Ruwiki (Wikipedia fork)

Ruwiki (Рувики) is a Russian online encyclopedia. It was launched in June 24, 2023 as a fork of the Russian Wikipedia, and has been described by media as "Putin-friendly" and "Kremlin-compliant". A full-scale launch took place on 15 January 2024.

The project is led by Vladimir Medeyko, who was formerly involved with the Russian Wikipedia project and a director of Wikimedia Russia. Medeyko reportedly created the project as an alternative to the Russian Wikipedia, which would be more friendly to the Russian government.

The words "рувики" and its English version, "ruwiki", have long been used to refer to Russian Wikipedia among Wikipedians.

History
On 24 May 2023, long-time Wikimedia Russia director Vladimir Medeyko announced Ruwiki as a Russian fork of Wikipedia on the Russian technology website Habr. The Russian politician Anton Gorelkin stated that the new "ruviki" website would be hosted on Russian servers and managed by a Russian organization. Medeyko has stated that Ruwiki will follow Russian laws, but is independent of the Russian government.

Russian Wikipedia contributors were shocked that Medeyko left the project he had been involved in since 2003, and were even more stunned when he said that his reason for leaving was to create a competitor to Wikipedia for the benefit of the government of Russia. The project's name, Ruwiki, is widely used by contributors to Russian Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects to refer to Russian Wikipedia itself, which has drawn criticism from Wikipedians.

In late May 2023, Stanislav Kozlovsky, then executive director of Wikimedia RU, stated that "anyone can take Wikipedia content and use it, it's perfectly normal. It's not normal to use the authority of the director of Wikimedia RU for this purpose and to do it in secret for several years".

On August 21, 2023, without further announcement, user registration was opened for everyone on Ruwiki.

At the end of November 2023, five new editions of Ruwiki were added: Bashkir, Mari, Sakha, Tatar and Chechen.

In December 2023, Ruwiki signed a long-term cooperation agreement with the Museum of Moscow.

On December 28, 2023, six new editions of Ruwiki were added: Altai, Tuvan, Mokshan, Udmurt, Chuvash and Erzyan.

In April 2024, Ruwiki launched new editions in Buryat, Veps, Ingush, Kalmyk, Komi, Permian Komi, Livvian-Karelian and Khakas languages with a total number of articles in the new sections exceeding 29 thousand, the website interface was improved and portals with materials for preparation for the Unified State Exam and Basic State Exam were launched.

Content and editorial policy
Ruwiki was created by copying all 1.9 million articles from the Russian Wikipedia, as well as several media components from Wikimedia Commons, and data items from Wikidata. However, articles containing content contrary to the Russian government's official line have been removed. Removals of content considered "anti-Russian propaganda" include coverage of the Russo-Ukraine War, the Wagner rebellion, and criticism of Vladimir Putin.

In mid-July 2023, Ruwiki was not yet editable by third parties. Medeyko had stated that he plans to allow public editing to resume, but that content will be vetted by panels of experts. , Ruwiki was available to edit by all registered accounts. Analysis from the independent Russian media outlet Mediazona shows that the majority of Ruwiki edits take place during weekday work hours. Mediazona deduces that teams of paid writers are responsible for Ruwiki’s editorial activity, which contrasts with Wikipedia’s volunteer model.

Finances
There is no reliable data on the source of funding for Ruwiki. Vladimir Medeyko reports the presence of private investors, but does not disclose them, indicating that there is a corresponding agreement with investors. According to Vladimir Medeyko, the project receives money from wealthy investors with whom he is pleased to cooperate, who understand Ruwiki's tasks and share the project's goals. Edits made by several administrators in the article about Naila Asker-Zadeh, as well as some other facts indicate a possible connection between Ruwiki and VTB Bank. The money was presumably allocated with the expectation of the future commercial success of the project: if the site becomes popular, it will be possible to earn money through ads. Vladimir Medeyko notes that investors expect to make a profit, but they are very interested in what is realized in Ruwiki - free content, access to knowledge for everyone.

