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 @[email protected]

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.

  • otogiri46@programming.devOPEnglish
    46·
    8 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·
      8 months ago

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

      • otogiri46@programming.devOPEnglish
        1·
        8 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.