User:Викидим/Runiversalis
Pro-Russian online encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Runiversalis (/ruːnɪˈvɜːrsəlɪs/[3] roo-ni-VER-sə-lis; Russian: Руниверсалис, IPA: [rʊnʲɪvʲɪrˈsalʲɪs]), abbreviated as Runi (Russian: Руни, IPA: [ˈrunʲɪ]), is a Russian online encyclopedia forked from the Russian Wikipedia, launched on June 9, 2022. Some sources explain its articles are written with a pronounced pro-Russian-government view of world events.[4][5][6][7] Its creators claim to be former contributors to the Russian Wikipedia.[3] Nevertheless, the Wikimedia Foundation has distanced itself from Runiversalis and its editors.[8] The project is headed by Pavel Frolov and does not accept money from either governments or corporations.[2]
This site makes no mention of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, instead referring to it as a "special military operation".[9]
Characteristics
Runiversalis' manifesto states that the project's servers are located in Russia, and the pages are edited "in accordance with the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation and with respect for traditional values."[5][10][11][12][13] Runiversalis is based on MediaWiki, the same software that is used for Wikipedia.
Runiversalis' administrator team includes two former Russian Wikipedia administrators, arbiters and mediators in articles about Ukrainian conflict, who were engaged in pro-Kremlin propaganda while they had positions on Wikipedia.[14]
Since the end of August 2022, to make any edits in the encyclopedia, registration is required and must be confirmed by sysops.[15] According to the Runiversalis project website, as of April 2023 it can be done by writing a message to their Telegram bot, to their VK page, sending them an e-mail,[16] or by invitation.[17] As of mid-2023, Runiversalis had more than 200 active editors.[18]
Unlike WIkipedia, Runiversalis has an institute of experts. Experts are allowed to attach a hyperlink to their own page to any article where they are a principal author. They are also permitted to create their own articles under full control, in their own namespace.[19]
Runiversalis format allows users to publish personal (signed) reviews of articles.[19]
Statistics
In August 2022, two months after the project has been created, it had only 9000 articles, a tiny subset of the 1.85 million articles on the Russian Wikipedia.[20] As of June 2023, Runiversalis has more than 3 million articles, most of them copied (unmodified or edited) from the Russian Wikipedia and Wikidictionary.[21] There is a small corpus of original articles, about 8000,[2] some of them had been copied into Wikipedia.[22][18]
According to their own page, its milestones were as follows:[23]
- August 23, 2022: 9000 articles
- September 11, 2022: 100,000 articles
- October 23, 2022: 500,000 articles
- November 26, 2022: 1,000,000 articles
- February 3, 2023: 1,500,000 articles
- mid-2023: 2 million[24]
Reception
On August 23, 2022, the media drew attention to the project when some Telegram channels, including those of State Duma deputy Anton Gorelkin, reported on the Russian Internet encyclopedia.[5][25] By 2024, the Russian government apparently switched to promotion of Ruwiki, another Wikipedia fork.[26]
Cyber attacks
On 23 August 2022, the website stopped working due to a suspected DDoS attack, with readers getting a 403 error when they tried to navigate to a page on the site.[27] The site returned a few days later.[15]