7 ms·

Scots language Wikipedia is edited primarily by someone who doesn't know Scots

193 points by bdr 6y ago

trenchgun 6y ago
Oof
Isamu 6y ago
You mean: by someone who is not a True Scotsman [edit] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman Good thing we don’t let anyone with a tentative grasp of the language to edit the English Wikipedia.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nae_true_Scotsman https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nae_true_Scotsman
- eyeinthepyramid 6y ago
  There is, of course, a difference between being a casual editor in Wikipedia, versus creating 1/3 of the entire encyclopedia while being illiterate.
- donw 6y ago
  Have we actually confirmed whether or not he puts milk in his porridge?
C1sc0cat 6y ago
The problem is that Scots and even More so Ulster Scots as a language is the sectarian issues
- gridlockd 6y ago
  The Scots, forever in conflict with their mortal enemies, the Scots.
throwawaygh 6y ago
On the internet no one knows you're a (Scots-)illiterate teenager. This kid apparently didn't even understand that 1:1 dictionary look-ups aren't a form of translation, and definitely did not understand/anticipate the immense damage he was doing. There's plenty of blame to go around, but someone should've stepped in and stopped this before it went so far. The striking thing is that this person became a main administrator of the Scots wikipedia without vetting. Anonymous/Pseudonymous online discussion/contribution is and always has been an important part of internet culture. But I've never been part of a forum or website where the moderators/administrators retain their anonymity. In the rare cases where they did, there was a good reason (e.g., avoiding embarrassment or sensitive post history), and the admins at least knew each other's real identities. Maybe Wikipedia needs to have a "divulge your real identity at least to other admins" policy for at least the language-level main administrators of the wiki.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > This kid apparently didn't even understand that 1:1 dictionary look-ups aren't a form of translation, and definitely did not understand/anticipate the immense damage he was doing. There's plenty of blame to go around, but someone should've stepped in and stopped this before it went so far. This is also an illustration of the dangers of "inclusionism" (in the Wikipedia sense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_i...). It took at least seven years for this person to be identified, and in the meantime they introduced a massive amount of garbage, at least in part because resources were spread too thin for a meaningful amount of quality control to be done in the area that they were active. With Wikipedia's perpetually declining participation, it would make sense for them to drop areas where their volunteers don't have the manpower or interest to maintain.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    A short summary to clarify the "inclusionist" term, in case people don't check your link: > The terms reflect differing opinions on the appropriate scope of the encyclopedia and corresponding tendencies either to delete or to include a given encyclopedia article > "Deletionists" are proponents of selective coverage and removal of articles seen as poorly defended. Deletionist viewpoints are commonly motivated by a desire that Wikipedia be focused on and cover significant topic > "Inclusionists" are proponents of broad retention, including retention of "harmless" articles and articles otherwise deemed substandard to allow for future improvement.
NelsonMinar 6y ago
Who at Wikipedia is responsible for fixing a problem of this size?
- howenterprisey 6y ago
  The community as a whole, basically. In practice this will be whoever shows up to the ensuing discussions at "meta wikimedia" and the scots wiki. The results of these discussions will be implemented by the editors tasked with overseeing every Wikipedia (and other projects, like Wiktionary) of every language, such as https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards.
danans 6y ago
The fact that it took 7 years to reach this broad a recognition of the issue gives you an idea of how many actual speakers of the Scots language are reading the Scots language Wikipedia. Or maybe they don't read it specifically because they know it's (linguistically) fraudulent, and now we know the reason why it's that way.
- ndespres 6y ago
  The first sentence of the linked post addresses this: "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"
  - SilasX 6y ago
    But people were arguing that (i.e. treating Scots like a joke Wikipedia) long before this whole thing. See this discussion from 2005-6: https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collogue:Main_Page/Archive_1#Is_this_real https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collogue:Main_Page/Archive_1#...?
- soneil 6y ago
  This is a terribly common problem with threatened languages. The vast, vast majority of Scots speakers also have native English. And for the vast, vast majority of topics, the English wiki article is going to be much more informative. Of course this becomes circular and self-reinforcing. The really terrifying thought is of someone trying to preserve these languages - or in the future, studying dead languages - and finding this as the most accessible corpus. Imagine if the Rosetta Stone was merely an artists impression of dead languages.
