Are you surprised?
Two days ago, Wikipedia broke something that made people laugh and cry: there were more than 20,000 entries in Wikipedia's Scottish branch (which accounted for almost 1/3 of the entire branch), all of which were "contributed" by a minor in 7 years.
Minors are not the key, the key is that this child is an American and is probably only 12 years old when he started writing entries. His Scottish knowledge is basically equal to zero, and the encyclopedia entries he created are also full of extremely low-level mistakes: many of them were copied directly from the English version, but some keywords were replaced by the teenager with the assumed "Scottish vocabulary".
makes an inappropriate example, just like when you climb to the old Beijing Wiki, you find that it is full of things like "Bei Er Jing Er Gong Er You Er Lan Er Ju Er Nan Er". On the one hand, this greatly reduces the value and credibility of the website. On the other hand, it also makes it difficult for Beijingers to explain to their honest southern friends why Beijing college entrance examination essays do not require writing 1,600 words.
A low-level teenager controls the entire Wiki branch. This sounds like a story made up, but reality is often even more outrageous than the story.
This teenager has been involved in Wikipedia editing since 2013. In his self-introduction, he also said that he was a Pony Party and INTP. Due to his high activity, he gained the authority of a Scottish Wiki Administrator in less than half a year.
The perpetrator's homepage archive, claiming to be Brony (a fan of "My Little Pony") and INTP
This became the beginning of the fall of Scotland's Wiki. The fusion of Scottish and English is very high, but many grammatical habits and vocabulary still retain their own characteristics. For a long time, Scottish accents were a very common method to shape character images in film and television literary works.
In the Internet era, netizens in the English-speaking world have rediscovered the comedy effect in Scottish accents, and Scottish often appears in various bad memes.
It is hard to say whether this teenager is really interested in Scottish dialect, or is it just affected by bad memes and wants to make a troll joke. However, from some old discussions, it can be seen that the teenager not only knows little about these language habits and characteristics, but also lacks the due respect.
In an entry about Langmafeng, the boy used "Munt" to replace "Mountain". However, this word is almost equivalent to the meaning of "Niko" and "ugly" in Scotch. After being questioned, the young man explained in a deviant way that he felt that there was no problem with using this, and completely ignored the reasonable suggestions of others.
Some communication excerpts. Funny, this American kid is obsessed with using his pidgin Scottish, but real Scots choose to communicate in ordinary English
. In this discussion, it can also be seen that other volunteers have long had no confidence in the teenage ability and the quality of the entire Scottish Wiki. One discussionist called Scottish Wiki a "man-made plastic variant" and said that teenagers "should see how real Scots speak". However, these are all taken as wind in my ears. Because this teenager contributed a lot and was an administrator, other administrators may not be willing to conflict with him, and ordinary volunteers have no choice but to deal with him.
In the end, it was a Reddit user who shook the whole situation out and attracted widespread attention. After the incident broke out, this was the willful and arbitrary young man who deleted his personal homepage and quietly retired from the circle.
But his damage to Wikipedia has been done.
There are not many Scottish Wiki users and contributors, and there are only a dozen administrators in total. Modifying more than 20,000 entries is an extremely difficult task for them. These misleading entries cannot be placed online until the modification is completed. The entire Scottish Wiki project may be closed. After the incident, many relevant personnel called on those who truly understand Scottish to lend a helping hand.
Wikipedia officials also responded to this. They only provide necessary tools and technical support, but the specific content, quality and review standards of each wiki can only be maintained by the community. In other words, whether the Scottish Wiki can survive depends on the Scots themselves.
