Vladimir Putin sets up Russian rival to Wikipedia after branding the online encyclopaedia unreliable

Vladimir Putin is organising a Russian encyclopaedia on-line after declaring that Wikipedia was unreliable and needs to be changed.

The Russian president mentioned his nation would now not welcome the crowd-sourced on-line encyclopaedia which started within the US.

The brand new web site costing £20.7million shall be an online model of the Nice Russian Encyclopaedia and present ‘dependable data in a superb, fashionable manner’.

Vladimir Putin is organising a Russian encyclopaedia on-line after declaring that Wikipedia was unreliable and needs to be changed

However John Lubbock, a communications coordinator for Wikimedia, mentioned it was unclear how Mr Putin would enhance on the Russian Wikipedia.

He wrote on Twitter: ‘Russian Wikipedia is the seventh greatest language model of the location, with over 1.5 million articles created by 2.6 million customers, all printed on Open Licenses.’

Putin first proposed changing Wikipedia with an digital model of the Nice Russian Encyclopaedia – the successor to the Soviet Union’s primary encyclopaedia – final month. 

Wikipedia at the moment has over 1.5 million articles created by 2.6 million customers

In accordance with RIA Novosti information company, he mentioned: ‘As for Wikipedia… it is higher to interchange it with the brand new Large Russian Encyclopaedia in digital type. 

‘At the very least that shall be dependable data, offered in a superb, fashionable manner.’

In 2015, Russia briefly blocked the Russian-language model of Wikipedia for an article containing data on hashish below laws banning websites with drug-related materials.

The federal government will now additionally arrange a nationwide analysis and schooling centre for the location. 

Moscow has additionally launched harder on-line controls over the Russian phase of the web in order that it could maintain functioning even when it was reduce off from overseas infrastructure.