  - wink 6y ago
    I don't know Scots and how it is "officially" defined but when I look at the Bavarian Wikipedia https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoamseitn https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoamseitn (and I know this is a dialect and not a proper language, despite actual grammatical differences) I can't stand it. I'm a native speaker but the regional differences between the several parts of Bavaria and Austria just make the phonetic spelling totally weird. Different parts use completely different vocals in the same word, so I'm not even sure why this would be in the same language wikipedia.
abeppu 6y ago
> Wikipedia could have been an invaluable resource for the struggling language. Instead, it’s just become another source of ammunition for people wanting to disparage and mock it, all because of this one person and their bizarre fixation on Scots, which unfortunately never extended so far as wanting to properly learn it. How could it have been an invaluable resource for the language? Would actual Scots speakers have used it? Apparently they mostly don't contribute to it. The English wikipedia page on the Scots language says it has <100k native speakers and 1.5M L2 speakers and I'm guessing they're almost all fluent English speakers. How successful would the Scots wikipedia have needed to be actually used as an information resource to Scots speakers given that they can all easily use the extremely actively maintained English wikipedia? It's maybe unfair to make the comparison to a Walmart that sets up in town and causes all the mom and pop shops to die off -- but when you're the "neighbor" of a giant, how do you compete? Maybe I don't get it b/c I don't speak a language that needs active energy to protect. But I think it makes the most sense to focus on institutions and organizations that already have an external, mission-driven reason to produce content (e.g. schools, cultural institutions, governments, regional media) rather than trying to dedicate the volunteer hours (even when competent volunteers can be found) to try to produce an encyclopedia that few will have strong cause to use. (edited to correct a typo)
- ploika 6y ago
  > Maybe I don't get it b/c I don't speak a language that needs active energy to protect. I do think you're at least partially correct here, with all due respect. I learned Irish (Gaelic) in school and still use the language a fair bit, though I don't live anywhere near a majority Irish-speaking area and I don't need it at work. The Irish language is not in the greatest of health, and the need for community-driven content and interaction is very real. Top-down stuff like TV, radio, books etc are all well and good. They help. But at the same time it's things like face-to-face casual conversation, amateurish podcasts and accessible blogs and memes that make it feel more like a reviving, living language and less like homework. By necessity that means that you need to include and encourage people who don't have a perfect grasp of the language. And sometimes that means that very incorrect stuff is put out there by people who can't do any better, but that's part of the challenge of trying to save a language from extinction.
haunter 6y ago
Interesting how easy to track down this person. They used the same username everywhere and the first Google page shows their previous username which leads to basically everything about that person including real name, location, address etc. I bet some news site will doxx them and make a good story about it.
arethuza 6y ago
For anyone interested in Scots: https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/ https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/ I have no idea whether it is a language or not but the Doric version of Scots I used as a child ("loon") is pretty much incomprehensible to anyone not from the immediate area - terrible punishments were inflicted on anyone unwise enough to utter a word of Scots in school! It's a sair fecht Edit: An example of the terrible punishments inflicted by teachers would be a skelped lug.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- teh_klev 6y ago
  I'm from Tomintoul originally and spoke Doric as a kid. When I moved to the central belt no-one knew what the hell I was saying and sadly the Doric was gradually beaten out of me. That said I can still fall back into Doric mode whenever I meet another fellow traveller from the area.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    Out of interest - did they use loons & quines in Tomintoul - I'm from Portknockie originally.
    - teh_klev 6y ago
      Yes they do. My did still uses quine all the time. For me it kinda dropped off of my vocabulary.
renewiltord 6y ago
