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First sentence calls it "Wikipaedia" (two letters ae) but the logo shows it to be "Wikipædia" (diphthong æ). I don't know how to fix this because it is template-generated. Equinox ◑ 01:27, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
Could someone please explain this to me Audrey2424 ( talk) 11:38, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
As an admin on Sco.wiki, I'm not sure if I have a Conflict of Interest here? I know we wouldn't say that an enwiki admin has a COI for English Wikipedia, so... idk. Either way, here are some refs that can be used to improve the article: [1] [2] [3] [4] – MJL ‐Talk‐ ☖ 22:35, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
- @ MJL: You poor innocent and sweet young MJL. Little did you know in seven months what would happen to you and this site. – MJL ‐Talk‐ ☖ 06:20, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
reddit.com/r/scotland – "I’ve discovered that almost every single article on the Scots version of Wikipedia is written by the same person - an American teenager who can’t speak Scots" Comment
There's an interesting post on reddit about Scots Wikipedia, saying that it's deeply flawed and largely edited by someone who doesn't actually know Scots: [5]. Brad ( talk) 17:51, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
-
DividedFrame, See
m:Wikimedia_Forum#Scots_Wikipedia_is_largely_not_written_in_Scots. This is a serious problem. ―
Justin (koavf)❤
T☮
C☺
M☯ 18:38, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
- m:Requests_for_comment/Large scale language inaccuracies on the Scots Wikipedia as well. © Tbhotch ™ 22:48, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
The forum link is now archived. Link is
Newystats ( talk) 00:44, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum/Archives/2020-08#
Newystats ( talk) 00:45, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
I noticed that a paragraph on the whole not-actually-written-in-Scots thing has been added, removed, and then added again here. I agree with Puzzledvegetable that when a Reddit post and a Gizmodo article about that Reddit post are the only sources, it's WP:TOOSOON to mention it on Wikipedia, but I would like to hear others' thoughts before I perform the third reversion. Shouldn't we wait to see if this becomes WP:NOTABLE before including it? Justin Kunimune ( talk) 02:32, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
I'd argue that because of the massive PITA this whole deal is going to cause for Scots Wikipedia with practically every article meeding to be checked to make sure it's really in Scots we should include at least some mention of it. Given that, a small paragraph noting this feels appropriate. AngryZinogre ( talk) 07:02, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- There's been wider coverage now. I think it's clearly notable now.
Bondegezou (
talk) 11:17, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
-
Most of the coverage I've seen is online chournalism based on that Gizmodo article. The only real change is that Vice has now also been added to the mix. Neither of these are known for being reliable.
I'd argue that because of the massive PITA this whole deal is going to cause for Scots Wikipedia with practically every article meeding to be checked to make sure it's really in Scots we should include at least some mention of it.
That's not how Wikipedia works. We are simply documenting what has been reported by reliable sources. We can not add something because of the assumption that it will become notable enough for inclusion in the future. Please note the relevant notability guideline which states rather unambiguously:"Notability" is not synonymous with "fame" or "importance," and even web content that editors personally believe is "important" or "famous" is only accepted as notable if it can be shown to have attracted notice. No web content is exempt from this requirement, no matter what kind of content it is. If the individual web content has received no or very little attention from independent sources, then it is not notable simply because other web content of its type is commonly notable or merely because it exists
-- Puzzledvegetable Is it teatime already? 12:55, 26 August 2020 (UTC)- Verdict has covered the piece, including some original reporting. iNews has also covered the piece, again with some original reporting. In addition to Gizmodo and Vice, as mentioned, there's Heise and Numerama, the latter also extending beyond the Gizmodo piece, I think.
- Of those, the only one mentioned in WP:RSP is Vice, with a no consensus conclusion. Heinz Heise and Numerama articles don't suggest any particular problems with those sources. Bondegezou ( talk) 13:15, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
-
Most of the coverage I've seen is online chournalism based on that Gizmodo article. The only real change is that Vice has now also been added to the mix. Neither of these are known for being reliable.
The errors were originally found on 4chan. Predating the Reddit post by a day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.62.43.46 ( talk) 17:52, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- Maybe they were originally posted there (by the same author), but what's the relevance? Maybe the author had a Google Doc or a blog they posted it on before, too. Doesn't matter. The issue didn't blow up until it hit Reddit. As the i news article writes, "...according to an investigation originally published on Reddit." SnowFire ( talk) 17:59, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- I'd just like to mention being the original author of the post on Reddit that I did originally post it on 4chan's /his/ board a few hours beforehand. It gained a lot of traction there and was crossposted to /int/ and /pol/ but it didn't seem to spread outside the site. As SnowFire says it didn't get media attention until it blew up on Reddit. I'm not sure if the original 4chan post is notable enough to warrant a mention but feel free to put it in if you think it is. Ultaigh 11:10, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
The Guardian have picked up on it now. Opera hat ( talk) 18:21, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
@ Bondegezou: - I prefer simply stating that the user produced extremely low-quality work and leaving it at that. Saying that they "don't speak Scots" is reductive and makes the user - a real person - come across as (even more?) insane, as if they were knowingly writing nonsense into this wiki. If we had to discuss it, it would be to say something like "the editor believed in good faith that they could write Scots and were producing useful material, but only due to extreme naivety / shelteredness / being a kid. In actual reality their Scots proficiency was nearly nonexistent." Open to suggestions - I'd rather leave it out, but if you feel the matter should be brought up, we should strive not to misrepresent this editor per WP:BLP. SnowFire ( talk) 15:10, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- We should follow
WP:RS, even on a topic relating to our own community. I think we agree that the user does not speak Scots, so the statement is both true and reported, meeting
WP:V. We can review the exact phrasing used in news coverage to see if there is a less reductive/more nuanced way of saying it than "doesn't speak Scots". I'm not bothered about the precise wording. However, I think the text cries out for an explanation (how could he write so many low-quality articles) and RS give an explanation (he doesn't speak Scots). I suggest your suggested text isn't viable: the presumption of good faith, while appropriate for guiding how we interact with each other as editors, looks like editorialising were we to add it to the article text. Again, it comes back to what RS say: do RS give an explanation in terms of naivety etc.?
Bondegezou (
talk) 15:25, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- Despite being the one who added the Gizmodo article, I don't think we actually have any RS on this specific, personal issue. There's a higher standard for reliable sources about BLP, especially as related to "personal" things that could only be derived from an interview or the like. What we do know is this user's output: very poor Scots.
- Anyway, maybe we should quote from i article you added (
https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 ): "an American teenager who is not fluent in the language". I think that is more accurate than "doesn't speak Scots" and less misleading. (The key difference is that "doesn't speak Scots" makes it sound like their language proficiency was absolutely zero and they were writing pure gibberish. "not fluent" gets across that the problem was more like "is extraordinarily bad at it".)
