Worth noting that "Russian Wikipedia" here is "Wikipedia in the Russian language", not "Wikipedia of the country of Russia". There is no country specific Wikipedia, just different languages.
I think you're misreading the situation rather dramatically here.
Wikimedia Russia was an outreach organization; their role was primarily to run local conferences and fundraise. Its closure has no impact on the operations and policies of the Russian Wikipedia and other localized projects -- which are, in any event, focused on the language, not the country. (By way of analogy, notice that the Chinese Wikipedia is still operational, despite the site having been blocked in mainland China nearly since its inception.)
Who are "they"? It's still the same website on the same wikipedia domain, owned and hosted by the same global Wikimedia Foundation, with the same editors, roles and permissions.
P.S. Kinda funny how the narrative of "THEY are rewriting history" is now present in both opposing blocks. These are truly the end times of objectivity and pluralism.
People writing and moderating Ru Wikipedia. Go check yourself, with a Google translate for example. Their pettiness know no bounds, see articles on the Kievan Rus (they even tried to rename it a few times), downing of MH17 Boeing, Russian invasion and occupation of Georgia, Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine since Feb 2014, basically anything touching history and politics. It is quite clear that Ru Wikipedia is a state sanctioned and controlled operation.
There was never any objectivity. As a European, I often find mainstream US media scandalously biased on certain topics. Even just seeing everything as "two opposing blocks" is a terrible simplification of reality that is typical of Anglosphere traditions.
And pluralism is arguably as alive as ever - anyone can start a blog and be as successful as anyone else in pushing opinions, without the capital that used to be required to broadcast one's view of the world. If anything, the current problem is that the spectrum of political debate has widened so much that we struggle to contain it in the old institutions.
Bad headline. What is dissolved is the non profit organization that exists in Russia to host events for Russian Wikipedians and other tasks. ru.wikipedia.org != Wikipedia Russia.
To be more specific, "Wikimedia RU" was dissolved. I remember when they opened a legal entity, the lawyer said that one should not use the word "Russia" in the name of the company, as this requires permission from the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. Such permission can be obtained by a company that has branches and/or representative offices in more than half of the subjects of the Russian Federation, or belongs to the largest taxpayer, or more than 25% of shares (stakes) of which are owned by the state.
Wikimedia RU does not fall under these categories. In fact, it was a non-profit organization completely independent of Wikimedia, run by individual enthusiasts, sometimes not even interested in editing Wikipedia. However, Wikimedia did recognize the merits of this Russian company to some extent (in particular, it did not hinder fundraising for offline events and did not require reports).
Curious context: about half a year ago Wikimedia RU previous director had left his post to fork Russian wikipedia and develop an independent "Free Encyclopedia".
Wikipedia is has nothing to do with free speech. It's there to (in my words) document the world around us. To explain things factually, or as factually as we can. It's not about anyone's opinions or ideas.
Still, free speech is what allows such a project. And Wikipedia also explains philosophical opinions, political positions, NSFW concepts, etc., which is only possible to that extent due to free speech.
So I would disagree both that Wikipedia has nothing to do with free speech, and that it’s not about anybody’s opinions or ideas.
There was a far more productive reading you could have taken.
Free speech allows Wikipedia to publish unpopular or controversial speech, but that's not the same as having an editorial policy that contributors are allowed to express themselves on the platform, which would obviously be inappropriate.
Wikipedia documents opinions and ideologies but that's not the same as supporting the expression of the opinions and ideologies of its contributors. (See above.)
I'm _not_ claiming that Wikipedia has or doesn't have unpopular opinions. I'm making a distinction between the legal framework in which Wikipedia exists (they _can_ publish unpopular or controversial speech) and what Wikipedia does (they intend not to express their own opinions at all; whether you believe they succeed is immaterial).
OP was conflating the two, but Wikipedia has no obligation or principle to be a platform for free speech. It's completely irrelevant.
Are you making sure to include citations to proven reliable sources to back up your contributions? If so, then you can dispute any reverts on the article's Talk page. My experience with Wikipedia is that they are extraordinarily open and fair, and honestly they give more benefit of the doubt to editors than most of them deserve.
Certainly the task of determining "the truth" is a difficult one, but Wikipedia's definition of reliable sources is not very good and basically just means "mainstream, well-funded news organization."
This is the better criticism of Wikipedia. But it's really not a criticism of Wikipedia directly - it's more of a indictment on how media creates Zeitgeists and reality conforms to them.
But it is a criticism of Wikipedia directly. There is no reason why they couldn't come up with a more thoughtful, complete validation method. Instead, they just default to a last-century model of trust.
No, not really. More like a broadly Western one. It’s more complicated and specific than that, but I don’t really want to get into it here. All I’ll say is that if you read a variety of different opinions on subjects, the viewpoint of Wikipedia becomes fairly easy to predict and observe.
I don’t have anything in mind, because I don’t run a Wikipedia competitor. I haven’t spent enough time thinking about it. But certainty anything other than “just trust what the big media companies say” would be an improvement.
In general I find Wikipedia articles to be written from a very specific viewpoint that highlights certain facts and hides others. Whether this is from Wikipedia writers themselves or is merely a reflection of their sources, I’m not sure. But if the goal is to provide the truth, I don’t think they make a particularly good effort at incorporating alternative perspectives.
The thing is: mainstream validation works. Whenever little-known sources are introduced, the chances of information being false or misleading just skyrockets. Moderator rings are often detected that way - all citing the same obscure publications that turn out to be factually incorrect.
The internal essay on "verifiability, not truth" [1] comes to mind. Determining what is Actually True is difficult and often contentious; determining what reliable sources say about the topic is easier and can itself convey important information when those sources disagree.
Not that there is anything wrong with opinions, but they should at least be referenced as such when there is a clear debate.
Otherwise it just erodes trust - this actually seems to be an awfully common sentiment towards wikipedia, as it is evident even from neighboring comments.
Now this leaves me wondering, should I agree because I have had similar experiences when trying to improve some frankly unintelligible proofs in certain sections of CS wikipedia, or should I carefully disagree because of the suspicious second part of your comment? :=)
Wikipedia, while still extremely useful, has slowly become a hivemind that remove changes if they disagree with them, even if they're backed by good sources.
Wikipedia is not a place for opinions and bias, but for facts.
OP should share his edits so we can see ourselves, maybe they're just bad, but I've also had edits removed from bias, especially on controversial topics.
I don't think it makes sense to equate English speaking Wikipedia (I'm assuming that's what you're referring to) with a different language Wikipedia. Different cultures, most likely fewer people sitting around spending every free moment starting drama on wikipedia
While there are many legitimate questions about Wikipedia’s openness to new edits and editors, this is such a wild topic derail that I find it a little suspicious. Are you arguing that this isn’t a great loss for freedom of speech?
