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IYIL Wikipedia Edit-a-thon:�Language-specific�Articles & Tasks

February 1, 2019 & April 11, 2019

The University of Texas at Austin

PCL Learning Lab 2

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Edits can be small or large

  • Add references and categories to articles
  • Add links to other Wikipedia articles
  • Add/fix external links to AILLA
  • Make phoneme charts
  • Add information from articles on other languages’ Wikipedias
  • Edit article text

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Adding references

Add bibliographic references and citations to articles.

You don’t have to add information to the text of the article. Just adding a reference is helpful!

Uncited references can go in External Links or Further Reading sections

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Finding References

The UT Library catalog www.lib.utexas.edu

Reliable online sources

  • Glottolog reference lists (linked to in many infoboxes)
  • Open Language Archives Community http://search.language-archives.org/
  • The list of language archives in our Resources spreadsheet
  • The list of recent UT theses and dissertations in our Resources spreadsheet

The books we brought from the Benson Latin American Library [Feb. 1 only]

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Adding categories

Help people find the page

Add categories about language family, country/region where it is used, and categories for linguistic phenomena present in the language

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Adding links to other Wiki pages

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Fixing links to AILLA

Collections

Old: http://www.ailla.utexas.org/search/collection.html?c_id=98

New: https://ailla.utexas.org/islandora/object/ailla:124481

Get numbers from the URL of the collection’s page

Languages

Old: http://www.ailla.utexas.org/search/view_resource.html?lg_id=6

New: https://ailla.utexas.org/islandora/search/ailla:119499?type=dismax

Get numbers from the URL of the language’s page

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Making Phoneme Charts

Lists of phonemes already in articles or found in sources can be made into charts.

Copy and edit a similar chart in another article or the complete charts at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart

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Adding information from other Wikipedias

Some articles are more developed on other languages’ Wikis

  • View a machine-translated version of the article
  • Revise and add quality text and references
  • Add copyright attribution and translated template

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Editing an Article’s text

Use reliable sources to add info to the body of the article itself.

Follow the template at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Languages/Template

Include

  • Classification, History, Geographical distribution, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Vocabulary, Writing System

Or have a look at well-developed articles like Nahuatl or Mayan languages

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Watching our language

Many sources on indigenous languages often inadvertently perpetuate negative stereotypes about indigenous people. Avoid language that minimizes, others, or historicizes languages and their speakers.

Avoid

Instead use

dead, dying

dormant, sleeping

ancient, primitive

(usually can be omitted)

exotic

less common

dialect (when referring to a language)

language

small language

a language with few speakers/signers

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Finding Articles

Search Wikipedia for languages you’re familiar with

  • If you already know the literature about a language, go for it!

Select an Available Article on our Edit-A-thon dashboard (on Articles tab)

  • We have printed books on hand for many of these languages

Follow article links on our Resources spreadsheet to stub articles

  • Good approach if you want to fix links, add Glottolog references, etc. to a bunch of articles

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Wikipedia - NOT the place for your original research

If you have done first-hand research on a language (e.g., fieldwork or direct work with primary resources), you might be tempted to put that information into a language article. DON'T DO IT!

Publish that info in a reliable publishing venue first!

Information that you put into Wikipedia MUST lead back to verifiable information (and a p.c. from you does not count!).