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Posted by: SkyBon

Mr Putnik (one of the Russian Wikipedia sysops) fails to get globalsysop status for many reasons (abused by indefblocking Lvova on Commons for "cross-wiki issues" for example) He becomes furious and urges his friend VasilievVV (15-year old young red guard) to deal with those who voted against him. He quickly accomplished that task blocking a multitude of Russian editors who voted against Putnik for "canvassing and meatpuppetry" behind their backs.

Discussion concerning this is http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#Meatpuppetry.2Fvotestacking_on_Steward_requests.2FGlobal_permissions.23Global_sysop_for_putnik

Posted by: Ottava

I first ran into you were complaining about an Ombudsman from the Russian Wiki. That was when I decided that the Russian language politics are dramafilled even more so than the English language politics. You are a major defender of SA ru. He has a long history of bringing problems to meta in an inappropriate way as seen on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SA_ru.

If you want to be taken seriously, you have to get your people to stop with the personal attacks, be more reasonable, and not wage war on meta.

Posted by: The Joy

The Russian Wikipedia sounds like it's run by the Russian Mafia.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Most of the minor language projects are run by ironfisted dictators or all-controlling juntas; the Foundation simply doesn't care and since the English-language press largely ignores the non-English projects Jimmy never hears about any of it.

Posted by: NuclearWarfare

So were you actually canvassing? I notice that you haven't denied that.

Posted by: Anonymous editor

pretty much. For all the complaints about the English Wikipedia, the corruption really runs unchecked on some of the smaller wikis, where there are less active editors and less administrators.

Posted by: SkyBon

Not all canvassing is forbidden by policy. Friendly notices are allowed. My friendly notice exactly fitted the policy.



Russian Wiki is quite big (500k articles). Despite that a cartre-blanche has been given by WMF a lot of times. It really starts to look like to me that the only thing WMF wants to get is the fame and salary thanks to the crowd.

Posted by: RDH(Ghost In The Machine)

You catch on fast друг



http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=28519

Posted by: NuclearWarfare

It is also meant to be neutral and not to a selected group. Your message was anything but.

Posted by: SkyBon

It was neutral and public (non-partisan). You can check its neutrality by using Google Translate.

Posted by: NuclearWarfare

I already did so. The message was not neutral. While it may not have explicitly said "go vote oppose on this RfGS," it did preface it by saying "look at this awful thing that Jimbo pushed through" (which is false, by the way; I wrote this proposal and I don't believe that Jimbo ever commented) and "This other awful person passed, which I missed. However, we still have the opportunity to kill this other guy's request."

Plus, why did you feel the need to post this offsite, if not to canvass those you knew would agree with you?

Posted by: The Joy

If Greg, Jon, privatemusings, and Moulton went over to Russian Wikipedia, I'll bet Jimbo would care then.

Posted by: RMHED

No, he'd just pretend that he cares, afterall the news media doesn't give a fuck about the Russkies

Posted by: EricBarbour

Nope, speaking as someone who worked for a Russian-American joint company for 5 years, I can state with confidence that this is quite commonplace in Russian businesses and in Russian government. They really "get into the spirit".

(For example, the notorious recent case of a guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eUKzwnG7u4 at a wedding. Warning: disturbing video.)


Heh. Maybe American media don't care.
People in Europe, now that's different.
They apparently now get most of their natural gas from Gazprom.

Posted by: The Joy

I can't remember if it was discussed here or on Wikipedia, but a few years ago, it was alleged that the Russian Wikipedia was controlled by Kremlin-based government agents. I think it was Russavia (T-C-L-K-R-D) who claimed that he was pushed out of the Russian WP by Pro-Putin editors.

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern_European_mailing_list involved individuals trying to coordinate against an alleged "Russian Cabal" on the English Wikipedia. I wonder if this has anything to do with what's going on the Russian WP?

Posted by: Ottava

Well, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SkyBon&oldid=343656968#Greetings little note on SkyBon's talk page makes it seem like they wanted to form a "banned from Russian Wikipedia Cabal", but who knows if that actually ever happened. There does seem to be a group of 5 or 6 of the same people who have joined together and operate at en.wiki, meta, and ru.wikiversity in regards to various wiki-political matters.

Posted by: radek

It doesn't AFAIK. And Russavia's on the other side of the barricade, very strongly in the Pro-Putin camp - I don't even know if he's on ru wiki or not.

I don't really keep abreast of it anymore (actually never much did) but I've heard a number of stories of editors with a anti-Russian-government views being quickly ganged up on and driven out.

As for whether or not there is a Russian Putin cabal or not, take a peak at the current AE page and judge for yourself.

(edit - there's Russian editors on both sides of this issue so "Russian Cabal" is quite inappropriate")

Posted by: RDH(Ghost In The Machine)

Can I come too (strength in numbers and all)?
I'll be able to move through walls, floors and doors, though my Russian is a bit отграниченный.

Posted by: Geo.plrd

Wasn't there a complaint about the Portuguese WP awhile back?

Posted by: Kelly Martin

There has been a long-running dispute on the Portuguese projects over whether to consider Continental or Brazilian Portuguese "canonical" on the site. The vast majority of Portuguese speakers are, of course, Brazilian, but a slim majority of editors of the Wikimedia Portuguese projects are Portuguese. The two dialects have diverged enough to arguably qualify as different language; Brazilian Portuguese has extensive inclusions of Latin American Spanish in it and is probably more accurately described as a Spanish-Portuguese creole. While the two dialects are still largely intercomprehensible, there are differences in orthography and grammar and the anal-retentive assholes in both camps struggle gloriously to impose their preferred form over the entire project, with entirely predictable hilarity resulting. As always, there are undercurrents of racism, colonialism, and ethnic warfare in the dispute.

Wikimedia, of course, is profoundly Eurocentric in its attitudes and has persistently backed the Continentals, who are (as I noted earlier) the minority of speakers but the majority of editors. The only reason this hasn't completely boiled over is that it's over Portuguese, a language that most of the world simply doesn't care about.

Posted by: Ottava

I have to say that I agree with that trend. I would hate it if the French Wiki started adopting Canadian ideas. En wiki has aboot all that it can take of the Canadian nonsense and I'd hate to see Fr have the same.

Posted by: Moulton

Yah, that Filll was quite the nonsensical character.