He genuinely seems like a guy who was just trying to help. You don't get to that scale of edits manually without wanting to help. Reminds me of the Jesus Painting¹. Sometimes, your reach exceeds your grasp, and it's beneficial for society to help you out in these situations. So he made a mistake, but his user page looks like he wasn't malicious. Be kind, go and fix the articles or RFD them. Treating this guy like some sort of vandal isn't right. To be honest, it doesn't look like there are very many Scots contributors, so perhaps it should just be dumped as a project since it doesn't look like there are many Scots readers either. EDIT: Ah fortunately, they've been in touch with him³ and he feels awful that he upset people². I am glad there are kind people in the world that know how to help people be contributors. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Mart%C3%ADnez_and_Gim%C3%A9nez,_Borja) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Mart%C3%ADnez_and_G... ² https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/igbbh2/the_scots_language_wikipedia_is_edited_primarily/g2u07oo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/igbbh2/the_sco... ³ https://twitter.com/Cobradile94/status/1298321034530246658?s=20 https://twitter.com/Cobradile94/status/1298321034530246658?s...
- cool_dude85 6y ago
  There were people calling him out in 2014 for not knowing Scots. He said that he's read articles written by actual speakers, and he can't tell the difference between those articles and his, so it's the same. Whether this is willfully malicious, or stupid to the point of maliciousness seems like splitting hairs.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    > Whether this is willfully malicious, or stupid to the point of maliciousness seems like splitting hairs. Honestly, I feel differently about those two situations, especially since it affects the outcome. It looks like the Scots speakers who engaged with him have managed to work him into a fix. Good for them.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  His first mistake, which should be treated with graciousness and care, was a case of reach exceeding grasp. His second and bigger mistake was continuing astride for years even after several people expressed concern, told him he doesn't know the language, and explained that his editing was doing real damage to perception of the language. It's not right to treat him like a vandal, but the second mistake is good cause for being a little bit more forceful and public with the rebuke. TBH it was a failure of the community to even allow the situation to get this bad.
gridlockd 6y ago
It seems to me a little bit contradictory that modern Scots is often not considered a language but rather a dialect, when at the same time it supposedly is so different from English that merely translating the words with English grammar intact does it a great injustice. As far as I can tell, the grammatical differences are very minor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Scots#Grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Scots#Grammar Seems more like somebody is upset that no true Scotsman is the chief contributor to Scots Wikipedia. Either the true Scotsmen must be finding that this guy has done an adequate job, or they can blame themselves for not correcting it.
- eyeinthepyramid 6y ago
  Part of the problem that Scots faces is that there are actually 3 Scottish languages: Scottish Gaelic, Scots, and Scottish English. Scottish Gaelic is similar to Irish, Scots is a descendant of Old English, and Scottish English is a dialect of standard British English. People often conflate Scots with Scottish English.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  What English are you referring to? The variety [0] known as American English? Black American English? New Zealand English? I don't speak Scots, but it looks like it has some notable differences, enough to be considered a dialect, but not enough to be considered a different language outright. Also, the line between a "language" and a "dialect" isn't as clear cut as one might initially think, and it tends to involve politics. I recommend listening to this [2] episode of Lexicon Valley about it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect [2]: https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley/2019/08/john-mcwhorter-on-language-versus-dialect https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley/2019/08/john-mcwho...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
frou_dh 6y ago
Apparently the following is the response from the editor. It sounds nice and mature actually. Hopefully this event has snapped them out of the delusion they've been afflicted with. > Honestly, I don't mind if you revert all of my edits, delete my articles, and ban me from the wiki for good. I've already found out that my "contributions" have angered countless people, and to me that's all the devastation I can be given, after years of my thinking I was doing good (and yes, obsessively editing). I was only a 12-year-old kid when I started, and sometimes when you start something young, you can't see that the habit you've developed is unhealthy and unhelpful as you get older. I don't care about defending myself, I only want to stop being harassed on my social medias (and to stop my other friends who have nothing to do with the wiki from being harassed as well). Whether peace can be achieved by scowiki being kept like it is or extensively reformed to wipe my influence from it makes no difference to me now that I know that I've done no good anyway.

