia.[16][17] The second and the third readings of the law were held in the State Duma on 11 July; no essential corrections were introduced. The law will come into force after three readings in the State Duma, one reading in the Federation Council and presidential approval.[18]

On 10 July, Nikolai Nikiforov, Russian Minister for Telecommunications and Mass Media announced in his Twitter account, that the organization of the List of the prohibited websites (that was sited on the Law Project No. 89417-6) will be suspended until 1 November 2012.[18][19] On the same day Yelena Mizulina, a Duma deputy and the head of the subcommittee which sponsored the law, said that the blackout is an attempt to blackmail the Duma and was sponsored by the "pedophile lobby".[20]

Russian Wikipedia blacklisted

On 5 April 2013, it was confirmed by a spokesperson for the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media that Wikipedia had been blacklisted over the article 'Cannabis Smoking' on Russian Wikipedia.[21][22] On 31 March 2013 the New York Times reported that Russia was 'Selectively Blocking [the] Internet',[23] though Wikipedia itself was not blocked at that time.

The entire Russian Wikipedia was blocked in the Russian Federation for a few hours in August 2015 due to the contents of the article on charas.[24]

References

Wikinews has articles relating to the Russian language Wikipedia
  1. ↑ https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-May/000116.html
  2. ↑ All Wikipedias ordered by number of articles
  3. ↑ List of Wikipedias given in decadic logarithm
  4. ↑ (in Russian) ru:WP:Arbitration Committee
  5. ↑ (in Russian) ru:WP:Administrators (rus)
  6. ↑ Erik Zachte (14 November 2011). "Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report – Wikipedia Page Views Per Country – Trends". Wikimedia Statistics. Retrieved 19 January 2011.
  7. ↑ В русской Википедии появилась 200-тысячная статья (in Russian). Lenta.ru. 4 September 2007. Retrieved 16 March 2010.
  8. ↑ "Номинанты и Лауреаты 2010 года". Премии Рунета. Retrieved 25 November 2010.
  9. ↑ Главная премия российского интернета стала государственной (in Russian). Lenta.ru. 29 August 2005. Retrieved 15 March 2010.
  10. ↑ Most linked categories
  11. ↑ Усыскин, Лев (5 June 2015). "Википедия – знакомая и неизвестная". Гефтер. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  12. ↑ "Базовая статья". Retrieved 25 March 2015.
  13. ↑ Номинанты Премии Рунета — 2009. Интернет-проекты (in Russian)
  14. 1 2 "Русский раздел Википедии преодолел рубеж в 1 миллион статей". cit.ua. Сервисные интернет технологии. 11 May 2013. Retrieved 12 May 2013.
  15. ↑ "Russian Lawmakers Set to Debate Internet Blacklist". RIA Novosti. 6 July 2012. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
  16. ↑ "Забастовка Википедии на русском языке". 10 July 2012. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
  17. ↑ "Russian Wikipedia goes dark in protest at censor law". BBC News. 10 July 2012. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
  18. 1 2 "Wikipedia down in protest in Russia". Euronews. 10 July 2012. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
  19. ↑ "Николай Никифоров". Retrieved 25 March 2015.
  20. ↑ Доброхотов, Роман; Никита Лашук; Маргарита Белодедова (10 July 2012). Елена Мизулина: Википедия – прикрытие педофильского лобби (in Russian). Slon.ru. Retrieved 12 July 2012.
  21. ↑ "Russia May Block Wikipedia Access Over Narcotics Article". RIA Novosti. Retrieved 8 April 2013.
  22. ↑ "Russian media regulator confirms Wikipedia blacklisted". Russia Beyond the Headlines. 5 April 2013. Retrieved 8 April 2013.
  23. ↑ Andrew E. Kramer (31 March 2013). "Russians Selectively Blocking Internet". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 April 2013.
  24. ↑ Russia Cancels Short-Lived Wikipedia Ban, The Associated Press
Russian edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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