Apparantly, there is currently (2006-04-03) a major controversy underfoot in ru:, something about pages getting deleting, editors potentially getting sued, and the ensuing hue and cry over censorship. It's getting ugly over there.
I don't speak Russian, but if anybody would like to present an account of what's going on, I would be interested. Please feel free to edit this page directly, by the way.
What is to be the fate of Russian wikipedia? Will there be a revolution? An admin-reboot (everybody drops back down to user priviledges and the community organise snap elections for new admins)? Will people just start contributing to alternative projects, abandoning ru: altogether?
Policy discussions in Russian can appear somewhat strange from the western perspective because of the all-pervasive multi-layered irony -- elephantus (#wikipedia 2006-04-03 17:41)
A tale of escalating overreactions. I might be getting things wrong here. Please feel free to correct my account of things!
From http://popovvlad.livejournal.com/4001.html (2006-03-27 18:22:00)
A project that is born dead - Russian Wikipedia
Just like supposed my article about Russian republic is removed because of "advertisement style". Wikipedia in other languages develops successfully , but the Russian project is controlled by a company of die-hard censors, for whom any reference to a newly created developing project is "advertisement". In their opinion an encyclopedia is a museum of dead civilizations' artifact. Moreover, everybody's obsessed with cencsorship. Even if there is nothing to put in place of the article being deleted, the deletion takes place, although, it would be better no to leave an empty space. This strongly resembles Soviet censorship, you know. Maybe it is a conspiracy?
Judging from my experience, I would suppose that FSB has introduced its own censors for the project, since this organisation's members moderate the majority russian internet forum that have a slightest realtion to politics.
-- Translated by ru:Участник:Dmitri83
Note: this is not the vandal that's writing this.
From http://lj.rossia.org/users/tiphareth/718629.html.
Here people are discussing the fact that Russian Wikipedia is a totalitarist sect.
Well, maybe it is not a totalitarist sect, but this project is extremely pointless and stinking. Any person that has a little of self-respect won't deal with this shit, that's obvious.
Althoug the idea itself is good, as it can be seen from it's american analogue. It's just that Russian Wikipedia is ruled by dejected fascits, who are crazy about political censorship and deleteing other people's articels. As a matter of a fact, if this project could be destroyed in some way, that would be great -- ru.Wikipedia in its present state is completely useless, and it won't ever turn useful, if this band of freaks gone out of their minds because of their anal retentiveness is not destroyed.
By the way, the most enthusiastic one is a well know "literary organisator" dkuzmin@lj, who is crazy about deleting all kinds of unrecognized and amateur writers,
Here are some more posts with the same point of view.
And here is the position of wikifags (word play, in russian "pedia" sounds much like a word that means "fag"): http://alexvr.livejournal.com/67402.html
The posts ends with an appeal to "copy it to your blog", and this was done by many of the wikifags.