193 points by bdr 6y ago

Oof

You mean: by someone who is not a True Scotsman [edit] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman Good thing we don’t let anyone with a tentative grasp of the language to edit the English Wikipedia.

gridlockd 6y ago
https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nae_true_Scotsman https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nae_true_Scotsman
eyeinthepyramid 6y ago
There is, of course, a difference between being a casual editor in Wikipedia, versus creating 1/3 of the entire encyclopedia while being illiterate.
donw 6y ago
Have we actually confirmed whether or not he puts milk in his porridge?

C1sc0cat 6y ago

The problem is that Scots and even More so Ulster Scots as a language is the sectarian issues

gridlockd 6y ago
The Scots, forever in conflict with their mortal enemies, the Scots.

throwawaygh 6y ago

On the internet no one knows you're a (Scots-)illiterate teenager. This kid apparently didn't even understand that 1:1 dictionary look-ups aren't a form of translation, and definitely did not understand/anticipate the immense damage he was doing. There's plenty of blame to go around, but someone should've stepped in and stopped this before it went so far. The striking thing is that this person became a main administrator of the Scots wikipedia without vetting. Anonymous/Pseudonymous online discussion/contribution is and always has been an important part of internet culture. But I've never been part of a forum or website where the moderators/administrators retain their anonymity. In the rare cases where they did, there was a good reason (e.g., avoiding embarrassment or sensitive post history), and the admins at least knew each other's real identities. Maybe Wikipedia needs to have a "divulge your real identity at least to other admins" policy for at least the language-level main administrators of the wiki.

ardy42 6y ago
> This kid apparently didn't even understand that 1:1 dictionary look-ups aren't a form of translation, and definitely did not understand/anticipate the immense damage he was doing. There's plenty of blame to go around, but someone should've stepped in and stopped this before it went so far. This is also an illustration of the dangers of "inclusionism" (in the Wikipedia sense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_i...). It took at least seven years for this person to be identified, and in the meantime they introduced a massive amount of garbage, at least in part because resources were spread too thin for a meaningful amount of quality control to be done in the area that they were active. With Wikipedia's perpetually declining participation, it would make sense for them to drop areas where their volunteers don't have the manpower or interest to maintain.
- dgellow 6y ago
  A short summary to clarify the "inclusionist" term, in case people don't check your link: > The terms reflect differing opinions on the appropriate scope of the encyclopedia and corresponding tendencies either to delete or to include a given encyclopedia article > "Deletionists" are proponents of selective coverage and removal of articles seen as poorly defended. Deletionist viewpoints are commonly motivated by a desire that Wikipedia be focused on and cover significant topic > "Inclusionists" are proponents of broad retention, including retention of "harmless" articles and articles otherwise deemed substandard to allow for future improvement.

NelsonMinar 6y ago

Who at Wikipedia is responsible for fixing a problem of this size?

howenterprisey 6y ago
The community as a whole, basically. In practice this will be whoever shows up to the ensuing discussions at "meta wikimedia" and the scots wiki. The results of these discussions will be implemented by the editors tasked with overseeing every Wikipedia (and other projects, like Wiktionary) of every language, such as https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards.

danans 6y ago

The fact that it took 7 years to reach this broad a recognition of the issue gives you an idea of how many actual speakers of the Scots language are reading the Scots language Wikipedia. Or maybe they don't read it specifically because they know it's (linguistically) fraudulent, and now we know the reason why it's that way.

ndespres 6y ago
The first sentence of the linked post addresses this: "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"
- SilasX 6y ago
  But people were arguing that (i.e. treating Scots like a joke Wikipedia) long before this whole thing. See this discussion from 2005-6: https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collogue:Main_Page/Archive_1#Is_this_real https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collogue:Main_Page/Archive_1#...?
soneil 6y ago
This is a terribly common problem with threatened languages. The vast, vast majority of Scots speakers also have native English. And for the vast, vast majority of topics, the English wiki article is going to be much more informative. Of course this becomes circular and self-reinforcing. The really terrifying thought is of someone trying to preserve these languages - or in the future, studying dead languages - and finding this as the most accessible corpus. Imagine if the Rosetta Stone was merely an artists impression of dead languages.
- wink 6y ago
  I don't know Scots and how it is "officially" defined but when I look at the Bavarian Wikipedia https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoamseitn https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoamseitn (and I know this is a dialect and not a proper language, despite actual grammatical differences) I can't stand it. I'm a native speaker but the regional differences between the several parts of Bavaria and Austria just make the phonetic spelling totally weird. Different parts use completely different vocals in the same word, so I'm not even sure why this would be in the same language wikipedia.

abeppu 6y ago

> Wikipedia could have been an invaluable resource for the struggling language. Instead, it’s just become another source of ammunition for people wanting to disparage and mock it, all because of this one person and their bizarre fixation on Scots, which unfortunately never extended so far as wanting to properly learn it. How could it have been an invaluable resource for the language? Would actual Scots speakers have used it? Apparently they mostly don't contribute to it. The English wikipedia page on the Scots language says it has <100k native speakers and 1.5M L2 speakers and I'm guessing they're almost all fluent English speakers. How successful would the Scots wikipedia have needed to be actually used as an information resource to Scots speakers given that they can all easily use the extremely actively maintained English wikipedia? It's maybe unfair to make the comparison to a Walmart that sets up in town and causes all the mom and pop shops to die off -- but when you're the "neighbor" of a giant, how do you compete? Maybe I don't get it b/c I don't speak a language that needs active energy to protect. But I think it makes the most sense to focus on institutions and organizations that already have an external, mission-driven reason to produce content (e.g. schools, cultural institutions, governments, regional media) rather than trying to dedicate the volunteer hours (even when competent volunteers can be found) to try to produce an encyclopedia that few will have strong cause to use. (edited to correct a typo)

ploika 6y ago
> Maybe I don't get it b/c I don't speak a language that needs active energy to protect. I do think you're at least partially correct here, with all due respect. I learned Irish (Gaelic) in school and still use the language a fair bit, though I don't live anywhere near a majority Irish-speaking area and I don't need it at work. The Irish language is not in the greatest of health, and the need for community-driven content and interaction is very real. Top-down stuff like TV, radio, books etc are all well and good. They help. But at the same time it's things like face-to-face casual conversation, amateurish podcasts and accessible blogs and memes that make it feel more like a reviving, living language and less like homework. By necessity that means that you need to include and encourage people who don't have a perfect grasp of the language. And sometimes that means that very incorrect stuff is put out there by people who can't do any better, but that's part of the challenge of trying to save a language from extinction.

haunter 6y ago

Interesting how easy to track down this person. They used the same username everywhere and the first Google page shows their previous username which leads to basically everything about that person including real name, location, address etc. I bet some news site will doxx them and make a good story about it.

arethuza 6y ago

For anyone interested in Scots: https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/ https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/ I have no idea whether it is a language or not but the Doric version of Scots I used as a child ("loon") is pretty much incomprehensible to anyone not from the immediate area - terrible punishments were inflicted on anyone unwise enough to utter a word of Scots in school! It's a sair fecht Edit: An example of the terrible punishments inflicted by teachers would be a skelped lug.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
teh_klev 6y ago
I'm from Tomintoul originally and spoke Doric as a kid. When I moved to the central belt no-one knew what the hell I was saying and sadly the Doric was gradually beaten out of me. That said I can still fall back into Doric mode whenever I meet another fellow traveller from the area.
- arethuza 6y ago
  Out of interest - did they use loons & quines in Tomintoul - I'm from Portknockie originally.
  - teh_klev 6y ago
    Yes they do. My did still uses quine all the time. For me it kinda dropped off of my vocabulary.