SnowFire (
talk) 15:54, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- @ SnowFire: Agreed. That seems sensible. Bondegezou ( talk) 18:29, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
I see the Guardian article has been added to the article, but I thought I'd add for reference on this talk page that it is the 4th most-viewed article currently live there (behind Boris Johnson, Brexit, and the school grades scandal). If there was already a lot of attention, this could lead to much more mainstream coverage in the UK, so beware of incoming vandals.
Also, the Guardian article mentions that the Scots language body has contacted Wikimedia, which isn't in the article (yet), in case an interested user wanted to add it. Kingsif ( talk) 22:35, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- Done. RexSueciae ( talk) 23:17, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
-
I was under the impression that that template is intended for when the article itself is mentioned by the media, not the subject of the article. Am I wrong? --
Puzzledvegetable
Is it teatime already? 00:37, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
- @ Puzzledvegetable: Yes, when the article is mentioned - here I was referring to relevant details in the content of the Guardian report being written in this article, sorry if there was confusion. Kingsif ( talk) 00:48, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
-
I was under the impression that that template is intended for when the article itself is mentioned by the media, not the subject of the article. Am I wrong? --
Puzzledvegetable
Is it teatime already? 00:37, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
The article has categories of "Science and technology in Scotland" and "2005 establishments in Scotland", yet the only mention of its foundation is that Wikimedia's headquarters are in Miami, Florida. Can we clarify this one way or the other? How did the project start? -- Lord Belbury ( talk) 15:05, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
A succession of words in Scots is not even low-quality Scots / Best way to describe language in Scots Wikipedia
(EDIT: Looks like we both posted new sections simultaneously - combining them — Preceding unsigned comment added by SnowFire ( talk • contribs) 17:30, 28 August 2020 (UTC))
Taking a text in language A and translating each word into language B, one by one and maintaining the sequence, will never produce a text in language B, low-quality or otherwise. To say so flatters what was produced. Many of the choice of words apppear to have been spuriously Scottified, others chosen on the basis of maximal differentiation from the English word in the source text, even if they are archaic, obscure or a word closer to English is the more commonplace. His work was made up of a succession of Scots words, or something approximating them, but that does not make it Scots. He attempted to construct text in the language without being informed as to how to do so. The very next sentence elaborates as to the mechanics of how he is assumed to have gone about this, with an English/Scots dictionary so I'm not sure why anyone would think he used Italian(?!; I know it is intended of an example of something but it doesn't fly). Mutt Lunker ( talk) 17:18, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
@ Mutt Lunker: I'm open to options here on alternate phrasings, but think your original attempt was misleading. If we go solely by the original Reddit post - which was unnecessarily bombastic in parts IMO - even it acknowledges that the author thought that Scots Wikipedia was "legendarily bad" when looking at in years prior. Not that it was pure gibberish / spam like zsadfjhklsfkjhsdfkjhsdfhdsf , or straight-up Actually A Different Langauge like pasting in English directly. I don't think it's under dispute that AG's grasp of Scots was horrible, and that's in the article already with the quote from the linguistics professor. It was, however, Scots-y enough to not be immediately, obviously, "not Scots" in the sense of gibberish or a different language. If it were, then even non-Scots speaking admins (like MJL) and passerby would have noticed. Hence, I stand by "very low quality Scots" as an accurate description of the state of AG's articles. Do you have a better suggestion than the awkward-reading (to me at least) "uninformed attempt at the construction of Scots text"? To me, that sounds more like it's implying the pure gibberish option, like saying "the toddler made an uninformed attempt at writing the alphabet" (implied: but they failed to correctly write the alphabet). SnowFire ( talk) 17:23, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Reply to the above, since we double-posted: sounds like we just have a semantics issue. Like I said, I don't think there's a dispute between us that AG wrote via starting with English sentences, and doing 1:1 substitutions in his own personal branch of North Carolina Scots. I'm just saying that claiming this was "not Scots" has a stronger meaning to most readers than what you mean - "not Scots" means obviously written in a different language with no Scots words whatsoever, or pure gibberish.
SnowFire (
talk) 17:30, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Being "Scots-y" enough to not appear like a stream of random letters or an entirely distinct third language is a phenomenally low bar to classify it as Scots. "uninformed attempt at the construction of Scots text" simply states (not implies) that he was attempting to construct the text of the articles in Scots without the benefit of sufficient information to do so, that is all. There is nothing in this wording to remotely lead anyone to the conclusion that, not only was he insufficiently skilled to succeed, all he wrote was "pure gibberish/ spam". That is not a warranted interpretation. "the (editor) made an uninformed attempt at writing the (article in Scots)" (implied: but they failed to correctly write the (article in Scots))" is absolutely bang on.
Mutt Lunker (
talk) 18:09, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Like I said, I believe that readers will interpret your suggested version in a way harsher than is the reality here (regardless of whether it's a warranted interpretation or not). Do you have any other suggestions for how to express the nature of the Scots Wikipedia articles if you still feel "very low-quality Scots" will be interpreted as better than the reality? SnowFire ( talk) 18:59, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Would "a combination of English and low-quality Scots" work for you? I think this is already explained a little bit further on, but if you feel it's important to talk about how much pollution of English was going on immediately, maybe this would be better? SnowFire ( talk) 19:06, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Being "Scots-y" enough to not appear like a stream of random letters or an entirely distinct third language is a phenomenally low bar to classify it as Scots. "uninformed attempt at the construction of Scots text" simply states (not implies) that he was attempting to construct the text of the articles in Scots without the benefit of sufficient information to do so, that is all. There is nothing in this wording to remotely lead anyone to the conclusion that, not only was he insufficiently skilled to succeed, all he wrote was "pure gibberish/ spam". That is not a warranted interpretation. "the (editor) made an uninformed attempt at writing the (article in Scots)" (implied: but they failed to correctly write the (article in Scots))" is absolutely bang on.
Mutt Lunker (
talk) 18:09, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- How can I argue against this sort of illogicality? My wording characterises the situation, your baseless interpretation of it bears no relation but you say that it doesn't matter if there is no reasonable expectation that others would make the same misinterpretation, because they would anyway. If I am not happy about something being characterised as something it is not, it makes asking me if I happy for it be characterised as that thing it is not, in combination with something else, somewhat of a foregone conclusion.
- Can I assume that the editors who thanked me for my edits also find the current wording inadequate and inaccurate and SnowFire's conclusions from my wording unwarranted?
Mutt Lunker (
talk) 21:45, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Calm down. It's a wiki, which means collaborative writing, which means not everyone will always agree. I got a thanks for my edit as well. It's not a big deal. I'm just looking for a possible compromise here, not an argument.
