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Wikipedia

Russians Are Racing To Download Wikipedia Before It Gets Banned (slate.com) 61

Posted by BeauHD from the grab-it-before-it's-gone dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Slate.com: On March 1, after a week of horror in Ukraine, reports came out that Russia's censorship office had threatened to block Russian Wikipedia. A 32-year-old who asked to be called Alexander soon made a plan to download a local copy of Russian-language Wikipedia to keep with him in eastern Russia. "I did it just in case," he told me over Instagram Messenger before sharing that he and his wife are "working on moving to another country" with their two dogs, Prime and Shaggy. (Instagram has been blocked in Russia, but many continue to access it using virtual private networks. On Monday, the Russian government officially declared Facebook and Instagram "extremist organizations.")

Alexander wasn't the only Russian citizen to make a local copy of Wikipedia. Data suggests that after the threats of censorship, Russians started torrenting Wikipedia in droves. Currently, Russia is the country with the most Wikipedia downloads—by a landslide. Before the invasion, it rarely broke the top 10, but after the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, it has kept a solid hold on first place. The 29-gigabyte file that contains a downloadable Russian-language Wikipedia was downloaded a whopping 105,889 times during the first half of March, which is a more than 4,000 percent increase compared with the first half of January. According to Stephane Coillet-Matillon, who leads Kiwix, the organization that facilitates these downloads, Russian downloads now constitute 42 percent of all traffic on Kiwix servers, up from just 2 percent in 2021. "We had something similar back in 2017 when Turkey blocked Wikipedia," he said, "but this one is just another dimension." "Wikipedia routinely makes a dump of its databases available publicly, which Kiwix compresses into an archive so it can be more easily shared," adds Slate. "The entirety of English Wikipedia, from 'List of Informally Named Dinosaurs' to 'Floor' to 'Skunks as Pets' and everything in between, is 87 GB with pictures or 47 GB without. Russian-language Wikipedia is even smaller, continuing 1.8 million articles compared with English Wikipedia's 6.4 million."
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Russians Are Racing To Download Wikipedia Before It Gets Banned More

Russians Are Racing To Download Wikipedia Before It Gets Banned

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  • about preserving access to factual information, the country doesn’t want them any more. My advice: cut your losses and get out before it gets worse, because it’s definitely gonna get worse.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 )

      Easy for you to run off your mouth about moving to another country. Forty percent of Russian population is rural and has household income of $160 a month. You're like Peter Buttigieg telling USA poor people to avoid high gas prices by buying a Tesla.

    • Russia has a huge problem with brain drain. So much so that it's likely they are going to put a new iron curtain back up soon.

      • A big reason why the pro war Russians are such a high percentage of the population is because more liberal pacifist minded folks tend to leave as soon as they can.

        I always think what would it be like if 10 million liberal voters left the United States and all I can imagine is the right would finally have the Christian theocracy it's always wanted.

      • Russia has a huge problem with brain drain. So much so that it's likely they are going to put a new iron curtain back up soon.

        USA, EU and Britain just prevented it - by removing acceptance for all Russian education diplomas and certificates. So an educated Russian now has two choices (thanks to very thoughtful, well designed and ingenious sanctions) - to stay home and get a reasonably high middle class salary at home or to wash toilets in Germany, because his quantum physics diploma is worth less than toilet paper.

        The Russian government has smiled, applauded the USA shooting itself in the dick and added a few tweaks for good mea

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by DVLNSD ( 9457327 )
          Care to provide some links to verify your kremlin bullshit?
        • This would be monumentally stupid but this appears to be fake news: https://sciencebusiness.net/ne... [sciencebusiness.net] https://www.chronicle.com/arti... [chronicle.com] a bunch more links on google if you search something like 'russian student ban'
          • Thank you, it seems that the gp comment feel for the propaganda or likes to spread it. Either way, it's a lie, Russian students aren't expelled.

  • You never know if nuclear war will break out, Wikipedia would be invaluable then. Especially if we want to have a WW 4.

    • A real prepper would instead keep a printout of wikipedia in their bunker for obvious reasons. Apparently [quora.com] you can purchase a printed copy for $50,000, or print it out, creating a stack of paper somewhat over one mile high (5,605 feet).

      • Sounds like a perfect niche for the return of microfiche.

      • Because knowing that the USA was founded by the Iluminati in 1804 will be essential knowledge in a post-apocalyptic wasteland?

      • creating a stack of paper somewhat over one mile high (5,605 feet)

        It may be expensive, but just think how happy survivors of a nuclear war will be searching through hundreds of feet of paper containing Wikipedia articles on anime or popular TV series!

        • creating a stack of paper somewhat over one mile high (5,605 feet)

          It may be expensive, but just think how happy survivors of a nuclear war will be searching through hundreds of feet of paper containing Wikipedia articles on anime or popular TV series!

          Plenty of toilet paper.

      • No, convert it to a paginated, multi-part epub. (Sheesh, workable solutions are not that intractible.)

  • where Facebook and Instagram are banned? Surely they must have other reasons...

    • VK is a similar hell to FB. In fact FB never managed to gain substantial market share for local Russian content. Most of the content there was either west oriented or west driven.

