Dear all,

Today, the WikiFocus proposal was added as a perspective sister project. [http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_new_projects&c...]

The project already exists and is owned by Vladimir Medeyko, the director of Wikimedia.RU. This is a closed project, with invitations given only by Mr. Medeyko. The project, available in Russian and Ukrainian, has the stated purpose of describing Wikipedia and associated activities. In practice, most of the articles are about Russian Wikipedia participants and describe their activity in the project, with the collection of diffs, from the point of view of the circle supporting Mr. Medeyko. It has an excellent potential for outing (though outing is formally prohibited there) and is most likely illegal according to Russian laws.

Vladimir Medeyko has a highly ambiguous reputation in Russian Wikipedia, having his bureacrat flag removed by the community decision, being strongly admonished on several occasions by Arbitration Committee, and once being elected to serve on the Arbcom. Recently, ha has almost zero activity in Russian Wikipedia itself, but is extremely active on wikipedia-related closed communication channels. He has his established circle of supporters. I should also note that I believe he was one of the people who made my further participation in Russian Wikipedia impossible (I voluntarily gave the mop in in May 2011), and he knows this, therefore every criticism from my side he takes as harassment.

The event was apparently announced on Russian Wikipedia (which I am currently not a part of), which immediately caused a polarization, with strongly-worded supports and opposes,all by Russian speakers. I was already called troll on the talk page of the proposal by someone I, to the best of my knowledge, never intersected with on any WMF project.

I known that right now we have no official capabilities, but if the application could be reviewed as soon as possible and shut down the nomination, this could prevent some conflicts. I am obviously biased and already left my opinion, so that I can not do it, but any help would be appreciated.

Cheers Yaroslav