before I get too far into this I want to
give credit to a post on the subreddit
hobby drama made by Reddit user purple
wig as well as a post on the Scotland
subred made by user ultec as they are
the primary sources of information for
this video
Wikipedia doesn't really need an
introduction mainly because it's one of
the oldest and most used sources of
information on the internet
however over the years it has drawn some
controversy mainly due to its claim that
it's the encyclopedia that anyone can
edit and although the sites become much
more strict regarding what types of
edicts are accepted the stigma still
persist through this day in many still
view Wikipedia as an unreliable source
of information despite all this
Wikipedia has continued to grow and it's
even expanded its contents to over 329
different languages with one of these
languages being the subject of today's
video Scots Scots is language spoken in
Scotland and parts of Ireland and as you
can imagine it's the native language of
Scotland it's recognized internationally
as official language however there are
some who challenge that notion citing
its similarity to English as the main
reason calling it a dialect of English
instead many people who think like this
tend to point to the fact that in
Scotland the many cochlealisms of Scots
and Scottish English are very similar to
each other it can be hard to distinguish
between the two at times the key
takeaway here is that Scots is its own
complicated language with its own
grammar rules spellings and you get the
point if you want to speak Scots you
would quite literally have to learn
another language language you can't just
put on a funny accent and then continue
on and now this brings us back to the
Scots Wikipedia initially made in 2005
many Scottish internet users grew to
dislike the site throughout the years as
its many articles Rife with grammatical
errors misspellings and sometimes
complete and total gibberish and now
enter a Wiki user that will be calling
he
important side note the source that I'm
using originally called them AG as well
I was initially going to refer to them
as their full screen name
however since this has happened other
unrelated people to the story have taken
up the same online handle so I will also
be referring to the original person as
AG A.G made their account back in 2013
and soon after it began making countless
articles and edits after that due to
their dedication they ended up becoming
the main administrator of the Scots
Wikipedia having created over 27 000
articles and having edited 200 000 more
which at one point was over a third of
all the content on the site and that
brings us to the controversy on August
25th 2020 a Reddit user named ultak made
a post named I've discovered that almost
every single article on the Scots
version of Wikipedia is written by the
same person an American Teenager who
can't speak Scots originally posted on
the Scotland subreddit all tech provides
the reasons as to why they think Scott's
Wikipedia is so bad AG doesn't even know
the language that they've been writing
articles for to quickly summarize this
post many of the Articles written by A.G
seem to just be articles from the
English Wikipedia translated one to one
Scots AG had admitted previously that
they frequently used the Scots online
dictionary as a resource
the Scott's online dictionary is
disliked by a lot of Scottish people as
it lacks a lot of information on the
language and it seems that AG would just
copy and paste the first result for
whatever term they were looking up
regardless of the context for it related
to this it's also speculated for a
number of reasons that AG would also use
a Scots to English translator online and
there are three key points for this that
people use the first being Scott's
grammar is completely ignored in these
articles second being some English
sentences or phrases are left completely
untranslated and the third being words
that only exist in Scots and don't have
an English equivalent are rarely ever
used and when they are it's almost
always used incorrectly additionally AG
would combine or misuse terms from both
Scots and Scots English reminder these
are two entirely different languages on
top of all this AEG with seemingly
phonetically spell out English words as
if it were said by someone with a
Scottish accent to put it bluntly at
best AG was mistranslating stuff at
worst he was downright making up
shortly after all talk post to this the
story blew up it gave the attention to
mainstream news outlets in the Scots
Wikipedia itself got locked this is both
the deal with the controversy itself as
well as the deal with the large amount
of trolls that this whole ordeal
attracted
and that brings us to the aftermath not
only did this affect the Scots Wikipedia
but it also affected the Scots language
as a whole
this had an impact on the Scots online
dictionary as well as documents made by
the Scottish government itself now this
may seem outlandish but for a while the
Scots Wikipedia was the largest resource
of information for the language online
and several grammatical quirks in the
language started to show up and they
could only really be traced back to the
Scots Wikipedia more specifically
articles made by AG and the same Reddit
user from earlier altac goes into this
further on a comment the post itself was
just a meme but altak ended up
commenting on the work choice in the
spelling specifically in it the ee
spellings are actually a really
interesting Rabbit Hole they generally
only appear in three places Scots
Wikipedia the online Scots dictionary
and materials published by the Scottish
government the current theory as
formulated by the good folks on the
Scots lead Discord goes like this early
Scots Wikipedia editors are trying very
hard to make it look more different from
English they see that ee is a substitute
for English y or I is historically
attested in a very small number of Scots
