[Foundation-l] Siberian Wikipedia once again

[Johannes Rohr]

Hi there,

the proposal to close the Siberian/Northern Russian Wikipedia edition
has now been discussed for almost half a year. While I understand that
no member of the board will be keen to get involved into this ongoing
row, I feel that some sort of action would be needed.

Personally, I don't have a firm opinion on whether or not this edition
should be closed or should be allowed to continue (I am, however,
quite convinced, that Yaroslav Zolotarev's "Siberian language" is a
non-notable conlang, rather than an authentic representation of
Northern Russian dialects, but that's a side issue for the moment)

However, after peaking into some of the texts available at ru-sib, I
do understand that many from the Russian-speaking wikipedia community
are seriously offended. There are some pages, which can with some
legitimacy be classified as hate-speech, including e.g.

"moskal'ska svoloch' " (an approximate translation would be "Muscovite
scum" or "Muscovite swines", whereas "moskali" is a derogative term
for "Russians")

http://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%87

and "moskal'ski vybliadki"

http://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B1%D0%BB%D1%8F%D0%B4%D0%BA%D0%B8

The former has been around since June 2006, the latter has been added
only in March. Both pages are write-protected and, as I wrote, their
content is fairly offensive against Russian.

While I understand that the BoT is not in a position to micromanage or
censor content in individual language editions and that this would be
virtually impossible given the language barrier, I do see some
increasing urgency in addressing this matter. This would not
necessarily mean that the whole edition would have to be closed, but
still, I feel, that someone from the board could and should kindly
approach Mr. Zolotaryov and ask him to take down at least the more 
tasteless of his pages. 

Thanks,

Johannes

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http://www.infoe.de/