Russian Wikipedia "a top internet community"

May 23, 2008



The Russian Language edition of Wikipedia was recently dubbed "a top Internet community" of the past year by a professional union of Russian Internet (Runet) scene protagonists, the "Ezhe" (ЕЖЕ).

Ezhe ("еже") means "every" in Russian, a reference to regularly updated websites; Ezhe's mascot is a hedgehog because of its similarity with the word "yozh" ("ёж"). Ezhe.Ru is a non-profit "club" community coordinated via a Russian-speaking mailing list; nowadays it comprises more than 500 members — IT professionals, journalists and so on from all over the world. It was founded in 1997 and maintains some public projects, such as annual "professional award" "ROTOR" (a spelling interpretation for "Russian Online TOP"). It has no payments or figurines and is awarded virtually.

ROTOR is Runet-wise generally regarded as an acknowledgment token for some Russian language Internet project from the so-called "Runet professionals" who populate Ezhe club. Contest is usually covered by Russian online mass media and in blogs. There are approximately 30 nominations honoring different Russian websites, or acts related to Runet, in different planes. Ezhe members vote in 2 tours, and in most contemporary ROTOR-2008 (lasted May 12—22) Russian Wikipedia gained 1st place in "Internet Community of the year" nomination (the year before it took 2nd). It also obtained second place in "Scientific and Educational website of the year" nomination (for the 3rd time). In 2006 and 2007, Russian Wikipedia also mastered "Science and Education" category on the Runet Prize.

In the meantime Russian Wikipedians recently celebrated Top-10 Wikipedias range introduction: Swedish Wikipedia was out of 10th place, and Russian was in with over 283 thousand articles on May 19th, 2008. The collective of editors on the project issued a now-habitual press release describing the developments of Wikipedia.

Russian editors also immediately started a "Swedish Week" organized effort within their community to write a bunch of new articles dedicated to Swedish culture. Swedes later replied with the alike action on Russian culture.