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The news: Russias government has confirmed plans to set up an online version of its national encyclopedia, after President Vladimir Putin said last month that Wikipedia is unreliable and should be replaced. The government said this will ensure that Russian citizens can go online to find reliable information that is constantly updated on the basis of scientifically verified sources of knowledge.

The details: Specifically, it will be an online version of the Great Russian Encyclopedia (the successor to the Soviet Unions official encyclopedia), volumes of which have been published from 2004 to 2017. The Russian authorities have set aside a budget of about 2 billion rubles ($31 million), Sergei Kravets, an editor for the Great Russian Encyclopedia, told the Russian news agency TASS last month. The government will also set up a national research and education center for the Great Russian Encyclopedia, according to an official resolution.

Some context: The announcement can be seen as part of a wider push by the Russian government to exert more control over what its citizens see and do online. The ultimate goal is to make Russias internet independent from global structures and able to withstand attacks from abroad, as per a new law that came into force on November 1. Its also part of an official push to prioritize Russian-made products and services above others. New legislation passed this week will require manufacturers of smartphones, computers, and other devices to ensure that they come with Russian-made software installed.

A bit of history: Russias government has never been a big fan of Wikipedia. It has repeatedly blocked the Russian-language version of the website since it launched in 2001. Online propaganda groups linked to the Kremlin have been caught trying to edit Wikipedia entries on the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 and the 2014 Ukraine conflict. And since 2012, Russian volunteers for Wikipedia have no longer been allowed to receive financial aid from abroad because of the countrys foreign agent law.

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Russia plans to replace unreliable Wikipedia with its own version - MIT Technology Review

Wikipedia is full of unreliable information, Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month. The solution? Replace it with an electronic version of the Great Russian Encyclopaedia, an existing reference work whose content is possibly influenced by the Russian government.

"As for Wikipedia it's better to replace it with the new Big Russian Encyclopaedia in electronic form," Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted Putin as saying at a Kremlin meeting in November. "At least that will be reliable information, presented in a good, modern way."

A government resolution said the measure will ensure that "reliable information that is constantly updated on the basis of scientifically verified sources of knowledge."

But upon the launch of encyclopedia's latest iteration, in 2017, writer Nikolai Podosokorsky told the Christian Science Monitor that while some of the pieces featured in the work were "excellent," others were shallow and biased.

"I've gone through several articles that pertain to my area of expertise, and found them quite superficial. The lists of references at the end were often extremely biased."

Of course, the new measure will also help Russia crack down even harder on citizens' internet access, a longstanding project of the Kremlin. In 2017, Russia said it plans to route 95 percent of internet traffic through its own servers by 2020. Earlier this year, Russia conducted an experiment in which it briefly disconnected itself from global servers to test how well it functioned on its self-contained internet. The test seemed designed, in part, to bolster safeguard measures in the event that Russia was attacked in an act of cyber warfare.

But it's also possible that Russia is exploring new ways to make its internet even more censored, surveilled and isolated from outside influence. In March, for example, Russia passed legislation banning the publication of "unreliable socially significant information" and content that shows "clear disrespect" for the government. Under this law, multiple people were fined for sharing a video about the lack of schools in a province of Russia, according to a report from the Russian media freedom watchdog Roskomsvoboda.

Maybe it's no wonder why Russia wants to axe Wikipedia, a crowd-sourced website that currently hosts entries like "Internet censorship in Russia", "List of journalists killed in Russia" and "Propaganda in the Russian Federation". Putin's own Wikipedia page mentions accusations that Putin had elections rigged and his critics tortured and murdered. It also has a section titled "Comparison to Hitler."

There's also a Wikipedia entry for Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down over a part of Ukraine occupied by pro-Russian separatists in 2014. That same year, a Twitter bot that monitors edits made to Wikipedia pages found that an internet user affiliated with Russian state media changed the following sentence:

The plane was shot down by terrorists of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic with Buk system missiles, which the terrorists received from the Russian Federation.

To:

The plane was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers.

This year, international investigators accused four pro-Russian military officials of being involved in the attacks.

Russia's history of vying to maintain top-down information control at all costs dates back to the 18th century. And it makes sense, from the perspective of the few in control: The state would lose power if it's unable to control how citizens access and share information, as Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, told Big Think.

"[Stalin] understood that it doesn't take too many additional edges in the network to destroy the dominance of that central node. So one way of thinking about this is: imagine a pyramidal structure, imagine something kind of like a Christmas tree, and there's the big guy like the fairy on top of the Christmas tree. But imagine that on this Christmas tree the lights are just connected to the fairy, they're not connected to one another, and therefore the fairy decides if the lights go on or off. It's a peculiar kind of Christmas tree. That's essentially a hierarchical network.

