WMF vs. Russia

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WMF vs. Russia

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Jun 21, 2022 9:06 pm

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/17/wik ... f-ukraine/
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/20 ... f-ukraine/
It’s easy to be cynical here and to suggest this is a waste of time, because there’s no way a Russian court will rule against the censorial demands of Putin’s government. But, to some extent here I find it shows the kind of character that the Wikimedia Foundation has — to default to assuming good faith and exhausting all officials avenues before going further.
Side note: I and other people have tried to tell Mr. Masnick (who edited his own Wikipedia biography) the bare-assed truth about the WMF and its hypocritical "assuming good faith" nonsense. He ignored it all.

It's difficult to find other media coverage of this story. This is the only item on RT.
https://www.rt.com/russia/554545-court- ... e-ukraine/

And there is now an indignant Wikipedia article. Like Daniel Brandt or Greg Kohs, they use their "neutral and reliable" wiki to openly piss on people and institutions they don't like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_ ... _in_Russia

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Re: WMF vs. Russia

Post by Daniel Brandt » Wed Jun 22, 2022 2:50 pm

I wonder if Helen Buyniski would be interested in this topic? She is well-positioned to interview Russian sources if she wanted to pursue this, and she already knows a lot about Wikipedia.

But then I realized that SlimVirgin's ghost might start a BLP (Biography of a Living Person) on Buyniski. Although I believe that Buyniski could hold her own if that happened, I still wouldn't wish it on anybody.

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Re: WMF vs. Russia

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Jun 22, 2022 7:48 pm

Daniel Brandt wrote:
Wed Jun 22, 2022 2:50 pm
But then I realized that SlimVirgin's ghost might start a BLP (Biography of a Living Person) on Buyniski.
Given the current deletionist attitudes on WP, the chances of that are very small.

If you can get Helens' attention, run it by her. I've been trying--no response.

You might also tell her I can send her gigabytes of dirt about Wikipedia's internal operations.

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Re: WMF vs. Russia

Post by Daniel Brandt » Sat Jul 02, 2022 9:05 pm

I think Russia should block Wikipedia; now they have a perfect excuse. Screw the appeal by Wikipedia. It's not like anyone will notice if Russia blocks Wikipedia (if Joe Biden notices, it will be a laughing matter at this point).

Ever since SlimVirgin started that Wikipedia bio on me, I've felt that Wikipedia deserves to be blocked. I'm just a little guy, and it took years to get my bio deleted. Take note, Russia. You don't need this sort of frustration.

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Re: WMF vs. Russia

Post by ericbarbour » Sat Jul 02, 2022 9:12 pm

for comparison, here are the book-wiki notes on ru-WP. Banning it in Russia has been considered for years. Think the Cold War ended in 1992? Not quite. Also note that we don't even mention the brutal Ukraine/Russian editwars here. That's ANOTHER textbook full of crap.
Thanks primarily to the slow penetration of broadband into Russia, the Russian Wikipedia is one of the few whose editing participation is still growing as of 2017, albeit slowly. Ru-WP is said to suffer from considerable nationalism and bias against other countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to many accounts. The ru-wiki articles dealing with Caucasus countries such as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russian districts in the area, such as Chechnya and Dagestan, are said to be "extremely hostile and racist".

Per Radekz[12]: "One source of info for stuff going on Russian Wikipedia would be this (wikireality.ru). It's in Russian but if you slap individual articles into google translate you can get the jist of things. Of course this 'source' itself is pretty biased, it's basically a bit like ED-lite for people who care about Russian Wikipedia, it's where banned users go to attack (and I mean really attack not just criticize) others etc. So got to be careful. The stuff on the Russian Arbitration committee is interesting, and in particular the story of one of their Arbitrators (whose user name I forgot but will look up again) who had a rapid rise to power and as a result became the butt of many jokes on and off that Wiki."

On 10 July 2012, ru-WP was shut down as a protest against a new proposed law in the Duma, which would have severely censored websites. Press coverage:[13][14][15][16] WPocracy thread[17] The law passed, in spite of the Russian Wikipedia protest. One side-result was a very long thread on wikimedia-l, full of argumentation by English Wikipedia and WMF personnel, and no one from ru-WP. It degenerated into an argument over the SOPA blackout.

