User:Kowey/Russian admin war

Apparently, 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 privileges and the community organise snap elections for new admins)? Will people just start contributing to alternative projects, abandoning ru: altogether?

Thing to keep in mind

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 summary

A tale of escalating overreactions. I might be getting things wrong here. Please feel free to correct my account of things!

Random guy makes an ru vanity article about his gaming universe, flags, nations, etc
Admins nuke article
Random guy threatens subtle change-a-number-on-a-date vandalism on a massive scale (without actually acting on it)
Russian admins threaten to sue random guy (elephantus says that it was a joke, apparently)
Random guy posts a message on his live journal...
Before long, angry articles like the translated passage below (wikipedia censorship! aggghhh!) spread through the Russian livejournalosphere like wildfire, ru wikipedia takes a massive credibility hit

The wannabe vandal message

From http://5h00.livejournal.com/615900.html

Midnight. Everybody removes his mask

And now I am going to tell you what happened to Russian Wikipedia. Why I participated so actively in the conflict. What I did in it and how. What I want to gain from it. What my point of view is. And stuff.

So, it all started with the fact that Wikipedia is a Free Encyclopaedia. The freedom of the encyclopedia is understood in the english-speaking community so, that any fact can be freely covered by the enthusiasts (given their will and free time they have to invest). Before I first encountered the Russian segment of Wikipedia, I thought things are similar here, and that practically any wothy undertaking would be approved by the community. But no, sir, this is Russia. I was disappointed very quickly.

It all stared from that even small corrections to the text, aimed to improve readability, are not taken to kindly at all. For example, a caption "a meat-eating cat", that I have changed to "a cat eating meat" (the article is about cat nutrition, for example, saying that cats eat meat in general; there is a slight subtlety in meaning that is being fought over)

was rolled back four times, that almost convinced me that the caption look like this. But that's nothing. The real drama started when I started editing the article "Gelenzhik", which is maintained by a well-known webbastard (ru:User:Mithgol_the_Webmaster meant). Incorrigible mithgolisism, bureaucratic language... of course, all changes were rolled back! But little Mithgol bore ill-will, which served me later.

Next, prool and I wrote a small article "Virtustan" about a virtual kingdom. Yes, a humouristic project. Why not? The discussion was violent, and our webbastard was one of the most active participants. "Remove!", "Delete!", "Destroy!". It was removed, deleted and destroyed. And I kept in mind what robinbobin said:

here is the mirror of Russian Wikipedia, everything reflected in it.
Violation of the principle of the freedom of information. There is a fact: a virtual kingdom Virtustan. And it doesn't matter what impact on History and development of our civilisation it has. The fact exists. Somebody wrote an article about it in the Wikipedia. The article was niked. It like the situation in the anecdote: there is an ass, but there is no word for it. A have a question: can a psychotherapist find enough materials for his research using Wikipedia? or a journalist, who writes an article about jokes on the internet and memes? A student, who is searching for information on recognition of a state, an author of a quiz... There are a lot of people who would need this information. And now they'd better use google and yandex (russian search engine).
But no. The community decided that this information is not interesting for us. I would understand if it would be a paper encyclopedia, where you have to save the space. But even then I don't believe that 1 kilobyte matters, in that case you just don't trust the encyclopedia. You start thinking that most likely they removed other materials too. Go publish the Big Soviet Encylopedia as a pocketbook, noone is going to use it.
Of course, the article was deleted because it was not interesting for editors. And who are those people? It is Mithgol! A unique internet idiot, which is famous for preventively banning several thousands of users (on livejournal) just because they listed another user (apazhe) in their friends list.
Can you trust the information that is maintained by people with such filters in their heads?
And how do you determine what is not yet censored by them?

So, I retained that and stared to plan my actions. Not out of vengeance, I don't have this feeling when nothing deeply personal is concerned. But because of the feeling that if the Net will belong to such lame-brains, the lame-brains will prevail. Lame-brains are characterized by a big ass but a small head, and it looks like they continuously fail to use it for thinking. So, I started thinking. And I found a nice way to show the Wikipedia presidence the real fact of those who they have put to manage the russian segment of the project.

And so, the information bomb. The legend is that I modify Wikipedia during three months, I change dates, numbers, facts, personalia. The first to buy this was Mithgol, and it was he who notified all his collegues in Wikipedia. Naturaly, they could easily convince themselves, that there some changes, incorrect numbers and everything. I repeat, I did not change ANYTHING in Wikpedia. I pour more oil in flames and make the administrators show their real faces. And they did.

They started threatening me with a physical punishment. (Article 119 of the Penal Code of Russian Federation)
They threatened to sue me. (Wikipedia rules forbid to sue people).
They wanted to get money by sueing me (Wikipeida rules forbid to do this too)
They started to gather my personal data on the discussion page of the user page (Although this information was partly incorrect. Anonimity is one of the of the project)

You can see it here.

This is only four violations, but there are more, if you think about it. But four is enought for me.

I've just sent an official message to Wiki Foundation (in English, of course), with explaination of the situation that takes place in the russian segment of Wikipedia, with concrete names and their "contribution". Probaly nothing will change, but I will cross my fingers and hope, that all loudmouths, fighters, suers and and correspondence boxers will get what they deserve (much stronger expressionis in Russian, intranslatable)

I may achieve nothing in my aspiration, but I will have an unclouded conscience, because at least I tried to do this. Maybe my approach was not honest, maybe it was a gigantic provocation, but I tried.

Thank you, that is all.

-- Translated by ru:User:Dmitri83

The (dark) irony of the author was very hard to convey, but I did my best. ru:User:Dmitri83

The Russian blogosphere react

Russian wikipedia - a stillborn project

From http://popovvlad.livejournal.com/4001.html (2006-03-27 18:22:00)

Just as I 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.

Wikipedia is a totalitarist sect

From http://lj.rossia.org/users/tiphareth/718629.html (2006-03-27 01:28:00).

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.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

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

IRC discussion log

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)

Relevant links

ru:Обсуждение_участника:Dj_shoo
ru:Википедия:Вниманию участников
Talk:Empire_of_Atlantium - a page similar to "Virtustan" in English wikipedia.