- "Is a piece of text in language XYZ" is inherently a continuum, not a firm cutoff line. You clearly place that line higher than I do, which is fine, although I would politely ask that you acknowledge other people can disagree and think that even the most hopelessly garbled, unintelligible "Scots" can still be Scots. My proposed alternate phrasing was trying to sidestep the issue of "what language was it in" by instead describing the result, so yes, I did think you might find it more agreeable.
- As I've said before, I still don't think your text characterizes the situation accurately, just as you don't like my text. Is there really no other phrasing you can think of that would satisfy us both? We clearly agree on the actual facts of the matter, just not the semantics for how to express it. SnowFire ( talk) 22:22, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
At no time have I in any way objected to someone disagreeing with me, so you can withdraw that slight. If, though, the nature of that disagreement is illogical, unwarranted and indeed, in some of its aspects, ludicrous, it is entirely appropriate for me to point this out. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 12:48, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
- If you're fine with disagreement, cool, let's resolve the disagreement so we can remove the disputed tag then. I was hoping to avoid the semantics debate, but I guess let's go. Let's say somebody shows up to Latin class for the first time, and is told to translate a paragraph of English to a paragraph of Latin. They get it all wrong and backward - they maintain English grammatical structure, there's misspellings, the verbs are misconjugated, it's not idiomatic. It's awful. Is this hypothetical paragraph in Latin? I would argue that yes, it is. Someone can still figure out what was meant by this and the original sense of the paragraph if they know some Latin and can disentangle the mistakes made. It's a terrible example of grammatical or proper Latin, but it's still beginner Latin. On the other hand, a computer program that printed 30 random Latin words strung together with random punctuation did not produce valid Latin. There is no "sense" or meaning behind this random paragraph to determine.
- Now, you mentioned above that this is a "phenomenally low bar", and that's true, but just to be clear, the news media has already tripped itself up over this low bar. Several news stories DID in fact imply that AG's contributions were just gibberish or English in a funny accent, or (hilariously) in Vice's case, mistake Scots for Scottish Gaelic, and complain that AG's contributions looked nothing like a Google Translate version of English -> Gaelic. So this isn't a hypothetical concern, the distinction does need to be made. Whatever else you might think, it wasn't that catastrophic level of error. I think a valid way to express that AG was writing in horrible, horrible, broken Scots was "very low quality Scots", and think that your original version doesn't clearly rule out that AG wasn't flat out writing in the wrong language (e.g. putting raw English into the Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia). Like I said, I'm open to other options, but I'm hesitant to propose any after you shot down "mixture of English and low-quality Scots". Is there anything other than your original proposal that you'd be satisfied with, even if you think it's fine as is (I think my version is fine as is too)? Or should we go to WP:3O to get a third opinion or the like? SnowFire ( talk) 14:26, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
- Perhaps you have an unfortunate turn of phrase but I'll bite my tongue about your opener there. This latest post is a more considered reiteration of what you have said above, without the more outlandish aspects. You know my objections, so I won't repeat my position, other than to say that, even were my wording to somehow prompt these misconceptions in some, the very next sentence would disabuse them.
- Let's remember that, whether you believe your own characterisation of the way the Scots Wikipedia articles are written to be accurate or not, the sentence in question in this article regards what the post on Reddit said about the articles. Whatever you think of the views expressed in that post, your wording states that it said something that it did not. Although I do think that, in contrast, the wording I inserted does accurately represent the line taken by the post, I'll offer "(the) post noted that the project contained an unusually high number of articles written by non-speakers of Scots, primarily by a single prolific contributor". Mutt Lunker ( talk) 15:40, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
- My impression is that it's less incorrect but only because it is less meaningful. One is really none the wiser as to what is meant until you read the next sentence, which captures well what the Reddit post noted. If there isn't a way of summarising the post more briefly in the first sentence, whilst retaining meaning and accuracy, it makes doing so superfluous. We may as well just excise the phrase, to give: "In 2020, the site attracted attention after a contributor to Reddit reported that the project contained an unusually high number of articles by a single prolific contributor. At least 20,000 articles were created by an American teenager who is not fluent in the Scots language, writing without using genuine Scots idioms or grammatical structure and assumed to be using an online English-Scots dictionary to crudely translate English Wikipedia article segments." Nails it. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 12:03, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- That becomes a bait and switch if you read it cold: it reads as if the site became famous because one person worked very hard on it, before revealing in the next sentence that they did a bad job. "Low quality" should stay in there somewhere. --
Lord Belbury (
talk) 18:15, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- Per above, that has the down side of inaccuracy. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 19:36, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- That becomes a bait and switch if you read it cold: it reads as if the site became famous because one person worked very hard on it, before revealing in the next sentence that they did a bad job. "Low quality" should stay in there somewhere. --
Lord Belbury (
talk) 18:15, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- @ SnowFire: @ Mutt Lunker: I actually was the one who thanked both of your edits; I also was the one who added the hidden text asking for a more accurate term. This is certainly a vague situation in context, and may boil down to a philosophical argument. It certainly doesn't help that Scots is the closest existing relative to English, has no standard written form, and for like 99% of Scottish people, exists on an ambiguous spectrum to Scottish English depending on the situation at hand. I will say, to the best of my knowledge and looking a lot on that Wiki and having a few minor edits myself over the years - and also considering the possible consequences of his bewildering horde of edits and the reaction it recieved by actual Scotsmen - that AG was not writing in Scots of any form, but generally a poor imitation of it. There are very few halfway-decent, somewhat authentically translated sections/short articles. However, nearly all of the wiki is total rubbish, and many Scottish would find calling it "Scots" to be insensitive at best. The fact that so many people see Scots as just a humorous accented English (with implied stereotypes) is a travesty. It's safer to just call it garbage, but in wiki-approved language, I'd merely call it "generally low-quality imitation".-- ~Sıgehelmus♗ (Tøk) 06:45, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
(de-indent) I still don't understand what Mutt Lunker is looking for here, and am inclined to go back to the original phrasing of "very low-quality Scots." Or low-quality something. The fundamental scandal was low language quality. I'll quote from the original Reddit thread:
- The Scots language version of Wikipedia is legendarily bad. People embroiled in linguistic debates about Scots often use it as evidence that Scots isn’t a language, and if it was an accurate representation, they’d probably be right. It uses almost no Scots vocabulary, what little it does use is usually incorrect, and the grammar always conforms to standard English, not Scots.
