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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 tra

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.
  - JdeBP 6y ago
    An even better summary is that inclusionism and deletionism never existed as actual genuine philosophies. They began because a person early in the project who was a source of several odd ideas, and who was having arguments on the English Wikipedia's mailing list, invented "deletionism" from whole cloth, and someone else invented "inclusionism" as a joke to mock that. And then people who came along years later believed the pages on Meta to be authoritative without really researching what people actually did, or how those pages came about. The earliest version of the "inclusionism" page even pointed out that this was just name-calling. * https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inclusionism&oldid=16972 https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inclusionism&ol...
- lifthrasiir 6y ago
  It has nothing to do with inclusionism---we can only say about inclusionism and deletionism when there are parties to determine (and debate) what would go into the encyclopedia. Instead what we see right now is the complete lack of such parties and its consequences. This problem is, I believe, in fact prevalent for smaller language editions of pretty much every Wikimedia project; I've personally seen such an incident from the Korean Wikitionary in early 2010s.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    I disagree. A strongly inclusionist position would add articles to the point where there will be many pockets of articles edited according to the POV of single individuals (or interest groups), where there aren't other "parties [interested enough] to determine (and debate) what would go into the encyclopedia." For a crowdsourced project like Wikipedia to work, there has to be a critical density of contributions, so the different contributors will keep each other in check without coordination. Otherwise, you just get Geocities.
    - lifthrasiir 6y ago
      Most Wikipedians are not strongly incluionists nor strongly deletionists. It's a spectrum, rather wide one. My point is that this spectrum can only exist with a pool of editors and labelling the lack thereof as "(strong) inclusionism" is a misunderstanding of that spectrum.
- arethuza 6y ago
  "immense damage he was doing" What damage is he doing? As a Scot and someone who is rather fond of Scots (which I grew up speaking) I'm somewhat pleasantly surprised that anyone is sufficiently interested to have a go at creating Wikipedia entries!
  - fatbird 6y ago
    It's like he created the latin wikipedia by converting English wiki pages into pig-latin. It massively misrepresents the language, and when you're talking about a language like Scots that's very little used, and possibly in danger of going extinct, this is massively polluting to it. What he created isn't a Scots wikipedia, it's a bad parody of one that gets words wrong and is completely ignorant of Scots grammar, while sitting in a position of relative authority. If you can speak Scots, can you read these as Scots? Does it genuinely seem like it's actually written in Scots?
    - arethuza 6y ago
      The articles I read came across more as someone trying to phonetically describe a Scottish accent rather than using what I would recognise as Scots dialect. I don't think that approach will get you from "How are you?" to "Fit like?".
    - soneil 6y ago
      The reddit thread made a great example of "an aw" being used as a substitution for "also", so I'll round that example out to illustrate. In a nutshell, his dictionary has provided him "also"->"an aw", but it's better translated as "and all" or "as well". So "I had eggs for breakfast; I had toast also" works as "I had toast an aw" (I had toast as well). But "I also had toast" does not work as "I an aw had toast" (I as well had toast). "I had eggs for breakfast; I as well had toast"; As a native English speaker you'd find that perfectly intelligible, but jarring. I'm not Scottish, but I lived there for most my childhood - so I have a reasonable gut for what just feels wrong. And many the examples I've seen so far, look like spam that's been wrung through a thesaurus. The meaning's there but it doesn't make it correct.
  - 6y ago

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.
- JdeBP 6y ago
  An even better summary is that inclusionism and deletionism never existed as actual genuine philosophies. They began because a person early in the project who was a source of several odd ideas, and who was having arguments on the English Wikipedia's mailing list, invented "deletionism" from whole cloth, and someone else invented "inclusionism" as a joke to mock that. And then people who came along years later believed the pages on Meta to be authoritative without really researching what people actually did, or how those pages came about. The earliest version of the "inclusionism" page even pointed out that this was just name-calling. * https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inclusionism&oldid=16972 https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inclusionism&ol...
lifthrasiir 6y ago
It has nothing to do with inclusionism---we can only say about inclusionism and deletionism when there are parties to determine (and debate) what would go into the encyclopedia. Instead what we see right now is the complete lack of such parties and its consequences. This problem is, I believe, in fact prevalent for smaller language editions of pretty much every Wikimedia project; I've personally seen such an incident from the Korean Wikitionary in early 2010s.
- ardy42 6y ago
  I disagree. A strongly inclusionist position would add articles to the point where there will be many pockets of articles edited according to the POV of single individuals (or interest groups), where there aren't other "parties [interested enough] to determine (and debate) what would go into the encyclopedia." For a crowdsourced project like Wikipedia to work, there has to be a critical density of contributions, so the different contributors will keep each other in check without coordination. Otherwise, you just get Geocities.
  - lifthrasiir 6y ago
    Most Wikipedians are not strongly incluionists nor strongly deletionists. It's a spectrum, rather wide one. My point is that this spectrum can only exist with a pool of editors and labelling the lack thereof as "(strong) inclusionism" is a misunderstanding of that spectrum.
arethuza 6y ago
"immense damage he was doing" What damage is he doing? As a Scot and someone who is rather fond of Scots (which I grew up speaking) I'm somewhat pleasantly surprised that anyone is sufficiently interested to have a go at creating Wikipedia entries!
- fatbird 6y ago
  It's like he created the latin wikipedia by converting English wiki pages into pig-latin. It massively misrepresents the language, and when you're talking about a language like Scots that's very little used, and possibly in danger of going extinct, this is massively polluting to it. What he created isn't a Scots wikipedia, it's a bad parody of one that gets words wrong and is completely ignorant of Scots grammar, while sitting in a position of relative authority. If you can speak Scots, can you read these as Scots? Does it genuinely seem like it's actually written in Scots?
  - arethuza 6y ago
    The articles I read came across more as someone trying to phonetically describe a Scottish accent rather than using what I would recognise as Scots dialect. I don't think that approach will get you from "How are you?" to "Fit like?".
  - soneil 6y ago
    The reddit thread made a great example of "an aw" being used as a substitution for "also", so I'll round that example out to illustrate. In a nutshell, his dictionary has provided him "also"->"an aw", but it's better translated as "and all" or "as well". So "I had eggs for breakfast; I had toast also" works as "I had toast an aw" (I had toast as well). But "I also had toast" does not work as "I an aw had toast" (I as well had toast). "I had eggs for breakfast; I as well had toast"; As a native English speaker you'd find that perfectly intelligible, but jarring. I'm not Scottish, but I lived there for most my childhood - so I have a reasonable gut for what just feels wrong. And many the examples I've seen so far, look like spam that's been wrung through a thesaurus. The meaning's there but it doesn't make it correct.
- 6y ago