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Wikipedia:GLAM/SOAS/Lingwiki

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Lingwiki project page
Hello. This page has been set up to facilitate the Lingwiki editathons and events at SOAS. The project is supervised by Lauren Gawne and Charlotte Hemmings.


We have a number of task we are working on to improve Wikipedia's Endangered Language and Linguistics page. We meet up once a month at SOAS for editathons, but we welcome any contributions to these topics at any time and from anywhere! Wikipedia has pages for all languages that have an ISO 639-3 language code, so it is unlikely you will have to make a new page. Remember to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's editing practices, and articles that do not follow Wikipedia practices and guidelines will be put up for deletion.

Resources

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There are lots of great resources on editing Wikipedia. For linguists you can check out some of the resources made by Gretchen McCulloch:

  • Slides for how to edit Wikipedia as a linguist (CC-BY) bit.ly/lingwiki, French version at bit.ly/lingwikifr, Spanish version at bit.ly/lingwikies -- Feel free to use for your own editathon! If you translate into another language, do let me know so I can link to them.
  • A cute guide to linguistics stub sorting on Wikipedia, created with User:Keilana for linguistics enthusiasts who aren't sure if they have enough knowledge to edit: bit.ly/wugsorting.
  • The #lingwiki hashtag on twitter - where editathons move online. You can tweet your contributions, suggestions, or questions there any time!
  • The original grant proposal to Wikimedia Inspire for the SOAS editathons below.

Archive linking

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For the Lingwiki project we are aiming to link all ELAR and Paradisec archives to the relevant language pages on Wikipedia. This improves Wikipedia's links to important materials about endangered languages (sometimes they are the only materials about a language). It also gives participants the chance to engage with endangered language archives and visit lots of different endangered language pages.

To participate:

  1. Choose whether you want to link from Paradisec or Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR).
  2. Find a point in the archive to start working, and make note of it below.
  3. Work through the languages in alphabetical order (Paradisec) or collection number order (ELAR).
  4. Take the URL for a collection.
  5. Go to the relevant Wikipedia page.
  6. Go to the External Links section of the language page, if there's not one, create it
  7. Write a short sentence that captures the nature of the collection and add it as a link. Mention which archive it's from and link to its Wikipedia page. Include mention of whether it's open access, and note if it's open access, or covers specific genres, has video, or is just text documents.
  8. Make a note of the change as something like 'added link to Paradisec/ELAR.

For an example of how this is done see the Ahom page "external links" section, where a link to the Paradisec archive has been made. don't forget to make a note below if you're participating. If there is any information on the archive page that can improve the language page more generally you can also include that information with reference to the archive.

PARADISEC

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We will be working through the "Languages" column of the [[1]] page in alphabetical order.

Current Work

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The paradisec collection is here (http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/)

Lauren's Sandbox includes a list from Paradisec of all the languages in the archive not yet linked to the relevant language page on Wikipedia. Some languages will not show up in Paradisec's catalogue as they are 'hidden' collections and shouldn't be added.

ELAR

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ELAR will be linked by collection number. You can work through the ELAR collections using their URLS. e.g. http://elar.soas.ac.uk/deposit/0001 Pick a range of 20 or so numbers at a time!

Current Work

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Emily will be working on linking ELAR collections starting from deposit 300 (http://elar.soas.ac.uk/deposit/0300)
3 December edit-a-thon: Got through deposit 303 (four entries)
28 April edit-a-thon: skipped deposits 306 (Ratsua), 311 (Kula) as no Wikipedia entries exists, got through to 318 (Duoxu)

Sarah will be working on linking ELAR collections starting from deposit 1 SMD3719035 (talk) 16:29, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

[User:ADHarvey|ADHarvey]] has been working through the 300s

Jemima has worked from 0400 to 0409, 23 Nov '16

Grammars

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If you've got some linguistic training gram a descriptive grammar, find the language page on Wikipedia and start improving the quality of that page. If you're not completely comfortable with all of the grammar work with the sections you are interested in. If you have no linguistics training you can still add the basic information about the speakers, their location and other ethnographic information that is often given at the start of a grammar.

Need help finding a grammar?

Linguistics pages

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If you're interested in a specific feature of language, across different language pages (e.g. Phonetics inventories) you can enrich specific linguistics pages.

Article Assessment Scale

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This is the scale by which Wikipedia articles are rated. In order to see a ranking go to the article's talkpage. The different grading levels will also elaborate on how an article can be be improved. Many language pages on Wikipedia are stubs, and any contribution is very welcome!