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Russian Wikipedia

Screenshot  The homepage of the Russian Wikipedia.
URL	http://ru.wikipedia.org/
Commercial?	Charitable
Type of site	Internet encyclopedia project
Registration	Optional
Available language(s)	Russian
Content license	Creative Commons ShareAlike License 3.0
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
Launched	20 May 2001

The Russian Wikipedia (Russian: Русская Википедия) is the Russian language edition of Wikipedia. It was founded on 20 May 2001. Its 10,000th article was created on 30 December 2004^{[citation needed]}, and it is currently one of the largest and fastest growing Wikipedias. On 19 May 2008, it became the 10th largest Wikipedia by size and on 25 February 2010, it passed the 500,000 articles threshold.^[1] As of August 2009, yearly traffic was growing at a rate of 117%, nearly twice that of the second fastest growing, Korean Wikipedia.^{[citation needed]}

On 29 November 2006, it was awarded the Russian state "Runet Prize" (Премия Рунета) in the science and education category.^[2]

Policies

Rules in Russian Wikipedia are not regarded as flexible in disputes as they are on the English project^{[citation needed]}. Difficult issues are resolved through an arbitration committee which handles content disputes, blocks users or prohibit certain users from editing articles on certain topics. Misuse of administrator privileges is typically appealed through the arbitration committee because only this authority has the power to remove administrator flags.^{[citation needed]}

The Russian Wikipedia has used automated scripts to create articles.^{[citation needed]}

Administrators are elected through a vote; a minimal quorum of 30 voters and 66% of support votes are required if the request is to be considered successful. Administrators who have been inactive (have used any administrative tools such as the "delete" or "block" buttons less than 25 times) for six months lose their privileges by an Arbitration Committee determination.^{[citation needed]}

History

Celebration logo for 500 000 articles plays a pun as "half a lemon" means "half a million" in Russian jargon

The Russian Wikipedia was created on 20 May 2001 in the first wave of non-English Wikipedias, along with editions in Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, German, Esperanto, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

The first edit of the Russian Wikipedia was on 24 May 2001, and consisted of the line "Russia is a great nation". The following edit changed it to the joke: "Russia is the land where elephants (the big-eared, all-terrain capable type, see Mammoth) originated."^[3]

For a long time development was slow (especially since some left for WikiZnanie), but in a year from February 2005 to February 2006 it surpassed nine editions in other languages, i.e. Catalan, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Hebrew, Finnish, Norwegian, Chinese, Esperanto and Danish Wikipedias.

In 2006, 2007 and 2009, the Russian Wikipedia won the "Science and education" category of the "Runet Prize" (Russian: Премия Рунета award, supervised^[4] by the Russian government agency FAPMC.

Controversy

The Russian edition of PC Magazine has been in conflict with Russian Wikipedia since the middle 2009. Several articles about bureaucratization, sysop tyranny and low quality of articles in RuWiki were published in the magazine.^[5][6][7] The conflict ended up in PC Magazine/RE block of using its articles for citation in Russian Wikipedia pages. A user that comes to PC Magazine/RE website from Russian Wikipedia is being shown a special placeholder instead of the page he's looking for.^[8]

Content

Some of the biggest categories included:

• 45,665 biographical articles
• 24,276 human settlements articles
• 11,144 film articles
• 7,895 NGC astronomical articles
• 2,961 surname articles
• 2,750 animal articles
• 2,012 events by year articles

10,161 articles contain material from the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary.

Source: Most linked categories

Timeline

• On 7 November 2002, the main page was created ^[9]
• On 30 December 2004, the 10,000th article was created.
• On 23 December 2005, the 50,000th article was created.
• On 16 August 2006, the 100,000th article was created.
• On 29 November 2006, Russian Wikipedia received National Runet Award on Educational section.
• On 10 March 2007, the 150,000th article was created.
• On 4 September 2007, the 200,000th article was created.
• On 27 November 2007, Russian Wikipedia received National Runet Award on Educational section.
• On 17 March 2008, the 250,000th article was created.
• On 18 July 2008, the 300,000th article was created.
• On 22 January 2009, the 350,000th article was created.
• On 18 April 2009, the 380,000th article was created.
• On 16 June 2009, the 400,000th article was created.
• On 25 February 2010, the 500,000th article was created.

References

External links