words in a very limited capacity they
decide to apply it to everything when
the online in Scott's dictionaries being
put together they take a lot of words
from the Scots Wikipedia since even at
that early stage it was probably the
biggest online resource for Scots and
nobody really expected them to just make
up a whole fake version of the language
OSD is the first semi-professional
looking site that comes up when you
Google Scotch translation so the
government interns responsible for
translating pamphlets and web pages and
whatnot just use it out of laziness now
as you can imagine this also hurt The
credibility of the language as a whole
as detractors against Scots cited how
one American Teenager could seemingly
make up grammatical rules and convince
people that they are a fluent speaker
without knowing any of the practices of
the language
speaking of the American Teenager
whatever happened to AG
following the controversy they released
a statement saying honestly I don't mind
if you convert all my edits delete my
articles at Ben from the wiki for good
I've already found out that my
contributions of anger 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 have OCD 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 bicycle being kept like it is
or extensively reform to wipe my
influence from it makes no difference to
me now that I know that I've done no
good anyway
soon after this AG deleted their Twitter
as well as stepping away from their Wiki
account but for a brief time in 2022
they began once again editing pages on
both the English and Scots Wikipedia
however for the most part these edits
are small and they tend to be mostly
either small formatting changes or them
adding related images to the Articles as
for the Scott's Wiki some Wiki users did
some digging after the story broke and
found out that there were several other
people on the Scots Wikipedia who are
also editing it despite every single one
of them claiming they weren't that
familiar with the language none of them
were as prolific as AG was however all
of them had at least over a thousand
edits each
also if it matters one of the users
claimed that these edits were made
mostly for administration and site
maintenance purposes however some of the
people in the group were also admins
like AG it turns out that this has been
a problem on the wiki for a long time
as some of the oldest admins dating all
the way back to the Wiki's launch of
2005 didn't have a strong understanding
of Scots to be more specific only one
person in the group of founding members
identified as being a native speaker of
the language
a second person in the group claimed
that they knew a little and they wanted
to learn more this was also a sentiment
shared amongst the rest of the group
it seems that while the wiki started out
of both of a genuine desire to help
provide information and teach others
about the language the site quickly
became a joke becoming more apparent as
the years passed shortly after the
controversy one of the admits on the
Scots Wiki didn't AMA on the Scotland
subreddit and while there are a lot of
opinions discussed in this thread one
common sentiment was that the wiki not
only needed to delete aeg's articles but
also add some kind of verification to
prevent this from happening again I
bring this up to mention the fact that
there was a growing amount of Scottish
users who wanted the wiki to be deleted
entirely specifically calling it a
mockery of three language
the wiki did consider this option
however going forward they decided it
was best to completely remove the pages
that were made entirely by AG While
others were corrected with the help of
volunteers even the Scots Language
Center got involved dubbing it the big
Wiki rewrite these Corrections are still
going on to this day however as a direct
result of this the Wiki's Pages have
gone down a quantity but have gone up in
quality as of the time of recording
there are currently over 36 000 articles
which are accurate for the language down
from the over 50 000 there were
originally
so originally the ending of this video
was going to be a joke saying something
like maybe the true moral of the story
is to use a source other than Wikipedia
But as I've been reading into this more
I've realized there's a lot more to the
story than I initially thought like what
was originally intended to be a video
joking about a kid who hijacked a Wiki
turned it to be finding out this is an
issue which ties back to the site's
founding and it may or may not have had
a lasting impact on the Public's
perception of the language and this also
ties back into a problem with Scottish
culture itself how there are some people
who think that do their history Scotland
is incapable of self-confidence and
these people would often point to the
Scots Wikipedia as an example of how
they think their own languages are a
sham I'm not really sure how to end this
still not everything has a message and
there's not really a happy ending here
like yeah the Wikipedia is better now
but it came after more or less making
the site and by proxy the Scots language
as a whole a joke in the eyes of many
it also looks pretty bad on Wikipedia's
end because they let this go unnoticed
for so long although that's the part
that matters the least here honestly I
will say that there have been active
efforts to preserve the native languages
of Scotland and from what I could see
looking in it seems that in recent years
more and more Scottish people are taking
pride in their Heritage I've been
campaigning to stop their languages from
being phased out in educational or
federal settings it's nice to see really
if you do actually know any Scots the
Scots Wiki could really use the help I'm
sure
also please don't use this video as an
excuse to vandalize the wiki under the
guise of helping they really don't need
any more of that and that's about it
thank you for watching see you next time