The Russian officials already long time talk about substitution of Wikipedia by its Russian analogue in Russia. Actually the Russian wikipedia is not supposed to be created like its famous analogue. The Russian president endorses digitisation of Russian soviet encyclopedia, in other words the new encyclopedia is to be created centralized by the authors under editor’s control and on account of Russian state.
The wikipedia is created by the independent authors, the idea of this encyclopedia is creating content for wikipedia by the people who knows the material he or she writes about. The Russian wikipedia analogue is to be created by the people who should know the material he or she writes about but making it for hiring. The Russian president has proposed to substitute the Wikipedia by The Great Soviet Encyclopedia in digital format. “That would be the truly authentic information provided in a modern and suitable form”, – he said.
After Putin’s words other officials started to endorse the substitution of wikipedia. For example, The deputy of Russian minister of communication, Alexey Volin, has advised the Russian students to avoid using the Wikipedia because it is unreliable source of information.
As reported the Russian news agency TASS, at the forum “The Territory of senses”. Volin said “don’t use the wikipedia, you can receive two”. Two actually means bad mark. In Russia there is five grades rating. The five means very good, the one means “it couldn’t be worse” and the two means “very bad”, the three means satisfactory – bad, but not so bad as two.
So the student has asked Volin what interesting any student could find on Wikipedia. The Volin said “don’t’ use it, you risk to get two”. He has also said that wikipedia contains a lot of unverified information. But the most interesting argument, what not to use this encyclopedia, was the thought that there is a “separate business, providing opportunity to write articles (for Wikipedia) by request of certain companies, and such articles are edited in essential manner. So there could be that what is authentic as well as absolutely inaccurate information”.
The words, spoken by the Russian president Putin and other officials, in support of substitution of wikipedia raised concerns about its availability in Russian segment of internet. If officials say that Russian analogue of wikipedia would be better than wikipedia itself, would it means that wikipedia will be blocked in Russia? The press-secretary of Russian president Dmitry Peskov has stated that there is no intention to block wikipedia in Russia, the aim to create Russian wikipedia is onyl desire to create reliable source of authentic information.
Peskov also stated that “Wikipedia is respected popular resource. And the president suggested that information in Wikipedia is not guaranteed by anyone. No one guarantee its correctness and authenticity. The president means that it is necessary to make available the guaranteed, in terms of authenticity, source of information.” Such guaranteed source of information, according to officials, is The Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
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