activity around Wikimedia.ru - Wikimedia-l

25 May 2023

This story made some headlines in Russian-language media, and I guess it
could be of general interest here.

Vladimir Medeyko, who has been the president of Wikimedia.ru, the Russian
chapter of WMF, since its foundation in the 2000s, announced yesterday that
he is starting a Russian Wikipedia fork [1]. The media on the payroll of
the Russian government, which for a long time were saying that Wikipedia is
an anti-government and anti-Russian project and must be blocked in Russia,
supported the initiative, commenting that this is exactly the start of a
pro-government encyclopedia which would replace the Russian Wikipedia.

Wikimedia.ru, whose main (or even exclusive) activity was to raise money to
pay salaries to the functionaries including Mr. Medeyko was suddenly pissed
off and held a meeting yesterday. Before the meeting, Mr. Medeyko said he
does not see a problem with his actions, however, being in danger of
getting expelled from the chapter he resigned and quit the chapter.

The Russian Wikipedia community, which knew that Mr. Medeyko supported the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, and which was critical against his activity on
advocacy for his paid editor friends, was pissed off as well.[2] He first
responded that he has taken the only correct decision, and everybody else
eventually would understand why the decision was correct. However, later he
resigned his admin flag, was blocked indef, and now has an arbitration case
pending against him. The discussions are ongoing whether having a chapter
in Russia at all is now beneficial, however, the chapter was for many years
totally disconnected from the community anyway.

I could add my personal perspective, since on- and off-wiki activity of Mr.
Medeyko was one of the reasons why I stopped editing the Russian Wikipedia
in 2011, after having served two terms as an arbitrator, and never came
back, but I do not think this is important at the moment.

Best
Yaroslav

[1] https://habr.com/ru/companies/ruwiki/articles/737260/
[2]
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0…