159 Country Report: Wikipedia
Caroline McClellan
The Russian Wikipedia was created on May 11, 2001 and since then 1,893,432 articles have been published in Russian. 3,332,718 participants have registered for the Wikipedia section in Russian and 11,451 actively contribute. It is a large source of information and is constantly being updated, with the sixth-largest number of edits. Russia has a large presence of Wikipedia contributors with 7% of all contributors living in Russia, behind the United States who has 20% of all contributors and Germany who has 12% of all contributors.
An abundance of information is on the Russian Wikipedia including biographical articles, human settlement articles, scientific articles, and pop culture articles. While Wikipedia is a large source of information, Russia has taken actions to block certain content and even went as far as blocking the Russian Wikipedia for a short period of time in August 2015. What is lacking from the Russian Wikipedia, due to the censorship from the government, is anything having to do with drugs or alcohol, as well as any current events and political/historical information about Russia. Anything that is deemed illegal or harmful to children is also blocked on the Russian Wikipedia. The Russian government has and continues to censor many pages, spread propaganda, and spread disinformation through the use of Wikipedia.
Editors of the information about Russia on Wikipedia come not only from Russia, but all around the world. While these editors work to provide accurate, up to date information, the control that the Russian government holds over what is seen on the internet leads to a lot of propaganda and misinformation. While it has reliable information on the topics deemed acceptable by the government, it is overall not a reliable source and contains an abundance of misinformation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians
