MOSCOW, April 4. /TASS/. Russia needs to create an analogue to Wikipedia with verified information before it considers blocking the website from the Russian Internet, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov thinks.
He said this when reporters asked him to comment on remarks by Head of Russia’s Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC) Valery Fadeyev, who backed blocking Wikipedia.
"You know that in various formats, at different forums and levels, over and over we heard the opinion that it is necessary for us to develop an analogue to Wikipedia which contains truly verified and precise objective information. Since we know that Wikipedia has a lot of distortions, a lot of falsehoods, a lot of errors, historical and factual. So, of course, creating an analogue is a must," the Kremlin official asserted. Replying to a question as to whether it is necessary to block the portal given the unreliability of some data it contains, Peskov noted: "First, it is necessary to develop the analogue."
Earlier, Fadeyev said that Wikipedia was "convenient in some aspects," like obtaining some reference information, but it contains a lot of distortions of political and historical facts. The head of the Human Rights Council stated that currently there is no alternative to it. In his opinion "it is necessary to create the alternative as quickly as possible and block Wikipedia.".