Tell us about Russian Wikipedia

This page belongs to the project Tell us about your Wikipedia. See also RuWiki History for two recent studies.

Russian Wikipedia

Wikimedia Statistics can be difficult to interpret. What is your impression, how many steady contributors do you have?
- 105 users participated one of the latest polls, so I guess that the number of active users is around 100. V. Volkov / В. Волков (kneiphof) 18:54, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- About 1000 steady contributors, I guess.DonaldDuck 08:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Are your contributors mostly native speakers?
- Yes, but we have some contributers from former Soviet Union counties, who are native speakers of other languages (Ukranian, Azerbaijani... etc) and use Russian as second language. We also have few non-native Russian language contributors from Western Europe. V. Volkov / В. Волков (kneiphof) 18:54, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Where do your contributors live (regions/country)?
- Most of our users are from Russia. There are also many users from former Soviet Union (mostly Ukraine) and from Russian-speaking diaspora in Western Europe (mostly from Germany), Israel and Northern America.V. Volkov / В. Волков (kneiphof) 18:54, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How common is it that your contributors meet in real life?
- Quite often. So far 48 wikimeets have been held, in Russia, Ukraine and Germany. V. Volkov / В. Волков (kneiphof) 18:54, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have special contacts with another Wikipedias (maybe in related languages)?
- We have project that supports wikipedias in small languages of Russia and former Soviet Union. V. Volkov / В. Волков (kneiphof) 18:56, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you translate a lot from other Wikipedias? Which ones?
- Something is translated from English Wikipedia, but not much. Russian is one of the world languages.DonaldDuck 08:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- At our Portal we have lists like "Articles in en, de, uk, be wikipedias without Russian interwiki". It is a kind of TODO list. (actually, the Ukrainian wiki is challenging us, not we. Growth of uk.wiki looks quite correlative to ru.wiki). Personally I translate and some things from English, and some from Portuguese (usually Brasil related), as I read well only these two languages. There are groups of users who deal with French, German and others. We also have bots for import well-formed data from other Wikis (usually national data like cities and regions). Skirienko 07:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Translate a lot from English Wikipedia. --Ochilov (talk) 15:36, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Russia 10 years cake

Is there a Wikimedia chapter in your country? How does your language relate to it?
A Wikimedia Russian chapter is in final preparation stage. --Kaganer 08:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No longer in preparation stage, but just celebrated 10 years of relatively successful working (November 2018). English website: wmru:en --Ssr (talk) 11:28, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a language institution for your language, like an Academy, or a club of people interested in your language? Do you have contact with them?
- There is a en:Russian Language Institute. Skirienko 06:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What does the public outreach for your edition look like? Do you have flyers, give lectures, trainings etc.?
- Sometimes activists give interviews on radio, newspapers etc.Skirienko 06:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What other encyclopedias exist in your language?
- There are en:Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary and en:Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Both are used as a source for Russian Wikipedia articles.DonaldDuck 08:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Does your edition concentrates on certain topics, like your region and language, or Latin Wikipedia on Roman history and Christianity?
- Articles about Russian culture, Russian biographies etc are better covered.DonaldDuck 08:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Did your edition enjoy text donations, for example from older encyclopedias?
- en:Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, Polovtsov Russian Biographical Dictionary, Sytin's Publishing House Military encyclopedia are used, because they are already in public domain.DonaldDuck 08:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a generally accepted norm about your language (spelling, dictionary, pronounciation)?
Yes. --Obersachse 05:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How do you deal with different spellings, dialects etc. (like B.E. lift and A.E. elevator)?
This is not a big problem in russian language. Some words have a Moscow and a St. Peterburg variant. --Obersachse 05:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Moscow vs Petersburg differences are insignificant (BTW I reside in Moscow and visited SPb many times also). There are though different topographical namings and spellings, usually names as used in some exUSSR country vs Russian Federation's norm (based on USSR Russian); no other troubles involving internationalization was detected. Generally, ru.wikipedia follows well established standard Russian language. The orthography is stable, very close to Soviet language standard; the orthography of imperial Russia (before 1918) is widely considered as obsolete and never used in articles. We never face such problems as "British vs American English" or "France vs Belgium French". Also, any standards on dialects of Russian we have not. Incnis Mrsi 20:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We have Moscow variant, which is used in most of Russia and the St. Peterburg variant, used generally in St. Peterburg and whole Central Asia, former Soviet Union Republic. --Ochilov (talk) 15:38, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Social network accounts accociated with Russian WIkipedia

Main/Front page of your Wikipedia: http://ru.wikipedia.org
Facebook page on Russian Wikipedia where you can ask questions in English: http://www.facebook.com/russian.wikipedia