— Last week Vladimir Medinsky suggested that the Information Society copy all articles from Wikipedia. Can you comment on this statement? Is this ethical?
— It would probably be inappropriate for me to comment on Vladimir Medinsky’s words, but let me tell you how Wikipedia is structured and how its “forks”, that is, copies, work. First, let’s talk about ethics. This is just unethical! Richard Stallman invented the concept of free license for the freedom to copy! Its basic principles are the right of any person not only to use a free work (be it a program, text or encyclopedia), but also to make changes to it at his discretion. Wikipedia is based on a free license and has a huge number of copies and forks in the world: Wikipedia has a page where it collects information about them, and there are already more than 700 projects in the list. The most famous of these is the Spanish Encyclopedia Libre.
— So in general, it is not difficult to create another Wikipedia, right?
— However, many of my colleagues are faced with a certain misunderstanding here. Yes, anyone can easily copy content and open the media wiki engine. But Wikipedia has come a long way in the last eight years. Each article consists of several components such as text, images, and formalized data that are inextricably intertwined with the article. Images are stored in what is called the “Wiki repository” or “Partners” (a repository of over 100 million free images) and structured data is stored in the “Data Wiki”. These sections are much larger in volume than any other language text section. Most “easy-to-create copies” are actually a “wrapper” that replaces material in the “Wiki Repository” and “Wiki Data”. The pace of work of such “Frankensteins” leaves much to be desired.
In general, speed is the main problem of a large wiki site. When you struggle to process a large number of requests, simple solutions no longer work and the complexity of the infrastructure increases exponentially.
In Ruviki, we not only created a copy of the Russian section, not only created a completely Russian server infrastructure, but also transferred the “Wiki Repository” and “Wiki Data” to the completely Russian domain. This is absolute autonomy and the ability to carry a high load that requires a lot of effort and resources. This is a technical point.
But there is also an editorial side: almost 2 million articles, more than 100 million images; Can you imagine how much work would have to be done to update and maintain this data? A large professional editor staff works at Ruviki every day, volunteers have started to actively join us, and we will work seriously to create our own volunteer community. After all, you can’t simply “download” existing encyclopedias online; these are limited by copyright. So, based on my own experience, I can say that the “I can get Wikipedia up and running in an hour” story is on the verge of being forgotten.
— Many of your former colleagues condemned your project because there would be no one to update it and predicted its quick end. What is your answer to this?
“I would say: Let’s talk about this again at the end of the year.” Our editors are very active in updating articles and are sometimes ahead of Wikipedia! Also unfortunately (and I really regret that this is happening), the community around Wikipedia is shrinking around the world. This is largely due to the “entry” difficulties of newcomers and, in some cases, is also influenced by the very toxic atmosphere in society. Therefore, Wikipedia itself is faced with the problem of how to grow its community. We are currently running writing contests on a variety of topics to attract knowledgeable people. We plan to cooperate with companies that volunteer professionally. And most importantly, we hope to provide technological solutions that will allow us to introduce gamification elements on the platform to attract and retain new writers.
— So why isn’t Ruviki one of the 700 copies of Wikipedia in the world that no one knows about?
— First of all, because we did not copy the project just for the sake of it. We took advantage of the rights provided by the free license to develop the project and make it suitable for the digital future. Already in the spring we will present Ruviki 2.0 with a number of changes – from the interface and sound format to projects, updating and updating information in existing articles. And we will try to please everyone, especially with other changes that are currently being worked on. Our goal is to create a user-friendly, useful new product that will continue to serve the mission of spreading free knowledge. Each of us will benefit from this.
What are you thinking?
Source: Gazeta
Jackson Ruhl is a tech and sci-fi expert, who writes for “Social Bites”. He brings his readers the latest news and developments from the world of technology and science fiction.