Roscomnadzor to wait for answer from Wikipedia

The community of authors of the Russian version of Wikipedia, the Internet-based encyclopaedia, are discussing how to delete or correct the articles, which Roscomnadzor has banned. The authority put on the registrar of banned sites a total of 15 pages of the Internet resource, but Wikipedia have got information on six of those only. The regulative authority has asked for a valid address of electronic mail to communicate with the resource’s managers. “We need to solve the issue of contacts. We would like to have an e-mail address, which is used regularly,” the authority’s press secretary Vladimir Pikov said adding Roscomnadzor would be expecting constructive actions from the Internet resource and as yet would not be closing access to entire Wikipedia. “Our priority is not only fighting illegal content, we do not want to infringe on the rights of bona fide users of the Internet,” he said stressing the authority had not heard from the encyclopaedia’s management. Wikipedia replied they did not have managers and thus they were not reading e-mails, though they still gave a working e-mail address to Roscomnadzor to send their statements. Wikipedia.ru’s Executive Director Stanislav Kozlovsky said the authors had been discussing whether the articles discussed comply with the encyclopaedia’s rules and whether they were written in a scientific style. “If the community of authors decides to follow the demands from Rospotrebnadzor, pages are most likely to be edited, not deleted fully,” Director of Wikimedia Russia Vladimir Medeiko said. Pikov said the authority may be satisfied with edited versions, though in order to take them off the registrar the authority would have to make another inspection. Russia’s registrar of banned sites was launched on November 1, 2012.