The problem is not "one contributor contributed a lot," which would be a mystifying complaint. The problem is that the language quality of the articles is crap, and this needs to be stated. Additionally, per the original Reddit poster himself, this problem goes deeper than originally implied by the Reddit thread - he looked at other articles untouched by AG and found they were equally bad, and MJL, the other admin, has stated that looking back at the original contributors to Scots Wikipedia, many of them were oddball enthusiasts as well, not native Scots speakers. SnowFire ( talk) 20:23, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- "In 2020, the site attracted attention after a Reddit post noted that the project contained an unusually high number of articles written by a single prolific contributor who is not fluent in the Scots language, writing without using genuine Scots idioms or grammatical structure and assumed to be using an online English-Scots dictionary to crudely translate English Wikipedia article segments. At least 20,000 articles were created by this American teenager." Mutt Lunker ( talk) 21:07, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- This re-ordering of the two sentences retains all the information, without the need for the contested phrase. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 11:11, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
- I still don't really agree with your latest edit, but I don't think it's worth disputing at this point. I'll just drop this off from the same user who made the original Reddit post,
User:Ultaigh:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/ihiisw/ongoing_discussion_by_the_wikimedia_community_on/g30fntd/?context=3 :
- A troubling revelation from the discussion here is that AG wasn't the only culprit... It turns out this isn't the case. There were several more users just like him who created and edited huge numbers of articles despite admitting that they weren't fluent, or in extreme cases had no ability in Scots whatsoever. These articles are just as bad as, or in some cases even worse, than AG's... I've looked at hundreds of articles over the last couple of days and I've found one that looks like it was written by a native speaker, and even then it's not perfect.
- I'm totally fine with whatever phrase works if you just don't like "low language quality", but the idea that the articles are bad - in some form or expression - should be there, lest the point get buried. Plenty of non-fluent speakers who edit and do useful work on these wikis, after all, the key distinction is that the "good" users who aren't fluent don't write mountains of crap, and restrict themselves to anti-vandalism / maintenance and the like. SnowFire ( talk) 20:20, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
- I still don't really agree with your latest edit, but I don't think it's worth disputing at this point. I'll just drop this off from the same user who made the original Reddit post,
User:Ultaigh:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/ihiisw/ongoing_discussion_by_the_wikimedia_community_on/g30fntd/?context=3 :
- I don't think anyone would be in doubt from the description but if one were to emphasise the point and restrict oneself to what the initial Reddit post says: "In 2020, the site attracted attention after a Reddit post claimed that the project's "legendarily bad" content was largely attributable to a single prolific contributor who is not fluent in the Scots language, writing without using genuine Scots idioms or grammatical structure and assumed to be using an online English-Scots dictionary to crudely translate English Wikipedia article segments. At least 20,000 articles were created by this American teenager." Mutt Lunker ( talk) 22:36, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
I've removed this hatnote as I couldn't work out what it was trying to say. Is it trying to clarify that this article is about Scots Wikipedia and that there is no such thing as a Scottish English Wikipedia (and that the reader should just read the English Wikipedia instead)? -- Lord Belbury ( talk) 10:21, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
- I believe it's referring to the fact that the English Wikipedia is written in varying dialects including American English, Indian English and Scottish English, the last of which makes it the most relevant Wikipedia to the Scottish English dialect (if I'm understanding what Scottish English is correctly). — Bilorv ( talk) 12:40, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
"Scottish English Wikipedia" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect
Scottish English Wikipedia. The discussion will occur at
Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 December 6#Scottish English Wikipedia until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.
Soumya-8974 (he)
talk
contribs
subpages 17:38, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
The article doesn't say whether the 20 000 bogus articles were deleted! -- Espoo ( talk) 14:19, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Someone keeps removing my factual edit re: the ongoing cultural genocide propagated by Wikimedia Foundation and that the Scots Wikipedia is not written in any known language. 2A00:23C4:F1D:4201:C100:1146:80EC:65CB ( talk) 17:47, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- Wikipedia articles need to be based on reliable, published sources. Without them, we are limited in what can be added to the article. Richard Nevell ( talk) 18:20, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- Then where is the citation from a reliable source which claims that it is written in Scots? 2A00:23C4:F1D:4201:C100:1146:80EC:65CB ( talk) 18:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- It's true that the Scots Wiki is a work in progress. However, you constantly adding inflammatory passages to the article helps no one. Stop your disruptive editing. Envysan ( talk) 18:40, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- They are not inflammatory, I have simply corrected the article to reflect the fact of the matter. Wikipedia's hierarchy is disgusting that you have the power to gatekeep like this. 2A00:23C4:F1D:4201:C100:1146:80EC:65CB ( talk) 18:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- You did claim it was "cultural genocide" which at the very least needs a reference. Richard Nevell ( talk) 22:18, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
The IP has been blocked for 7 days due to edit-warring. Their flame-baiting commentary is not helping. The WMF has recently worked with scholars in Scotland on the linguistic accuracy, some sourcing (or at least evidence) is needed for the IP's position. 力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 22:20, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- yet another user trying to use wikipedia to promote some ideology for his. 99.27.106.23 ( talk) 17:26, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
What do editors think of adding a "See also" or "Further reading" to the wikimedia discussion? Newystats ( talk) 02:16, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- @
Newystats: Linking it in some form seems like a good idea.
★Trekker (
talk) 18:35, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
- It's inside baseball that is also incomprehensible to outsiders. If we really, really, really had to link something on Wikimedia sites, it'd be an official statement from the Wikimedia organization, or a Signpost article, or the like - not raw unfiltered discussion. Same reason that it can be okay to link blogposts, but almost never a forum thread. SnowFire ( talk) 21:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
First I fixed the citation, which was attributed to the wrong existing source. Then in a second edit, I removed the sentence completely:
The incident was described as "a huge failure on Wikimedia's part", with specific criticisms placed on Wikipedia's "labyrinthine back-end system" and a lack of coordination across smaller wiki projects.
Here's the actual source (mangled language and cliched conclusion in bold):
- Victoria Song :: Alleged Teen Brony Has Filled the Scots Wiki With Thousands of Fake Translations — 25 August 2020
Another issue is that there seems to stem from Wikipedia's labyrinthine back-end system. Admins, MJL said, mostly make sure no vandalism occurs on a given page and their main focus is to navigate the back-end. They aren't necessarily monitoring pages for accuracy.
Editors on smaller projects, like the Scots wiki, don't necessarily coordinate new articles that get written, either. They often work individually, unaware of what another editor may be doing. This is a huge failure on Wikimedia's part. Between the opacity of the Wikimedia back end and the reliance on unpaid community volunteers, something like this was bound to happen.
Victoria Song is an established technology journalist, but I don't think the above is her finest hour. She seems to have invented "labyrinthine back-end system" with little support from her own sources. IMO, a good editor at Gizmodo (hopefully not an oxymoron) should have removed this paragraph from Song's composition as unsupported OR.
Clearly the actual problem is that the site had too few administrators (presently just five) and not all of these were native Scots. Any kind of a serious new pages patrol should have flagged these contributions as problematic. This process is hardly "labyrinthine" or obscure.
- Wikipedia:New pages patrol — created 17 March 2004
Finally, it's not like Gizmodo (launched as part of Gawker Media) has never run shallowly sourced clickbait. — MaxEnt 22:06, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
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First sentence calls it "Wikipaedia" (two letters ae) but the logo shows it to be "Wikipædia" (diphthong æ). I don't know how to fix this because it is template-generated. Equinox ◑ 01:27, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
Could someone please explain this to me Audrey2424 ( talk) 11:38, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
As an admin on Sco.wiki, I'm not sure if I have a Conflict of Interest here? I know we wouldn't say that an enwiki admin has a COI for English Wikipedia, so... idk. Either way, here are some refs that can be used to improve the article: [1] [2] [3] [4] – MJL ‐Talk‐ ☖ 22:35, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
- @ MJL: You poor innocent and sweet young MJL. Little did you know in seven months what would happen to you and this site. – MJL ‐Talk‐ ☖ 06:20, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
reddit.com/r/scotland – "I’ve discovered that almost every single article on the Scots version of Wikipedia is written by the same person - an American teenager who can’t speak Scots" Comment
There's an interesting post on reddit about Scots Wikipedia, saying that it's deeply flawed and largely edited by someone who doesn't actually know Scots: [5]. Brad ( talk) 17:51, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
-
DividedFrame, See
m:Wikimedia_Forum#Scots_Wikipedia_is_largely_not_written_in_Scots. This is a serious problem. ―
Justin (koavf)❤
T☮
C☺
M☯ 18:38, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
- m:Requests_for_comment/Large scale language inaccuracies on the Scots Wikipedia as well. © Tbhotch ™ 22:48, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
The forum link is now archived. Link is
Newystats ( talk) 00:44, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum/Archives/2020-08#
Newystats ( talk) 00:45, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
I noticed that a paragraph on the whole not-actually-written-in-Scots thing has been added, removed, and then added again here. I agree with Puzzledvegetable that when a Reddit post and a Gizmodo article about that Reddit post are the only sources, it's WP:TOOSOON to mention it on Wikipedia, but I would like to hear others' thoughts before I perform the third reversion. Shouldn't we wait to see if this becomes WP:NOTABLE before including it? Justin Kunimune ( talk) 02:32, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
I'd argue that because of the massive PITA this whole deal is going to cause for Scots Wikipedia with practically every article meeding to be checked to make sure it's really in Scots we should include at least some mention of it. Given that, a small paragraph noting this feels appropriate. AngryZinogre ( talk) 07:02, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- There's been wider coverage now. I think it's clearly notable now.
Bondegezou (
talk) 11:17, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
-
Most of the coverage I've seen is online chournalism based on that Gizmodo article. The only real change is that Vice has now also been added to the mix. Neither of these are known for being reliable.
I'd argue that because of the massive PITA this whole deal is going to cause for Scots Wikipedia with practically every article meeding to be checked to make sure it's really in Scots we should include at least some mention of it.
That's not how Wikipedia works. We are simply documenting what has been reported by reliable sources. We can not add something because of the assumption that it will become notable enough for inclusion in the future. Please note the relevant notability guideline which states rather unambiguously:"Notability" is not synonymous with "fame" or "importance," and even web content that editors personally believe is "important" or "famous" is only accepted as notable if it can be shown to have attracted notice. No web content is exempt from this requirement, no matter what kind of content it is. If the individual web content has received no or very little attention from independent sources, then it is not notable simply because other web content of its type is commonly notable or merely because it exists
-- Puzzledvegetable Is it teatime already? 12:55, 26 August 2020 (UTC)- Verdict has covered the piece, including some original reporting. iNews has also covered the piece, again with some original reporting. In addition to Gizmodo and Vice, as mentioned, there's Heise and Numerama, the latter also extending beyond the Gizmodo piece, I think.
- Of those, the only one mentioned in WP:RSP is Vice, with a no consensus conclusion. Heinz Heise and Numerama articles don't suggest any particular problems with those sources. Bondegezou ( talk) 13:15, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
-
Most of the coverage I've seen is online chournalism based on that Gizmodo article. The only real change is that Vice has now also been added to the mix. Neither of these are known for being reliable.
The errors were originally found on 4chan. Predating the Reddit post by a day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.62.43.46 ( talk) 17:52, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- Maybe they were originally posted there (by the same author), but what's the relevance? Maybe the author had a Google Doc or a blog they posted it on before, too. Doesn't matter. The issue didn't blow up until it hit Reddit. As the i news article writes, "...according to an investigation originally published on Reddit." SnowFire ( talk) 17:59, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- I'd just like to mention being the original author of the post on Reddit that I did originally post it on 4chan's /his/ board a few hours beforehand. It gained a lot of traction there and was crossposted to /int/ and /pol/ but it didn't seem to spread outside the site. As SnowFire says it didn't get media attention until it blew up on Reddit. I'm not sure if the original 4chan post is notable enough to warrant a mention but feel free to put it in if you think it is. Ultaigh 11:10, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
The Guardian have picked up on it now. Opera hat ( talk) 18:21, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
@ Bondegezou: - I prefer simply stating that the user produced extremely low-quality work and leaving it at that. Saying that they "don't speak Scots" is reductive and makes the user - a real person - come across as (even more?) insane, as if they were knowingly writing nonsense into this wiki. If we had to discuss it, it would be to say something like "the editor believed in good faith that they could write Scots and were producing useful material, but only due to extreme naivety / shelteredness / being a kid. In actual reality their Scots proficiency was nearly nonexistent." Open to suggestions - I'd rather leave it out, but if you feel the matter should be brought up, we should strive not to misrepresent this editor per WP:BLP. SnowFire ( talk) 15:10, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- We should follow
WP:RS, even on a topic relating to our own community. I think we agree that the user does not speak Scots, so the statement is both true and reported, meeting
WP:V. We can review the exact phrasing used in news coverage to see if there is a less reductive/more nuanced way of saying it than "doesn't speak Scots". I'm not bothered about the precise wording. However, I think the text cries out for an explanation (how could he write so many low-quality articles) and RS give an explanation (he doesn't speak Scots). I suggest your suggested text isn't viable: the presumption of good faith, while appropriate for guiding how we interact with each other as editors, looks like editorialising were we to add it to the article text. Again, it comes back to what RS say: do RS give an explanation in terms of naivety etc.?
Bondegezou (
talk) 15:25, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- Despite being the one who added the Gizmodo article, I don't think we actually have any RS on this specific, personal issue. There's a higher standard for reliable sources about BLP, especially as related to "personal" things that could only be derived from an interview or the like. What we do know is this user's output: very poor Scots.
- Anyway, maybe we should quote from i article you added (
https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 ): "an American teenager who is not fluent in the language". I think that is more accurate than "doesn't speak Scots" and less misleading. (The key difference is that "doesn't speak Scots" makes it sound like their language proficiency was absolutely zero and they were writing pure gibberish. "not fluent" gets across that the problem was more like "is extraordinarily bad at it".)
