Founder rights
How often do you use the special rights given to you by the WMF? Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 22:49, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
Not often, but I also don't consider them to be "given to me by the WMF" to be precise.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:49, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Misuse of admin rights in Kz-wiki
Hello, Jimbo! Thanks for all your work. I am from Kazakh section. A little problem appeared there: one admin struck out all my writings on his talking page. Please say, what can I do in this situation? --Ерден Карсыбеков (talk) 19:20, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia court appeal in Russia
Hello, Jimbo. Today several news sources, e.g. [1][2][3], reported that WMF filed an appeal in a Moscow court challenging a lower court ruling that fine WMF $88K and ordered it to remove what Putin's government considers "disinformation" from several ru-wiki articles about 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Given the recent actions of Putin's regime, the probability that WMF's appeal will succeed in Russian courts is pretty much zero. I am wondering what might happen if and when WMF's appeal is denied. Does the Russian government have the ability to enforce any kind of a fine against WMF? And does WMF have any property and employees in Russia? (I would hope not.) Do you think it is likely that Russia would block access to the entire ru-wiki (or maybe even to all Wikipedias, in all languages)? Or just to the pages about Russia's war in Ukraine? Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 01:43, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- For many of these questions, your guess will be as good as mine. A few I can answer: The WMF does not have any property or employees in Russia to my knowledge. From a technical perspective, because we use https, it is not possible for Russia to only block certain pages - they have a policy option to block all of Wikipedia, or none. Which makes it very difficult to block Wikipedia because it is incredibly popular in Russia and it is well known for being calm and neutral.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:10, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- I'm not really sure why the fine wasn't set at $88M, or indeed any other random amount that Russia felt like imposing, not that it would make any difference to the eventual outcome. Unfortunately, Mr Putin also seems to be "incredibly popular in Russia", although probably mainly among those who have never heard of Wikipedia? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:19, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- Interesting, thanks. It's good that WMF has no employees in Russia, and let's hope that the government there won't try to come after individual Wikipedia editors directly, as it has done with Facebook and Twitter. Interesting what you say about https. I guess that makes it a little less likely that Russian authorities will block Wikipedia, although one can't really count on them acting rationally given their recent actions. Nsk92 (talk) 17:18, 14 June 2022 (UTC)