Ruwiki has launched an active advertising campaign: It purchases advertising from popular bloggers (e.g., Alexander Pushny, on the channel "Cosmos Just" ), since spring 2024 it has been advertised on numerous street banners in 19 Russian cities (including Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk), and one of the trains of the Sokolnicheskaya line of the Moscow Metro was decorated for 6 months as a themed "Ruwiki's Cognitive Train". Also in support of outdoor advertising, similarly styled banners were developed for demonstration on digital platforms. Interesting facts appeared on the homepage of Yandex, on the websites of Lenta.ru, Gismeteo, Afisha and others.

Public launch
In January 2024, it was reported that Ruwiki would enter full public service on Monday, 15 January. Ruwiki confirmed the statements shortly thereafter, announcing the "end of beta testing on January 15, 2024".

Similar projects
There were other Russian encyclopedic projects advertised as an alternative to Wikipedia: an online portal to Great Russian Encyclopedia and a wiki (Znanie.wiki) by the Znanie Society ("Knowledge Society"), inherited from the Soviet times.

Censorship
According to Medeyko, Ruwiki is supposed to comply with both Russian legislation and the principle of presentation from a neutral point of view. It is claimed that the project does not have censorship, and the content can be devoted to any topic, as long as it does not violate the legislation of the Russian Federation. However, in the Internet community, the creation of Ruwiki was perceived as a "censored analogue of Wikipedia". It is noted that the essence of the Ruwiki concept is manifested in articles devoted to modern politics (primarily Russia's foreign policy). At the same time, the emphasis is shifted in the opposite direction from the Wikipedia articles.

When Ruwiki was created, articles on topics that were banned by the Russian authorities, such as the massacre in Bucha and the Ukrainian chant "Putin khuylo!", were removed from the list of articles taken from the Russian Wikipedia; as of July 2023, they are not there. The Ruwiki article about the Wagner PMC does not mention the June mutiny, and the article about Russia's invasion of Ukraine does not use the word "invasion", instead using the expression "military operation." In January 2024, Vyorstka journalists who studied an array of articles on Ruwiki found references to the Russian occupation of Ukrainian cities, the disputed status of Crimea, and links to sources recognized in Russia as "foreign agents" and "undesirable organizations" in Russia. Just a few hours after the article was published, all references to the occupation of Ukrainian territories and disputed Crimea were removed from Ruwiki's articles in the publication. The drafts of two articles with the titles "Torture, castration and murder of a prisoner of war in the Privolye sanatorium" and Putin's Palace were deleted by the administrators, one of whom had previously edited the article about the journalist Naila Asker-Zade, removing the word "propaganda" from the text and the mention of Asker-Zade's illegitimate partner, the head of VTB Andrei Kostin.

Ruwiki also cleaned up an article about the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by the British writer George Orwell, the plot of which many observers compared to what is happening in Putin's Russia. For example, the description of the Ministry of Truth was removed from the article: "The Ministry of Truth ("mini-rights"), the place of work of the protagonist of the novel, is engaged in the continuous falsification of various historical information (statistical data, historical facts) at all levels of informing the population: in the media, books, education, art, sports. Even in chess: for example, at the end of the novel, Winston solves a chess study from a book where impossible moves are indicated. The article "A321 crash landing near Zhukovsky", which described the incident with the landing of a civilian aircraft in a cornfield in 2019, after which Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded the crew medals was also censored. However, Ruwiki removed criticism of the aircraft crew's actions by aviation experts. In the article about Yevgeny Prigozhin, among other things, information about Prigozhin's recruitment of Russian prisoners for the war with Ukraine was deleted.

The articles "human rights in Russia," "freedom of speech in Russia," "censorship in Russia," and "political prisoner" have been greatly reduced.

At some point in April 2024, tracking edits was difficult: the functionality that allows comparing two arbitrary versions of an article was excluded from the edit history.