      The big loss for Zukerborg is not FB. It is Instagram. No more Russian t*ts and bottoms (barely covered to comply with Zukerborgian modesty requirements) to drive the revenue stream.

  • Let us say the situation were reversed . . . how many of us here are technically competent to find a way around the kind of measures that are being put in place to isolate a rogue superpower from the www?
    How long would it take our Government to craft and/or legislate into existence the necessary infrastructure to replace what we could no longer access?
    Does anybody here believe the Russian government (especially given their authoritarian organization) can't do the exact same thing?

    • how many of us here are technically competent to find a way around the kind of measures that are being put in place to isolate a rogue superpower from the www?

      Plenty of people have been plenty competent enough to work their way around idiotic limitations put in place by the corporate world for decades: anti-copy software, DVD CSS, content access limitations based on IP geolocation... All quickly and switly defeated by clever people who believe the old canard that information wants to be free.

      State authorities are usually slower and stupider than companies. If the latter can be defeated soundly and regularly, there's no reason to believe the former will do any bet

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mmell ( 832646 )
        And for their efforts, they'll end up with a bunch of fantastic (and almost immediately stale) information which they don't dare share openly with anyone - information which, if found in their possession could well get them sent to the local gulag, even after it's all become common knowledge. May as well just keep working around the (soon to be dedicated) Iron Firewall. After all, it won't be much riskier, and they'll get news instead of history.
        I just hope nobody does anything stupid, like cutting the p
  • You might have a downloaded copy of Wikipedia, Vlad, but if someone asks you'll still say that 2 + 2 equals 5.
  • I have a weekly cron task that downloads the full version with photos to my NAS, for totally normal and routine "purposes".

  • ... and grab the article before they change it to Chicken Kyiv [wikipedia.org].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kiviQr ( 3443687 )
      ... see all depends on perspective. Chicken Kyiv in Poland is known as "Kotlet de volaille" (which sounds French).
    • Which is exactly why Wikipedia may finally cop it.

      There is a flood of edits all over the place. Some are truthful and counter various Russian statements that fail closer scrutiny. Some are er... contentions. And some are outright disinformation. Ukraine had the largest army of "internet warriors" on the planet. Heard of Prigozhin trolls? They are a handful of boyscouts compared to 72, 74 and 102 CISPO units as well as various outfits which they contract to in the Baltic states, Poland, Bulgaria, etc.

      With

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      Eh, they haven't even renamed the Peking Duck article yet.

  • Sounds like some comrades are committing Thoughtcrime. Let's review:

    War is peace.
    Freedom is slavery.
    Ignorance is strength.

    “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth." -- George Orwell, 1984.

  • Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday March 21, 2022 @09:00PM (#62378685) Journal

    For all the complaints, what a great website. They've managed to stay free from sponsor manipulation, (you may complain about bias but) they do a really good job of information aggregation, and it isn't easy to manipulate. Despite all the doubters over the years, they've done a really good job.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      Yes, I agree. But my kids' teachers all tell them not to use it because "anyone can edit it." I asked them what the teachers suggest to do instead, and they said, "just type the question into Google." (facepalm) I shit you not.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Yes, I agree. But my kids' teachers all tell them not to use it because "anyone can edit it." I asked them what the teachers suggest to do instead, and they said, "just type the question into Google." (facepalm) I shit you not.

        Yeah, that is silly, because an encyclopedia is a great resource to get started on a topic for further research (they're not citable as sources, but are great ways to start research from).

        In fact, your teach should be encouraging students to critically think about Wikipedia - the fact

  • As I see it, a thinking Russian has two choices:

    1. Get the fuck out.
    2. Start killing the oppressors. Military leaders, police officers, and government officials are all fair game. It's open season for ethical psychopaths.

    I'm hoping for #2.

    • 2. Start killing the oppressors. Military leaders, police officers, and government officials are all fair game. It's open season for ethical psychopaths.

      Too bad, it was much easier to do, back in the Soviet days. There were actual positions specifically tasked to enforce Communist and government ideology. Now you have to kill anyone wearing a uniform, but you really should be killing the people who are wearing nice suits.

  • Russia is a bad place for good minds. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Monday March 21, 2022 @11:18PM (#62378865)
    The only lesson its geography teaches is brutality. And geography is the first and last teacher of civilization.

  • ...Wikipedia... um... is disseminated among the masses?

    Something's off... usually I don't laugh because it's not funny...

  • ..to a stone-age where people use USBs with the whole Wikipedia content as a decorative object to hang on their neck.

  • I even considered doing this here in the US when Wikipedia was quite new, because I figured it was only a matter of time before hosting costs shut it down. It has survived much longer than I thought was possible.

  • There is certainly a lot you can unwrap from this, but I wonder if perhaps this detail has been missed? ... With so many downloads taking place, can we not interpret this to mean that Russians are far more aware of the truth than most people -- including Putin -- give them credit for?

    Putin has conducted some disturbingly effective misinformation campaigns in the past, both within Russia's borders and beyond, but perhaps it's an important historical note to recognize that his campaigns are falling entirely f

  • Wikipedia has been distributed on IPFS. Here is a link: https://blog.ipfs.io/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/

  • It's enough to make me wish I was Woody Allen.

    Oh, wait. Like Slashdot, he isn't funny anymore.

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