Hello Yaroslav,
Let me get this straight: there's no links between the Russian Wikipedia
community and the chapter, but you left the Community because of your
conflict with the Director of the chapter?
I disagree that the chapter is useless. Yes, it was always used by Medeyko
for personal gains, but the current director, Stas Kozlovsky did a lot of
advocacy for free knowledge in the Russian Parliament, Duma. I believe it's
one of the main reasons why Wikipedia is not blocked in Russia yet.
He also promoted Wikipedia among universities students.
The chapter supports communities of the "small languages" projects,
organises conferences (disclosure: I was a keynote speaker on the last
annual conference), etc
I think that only people who actually live in Russia can estimate the
chapter impact, and we should not forget the usual tension between the
online and offline parts of the Movement. I'm an online person, so it took
me a while to get what useful things offline people are doing instead of
writing articles.
Kind regards,
Victoria, Russian Wikipedia editor since 2006
On Fri, May 26, 2023, 02:02 effe iets anders <effeietsanders@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I think Yaroslav was reasonably open about his conflict with Vladimir
> Medeyko. I can appreciate that. Thanks also for the update with links, I
> really appreciate it because it's hard to follow these stories/events if
> you don't speak the language and don't even know where to start.
>
> Kolya, thanks for the clarifications (I don't think they are contradictory
> with Yaroslav's account on the recent events? But correct me if I missed
> something), and I hope you'll keep filling in blanks if any appear.
>
> What is not immediately clear to me: what is the status of the domain
> names and the trademarks in Russia? If I do a lookup for wikipedia.ru it
> does not seem to give a whole lot of information.
>
> Best,
> Lodewijk
>
> On Thu, May 25, 2023 at 11:38?AM ???? ??????? via Wikimedia-l <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> 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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>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
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>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>> <http:///compose?To=wikimedia%2dl%2dleave@lists.wikimedia.org>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> ? ?????????, ???????.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
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>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/YXT6V3ABXCXDTS5FHSJJ6XNQIXF7ZZN7/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Let me get this straight: there's no links between the Russian Wikipedia
community and the chapter, but you left the Community because of your
conflict with the Director of the chapter?
I disagree that the chapter is useless. Yes, it was always used by Medeyko
for personal gains, but the current director, Stas Kozlovsky did a lot of
advocacy for free knowledge in the Russian Parliament, Duma. I believe it's
one of the main reasons why Wikipedia is not blocked in Russia yet.
He also promoted Wikipedia among universities students.
The chapter supports communities of the "small languages" projects,
organises conferences (disclosure: I was a keynote speaker on the last
annual conference), etc
I think that only people who actually live in Russia can estimate the
chapter impact, and we should not forget the usual tension between the
online and offline parts of the Movement. I'm an online person, so it took
me a while to get what useful things offline people are doing instead of
writing articles.
Kind regards,
Victoria, Russian Wikipedia editor since 2006
On Fri, May 26, 2023, 02:02 effe iets anders <effeietsanders@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I think Yaroslav was reasonably open about his conflict with Vladimir
> Medeyko. I can appreciate that. Thanks also for the update with links, I
> really appreciate it because it's hard to follow these stories/events if
> you don't speak the language and don't even know where to start.
>
> Kolya, thanks for the clarifications (I don't think they are contradictory
> with Yaroslav's account on the recent events? But correct me if I missed
> something), and I hope you'll keep filling in blanks if any appear.
>
> What is not immediately clear to me: what is the status of the domain
> names and the trademarks in Russia? If I do a lookup for wikipedia.ru it
> does not seem to give a whole lot of information.
>
> Best,
> Lodewijk
>
> On Thu, May 25, 2023 at 11:38?AM ???? ??????? via Wikimedia-l <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/7D2BB3TNJL5KLIGI5T235P35CSJSTA4U/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>> <http:///compose?To=wikimedia%2dl%2dleave@lists.wikimedia.org>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> ? ?????????, ???????.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/JJP6WTFCTG63BVAQWNTUEABODPXJTPWM/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/YXT6V3ABXCXDTS5FHSJJ6XNQIXF7ZZN7/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org