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The Scots Wikipedia issue isn't straightforward at all. For one, considering the sheer effort spent in 170 000 edits over a decade, it's quite possible that the

by mgdlbp 4y ago

The Scots Wikipedia issue isn't straightforward at all. For one, considering the sheer effort spent in 170 000 edits over a decade, it's quite possible that the editor was acting in severely misguided good faith. More importantly, it raised questions about the utility and proceedings of Wikimedia sites with low traffic; a substantial discussion took place in an RFC[0] that included proposed audits to prevent future incidents, but nothing really went through other than increased attention to the long-existing Small-Wiki Monitoring Team. And the off-wiki effects...poisoned datasets and damage to the language itself! Perhaps proposals from the RFC will be renewed in light of this, though it's not the same situation as the Chinese Wikipedia isn't really small. It's known for questionable circumstances regarding adminship and other user behaviour, though, and is generally quite insular. So, unsurprising that this story hasn't received much attention outside of Chinese Wikipedia or news. On-wiki, the only pages for it currently are that on zhwiki and a corresponding page on English Wikipedia with a brief summary.[1] Also, enwiki's own newspaper has a more informed article on the Scots incident,[2] also with some discussion (there's also an HN post). By the way, I remember an article or Wikipedia page about how journalism about Wikipedia persistently lacks nuance or understanding of its customs (basically a community-wide Gell-Mann amnesia effect), but can't find it now...anyone happen to just know it? [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Large_scale_language_inaccuracies_on_the_Scots_Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Large_s... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fabricated_articles_and_hoaxes_of_Russia_in_2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fabricated_articles_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-08-30/News_and_notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> and damage to the language itself! What could this mean? Sometimes people do talk about the health of a language, but that almost exclusively refers to the number of living speakers.
- akolbe 4y ago
  Being freely licensed, the Wikipedia corpus is widely used as input for AI tools such as machine translation. https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    How does that hurt the language itself? What would it mean for the language to be hurt?
    - PeterisP 4y ago
      Any people wanting to learn the language using these resources (e.g. learning more Scots from the Scots wikipedia) would mean that they learn the altered/false/different language instead of the actual language, and afterward that changes how the actual language is used in practice, propagating the misconceptions onwards and degrading the language. In a similar way, if some people online are using they/their/they're interchangeably, and then other people (who are learning the language) learn that they are interchangeable and start using them this way, then English gets hurt by being altered in this undesired way. Some changes to language are considered desirable (e.g. introduction of new terminology for new concepts, or restructuring either as a natural process or top-down reforms that makes it more clear and thus more useful for communication) and some are not (ones that increase confusion such as the they/their/they're example above), and the latter ones are considered to hurt the language.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > Some changes to language are considered desirable (e.g. introduction of new terminology for new concepts, or restructuring either as a natural process The problem is that what you describe in your first paragraph: > Any people wanting to learn the language using these resources (e.g. learning more Scots from the Scots wikipedia) would mean that they learn the altered/false/different language instead of the actual language, and afterward that changes how the actual language is used in practice is just a description of how languages change as a natural process. It's not different in any way. Concluding that in this case it is "damage" and "bad" would require you to conclude that all natural language change is also "damage" and "bad", which is admittedly a popular viewpoint. But it's one you're trying to disavow.
akolbe 4y ago
Media reporting on Wikipedia (with few exceptions, like Stephen Harrison on Slate) generally consists in regurgitating Wikimedia press releases. So issues like Wikimedia's dodgy fundraising practices that could do with investigative journalism for example often fall by the wayside: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-06-26/Special_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... I and some others from the Signpost, the English Wikipedia's community newspaper, gave a presentation at the 2015 WikiConference about the lack of good Wikipedia journalism: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journalism_and_the_online_information_community.pdf https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journalism_and_the_o...

by mgdlbp 4y ago

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> and damage to the language itself! What could this mean? Sometimes people do talk about the health of a language, but that almost exclusively refers to the number of living speakers.

akolbe 4y ago
Being freely licensed, the Wikipedia corpus is widely used as input for AI tools such as machine translation. https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  How does that hurt the language itself? What would it mean for the language to be hurt?
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    Any people wanting to learn the language using these resources (e.g. learning more Scots from the Scots wikipedia) would mean that they learn the altered/false/different language instead of the actual language, and afterward that changes how the actual language is used in practice, propagating the misconceptions onwards and degrading the language. In a similar way, if some people online are using they/their/they're interchangeably, and then other people (who are learning the language) learn that they are interchangeable and start using them this way, then English gets hurt by being altered in this undesired way. Some changes to language are considered desirable (e.g. introduction of new terminology for new concepts, or restructuring either as a natural process or top-down reforms that makes it more clear and thus more useful for communication) and some are not (ones that increase confusion such as the they/their/they're example above), and the latter ones are considered to hurt the language.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > Some changes to language are considered desirable (e.g. introduction of new terminology for new concepts, or restructuring either as a natural process The problem is that what you describe in your first paragraph: > Any people wanting to learn the language using these resources (e.g. learning more Scots from the Scots wikipedia) would mean that they learn the altered/false/different language instead of the actual language, and afterward that changes how the actual language is used in practice is just a description of how languages change as a natural process. It's not different in any way. Concluding that in this case it is "damage" and "bad" would require you to conclude that all natural language change is also "damage" and "bad", which is admittedly a popular viewpoint. But it's one you're trying to disavow.

akolbe 4y ago

Media reporting on Wikipedia (with few exceptions, like Stephen Harrison on Slate) generally consists in regurgitating Wikimedia press releases. So issues like Wikimedia's dodgy fundraising practices that could do with investigative journalism for example often fall by the wayside: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-06-26/Special_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... I and some others from the Signpost, the English Wikipedia's community newspaper, gave a presentation at the 2015 WikiConference about the lack of good Wikipedia journalism: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journalism_and_the_online_information_community.pdf https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journalism_and_the_o...