I think Yaroslav was reasonably open about his conflict with Vladimir
Medeyko. I can appreciate that. Thanks also for the update with links, I
really appreciate it because it's hard to follow these stories/events if
you don't speak the language and don't even know where to start.
Kolya, thanks for the clarifications (I don't think they are contradictory
with Yaroslav's account on the recent events? But correct me if I missed
something), and I hope you'll keep filling in blanks if any appear.
What is not immediately clear to me: what is the status of the domain names
and the trademarks in Russia? If I do a lookup for wikipedia.ru it does not
seem to give a whole lot of information.
Best,
Lodewijk
On Thu, May 25, 2023 at 11:38 AM Коля Красный via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Sorry, Yaroslav, but while I mostly agree with facts
you’ve presented
here, I don’t think that your words are «non personal» since you’ve had
long-term personal conflict with Vladimir Medeyko and few other members of
Wikimedia RU. Your view on their activity can be your view, but saying that
their «main (or even exclusive) activity was to raise money to pay salaries
to the functionaries» publicly with no real backup of your words can be
considered as slander.
This situation is, of course, terrible, because while Vladimir
literally ruined Wikimedia RU with his actions (he was the only person
who’ve made financial reports and he was making it awfully bad that lead to
many consequences such as refusal of most sponsors to continue the
cooperation) and was always busy for personal contacts for weeks, he was
not working on WM RU problems, but was making his own project while few
other WM RU members was literally digging through a big pile of problems in
the organisation. Month ago I’ve had a long talk on this with Stas
Kozlovsky (who, AFAIK took the president’s place now) and have seen much of
success in overcoming most of concerns. I hope that under new leadership
chapter will resume it’s productive work despite the fact that it is one
leg in the foreign agents list.
Пятница, 26 мая 2023, 0:13 +06:00 от Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt(a)gmail.com>om>:
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…
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