Someone spammed a Novosibirsk City Hall forum, lobbying hard for a Stalin monument

From October 9 to 29, Internet users in Novosibirsk were invited to share their thoughts about a proposal to build a monument in the city to the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. In three weeks, 243 comments rolled in.

According to a report by the mayor’s office about the feedback, the city got 85 responses against the monument and 155 comments in support of a Stalin monument, including 137 posts advocating that the new monument be erected near the city’s historic Officers’ Building.

Curiously, the report notes, 97 of these 137 comments were completely identical.

The issue now goes to Novosibirsk’s Art Council, which has to decide what to do with the online experiment’s apparently unreliable results.