SnowFire (
talk) 15:54, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- @ SnowFire: Agreed. That seems sensible. Bondegezou ( talk) 18:29, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
I see the Guardian article has been added to the article, but I thought I'd add for reference on this talk page that it is the 4th most-viewed article currently live there (behind Boris Johnson, Brexit, and the school grades scandal). If there was already a lot of attention, this could lead to much more mainstream coverage in the UK, so beware of incoming vandals.
Also, the Guardian article mentions that the Scots language body has contacted Wikimedia, which isn't in the article (yet), in case an interested user wanted to add it. Kingsif ( talk) 22:35, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
- Done. RexSueciae ( talk) 23:17, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
-
I was under the impression that that template is intended for when the article itself is mentioned by the media, not the subject of the article. Am I wrong? --
Puzzledvegetable
Is it teatime already? 00:37, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
- @ Puzzledvegetable: Yes, when the article is mentioned - here I was referring to relevant details in the content of the Guardian report being written in this article, sorry if there was confusion. Kingsif ( talk) 00:48, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
-
I was under the impression that that template is intended for when the article itself is mentioned by the media, not the subject of the article. Am I wrong? --
Puzzledvegetable
Is it teatime already? 00:37, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
The article has categories of "Science and technology in Scotland" and "2005 establishments in Scotland", yet the only mention of its foundation is that Wikimedia's headquarters are in Miami, Florida. Can we clarify this one way or the other? How did the project start? -- Lord Belbury ( talk) 15:05, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
A succession of words in Scots is not even low-quality Scots / Best way to describe language in Scots Wikipedia
(EDIT: Looks like we both posted new sections simultaneously - combining them — Preceding unsigned comment added by SnowFire ( talk • contribs) 17:30, 28 August 2020 (UTC))
Taking a text in language A and translating each word into language B, one by one and maintaining the sequence, will never produce a text in language B, low-quality or otherwise. To say so flatters what was produced. Many of the choice of words apppear to have been spuriously Scottified, others chosen on the basis of maximal differentiation from the English word in the source text, even if they are archaic, obscure or a word closer to English is the more commonplace. His work was made up of a succession of Scots words, or something approximating them, but that does not make it Scots. He attempted to construct text in the language without being informed as to how to do so. The very next sentence elaborates as to the mechanics of how he is assumed to have gone about this, with an English/Scots dictionary so I'm not sure why anyone would think he used Italian(?!; I know it is intended of an example of something but it doesn't fly). Mutt Lunker ( talk) 17:18, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
@ Mutt Lunker: I'm open to options here on alternate phrasings, but think your original attempt was misleading. If we go solely by the original Reddit post - which was unnecessarily bombastic in parts IMO - even it acknowledges that the author thought that Scots Wikipedia was "legendarily bad" when looking at in years prior. Not that it was pure gibberish / spam like zsadfjhklsfkjhsdfkjhsdfhdsf , or straight-up Actually A Different Langauge like pasting in English directly. I don't think it's under dispute that AG's grasp of Scots was horrible, and that's in the article already with the quote from the linguistics professor. It was, however, Scots-y enough to not be immediately, obviously, "not Scots" in the sense of gibberish or a different language. If it were, then even non-Scots speaking admins (like MJL) and passerby would have noticed. Hence, I stand by "very low quality Scots" as an accurate description of the state of AG's articles. Do you have a better suggestion than the awkward-reading (to me at least) "uninformed attempt at the construction of Scots text"? To me, that sounds more like it's implying the pure gibberish option, like saying "the toddler made an uninformed attempt at writing the alphabet" (implied: but they failed to correctly write the alphabet). SnowFire ( talk) 17:23, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Reply to the above, since we double-posted: sounds like we just have a semantics issue. Like I said, I don't think there's a dispute between us that AG wrote via starting with English sentences, and doing 1:1 substitutions in his own personal branch of North Carolina Scots. I'm just saying that claiming this was "not Scots" has a stronger meaning to most readers than what you mean - "not Scots" means obviously written in a different language with no Scots words whatsoever, or pure gibberish.
SnowFire (
talk) 17:30, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Being "Scots-y" enough to not appear like a stream of random letters or an entirely distinct third language is a phenomenally low bar to classify it as Scots. "uninformed attempt at the construction of Scots text" simply states (not implies) that he was attempting to construct the text of the articles in Scots without the benefit of sufficient information to do so, that is all. There is nothing in this wording to remotely lead anyone to the conclusion that, not only was he insufficiently skilled to succeed, all he wrote was "pure gibberish/ spam". That is not a warranted interpretation. "the (editor) made an uninformed attempt at writing the (article in Scots)" (implied: but they failed to correctly write the (article in Scots))" is absolutely bang on.
Mutt Lunker (
talk) 18:09, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Like I said, I believe that readers will interpret your suggested version in a way harsher than is the reality here (regardless of whether it's a warranted interpretation or not). Do you have any other suggestions for how to express the nature of the Scots Wikipedia articles if you still feel "very low-quality Scots" will be interpreted as better than the reality? SnowFire ( talk) 18:59, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Would "a combination of English and low-quality Scots" work for you? I think this is already explained a little bit further on, but if you feel it's important to talk about how much pollution of English was going on immediately, maybe this would be better? SnowFire ( talk) 19:06, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Being "Scots-y" enough to not appear like a stream of random letters or an entirely distinct third language is a phenomenally low bar to classify it as Scots. "uninformed attempt at the construction of Scots text" simply states (not implies) that he was attempting to construct the text of the articles in Scots without the benefit of sufficient information to do so, that is all. There is nothing in this wording to remotely lead anyone to the conclusion that, not only was he insufficiently skilled to succeed, all he wrote was "pure gibberish/ spam". That is not a warranted interpretation. "the (editor) made an uninformed attempt at writing the (article in Scots)" (implied: but they failed to correctly write the (article in Scots))" is absolutely bang on.
Mutt Lunker (
talk) 18:09, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- How can I argue against this sort of illogicality? My wording characterises the situation, your baseless interpretation of it bears no relation but you say that it doesn't matter if there is no reasonable expectation that others would make the same misinterpretation, because they would anyway. If I am not happy about something being characterised as something it is not, it makes asking me if I happy for it be characterised as that thing it is not, in combination with something else, somewhat of a foregone conclusion.
- Can I assume that the editors who thanked me for my edits also find the current wording inadequate and inaccurate and SnowFire's conclusions from my wording unwarranted?
Mutt Lunker (
talk) 21:45, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
- Calm down. It's a wiki, which means collaborative writing, which means not everyone will always agree. I got a thanks for my edit as well. It's not a big deal. I'm just looking for a possible compromise here, not an argument.
- "Is a piece of text in language XYZ" is inherently a continuum, not a firm cutoff line. You clearly place that line higher than I do, which is fine, although I would politely ask that you acknowledge other people can disagree and think that even the most hopelessly garbled, unintelligible "Scots" can still be Scots. My proposed alternate phrasing was trying to sidestep the issue of "what language was it in" by instead describing the result, so yes, I did think you might find it more agreeable.
