Russian Wikipedia

The Russian Wikipedia () is the Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of , it has . It was started on 11 May 2001. In October 2015 it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of articles. It has the fifth-largest number of edits (). In June 2020, it was the world's 6th most visited language Wikipedia after the English Wikipedia, the Japanese Wikipedia, the Spanish Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia and the French Wikipedia.
It is the largest Wikipedia written in any Slavic language, surpassing its nearest rival, the Polish Wikipedia, eightfold by the parameter of . In addition, the Russian Wikipedia is the largest Wikipedia written in Cyrillic 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 , which handles content disputes, blocks users or prohibits certain users from editing articles on certain topics.
Administrators (currently ) 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.
Content.
As of 1 June 2012, some of the biggest categories (which contain more than 5,000 articles) in the Russian Wikipedia are:
10,340 articles contain material from the "Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary". More than 47,000 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 and "Arbitration" (# 106–107) – for requests.
User pages.
On user pages, users are able to see their "outreach", the cumulative view count of pages they have edited.
Criticism.
In 2015, , 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.
History.
Early years.
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 first edit of the Russian Wikipedia was on 24 May 2001, and consisted of the line (""Russia is a great nation"). The following edit changed it to the joke: ("Russia is the motherland of elephants (big-eared, improved cross-country capability, see Mammoth."")
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 the Russian Wikipedia won the "Science and education" category of the "Runet Prize" () award, supervised by the Russian government agency FAPMC.
Troubles with the government.
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".
Supporters of the amendment stated that it is aimed only at widely prohibited content such as child pornography and similar information, but the Russian 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. 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.
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. 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".
Also, since 2012, Russian foreign agent law resulted in reduced funding available for the Russian Wikipedia and its volunteers, who no longer can receive financial aid from abroad, including their share of funds raised through global Wikipedia fundraisers.
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. On 31 March 2013, "The New York Times" reported that Russia was 'Selectively Blocking [the] Internet', though Wikipedia itself was not blocked at that time.
Articles on Russian Wikipedia, and also on other Wikipedia versions, concerning the flight MH17 down-shoot and the 2014 Ukraine conflict have been targeted by Internet propaganda outlets associated with the Russian government. Some of the edits were spotted by a Twitter bot which monitors Wikipedia edits made from Russian government IP addresses.
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.
In November 2019, Russian president Vladimir Putin called for a government-run alternative to Wikipedia. "The Guardian" reported state funds had already been allocated according to official documents published the previous September. The new electronic alternative was intended to be based on the "Great Russian Encyclopedia". According to the London "Times", the proposal had been abandoned by mid-May 2020, however, according to "Great Russian Encyclopedia" employee Yekaterina Chukovskaya, only the working group was disbanded and work on the project as a whole will continue.