Russia to launch its alternative to Wikipedia
People power: Volunteers take part in an all-day Wikipedia edit-a-thon at the Smithsonian American Art Museum last year.
Moscow:Russia's presidential library is to launch its own version of Wikipedia, claiming that the popular web resource contains "untrustworthy" information about the country.
The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, named after Russia's first president, said it had already collected 50,000 books and archive documents from regional libraries to start work on its electronic encyclopedia.
"Thus, the creation of an alternative to Wikipedia has begun," the library, which is based in St Petersburg, said in a statement. "Analysis of that resource has shown that it is unable to give detailed and trustworthy information about Russia's regions and the life of the country."
It was unclear what information on Wikipedia the library deemed unreliable and calls to its spokesman went unanswered on Friday.
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The new resource would "objectively and accurately show the country and its population, and the diversity of the state and national structure of Russia", according to the library statement.
Wikipedia was launched by the American entrepreneurs Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001. According to its own estimates, as of February this year, it had 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month.
A key principle of Wikipedia is that users can create accounts and participate in writing and editing themed entries.
According to the presidential library, which was established by Vladimir Putin, the current president, and opened in 2008, the encyclopedia would be "open for constant renewal and update" but it was unclear whether it would allow reader participation in editing. There was controversy in July when a Twitter bot - a software application that runs automated tasks - tracked an account linked to Russian state television changing a Wikipedia entry on the MH17 plane crash to say it was "shot down by Ukrainian soldiers".
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Russia to launch its alternative to Wikipedia