Scots Wikipedia

The Scots Wikipedia (Scots: Wikipædia[lower-alpha 1]) is the Scots language version of Wikipedia, and is run by the Wikimedia Foundation. It was established on 23 June 2005, and first reached 1,000 articles in February 2006, and 5,000 articles in November 2010. As of February 2021, it has about 43,000 articles.[1] The Scots Wikipedia is one of eight Wikipedias written in an Anglic language or English-based pidgin/creole, the others being the English Wikipedia, the Simple English Wikipedia, the Old English Wikipedia, the Pitkern-Norfuk Wikipedia, the Tok Pisin Wikipedia, the Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, and the Sranan Tongo Wikipedia.

Not to be confused with Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia.
Scots Wikipedia
Logo of the Scots Wikipedia
Screenshot
Type of site
Internet encyclopaedia
Available inScots
HeadquartersMiami, Florida
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
URLsco.wikipedia.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Users80,857 users, 9 administrators as of 6 February 2021
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution/
Share-Alike 3.0 (most text also dual-licensed under GFDL)

In August 2020, the wiki received scrutiny from the media for the poor quality of the Scots writing in many of its articles, and for the discovery that at least 20,000 articles had been written by an individual who did not actually speak the language. This attention led to a review of the wiki's content by Scots speakers as well as editors from Wikipedia's wider community.[2]

Reception

By February 2008, the site contained 2,200 articles[3] and had outpaced Maori Wikipedia and Kashmiri Wikipedia. Reported reception, however, was mixed, with Scotland on Sunday's literary editor describing it as "convoluted at best, and an absolute parody at worst,"[4] while Ted Brocklebank, culture spokesman for the Scottish Tories, described it as a "cheap attempt at creating a language."[4] However, Chris Robinson, director of the Dictionary of the Scots Language, spoke more positively of the site, noting: "The fact it is doing well gives a lie to all those people who decry Scots and try to do it down."[4] In 2014, Jane C. Hu of Slate.com described the site as reading "like a transcription of a person with a Scottish accent", and said one Wikipedia editor had proposed that the project be closed, in the mistaken belief that it was a practical joke.[5]

Controversy

In August 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. Over 23,000 articles, approximately a third of the entire Wikipedia at that time, were created by this American teenager, most of which having been variously described as "English written in a Scottish accent" and "very odd" to abject gibberish with nonsensical words and spellings not present in any Scots dialect.[6][7][8] 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.[7]

Robert McColl Millar, the Chair in Linguistics and Scottish Language at the University of Aberdeen, said that the affected articles displayed "a very limited knowledge both of Modern Scots and its earlier manifestations".[7] Michael Dempster, director of the Scots Language Centre, contacted the Wikimedia Foundation over the possibility of building upon the Scots Wikipedia's existing infrastructure, describing the renewed interest in the site as having "potential to be a great online focus" for the Scots language.[9]

See also

Notes
  1. Pronunciation varies between [wikipedia] and [wʌkipedia], see Modern Scots#Phonology.

References
  1. "List of Wikipedias". meta.wikimedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on 25 June 2018. Retrieved 15 March 2014.
  2. Harrison, Stephen (9 September 2020). "What Happens to Scots Wikipedia Now?". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 11 October 2020.
  3. "Learnin's jist a wee click awa". Daily Mirror. 25 February 2008. Archived from the original on 11 June 2014. Retrieved 31 July 2012. – via HighBeam Research (subscription required)
  4. Horne, Marc (24 February 2008). "Scots finds home on gey muckle website". Scotland on Sunday. Archived from the original on 1 June 2016. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  5. Jane C. Hu (5 August 2014). "The Free Enclopaedia That Awbody Can Eedit: Scots Wikipedia Is No Joke". slate.com. Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
  6. Song, Victoria (25 August 2020). "Alleged Teen Brony Has Filled the Scots Wiki With Thousands of Fake Translations [Update: Confirmed Teen, No Longer Brony]". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on 26 August 2020. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  7. McDonald, Karl (26 August 2020). "Scots Wikipedia taken over by American teenager who wrote thousands of 'very odd' articles without learning language". inews.co.uk. Archived from the original on 26 August 2020. Retrieved 26 August 2020.
  8. Ingham, Lucy (26 August 2020). "Majority of Scots Wikipedia articles are gibberish due to single prolific editor". Verdict. Archived from the original on 19 September 2020. Retrieved 1 February 2021.
  9. Brooks, Libby; Hern, Alex (26 August 2020). "Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 August 2020.
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