- As I've said before, I still don't think your text characterizes the situation accurately, just as you don't like my text. Is there really no other phrasing you can think of that would satisfy us both? We clearly agree on the actual facts of the matter, just not the semantics for how to express it. SnowFire ( talk) 22:22, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
At no time have I in any way objected to someone disagreeing with me, so you can withdraw that slight. If, though, the nature of that disagreement is illogical, unwarranted and indeed, in some of its aspects, ludicrous, it is entirely appropriate for me to point this out. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 12:48, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
- If you're fine with disagreement, cool, let's resolve the disagreement so we can remove the disputed tag then. I was hoping to avoid the semantics debate, but I guess let's go. Let's say somebody shows up to Latin class for the first time, and is told to translate a paragraph of English to a paragraph of Latin. They get it all wrong and backward - they maintain English grammatical structure, there's misspellings, the verbs are misconjugated, it's not idiomatic. It's awful. Is this hypothetical paragraph in Latin? I would argue that yes, it is. Someone can still figure out what was meant by this and the original sense of the paragraph if they know some Latin and can disentangle the mistakes made. It's a terrible example of grammatical or proper Latin, but it's still beginner Latin. On the other hand, a computer program that printed 30 random Latin words strung together with random punctuation did not produce valid Latin. There is no "sense" or meaning behind this random paragraph to determine.
- Now, you mentioned above that this is a "phenomenally low bar", and that's true, but just to be clear, the news media has already tripped itself up over this low bar. Several news stories DID in fact imply that AG's contributions were just gibberish or English in a funny accent, or (hilariously) in Vice's case, mistake Scots for Scottish Gaelic, and complain that AG's contributions looked nothing like a Google Translate version of English -> Gaelic. So this isn't a hypothetical concern, the distinction does need to be made. Whatever else you might think, it wasn't that catastrophic level of error. I think a valid way to express that AG was writing in horrible, horrible, broken Scots was "very low quality Scots", and think that your original version doesn't clearly rule out that AG wasn't flat out writing in the wrong language (e.g. putting raw English into the Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia). Like I said, I'm open to other options, but I'm hesitant to propose any after you shot down "mixture of English and low-quality Scots". Is there anything other than your original proposal that you'd be satisfied with, even if you think it's fine as is (I think my version is fine as is too)? Or should we go to WP:3O to get a third opinion or the like? SnowFire ( talk) 14:26, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
- Perhaps you have an unfortunate turn of phrase but I'll bite my tongue about your opener there. This latest post is a more considered reiteration of what you have said above, without the more outlandish aspects. You know my objections, so I won't repeat my position, other than to say that, even were my wording to somehow prompt these misconceptions in some, the very next sentence would disabuse them.
- Let's remember that, whether you believe your own characterisation of the way the Scots Wikipedia articles are written to be accurate or not, the sentence in question in this article regards what the post on Reddit said about the articles. Whatever you think of the views expressed in that post, your wording states that it said something that it did not. Although I do think that, in contrast, the wording I inserted does accurately represent the line taken by the post, I'll offer "(the) post noted that the project contained an unusually high number of articles written by non-speakers of Scots, primarily by a single prolific contributor". Mutt Lunker ( talk) 15:40, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
- My impression is that it's less incorrect but only because it is less meaningful. One is really none the wiser as to what is meant until you read the next sentence, which captures well what the Reddit post noted. If there isn't a way of summarising the post more briefly in the first sentence, whilst retaining meaning and accuracy, it makes doing so superfluous. We may as well just excise the phrase, to give: "In 2020, the site attracted attention after a contributor to Reddit reported that the project contained an unusually high number of articles by a single prolific contributor. At least 20,000 articles were created by an American teenager who is not fluent in the Scots language, writing without using genuine Scots idioms or grammatical structure and assumed to be using an online English-Scots dictionary to crudely translate English Wikipedia article segments." Nails it. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 12:03, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- That becomes a bait and switch if you read it cold: it reads as if the site became famous because one person worked very hard on it, before revealing in the next sentence that they did a bad job. "Low quality" should stay in there somewhere. --
Lord Belbury (
talk) 18:15, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- Per above, that has the down side of inaccuracy. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 19:36, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- That becomes a bait and switch if you read it cold: it reads as if the site became famous because one person worked very hard on it, before revealing in the next sentence that they did a bad job. "Low quality" should stay in there somewhere. --
Lord Belbury (
talk) 18:15, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- @ SnowFire: @ Mutt Lunker: I actually was the one who thanked both of your edits; I also was the one who added the hidden text asking for a more accurate term. This is certainly a vague situation in context, and may boil down to a philosophical argument. It certainly doesn't help that Scots is the closest existing relative to English, has no standard written form, and for like 99% of Scottish people, exists on an ambiguous spectrum to Scottish English depending on the situation at hand. I will say, to the best of my knowledge and looking a lot on that Wiki and having a few minor edits myself over the years - and also considering the possible consequences of his bewildering horde of edits and the reaction it recieved by actual Scotsmen - that AG was not writing in Scots of any form, but generally a poor imitation of it. There are very few halfway-decent, somewhat authentically translated sections/short articles. However, nearly all of the wiki is total rubbish, and many Scottish would find calling it "Scots" to be insensitive at best. The fact that so many people see Scots as just a humorous accented English (with implied stereotypes) is a travesty. It's safer to just call it garbage, but in wiki-approved language, I'd merely call it "generally low-quality imitation".-- ~Sıgehelmus♗ (Tøk) 06:45, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
(de-indent) I still don't understand what Mutt Lunker is looking for here, and am inclined to go back to the original phrasing of "very low-quality Scots." Or low-quality something. The fundamental scandal was low language quality. I'll quote from the original Reddit thread:
- The Scots language version of Wikipedia is legendarily bad. People embroiled in linguistic debates about Scots often use it as evidence that Scots isn’t a language, and if it was an accurate representation, they’d probably be right. It uses almost no Scots vocabulary, what little it does use is usually incorrect, and the grammar always conforms to standard English, not Scots.