Ru-WP suffers from COI, paid editing, and editor abuse, just as the other Wikipedias do.[18][19]

A silly attempt to build another Russian online encyclopedia in November 2014 was widely reported in the media. [20][21][22] "Over the weekend, the Russian Presidential Library denounced the online database Wikipedia for being “unable to provide reliable and detailed information about Russian regions.” The library’s solution is to create a new web source that gives, in its opinion, more objective detail on life in Russia. This site is being dubbed an “alternative” to Wikipedia by the library. More than 50,000 books and documents from 27 regional libraries across Russia have been collected as resources for the website. "

As the political situation in Eastern Europe declined and the Russian government became more aggressive, the number of attempts to forcibly censor ru-WP became more frequent. An attempt to remove the "Heroin" article in late 2014 was reported. [23][24][25]

In January 2015, TASS and the Moscow Times reported this: "The deputy head of Russia's education watchdog said Thursday that Wikipedia should be banned, the TASS news agency reported. "Wikipedia does not help, but only harms education," TASS cited Alexander Biserov, deputy head of Rosobrnadzor, as saying. The official complained that the free online encyclopedia is riddled with factual errors, and concluded "I would ban it, I would simply censor it." A Rosobrnadzor spokesperson said later Thursday that the official's words were meant to be a joke and should not be taken seriously, Russian News Service reported. Wikipedia has previously changed the content of articles relating to drugs and suicide after they were blacklisted by Russia's media and communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor." The TASS article later disappeared.

Not surprisingly, Russian government people have edited ru-WP. For example: a 2017 media report claimed that "Like many high-ranking government officials, Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee, has a verified account on the social media network Vkontakte, where photos from state ceremonies are shared, along with posts about various aspects of life as one of Russia’s top cops: meeting celebrities, attending important meetings, congratulating famous public figures on things, and celebrating different holidays. It’s all very official, but Meduza has learned that Alexander Bastrykin also has a surprisingly personal presence on social media, where Russia’s Investigative Committee chief composes poetry about love and about Alexey Navalny, posting as a Polish poet named Stanislav Strunevsky. Bastrykin also manages another unverified Vkontakte account in his own name, and he apparently closely edits his own Wikipedia page.". Also not surprisingly, Bastrykin's poetry is far from being "world class". [26] There is an article about him on English Wikipedia, which is not very flattering -- it mentions death threats and corruption. As of 2017 he was banned from traveling to the United States or having any financial transactions within the US.

See also: EEML/Digwuren battle

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Re: WMF vs. Russia

Post by Daniel Brandt » Wed Jul 20, 2022 1:50 pm

https://www.rt.com/russia/559314-wikipe ... -law-fake/

20 Jul, 2022 13:19

Wikipedia designated as lawbreaker

Russia wants its search engines to inform users that the platform promotes false information about the Ukraine conflict.

Russia's state media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has obliged search engines to label Wikipedia as being in violation of the law, saying that the online encyclopedia promotes misleading information about the conflict in Ukraine.

The watchdog said on Wednesday that it would take steps to punish Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., which hosts Wikipedia, due to its failure to delete content deemed in violation of Russian law.
...

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Re: WMF vs. Russia

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Jul 20, 2022 7:16 pm

Meanwhile, this started to hit the media last month. Because it happened mostly on zh-WP, the bastards on en-WP failed to notice it, until it was shoved in their faces. EVEN AFTER SOME OF HER PHONY ARTICLES WERE TRANSLATED AND PUT ON EN-WP. And: she's been doing it since 2010 using multiple sockpuppets. Wiki-History repeats itself over and over. At least this time, it's unlikely the Russian government was paying her under the table, because a lot of the "Russian history" she made up was unpleasant stuff.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkgbwm/ ... -wikipedia
https://www.engadget.com/chinese-wikipe ... 01604.html
https://lithub.com/a-chinese-borges-wro ... -a-decade/

And how many times have we seen complicated hoax articles like this? It is ROUTINE. I gave up keeping track 10 years ago. And yet, it still comes as a "shock" to "journalists". Also: here we go again with the "VERIFIABILITY NOT TRUTH" crap. SlimVirgin's shrieking ghost continues to pester us.

Meanwhile the Russia story spreads. Complete with a 5 million ruble 'fine', which will never be paid. Unless they talk their idiot fans into digging into their pockets a little deeper. Is Wikipedia going to become a "political football", as in "poor Wikipedia, blocked by those pesky Russkis, we should punish them and bomb them" or something similar? Or will it all remain a pathetic joke? One hopes for the pathetic joke. No one should die in a war over a half-baked "reference" website.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ru ... 022-07-20/

Just another little reminder
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2434

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Re: WMF vs. Russia

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Jul 20, 2022 8:56 pm

After looking thru wikireality.ru for a while, I wonder if it is being "screwed down", probably by Roskomnadzor. The whole thing is now controlled by an "absolute ruler" called "John Locke". Any jokes about Russian politics or the Putin regime have "mysteriously disappeared". The Putin article itself is rather bland, especially for a "satirical" wiki. All it does is blather about him "not having time" to read anything on the internet.

If you don't believe me, try translating their Ukraine articles.
http://wikireality.ru/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BA ... 0%BD%D0%B0

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Re: WMF vs. Russia

Post by Daniel Brandt » Thu Jul 28, 2022 6:04 pm

https://www.rt.com/news/559760-russia-f ... -snapchat/

Wikipedia isn't mentioned in this article, but it gives you an idea of what Russian officials are thinking as they try to collect fines against other social media platforms.

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