Hello,
I cannot say much about the specific case, but in general: in small countries it is not unusual that there is only one national encyclopedia, and that it is directly or indirectly published or supported by the government or an institution close to the government.
A good example is the Store Norske from Norway. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/2.1719/kein-geld-fuer-lexika-w...
So it is not necessary to think immediately and exclusively about the Soviet Union.
Kind regards Ziko
2016-03-02 21:11 GMT+01:00 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
On 2016-03-02 20:58, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
Now, why are we bestowing Wikipedian of the Year honours on government employees of repressive regimes? If we had the US Secretary of Defense writing Wikipedia articles about the US Army, or had employees of the German government running Wikimedia Deutschland, I'm sure there'd be an outcry, even though those are countries with quite favourable records on human rights, press freedom and so on. The idea of an award would not even arise.
Susanna is (or was) a researcher, and every researcher in Armenia is a state employee. There are just no non-governmental organizations who employ researchers.
I do think there is a problem with a potential Armenian board member (that is, Turkish and Azeri Wikimedians would basically consider board as not legitimate), but I do not think the fact that she is or was employed by the Academy of Sciences is in any way problematic.
Cheers Yaroslav
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