English Wikireality/Russian Wikipedia

Russian Wikipedia (рус. Русская Википедия‎, ru.wikipedia.org) is a part of universal multi-language encyclopedia Wikipedia, which helds 6th place by total number of articles.

Normative

• There is consensus of community that Russian part needn’t official name.
• Russian Wikipedia (рус. Русская Википедия‎) — the most settled-down and now the most used name. But there are alternative names of this wiki-project. The name was supported by «the old composition» of project, PEA, russian nationalists, some administrators and most of the «neutrals»).
• Russian-speaking Wikipedia (рус. Википедия на русском языке‎) — the second version of the name of the project, supported by romanobekkerists, some sysops and «neutrals». It is not adopted as official.

Vitupirative

• Pediwikia — version, used by users of Russian Lurkmore and some RWP oppositionists, such as Smartass, Zolotaryov, Anatoly and some other.
• Dickipedia — version, invented by Smartass. He called the project so after his year-long block in it, offended administrators.

Humorous

• Wikipuzia — version used in Kaschepuzia and on the forum Kaschenko.ru, and out of them, by kaschenits.

History

Russian Wikipedia was founded May 11, 2001 together with other biggest parts. The first project’s domain name — http://russian.wikipedia.com (wikipedia.ru was usurped by cybersquatters).

The first stage of developing took plaсe in 2001—2004 years, then about 10 000 articles were writed, the first administrators (Brion Vibber, Ramir, Drbug) and bureaucrat (Drbug) were elected.

The second stage occured in 2005—2006 years. Community was being formed, the most notable users came into Wikipedia (Smartass, Roman Bekker, MBD, Serebr and some other).

June 5, 2005 20 000-th article was written, August 23 — 30 000-th, and December 31 — 50 000-th. August 16, 2006 the number of articles reached 100 thousands. The first Arbitration Commitee was elected in late 2005, the first checkusers — in March 2006.

The third stage started in 2007 and is now continuing. It charaterize by rapid growth of community, number of articles, project’s popularity. Project is in the permanent stage of wikirise. March 10, 2007 150 thousandth article was created, September 4 the number of articles achieved 200 thousands, and July 18, 2008 the number of articles became 300 thousands. In the beginning of 2009 it exceeded 350 thousands, June 16, 2009 — 400 thousands, and November 6 — 450 thousands. The number of active users (making hundreds edits par month) is about some hundreds now.

Content

Early 2009 the most numerous articles were about:

• Personalities — over 92 thousands;
• Inhabited localities — over 73 thousands (botoarticles);
• Films — ca. 12,500;
• NGC objects — ca. 7,800 (botoarticles);
• Galaxies — over 6 thousands;
• Animals — over 3.8 thousands;
• Surnames — over 3.3 thousands.

Many of these articles were created by bots automatically and are stubs with minimal information.

Government

Project is managed by the «administration» — 5 arbitrators, 3 bureaucrats and about 80 sysops The Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales never interfered despite numerous petitions to him concerning abuses of power in the wiki.

LiveJournal

An unofficial LiveJournal community ru_wikipedia exists. It resembles the Wikipedia Review as it provides a base for discussion and publishing of own thoughts. Once it was considered the "official" one, and there were a lot of links to it inside the Russian Wikipedia. However, in autumn 2007 its holders changed. Due to the conflict between the new community maintainers and Russian Wikipedia sysops the community is currently blacklisted inside the Wiki. Consequently, all three community maintainers are indefinitely blocked in Russian Wikipedia.

ru_wikipedia community is very active (no less than two posts per day which is quite a lot compared to one or two messages per week in the "official" wikipedia_blog community). It is a place of wide-topic discussions. In 2009—2010 several otterizations (peer review of the featured articles written by some notorious sysops) took place in this community.

There are some hypotheses about co-called "Real Rulers" of Russian Wikipedia, based upon the "Conspiracy Theories". In project, these hypotheses and facts are listed on this page (Wikipedia:List of conspiracies).

Some Wikipedia users, mainly, "The Opposition", thought one time, that project are under control of Roman Bekker and his Group, but this hypothesis is unbelievable.

Following materials

Tools

• Statistics
• Special pages
• MediaWiki version and extensions

Articles about the project

• Wikipedia about itself
• Kaschepuzia
• Russian Lurkmore
• ru:АПЭ:Блеск и нищета Википедии — PEA point of view
• Russian Wikipedia