It wouldn't take too many connections, as it werelateral or horizontal connectionsbetween the lights to reduce the centrality of the fairy on the tree, and ultimately you could end up illuminating the tree without needing the fairy altogether."

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Russia to replace Wikipedia with the 'Great Russian Encyclopaedia' - Big Think

Apparently, disgruntled Rutgers football fans have gone scorched earth on Athletic Director Patrick Hobbs in the 24 hours since negotiations to bring Greg Schiano on board as the programs next head coach fell through. With the mob lighting up the message boards and social media and calling for Hobbs job, one fan took to Wikipedia to make his point.

On Monday morning -- less than 24 hours after Schiano-Rutgers negotiations were officially declared dead -- Hobbs Wikipedia page listed his full name as Patrick Weasel Hobbs. The entry ends by saying In 2019, his ego killed Rutgers football.

An edited Wikipedia entry for Rutgers Athletics Director Patrick Hobbs.

It is a unique display of a common feeling among the Rutgers fanbase.

In the hours after the breakdown was reported Sunday, a steady stream of fans expressed their frustration with a #FireHobbs hashtag on Twitter. One fan created a Change.org petition that called for leadership change atop the Rutgers athletics department. It has 930 signatures as of 11 a.m. Monday.

"Rutgers nation,'' the posting read, "has lost confidence and trust in him.''

High-level donors publicly expressed their frustrations with Hobbs.

Im terribly disappointed in Pat Hobbs, Doug Dolan, a longtime Rutgers booster and the Universitys former athletics director of fundraising, told NJ Advance Medias Keith Sargeant. This has been a train wreck hurtling towards a cliff for a while now. I dont know everything thats gone on behind the scenes. But my opinion is, the way things have fallen apart, Hobbs needs to pay for this with his job. I dont believe he knows whats necessary to run a major college football program.

(NJ Advance Medias Keith Sargeant contributed to this report.)

Get Rutgers Sports Insider text messages from reporters: Cut through the clutter of social media and communicate directly with the Rutgers beat writers. Plus, exclusive news and analysis every day. Sign up now.

Brian Fonseca may be reached at bfonseca@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @briannnnf. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Somebody messed with Pat Hobbs Wikipedia page: Hes a weasel with an ego that killed Rutgers football' - NJ.com

We explore some of Wikipedias oddities in our 5,973,574-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

This weeks entry: 2010s in music

What its about: Baby Shark, and all of the other, lesser songs that also came out in the past ten years. This decade appeared to be when people stopped paying for music, all FM radio stations seemed to be owned by one company and programmed by the same computer, and most of us discovered new artists by letting YouTube autoplay to the next video rather than exerting ourselves enough to click a button. Yet, some people still managed to write some terrific songs. Lets take a listen.

Biggest controversy: This column is more than 300 entries into our 5,973,574-week series, and this might be the worst-written Wikipedia article weve yet come across. Granted, much of the text is merely lists of artists, broken up by the occasional list of songs. But attempts at prose include such gems as, Traditional instruments have been used more often, especially in indie rock musicians, In recent years, the music industry has progress in Ghana, and one run-on sentence after another. The moral of the story: For readable, informative music writing, stick to your local pop culture website!

Strangest fact: Japanese girl group AKB48 set a record for being the largest pop group in history. The J-pop band at one point had 134 members. The sprawling group opened its own theater so that it could play in one location every day instead of touring, and will rotate members in and out so different factions of the group can play multiple gigs or fan events simultaneously. (Part of the groups concept is that the members are idols you can meetwith so many, its much easier for fans to have face-to-face contact with one.) The group is the highest selling musical act in Japan in terms of singles sold. The concept proved sturdy enough that AKB48 now has spinoff groups in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, with an Indian AKB48 in the works.

Thing we were happiest to learn: Hip-hop has gotten its due. Lil Nas X became a star this year by combining hip-hop and country, spurring the latest chapter in the neverending debate over what constitutes real country music. The genre also increased its influence around the world, with rappers like Shigga Shay in Singapore, AKA and Emtee in South Africa becoming big stars, and Korean K-Pop spawning a K-hip-hop subgenre.

Thing we were unhappiest to learn: The meaningless label alternative rock has only become more meaningless with time. Originally coined to separate the post-punk underground acts that broke through to the mainstream in the 1990s with the hard rock and pop acts who dominated the mainstream in the 80s, the term now appears to encompass mainstream acts like Imagine Dragons, Linkin Park, and Coldplay, somnambulant singer-songwriter Jack Johnson, and funk party band-turned-yacht rockers the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Alternative used to mean something, maaaaan! Okay, it never meant anything, but it meant slightly more than this, maaaaan!

Also noteworthy: Punks decline ended up being a good thing for punk. After a surge in popularity in the 2000s by punk-esque bands like Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, and Sum 41, the genre has been largely absent from the pop charts. But thats led to a resurgence of scrappy garage-influenced punk bands (and one of the bands on the list is called Joanna Gruesome, a definite contender for Year In Band Names.)

Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: If you want to read about music in the 2010s without any of the actual music, check out 2010s In the Music Industry. That page covers music business trends, nearly all of which involve how digital media has upended the industry. One of the page headings, Exclusive Releases As Promotion, hilariously has two subheadings: The Beginning Of Exclusive Releases and The End Of Exclusive Releases. The trend was apparently short-lived.

Further down the Wormhole: Included in a very long list of rappers is Chief Keef, a Chicago-born MC who broke out in the 2010s and had an unlikely champion in Lou Reed. Shortly before Reeds death in 2013, he commented to The Talkhouse about Keefs featured track on Kanye Wests album Yeezus: Hold My Liquor is just heartbreaking listen to that incredibly poignant hook from a tough guy like Chief Keef, wow. Reed, the sardonic songwriter who fronted the influential Velvet Underground before releasing 22 solo studio albums, also made an odd contribution to the video game world. The singer had a cameo in Penn & Tellers Smoke And Mirrors, a 1995 Sega CD game that was never released, but found a cult following in recent years after the game was posted online. Were taking a week off to enjoy Thanksgiving, but well be back in two weeks to examine one of the most intentionally maddening video games ever created.

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Wikipedia tries to cover the last 10 years of music in one overstuffed page - The A.V. Club

Weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that his country develop an alternative to the massively popular Wikipedia free online encyclopedia one prominent editor has revealed he was working to do just that.

Speaking Thursday to the state-run Tass Russian News Agency, Great Russian Encyclopedia executive editor Sergei Kravets said that he was developing a digital version of the famed 21st-century Great Soviet Encyclopedia commissioned by Putin. "The project, which began in July, is anticipated to take 33 months," he said. "It will be completed by the spring or summer of 2022."

The name has not been selected, but Kravets said he sought a title that both evoked the prestige of the Great Russian Encyclopedia and could bring such a work to a contemporary, young audience.

"As many as 35 percent of students are aware of its existence, they consider it to be reliable but a bit outdated. As for professors, nearly 100 percent are acquainted with the encyclopedia and believe it to be fundamental and reliable," he said. "If we create something new, we need to maintain continuity, credibility, depth and reliability, but at the same time, we should eliminate its antiquatedness and reach out to new areas."

Establishing a Russian Wikipedia-style database has been a source of debate in Russia for years. The idea was brought up by lawmaker Yelena Yampolskaya, a member of Putin's ruling United Russia Party and an outspoken supporter of the Soviet Union, at a December 2016 a joint meeting of the Council for Culture and Art and the Council on the Russian Language during which she appealed to Putin for more indigenous forms of sports, culture and entertainment.

"We need a national reference system so that people have resources other than Wikipedia at their disposal," Yampolskaya, who last year went on to become head of the Russian lower house of parliament's culture committee, said, berating mobile game Pokmon GO as "the devil's work and the product of a global conspiracy."

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A year later, in 2017, Kravets met with Putin alongside Russian Academy of Sciences member Yury Osipov to present the Russian leader the final, 35th volume of the Great Russian Encylopedia. The two men thanked Putin for his guidance but called for more support in bringing the vast work online, an endeavor he immediately praised.

"You are right, when they read Wikipedia online, people get a lot of varied and important information. However, when it is not entirely accurate, it does more harm than good," Putin said at the time. "This is why this information touchstone is so valuable."

Two years later, the Kremlin announced in a draft law that it would spend up to $27 million in establishing a Russian-language Wikipedia alternative during 2020-2022, but at a meeting earlier this month Putin elicited some controversy at home and abroad with comments that some took to mean he may move to block access to the original site, which has more than one and half a million articles in Russian.

Putin held a meeting of the Presidential Council on the Russian Language on November 2. During the session, before the president weighed in, two other participants brought up the subject of Wikipedia, both questioning its accuracy and warning of its effect on society and the proliferation of Russian-language knowledge.

"Regarding Wikipedia, this has already been mentioned here: It is better to replace it with the new Great Russian Encyclopedia in electronic form, we are now talking about this with our colleagues," Putin said. "This will be, in any case, reliable information in a good, modern, by the way, form."

Days later, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov issued a clarification on the Russian leader's comments, saying "Wikipedia is a popular and respected self-updated resource," according to Tass.

"What the president and some of the speakers [at the Council's meeting] meant was that with all due respect, no one guarantees the credibility of information available on Wikipedia," Peskov said. "The president highlighted the need to create an encyclopedia-style source of knowledge and make it accessible."

"That's what the Great Soviet Encyclopedia is," he added, emphasizing that "there cannot be, nor have there been any bans or restrictions on access to Wikipedia."

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Russia Is Building Its Own Wikipedia After Putin Says The Country Needs One - Newsweek