Scots Wikipedia


The Scots Wikipedia is the Scots language version of Wikipedia, and is run by the Wikimedia Foundation. It was established on 23 June 2005, and first reached 1,000 articles in February 2006, and 5,000 articles in November 2010. As of , it has about articles. The Scots Wikipedia is one of eight Wikipedias written in an Anglic language or English-based pidgin/creole, the others being the English Wikipedia, the Simple English Wikipedia, the Old English Wikipedia, the :pih:Mien_Paij|Pitkern-Norfuk Wikipedia, the Tok Pisin Wikipedia, the Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, and the Sranan Tongo Wikipedia.

Reception

By February 2008, the site contained 2,200 articles, and had already outpaced other Wikipedias, such as Maori Wikipedia and Kashmiri Wikipedia. Reported reception, however, was mixed, with Scotland on Sunday's literary editor describing it as "convoluted at best, and an absolute parody at worst," while Ted Brocklebank, culture spokesman for the Scottish Tories, described it as a "cheap attempt at creating a language." However, Dr Chris Robinson, director of the Dictionary of the Scots Language, spoke more positively of the site, noting: "The fact it is doing well gives a lie to all those people who decry Scots and try to do it down." And Jane C Hu of Slate.com describes how it is regarded as a "joke" by some and goes on to debate whether Scots is really its own language or just a dialect of English, and therefore whether someone who because it was a "joke project" was right or not.