A Brief History Of SCP-RU
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Well, I may miss some points in our history and forget others, but here's how I remember it. - GeneR

For all I know, it all started in the image boards. On June 27th, 2010, the user known as SCP-RU and some other guys decided to try translating the SCP Foundation into Russian. Ged_Malburg is the oldest active member from those days. Back then there was a different design, no nav:side menu and no forums - work on translation was coordinated using a separate webpage. Registration was open to anyone, without restriction. GeneR joined the project in the end of November 2010. At that time it was pretty much abandoned - only three people were displaying any activity. So they trucked along, doing things on their own, until the user dr-phasanova proposed that she, Malburg and GeneR should work together.

I still have that proposal message, it was sent on 30th January 2011. We had about 110 complete translations at that time - GeneR

SCP-RU, the guy who started it, had long since left the project. No one but him was an administrator, so the staff were really limited in what they could change, similar to how The Administrator being MIA limited the English SCP Wiki in 2009. Fortunately, Malburg managed to contact him and get administrator privileges for the three in February 2011. At that time, they finally had forums, voting modules and a design like the English wiki. That was also the time Resure joined. He filled the "tech" niche quite nicely and provided priceless help with various web features, Google Analytics, domain name registration and other stuff none of the others were competent with.

Sometime in March 2011 they decided to try creating their own SCPs and created a sandbox site. Rules were changed frequently throughout its history, at one time running one's SCP through the sandbox was not necessary for authors with >5 approved SCPs on the main site. SCPs from that time have a distinct vibe to them, but now are generally regarded the same as English SCPs from 2008. Pretty much "the classics".

We even have plans to rewrite them, but rewrites are almost unheard of in our community, so that's new horizons for us. - GeneR

When the site was a year old, they decided to have a meet-up. Only 3 people came, but that was a start. There were at least 7 other meetups since then with two of these gathering 11 site members.

Dugond and Osobist came some time after. Dugond had a tremendous working capacity - most of their mass edits were primarily his effort. He saw a lot of minor blemishes and inconsistencies, and contributed much to the site's improvement. Eventually, however, they made the mistake of letting him maintain the sandbox wiki alone, and he burned out. Since he also had to work on his thesis, he left. Eventually he came back, had another period of activity, and left for another hiatus. But that's really condensing 2 years into a paragraph. Dugond is gone right now.

I do not have any means of contacting him, he'll come out eventually. Or maybe he won't. - GeneR

Osobist is still active. He does many of the "official" and "organizational" tasks, manages the vk.com (Russian Facebook analogue) community and maintains general order.

Both of them were active translators (Dugond was more prolific, though). People kept joining and the amount of content grew. Amassing content was a priority at that time, so the number of translations (and new -RU SCPs) increased steadily.

Ah. Back to 2011. At the end of the year GeneR first translated one of their articles into English (SCP-1138). It was originally written by Fartun and was his debut SCP. Secondly, he managed to transfer the master administrator rights from SCP-RU (whom he tried to contact several times with no results). After a year and a half of work they finally got rid of female underwear ads below SCP-076. They were kinda killing the mood.

In September 2011 they had their first case of vandalism, so they developed a membership application procedure modeled after the English SCP Wiki's procedure. At the end of November, a user named Wiiskey violated the rules and posted http://scpfoundation.ru/evil-doctor-alto-klef directly to the main site. The poem quickly rose to the top 3 and is still there, on par with 173 and slightly above 076.

2012 changed much. First and foremost, SCP-087 game came into existence. The amount of visitors in Google Analytics increased five-fold, the amount of new applicants and bad SCPs in the sandbox… you get the idea.

In April 2012 they had to ban one of their most prolific authors (with ~25 SCPs written) over a disagreement about the GOI he invented. He did not take well to criticism. It was a long and unpleasant story, and they try not to talk about it. The social network group was also established in early 2012. The Russian wiki has continued to grow, with thousands of articles either translated or created originally. They also had their own translation contest in 2013, and had over 177 entries submitted for it.

The Russian SCP Wiki was the first translation community, and it has continued to grow in the years we've been working with it. They've had some hard times, just like us, but they've always come out stronger for it. If you ever have the inclination, read over some of their original tales and articles. Maybe say hi to their staff. Appreciate the work they've done for us, in the past, and into the future.

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