Requests for comment/Large scale language inaccuracies on the Scots Wikipedia/front
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- Announcements
- The Big Wiki Rewrite Centre for the Scots Leid (Scots Language Centre)
- sco:Wikipedia:E Scots Leed Editathon August 2020 Sunday and Monday, August 30-31
- Scots language lessons by Michael Dempster, Director of the Centre for the Scots Leid (grammar, words)
- The small wiki audit and wiki governance audit are being organized to combat this problem in the future.
Rationale
editOriginally this topic was opened with the focus on the actions of mainly one user on the Scots Wikipedia. His actions, albeit well-intentioned, nonetheless exposed a large vulnerability not just in the Scots Wiki, but small language Wikis in general. The conversation that followed quickly turned to the topic of the fate of the Wiki itself: How to best fix the damage that had been done, to what extent pruning is preferable to fixing, is the project even salvageable? And how can this sort of thing be prevented in the future? This conversation is currently still on-going and probably will be for a while. In large part as a result of the mainstream coverage this issue generated, several native Scots speakers have stepped up to the task to help fix and moderate the Wiki.
More broadly though, what happened raises questions about other small language Wikis. There are 300+ public Wikis, of which the vast majority are tiny, that might suffer from similar problems that come with having little to no oversight. If you’re someone who doesn’t understand the language a particular Wiki is written in, it’s impossible to tell for yourself. The idea has been raised to start a “Small Wiki Audit”, which would have people fluent in one of these languages assess the quality of the articles written there. This too is still a work in progress. --ReneeWrites (talk) 13:40, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
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Wiki user AmaryllisGardener has made a significant number of contributions on Wikipedia overall, of which the vast majority were done on the Scots Wikipedia. There he contributed over 27,000 articles, making up close to half of the total number of articles on that Wiki altogether. The problem is that none of these articles were written in Scots. AmaryllisGardener does not know the language, as seen in for instance this exchange. Despite this he is treated as somewhat of an authority on the language, judging by the contributions on his talk page by people who don't know the language either. However, the bigger problem is the tens of thousands of articles and edits that were done in an endagered language. The articles use US-en grammar instead of Scots grammar, and the English words are replaced with a Scottish translation (some of which were not correct, either). For words where the author couldn't find a Scottish equivalent, either English was used instead, or a new word was made up altogether (like "pheesicist", although in Amaryllis's defense, he did not create that word, another user who doesn't speak Scots did). Huge parts of the Scots Wikipedia can not function as a resource because of this, and do active harm to the language it pretends to be written in. Scots is a struggling language, and having it replaced with the dressed-up skeleton of another language is cultural vandalism at an unprecedented scale. For more discussion and commentary, see this thread on Reddit. |
Wikimedia UK statement, 26 August 2020:
Daria Cybulska, director of programmes and evaluation at Wikimedia UK said: “We do not own or control the Scots-language Wikipedia, which as with all parts of the Wiki community, is edited and managed by volunteers.
“We are aware of the concerns that have emerged about the content of the Scots-language Wikipedia and are in touch with the Wikimedia Foundation and volunteer editor community to offer support in helping to ensure that these issues are addressed.
“We are exploring ways of supporting the existing Scots Wikipedia editor community, by offering help with editing training for newcomers, facilitating partnerships with authoritative language organisations and organising editing events to harness current interest and energy.” from The Guardian