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.
>???????, 26 ??? 2023, 0:13 +06:00 ?? Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt@gmail.com>:
>
>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%B8%D1%8F:%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83%D0%BC/%D0%9D%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8#%D0%A0%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%BE%D1%82_%D0%92%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B0_%D0%9C%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%B9%D0%BA%D0%BE
>
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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.
>???????, 26 ??? 2023, 0:13 +06:00 ?? Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt@gmail.com>:
>
>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%B8%D1%8F:%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83%D0%BC/%D0%9D%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8#%D0%A0%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%BE%D1%82_%D0%92%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B0_%D0%9C%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%B9%D0%BA%D0%BE
>
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