“Ruviki”: what kind of Internet resource – Kommersant

On January 15, the Russian online encyclopedia “Ruviki” is expected to begin functioning in full mode. What is known about the Russian analogue of Wikipedia and how it differs is in the Kommersant reference.

What is “Ruviki”

The Internet encyclopedia “Ruviki” was announced on May 24, 2023 at the Russian Internet Forum in the Moscow region by one of its authors, Vladimir Medeyko, who at that time served as director of the non-profit partnership “Wikimedia RU”. According to his plan, the new encyclopedia should focus on “balanced, accurate information,” abandoning news and broad thematic coverage.

The domestic analogue is based on the contents of the Russian-language Wikipedia (all 1.9 million Russian-language articles). All data is stored on domestic servers. The project, which is managed by a Russian legal entity, was created with the participation of investors, but their names and the amount of investments are not disclosed. The site went live in beta version on June 26, 2023. As noted on the resource’s website, during 2024, Ruviki will introduce technological changes, including personalization of content, thematic collections, audio retelling of the full and short versions of the article, an updated personal user account, videos and podcasts. At stage 3.0 artificial intelligence will be added.

“Ruviki” is not the first analogue of “Wikipedia” presented recently. Other similar projects include those designed to replace the popular resource “Runiversalis” and the Great Russian Encyclopedia. In total, there are more than 1 thousand branches and mirrors of Wikipedia in the world.

“Ruviki” is available at ru.ruwiki.ru. On the main page of the online encyclopedia there is a search bar that allows you to explore almost 2 million articles, as well as a menu where you can find an alphabetical index, a category tree, chronological tables and other navigation tools. There is also a “Create article” button for those who want to join the content of the encyclopedia. Future authors are warned that materials copied from other resources will be deleted. Once an article is created, it will be assessed by other participants on the appropriateness of the subject matter, its significance and how it is presented in the article, the quality of the sources cited, possible copyright infringement, and the neutrality of the presentation.

Below on the main page there are materials that are in one way or another related to current world news, and the “On This Day” section, dedicated to historical events of today. There is also a section “Did you know?”, which talks about remarkable facts from different areas of life.

You can view changes to the main page.

According to Ruvika, the most read publications on the portal for 2023 were “List of those who died in 2023”, “Escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict”, “Benefits for SVO participants”, “List of the highest-grossing films in Russia”, “Military actions” in Ukraine”.

How is the Russian online encyclopedia different?

According to SimilarWeb, in December, the Ruviki site was viewed 157 thousand times, while the Russian-language Wikipedia site was visited 130 million times.

The original Wikipedia is filled with materials on a variety of topics created and supplemented by users (volunteers). “Ruviki” works on the same principle.

However, all materials of the domestic knowledge base are checked for compliance with reality and the rules of the site. As reported on the Rukiviki website, the portal has introduced the concepts of “verified” and “peer-reviewed” articles: the editors of the online encyclopedia work on “verified” publications, and “reviewed” articles are prepared with the help of experts (scientists, representatives of museums, other specialists) .

On September 7, 2023, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Internet Encyclopedia signed a cooperation agreement, according to which RAS scientists participate in the verification of articles published on the portal.

Reviewers in 2023 were also the Association of Cosmonautics Museums, the Scientific Memorial Museum. Professor N. E. Zhukovsky, State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Kaluga, Central House of Aviation and Cosmonautics, Russian Feline Society and others. Strategic partnerships for working with the encyclopedia content were concluded by the Presidential Library. B. N. Yeltsin, Moscow Planetarium, Museum of Moscow.

Complex and controversial topics that require special study are submitted to a public council consisting of representatives of leading universities and scientific institutes. The authors of Ruvika note that they do not oppose themselves to Wikipedia.

The Ruviki interface has been translated into 20 languages ​​of the peoples of Russia, including Altai, Bashkir, Buryat, Vepsian, Ingush, Kalmyk, Chechen, Chuvash and others. In 2024, it is planned to open at least ten language sections. There is no version in foreign languages.

The free encyclopedia website reports that the total volume of materials today is 1,959,577 articles in Russian. In the near future, users will also be able to freely edit texts.