User:Valaxiom/sandbox

Hi nice to meet you :) Paragraph: formatting

A : font style options

Links: connect your article to another article on wiki

Cite: I love this, just copy paste the url etc

Bullets: just like every word processor ever

Insert: pretty self-explanatory tbh

Ω: add symbols.

=(^.^)= : a kitty for the sandbox

Language revitalization is the practice of bringing a sleeping language back into common use. The revitalization efforts can take the form of teaching the language to new speakers or encouraging the continued use within the community.

Ideas for "Language documentation" page edits:

- add an additional section on digitization of language archives.

- probably add into the 'methods' section; between first and second paragraph, detailing the need for digitization and the obstacles that can be encountered

- rough: "The digitization of archives is a critical component of language documentation projects. There are descriptive records of local languages that could be put to use in language revitalization projects that are inaccessible due to obsolete formatting, incomplete hard-copy records, or unhelpful staff [structural bureaucratic issues?]. Local archives in particular, who may have vital records of the area's indigenous languages, are chronically underfunded and understaffed. The use of historic language documentation records, often by non-specialists such as missionaries or amateur anthropologists, can be overlooked if the collection is not digitized. Physical archives are naturally more vulnerable to damage and information loss. Digitization of physical archives has become increasingly critical for language revitalization efforts in recent years."

-find sources, use biblio from class

-make this sound more coherent

-maybe rearrange the sections on the page? it's a little incomplete-looking

-perhaps some examples of language documentation would be a good addition as well

Final Edits for LingWiki Project
Here is a link to the finished version of the "Digital Documentation" Section which I added: Language documentation

For more details on how I edited that page, particularly the introductory paragraph, please see the page edit history in addition to my project reflection below.

LingWiki Reflection
(This is an identical copy of the reflection I've submitted on Canvas- I wasn't sure if you wanted it in both places or just one).

The Wikipedia article I chose to edit for this project is “Language Documentation.” I chose this article because it was a stub-class article in the Linguistics category of Wikipedia. I also found that the article had several places that I could improve it. The article overall was somewhat unclear on its purpose, oscillating between describing the grammatical strategies used for language documentation and listing related subfields.

The main addition I made was adding a section on digital language documentation. The page had mentioned digital language technologies in a list without much detail. There was also an extensive section on “Methods” that focused heavily on language documentation in the field, rather than archival documentation. Language documentation is a broad category, encompassing both classical documentation (such as that of a linguistic anthropologist in the field), and archival practices such as digitizing and reformatting older documents. This article did not have a section on more modern documentation practices.

I also took the liberty of adding five additional citations to this article (citations # 4, 5, 8, 9, and 10). This effectively doubled the number of sources this article had. The citations I added were all relevant peer-reviewed academic sources on language digitization, archives, or documentation.

Wikipedia is an important resource that needs to be recognized as such. The quality of its articles varies widely, often (but not always) in line with the relative importance of the content of the articles. There are certainly gaps in this system- from political squabbling on hot-topic issues to a lack of peer-reviewed sources on articles that sorely need them. Yet with other, similar websites often locked behind paywalls, Wikipedia is often the only available overview of a topic that is accessible to the general public. Encyclopedia Brittanica is a poor replacement at best- its articles tend to be outdated, especially on current events, and it often lacks the detail of many Wikipedia articles. I recently had to do a project on a well-known anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, and his Encyclopedia Brittanica page was short and basic. In contrast, his Wikipedia page had more details on his life and works, in addition to many of his works and theories have their own dedicated pages. I am not saying that Encyclopedia Brittanica is irrelevant, but it has its own weaknesses that should be addressed, the same as Wikipedia does.

I will sometimes go on Wikipedia for fun- I like learning new things, and I appreciate being able to learn them without having to pay a monthly subscription or be assaulted by distracting advertisements. I really liked doing this project because I feel like Wikipedia has been given an unfairly earned reputation of unreliability. If you know how to read a Wikipedia article, and if you can recognize that a stub-class article with two non-academic sources is not the same as an A-class article with forty academic citations, then Wikipedia is a fantastic resource. The knee-jerk reaction of sneering at Wikipedia is unhelpful and childish. I would have found it much more useful if, in high school, they had taken the time to explain how Wikipedia worked instead of banning it in any capacity. Being able to analyze a source and determine its trustworthiness is a great skill to have, especially in today’s world of “fake news.”