Hello
-- My comments are in italics. ru:Участник:Dmitri83
17:18 < kowey> any russian speakers here? (i'm not) i here there is some kind of admin war going on in ru 17:19 * kowey might be inflating accts of things 17:19 < bumm13> kowey: 'fraid not 17:19 < bumm13> we rarely have Russian speakers in here :( 17:20 < elephantus> What's the URL? 17:21 < bumm13> kowey: #wikipedia-ru might be able to help, but it doesn't appear that many people linger there :> 17:22 < kowey> thanks, bumm13 (kinda empty) 17:22 < bumm13> yeah 17:23 < kowey> elphantus: are you talking about the ru conflict? here is one link: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/??????????_?????????:Dj_shoo 17:23 < kowey> uh-oh 17:24 < elephantus> I'm reading about it in their forum 17:25 < kowey> elephantus: thanks, if you think it would be useful, maybe you could report to Greater Wikipedia about the controversy 17:30 < kowey> (if anybody else is interested in the russian admin war, feel free to edit my user page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kowey/Russian_admin_war ) 17:34 < elephantus> kowey: nothing much, apparently :-) 17:35 < kowey> elephantus: oh... ok, thanks 17:36 < elephantus> They've been dealing with their first patho-vandal, and apparently there have been some over-reactions, but didn't get the support of the community. 17:37 < kowey> apparantly, it's rippling through the russian livejournalosphere 17:38 < kowey> stop contributing to russian wikipedia! they're censoring! aggggghhh! 17:38 < bumm13> :P 17:39 < elephantus> lotsa perfectly reasonable admins there, like in most other places 17:39 < Dragonfly6-7> cowey - I believe this is a situation where the term "blogosphere" is actually useful 17:39 < kowey> (nb: russian livejournal is not the same as en livejournal, in ru, lj is serious stuff, not teeny-bopper land) 17:39 < kowey> anyway... 17:39 < fuzzie> en livejournal is relatively sane too, if you don't stereotype it 17:40 * kowey is somewhat relieved 17:40 * bumm13 stereotypes it 17:40 < kowey> fuzzie (ooops, sorry for the vast generalisation) 17:40 < fuzzie> bumm13: i'm meeeelting :( 17:40 < bumm13> there's ton of crap on en LJs 17:40 < bumm13> fuzzie: heh 17:40 < kowey> ru is apparantly very tight knit, and a massive chunk of the russian net-intelligentsia are there 17:41 < bumm13> interesting 17:41 < elephantus> Well, policy discussions in Russian can appear somewhat strange from the western perspective because of the all-pervasive multi-layered irony. 17:41 < kowey> like, apparantly, ru say "livejournal" for "blog" they way we say "kleenex" for "tissue paper" 17:41 < Dragonfly6-7> ah, I see 17:41 < shimgray> on en:, you use irony and someone gets upset 17:41 * ems pokes bumm13 17:41 < bumm13> on en: most anything causes someone to become upset :P 17:41 < mind|notallhere> bumm13 has it. :-P 17:42 < kowey> elephantus: i'm pasting that in my page :-) 17:42 < elephantus> kowey: apparently the chief vandal is also a livejournal writer 17:42 < elephantus> and is commenting on the affair in his livejournal 17:43 < kowey> he must have some kind of following 17:43 < elephantus> he apparently sees a sneaky vandalism of several hundred pages as some kind of prank 17:43 < Dragonfly6-7> It is. 17:43 < Dragonfly6-7> It's just not a very funny one. 17:44 < kowey> vandalism of the subtle change-a-number-in-a-date variety 17:44 < elephantus> yes 17:44 * Dragonfly6-7 winces 17:44 < Dragonfly6-7> block him. 17:44 < elephantus> they did that already 17:44 < elephantus> but one user (or admin) suggested intiating a judicial process 17:45 < elephantus> which was rejected by the others 17:46 < kowey> i also hear there is some random (possibly unconnected) stuff going on, like admins blocking each other, stuff like that? 17:57 < elephantus> They have many reasonable people there too 17:57 < bogdan> WTF happened to the Russians? 17:57 < Seqsea> Obviously the solution is WP hit squads 17:57 < Seqsea> "You vandalize our shit; we'll kill you. Literally." 17:57 < bogdan> Seqsea: the Russian Mafia, haha. 17:57 < bogdan> Seqsea: seriously, Russian mafia is *very* strong. 17:57 < James_F> Seqsea> Want to form the first Arbitration wet-team? 17:58 < ShakespeareFan00> Seqsea: Come on hit squads are to western... 17:58 < ShakespeareFan00> too 17:58 < elephantus> Apparently the whole thing is a product of an injured ego. 17:58 < ShakespeareFan00> You need to think in russian... 17:58 < shimgray> ru:Mafiacom, then... 17:58 < elephantus> One vanity article got deleted :-) 17:58 < kowey> guy writes article, admins nuke article, guy threatens vandalism 17:58 < Dragonfly6-7> Willy On Wires 17:58 < kowey> (doesn't actually do anything)
