Russia Clones Wikipedia, Censors It, Bans Original
www.404media.co
Ruviki is intended to be a more “trustworthy” source of information for Russians by editing out anything that makes the Russian government look bad.

What the hell?

Edit - Quoting @Allero@lemmy.today

Wikipedia is not currently banned in Russia. But the Russian branch of Wikimedia as an organization is. Also, pretty much nobody in Russia uses Ruwiki, everyone keeps using Wikipedia.

That’s all not to say it isn’t a troubling development, though. But Russians are more likely to access Wikipedia through VPN than to rely on Ruwiki. The game’s not lost.

  • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1063·
    2 months ago

    Doesn’t seem to be banned by my ISP.

    Anyway, Russian Wikipedia clones to steal budget money are old news.

    There even is such a meme as “encyclong”, that’s what the Wikipedia article for vikings turned into after one such cloning with replacing wiki- (no difference between V and W in Russian) with encyclo- .

    • otogiri46@programming.devOPEnglish
      46·
      2 months ago

      Really? Good to hear it’s just an ineffective censorship attempt then.

      There even is such a meme as “encyclong”, that’s what the Wikipedia article for vikings turned into after one such cloning with replacing wiki- (no difference between V and W in Russian) with encyclo- .

      Damn that’s funny.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
        5·
        2 months ago

        I don’t think there was an attempt, “bans original” is a hallucination by the author.

        • otogiri46@programming.devOPEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          Reading the article it sounds like they’re trying

          Real Russian Wikipedia editors used to refer to the real Wikipedia as Ruwiki; the new one is called Ruviki, has “ruwiki” in its url

          Or at least this part does.

          edit - Oh damn. Sorry, I misread your comment.