renewiltord 6y ago

He genuinely seems like a guy who was just trying to help. You don't get to that scale of edits manually without wanting to help. Reminds me of the Jesus Painting¹. Sometimes, your reach exceeds your grasp, and it's beneficial for society to help you out in these situations. So he made a mistake, but his user page looks like he wasn't malicious. Be kind, go and fix the articles or RFD them. Treating this guy like some sort of vandal isn't right. To be honest, it doesn't look like there are very many Scots contributors, so perhaps it should just be dumped as a project since it doesn't look like there are many Scots readers either. EDIT: Ah fortunately, they've been in touch with him³ and he feels awful that he upset people². I am glad there are kind people in the world that know how to help people be contributors. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Mart%C3%ADnez_and_Gim%C3%A9nez,_Borja) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Mart%C3%ADnez_and_G... ² https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/igbbh2/the_scots_language_wikipedia_is_edited_primarily/g2u07oo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/igbbh2/the_sco... ³ https://twitter.com/Cobradile94/status/1298321034530246658?s=20 https://twitter.com/Cobradile94/status/1298321034530246658?s...

cool_dude85 6y ago
There were people calling him out in 2014 for not knowing Scots. He said that he's read articles written by actual speakers, and he can't tell the difference between those articles and his, so it's the same. Whether this is willfully malicious, or stupid to the point of maliciousness seems like splitting hairs.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  > Whether this is willfully malicious, or stupid to the point of maliciousness seems like splitting hairs. Honestly, I feel differently about those two situations, especially since it affects the outcome. It looks like the Scots speakers who engaged with him have managed to work him into a fix. Good for them.
throwawaygh 6y ago
His first mistake, which should be treated with graciousness and care, was a case of reach exceeding grasp. His second and bigger mistake was continuing astride for years even after several people expressed concern, told him he doesn't know the language, and explained that his editing was doing real damage to perception of the language. It's not right to treat him like a vandal, but the second mistake is good cause for being a little bit more forceful and public with the rebuke. TBH it was a failure of the community to even allow the situation to get this bad.

gridlockd 6y ago

It seems to me a little bit contradictory that modern Scots is often not considered a language but rather a dialect, when at the same time it supposedly is so different from English that merely translating the words with English grammar intact does it a great injustice. As far as I can tell, the grammatical differences are very minor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Scots#Grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Scots#Grammar Seems more like somebody is upset that no true Scotsman is the chief contributor to Scots Wikipedia. Either the true Scotsmen must be finding that this guy has done an adequate job, or they can blame themselves for not correcting it.

eyeinthepyramid 6y ago
Part of the problem that Scots faces is that there are actually 3 Scottish languages: Scottish Gaelic, Scots, and Scottish English. Scottish Gaelic is similar to Irish, Scots is a descendant of Old English, and Scottish English is a dialect of standard British English. People often conflate Scots with Scottish English.
andrewzah 6y ago
What English are you referring to? The variety [0] known as American English? Black American English? New Zealand English? I don't speak Scots, but it looks like it has some notable differences, enough to be considered a dialect, but not enough to be considered a different language outright. Also, the line between a "language" and a "dialect" isn't as clear cut as one might initially think, and it tends to involve politics. I recommend listening to this [2] episode of Lexicon Valley about it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect [2]: https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley/2019/08/john-mcwhorter-on-language-versus-dialect https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley/2019/08/john-mcwho...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

frou_dh 6y ago

Apparently the following is the response from the editor. It sounds nice and mature actually. Hopefully this event has snapped them out of the delusion they've been afflicted with. > Honestly, I don't mind if you revert all of my edits, delete my articles, and ban me from the wiki for good. I've already found out that my "contributions" have angered countless people, and to me that's all the devastation I can be given, after years of my thinking I was doing good (and yes, obsessively editing). I was only a 12-year-old kid when I started, and sometimes when you start something young, you can't see that the habit you've developed is unhealthy and unhelpful as you get older. I don't care about defending myself, I only want to stop being harassed on my social medias (and to stop my other friends who have nothing to do with the wiki from being harassed as well). Whether peace can be achieved by scowiki being kept like it is or extensively reformed to wipe my influence from it makes no difference to me now that I know that I've done no good anyway.