Russian presidential aide suggests copying Wikipedia in its entirety for Russian analog

Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky suggested copying Wikipedia in its entirety for the Russian analog of the online encyclopedia, Znanie.Wiki, RIA Novosti reports.

“I think now is not the time to create new content from scratch — it’s hard to catch up. Aggregate and use other people’s content, copy all of Wikipedia, and that’s it,” Medinsky said at a meeting for Znanie.

He noted that Znanie.Wiki currently has 22 thousand articles, while Wikipedia has 70 million articles in Russian. “Naturally, it always comes up first,” Medinsky added, referring internet searches for “Wikipedia.”

According to the presidential aide, 99 percent of the articles on Wikipedia are “absolutely neutral and even interesting,” hence they could be used for a Russian analog. “Why should we produce entities, as philosophers say?” Medinsky said.

Medinsky called the remaining 1 percent of articles “enemy slander,” which are “severely moderated.” “You’ll never get a word of truth in there,” he added.

Medinsky also suggested using materials from History.rf and RuWiki (another Russian analog of Wikipedia) for Znanie.Wiki. At the same time, referring to the “two million very decent articles” on RuWiki, he noted that they’re “also copied.”

The idea of creating a Russian analog of Wikipedia has around for many years. In the summer of 2022, Russia launched an analog of the online encyclopedia Runiverse, and in the spring of 2023, the Znanie society released Znanie.Wiki. That summer, RuWiki was also launched. As of February 2024, about two million articles had been published on Runiversalis and RuWiki.