I’m posting this here because I’m honestly so sick and tired of this kind of thing. Especially in regards to endangered languages
But yeah. so funny
For those who don’t know, Scots language is not the same as Scottish Gaelic. They are unique from each other. Some people know Scots language better as being referred to as a dialect, so if you’ve heard about the Scots dialect before online, they’re probably referring to Scots language.
UNESCO recognizes it as a vulnerable language (Gaelic is considered more severely as “endangered”).
The Scots Wikipedia is exactly what it sounds like, an alternate wikipedia where the articles are all written in Scots. There are other wikipedias that provide content for other languages the same way. It helps preserve and give access to a threatened and underrepresented language, which is invaluable.
About 16 hours ago, it was discovered that an American teenager has been editing and writing articles not in Scots, but in an American’s disrespectful phonetic take on what he thinks Scots sounds like.
This problem isn’t unique to this incident. Frequently on tumblr I see Americans making jokes about Scottish actors making what they’ve called “garbled Scottish sounds” and attempting (and failing) to type in Scots. Scottish languages have been decimated over the centuries, and Scots Wikipedia should be an amazing language resource.
The worst part? He’s apparently been at this for YEARS. He’s potentially (more info to come) edited or penned nearly 1/3 of Scots Wikipedia. Apparently when Scots speakers have corrected him in the past, he’s had a “haughty attitude,” claiming that other Scots speakers (who were never present, unsurprisingly) approved of his failed attempts at writing in Scots.
The damage is heart wrenching:
“Potentially tens of millions of people now think that Scots is a horribly mangled rendering of English rather than being a language or dialect of its own, all because they were exposed to a mangled rendering of English being called Scots by this person and by this person alone.
They wrote such a massive volume of this pretend Scots that anyone writing in genuine Scots would have their work drowned out by rubbish. Or, even worse, edited to be more in line with said rubbish.
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.”
Even worse, many people are praising this kid as the all-time most dedicate “troll,” as funny, etc. It’s inexcusable.
They’re hoping Scots speakers will volunteer to help fix all of the nonsense articles he’s put up.
This is awful first of all, but how can you completely write that many Wikipedia page translations in a bastardized language without getting caught sooner? I know Wikipedia is open to edit many pages, but there’s got to be some checks right? The fact that nobody caught this seems like a bigger problem. Even if that one kid didn’t do this, it could have been done to many other vulnerable languages by anyone else.
Apparently, at some point he was somehow granted moderator power, but there’s so far no detail as to how. Scots Wikipedia isn’t exactly a bustling business. There aren’t many moderators, and unless they were combing through tens of thousands of articles continually, these ones could be missed among the rest.
Apparently, the kid was using online Scots dictionaries (not a reliable way to translate a language) so that at a glance or to a non-speaker, enough words…..looked like they were being used in the APPROXIMATELY correct place. That combined with a small number of moderators and tens of thousands of articles to look after let this non-speaker edit and moderate pages despite being caught a few times and questioned by speakers.
That’s all I know.
It’s a mess. And you’re right. Hopefully nothing like this happens (or is already happening) to other vulnerable languages.
Teenager’s statement: “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.”
It should be noted, it is possible to selectively delete pages started by a specific user and also roll back their edits. It was started by native speakers and there are still native speakers writing pages. The whole thing doesn’t have to be deleted.
While I may seem unreasonably sympathetic to this person, I’m doing so because so many of the native Scots speakers who have been or plan to contribute to scowiki, and the Reddit OP, have been surprisingly very sympathetic. It’s obvious this wasn’t done for “teh lullz” like many are assuming. If that’s their decision on how to proceed then I certainly won’t go against that.
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.
Yeah, that definitely tracks… glad the guy is at least cognizant of what he’s done and willing to help resolve the problem.
Good things to hear on this situation!
From my other post:
Y’all I reblogged that post with additional information yesterday hoping simply to explain what Scots language is and what had happened with only the developing information I had available in that moment. I didn’t call for and don’t approve of the excessive and graphic descriptions of violence and doxxing threats in the notes of that post.
I understand people are angry, but plenty of native Scots speakers are optimistically looking ahead to how this attention can be used to create a strong Scots language resource moving forward.
Michael Dempster, the director of the Scots Language Centre based in Perth, takes a more ameliorative approach and says he is now in conversation with the Wikimedia Foundation about the prospect of properly re-editing the teenager’s contributions.
“We know that this kid has put in an incredible amount of work, and he has created an editable infrastructure. It’s a great resource but it needs people who are literate in Scots to edit it now. It has the potential to be a great online focus for the language in the future.” (Source)
Even the person who originally discovered the fiasco and started the Reddit post has asked people to stop harassing the person responsible and his friends who were not even involved:
EDIT : I’ve been told that the editor I’ve written about has received some harassment for what they’ve done. This should go without saying but I don’t condone this at all. They screwed up and I’m sure they know that by now. They seem like a nice enough person who made a mistake when they were a young child, a mistake which nobody ever bothered to correct, so it’s hardly their fault. They’re clearly very passionate and dedicated, and with any luck maybe they can use this as an opportunity to learn the language properly and make a positive contribution. If you’re reading this I hope you’re doing alright and that you’re not taking it too personally. (Source).
The guy himself has apologized, explained that he thought he was doing a good thing, and has agreed to both leave the wiki AND to start actually learning Scots.
If the people who have to clean up this mess and organize the translation corrections can give this guy some grace, I think that’s the path to follow.
I won’t tell Scottish people and Scots speakers how to feel about all of this, but I’ll ask other people in the notes, especially the outraged Americans, who are posting extremely aggressive and sometimes violent reactions to consider putting that energy into supporting the speakers who are going to fix this.
The main takeaway from this mess is that now other vulnerable language resources can check their own weak spots to hopefully avoid this from happening to them, and it seems that now the woefully understaffed (not their fault, they’ve been doing their best!) Scots Wiki is getting the attention and volunteer work it deserves to build a reliable language source on strong foundations.