The problem is not "one contributor contributed a lot," which would be a mystifying complaint. The problem is that the language quality of the articles is crap, and this needs to be stated. Additionally, per the original Reddit poster himself, this problem goes deeper than originally implied by the Reddit thread - he looked at other articles untouched by AG and found they were equally bad, and MJL, the other admin, has stated that looking back at the original contributors to Scots Wikipedia, many of them were oddball enthusiasts as well, not native Scots speakers. SnowFire ( talk) 20:23, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- "In 2020, the site attracted attention after a Reddit post noted that the project contained an unusually high number of articles written by a single prolific contributor who is not fluent in the Scots language, writing without using genuine Scots idioms or grammatical structure and assumed to be using an online English-Scots dictionary to crudely translate English Wikipedia article segments. At least 20,000 articles were created by this American teenager." Mutt Lunker ( talk) 21:07, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
- This re-ordering of the two sentences retains all the information, without the need for the contested phrase. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 11:11, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
- I still don't really agree with your latest edit, but I don't think it's worth disputing at this point. I'll just drop this off from the same user who made the original Reddit post,
User:Ultaigh:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/ihiisw/ongoing_discussion_by_the_wikimedia_community_on/g30fntd/?context=3 :
- A troubling revelation from the discussion here is that AG wasn't the only culprit... It turns out this isn't the case. There were several more users just like him who created and edited huge numbers of articles despite admitting that they weren't fluent, or in extreme cases had no ability in Scots whatsoever. These articles are just as bad as, or in some cases even worse, than AG's... I've looked at hundreds of articles over the last couple of days and I've found one that looks like it was written by a native speaker, and even then it's not perfect.
- I'm totally fine with whatever phrase works if you just don't like "low language quality", but the idea that the articles are bad - in some form or expression - should be there, lest the point get buried. Plenty of non-fluent speakers who edit and do useful work on these wikis, after all, the key distinction is that the "good" users who aren't fluent don't write mountains of crap, and restrict themselves to anti-vandalism / maintenance and the like. SnowFire ( talk) 20:20, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
- I still don't really agree with your latest edit, but I don't think it's worth disputing at this point. I'll just drop this off from the same user who made the original Reddit post,
User:Ultaigh:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/ihiisw/ongoing_discussion_by_the_wikimedia_community_on/g30fntd/?context=3 :
- I don't think anyone would be in doubt from the description but if one were to emphasise the point and restrict oneself to what the initial Reddit post says: "In 2020, the site attracted attention after a Reddit post claimed that the project's "legendarily bad" content was largely attributable to a single prolific contributor who is not fluent in the Scots language, writing without using genuine Scots idioms or grammatical structure and assumed to be using an online English-Scots dictionary to crudely translate English Wikipedia article segments. At least 20,000 articles were created by this American teenager." Mutt Lunker ( talk) 22:36, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
I've removed this hatnote as I couldn't work out what it was trying to say. Is it trying to clarify that this article is about Scots Wikipedia and that there is no such thing as a Scottish English Wikipedia (and that the reader should just read the English Wikipedia instead)? -- Lord Belbury ( talk) 10:21, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
- I believe it's referring to the fact that the English Wikipedia is written in varying dialects including American English, Indian English and Scottish English, the last of which makes it the most relevant Wikipedia to the Scottish English dialect (if I'm understanding what Scottish English is correctly). — Bilorv ( talk) 12:40, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
"Scottish English Wikipedia" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect
Scottish English Wikipedia. The discussion will occur at
Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 December 6#Scottish English Wikipedia until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.
Soumya-8974 (he)
talk
contribs
subpages 17:38, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
The article doesn't say whether the 20 000 bogus articles were deleted! -- Espoo ( talk) 14:19, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Someone keeps removing my factual edit re: the ongoing cultural genocide propagated by Wikimedia Foundation and that the Scots Wikipedia is not written in any known language. 2A00:23C4:F1D:4201:C100:1146:80EC:65CB ( talk) 17:47, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- Wikipedia articles need to be based on reliable, published sources. Without them, we are limited in what can be added to the article. Richard Nevell ( talk) 18:20, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- Then where is the citation from a reliable source which claims that it is written in Scots? 2A00:23C4:F1D:4201:C100:1146:80EC:65CB ( talk) 18:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- It's true that the Scots Wiki is a work in progress. However, you constantly adding inflammatory passages to the article helps no one. Stop your disruptive editing. Envysan ( talk) 18:40, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- They are not inflammatory, I have simply corrected the article to reflect the fact of the matter. Wikipedia's hierarchy is disgusting that you have the power to gatekeep like this. 2A00:23C4:F1D:4201:C100:1146:80EC:65CB ( talk) 18:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- You did claim it was "cultural genocide" which at the very least needs a reference. Richard Nevell ( talk) 22:18, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
The IP has been blocked for 7 days due to edit-warring. Their flame-baiting commentary is not helping. The WMF has recently worked with scholars in Scotland on the linguistic accuracy, some sourcing (or at least evidence) is needed for the IP's position. 力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 22:20, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- yet another user trying to use wikipedia to promote some ideology for his. 99.27.106.23 ( talk) 17:26, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
What do editors think of adding a "See also" or "Further reading" to the wikimedia discussion? Newystats ( talk) 02:16, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- @
Newystats: Linking it in some form seems like a good idea.
★Trekker (
talk) 18:35, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
- It's inside baseball that is also incomprehensible to outsiders. If we really, really, really had to link something on Wikimedia sites, it'd be an official statement from the Wikimedia organization, or a Signpost article, or the like - not raw unfiltered discussion. Same reason that it can be okay to link blogposts, but almost never a forum thread. SnowFire ( talk) 21:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
First I fixed the citation, which was attributed to the wrong existing source. Then in a second edit, I removed the sentence completely:
The incident was described as "a huge failure on Wikimedia's part", with specific criticisms placed on Wikipedia's "labyrinthine back-end system" and a lack of coordination across smaller wiki projects.
Here's the actual source (mangled language and cliched conclusion in bold):
- Victoria Song :: Alleged Teen Brony Has Filled the Scots Wiki With Thousands of Fake Translations — 25 August 2020
Another issue is that there seems to stem from Wikipedia's labyrinthine back-end system. Admins, MJL said, mostly make sure no vandalism occurs on a given page and their main focus is to navigate the back-end. They aren't necessarily monitoring pages for accuracy.
Editors on smaller projects, like the Scots wiki, don't necessarily coordinate new articles that get written, either. They often work individually, unaware of what another editor may be doing. This is a huge failure on Wikimedia's part. Between the opacity of the Wikimedia back end and the reliance on unpaid community volunteers, something like this was bound to happen.
Victoria Song is an established technology journalist, but I don't think the above is her finest hour. She seems to have invented "labyrinthine back-end system" with little support from her own sources. IMO, a good editor at Gizmodo (hopefully not an oxymoron) should have removed this paragraph from Song's composition as unsupported OR.
Clearly the actual problem is that the site had too few administrators (presently just five) and not all of these were native Scots. Any kind of a serious new pages patrol should have flagged these contributions as problematic. This process is hardly "labyrinthine" or obscure.
- Wikipedia:New pages patrol — created 17 March 2004
Finally, it's not like Gizmodo (launched as part of Gawker Media) has never run shallowly sourced clickbait. — MaxEnt 22:06, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
" Scotched English" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect
Scotched English has been listed at
redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the
redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at
Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 September 14 § Scotched English until a consensus is reached.
CiphriusKane (
talk) 09:37, 14 September 2023 (UTC)