LINGUIST List 19.885: You Helped Develop

LINGUIST List 19.885

Mon Mar 17 2008

What: You Helped Develop

Editor for this issue: Maria Moreno-Rollins <marialinguistlist.org>

1. linguist, Progress Report on LINGUIST's Wikipedia Update Project

Message 1: Progress Report on LINGUIST's Wikipedia Update Project
Date: 17-Mar-2008
From: linguist <linguistlinguistlist.org>
Subject: Progress Report on LINGUIST's Wikipedia Update Project
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Dear readers,

This letter is a progress report on LINGUIST's Wikipedia Update Project. You mayremember that Fund Drive 2007 donors voted to earmark some funds for a LINGUISTteam to look into filling some of the gaps in linguistics and language articlesthat appear in Wikipedia. Our goal was to make Wikipedia an even better resourcefor our field and the general public by asking the linguistics community itselfto help improve the reliability of information in the "encyclopedia that anyonecan edit." Our mandate was to get the word out about which articles needed revisionor completion and to issue periodic calls for volunteers to edit such entries and/oradd new entries. Our role was to serve as a hub for facilitating such updates andto report back to you on the results of our efforts.

We began our project in earnest in the summer of 2007. LINGUIST's Wikipedia teamlogged itself in as a user (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Linguistlist) andmerged its project with the existing WikiProject Linguistics page. We found thatWikipedia administrators and editors had already identified some 700 articles as"linguistic stubs," flagged as being incomplete or lacking in some respect-needingfuller content, having content that was "contested" by some, lacking proper referencesor citations, or having missing or empty links. We put these stubs on a "watchlist"to keep track of what got updated and when. From this large list of stubs, we thencreated smaller lists by linguistic subfield-these included biographic entries oflinguists and specific articles in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, andsociolinguistics.

We then issued calls for volunteers, one per month for a total of six through theend of December 2007. Each call included a report on subscribers who had respondedto our calls. Some reported having edited or created new articles while others promisedto edit specific entries in the future. Our respondents came from all over, as closeto home as Chicago and New York and as far away as Serbia and the West Indies. AllLINGUIST activities on the update project, including the full text of each call foraction, are logged on our user page.

We are pleased to report the following activities concerning linguistics articles:- 13 articles were completed or newly created by subscribers- 12 articles had references added- 33 links were added to existing articles- 28 articles were de-stubbed by virtue of being judged self-sufficient

The Wikipedia team was able to devote six months to the project, given a timeframethat was necessarily limited. Because we are also involved in other LINGUIST projects,we are no longer recruiting participants for the update project.

The Wikipedia team is extremely grateful to all of you for your collective interestin the project and especially to those of you who made specific contributions toWikipedia entries. Overall, we are pleased that we were able to perform a publicservice by calling attention to the quality of linguistics articles in Wikipediaand inviting you to join in as active Wikipedians for the greater good of our discipline.

In closing, we thank you, as always, for being there for us: we depended cruciallyon you for this particular project and could not have done it without you! We hopewe were able to a small difference with this project. Please remember that when youdonate to this year's Fund Drive, you are contributing to similar projects aimed atproviding you with the broadest range of resources in the field of linguistics.

With best wishes,

The Wikipedia Update TeamRoxana Ma NewmanHannah MoralesLuiza Newlin Lukowicz

This Year the LINGUIST List hopes to raise $60,000. This money will go to help keep the List running by supporting all of our Student Editors for the coming year. See below for donation instructions, and don't forget to check out our Fund Drive 2008 LINGUIST List Circus and join us on our many shows! http://linguistlist.org/fund-drive/2008/ There are many ways to donate to LINGUIST! You can donate right now using our secure credit card form at https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm Alternatively you can also pledge right now and pay later. To do so, go to: https://linguistlist.org/donation/pledge/pledge1.cfm For all information on donating and pledging, including information on how to donate by check, money order, or wire transfer, please visit: http://linguistlist.org/donate.html The LINGUIST List is under the umbrella of Eastern Michigan University and as such can receive donations through the EMU Foundation, which is a registered 501(c) Non Profit organization. Our Federal Tax number is 38-6005986. These donations can be offset against your federal and sometimes your state tax return (U.S. tax payers only). For more information visit the IRS Web-Site, or contact your financial advisor. Many companies also offer a gift matching program, such that they will match any gift you make to a non-profit organization. Normally this entails your contacting your human resources department and sending us a form that the EMU Foundation fills in and returns to your employer. This is generally a simple administrative procedure that doubles the value of your gift to LINGUIST, without costing you an extra penny. Please take a moment to check if your company operates such a program. Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We would like to thank all of the publishers and subscribers who donated prizes for this year's Fund Drive games, puzzles, and competitions. Publisher Prize Donors: Cascadilla Press Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd Edinburgh University Press Elsevier John Benjamins Multilingual Matters Cambridge University Press Lincom MIT Press Oxford University Press Surrey Morphology Group Subscriber Prize Donors: Stefan Dollinger Suzette Haden Elgin Monica Macaulay Sandina Vasile ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The LINGUIST List Hall of Fame RING LEADERS ($1000 and over) D Terence Langendoen Deutsche Sprachwiss LION TAMERS ($100 to $1000) A K Acrisio Pires anita fetzer Anne Breitbarth Antonella Sorace Arienne Dwyer Barbara H Partee Bernard Spolsky Betty S. Phillips Caroline R Wiltshire Carolyn Hartnett Catherine Rudin Cinzia Russi Claire Ramsey Dan I. Slobin Danny Moates David Bowie Earl M Herrick Edward Garrett Elena Tapia Elizabeth Cowper Elizabeth Liddy Emmon and Wynn Bach Ernest McCarus Helen and Anthony Aristar HSIU-CHUAN LIAO Ian Wilson Ivano Caponigro james corcoran James Kari Jeff Good Jeffrey Heath Jennifer Cole Jie Zhang Johanna Laakso John Beavers Josep M. Fontana and Louise McNally Keren Rice Kiyoko Takahashi Kornel Bangha Laura Callahan Laura Wagner Laurie Zaring Lenore Grenoble Linguistics Program Carleton College Marisa Ferrara Boston Martin Kappus and Maribel Romero Michael Silverstein Michael Swan Monica Macaulay & Joe Salmons Northeastern University Linguistics Program Oleksandr Dymo Oliver Stegen Paul Chapin Paul S. Cohen Pius ten Hacken Randall Gess Richard Hudson Roger Shuy Sanford Steever Shanley Allen Stanley Dubinsky Steven Pinker Susanne Gahl Thera Crane tom Roeper Ute Römer Veronika Koller Victoria Muehleisen Wayles Browne Wolfgang J. Meyer Wynn Chao Zenzi M. Griffin - Plus 12 anonymous donors ACROBATS ($50 to $100) Alana Thorpe Albin Jaques Alison Gabriele Amanda Brown Amara Prasithrathsint Ana bartra kaufmann Andrea Berez Andreas Musolff Anke Lüdeling Ann Wehmeyer Anna Fagan Catherine Fortin Christopher Becker Claudia Kunschak Diane Brentari Donna Lillian Dylan Herrick Elisabeth COTTIER FÁBIÁN Fabiana MacMillan Fay Wouk francisco Dubert Hans Lindquist Heidi Quinn Hortensia Curel Howard Williams Humphrey P van Polanen Petel Inge Genee Jacques Jayez James L Fidelholtz Jean Mulder Jennifer Cornish Joan Baart Joaquim Barbosa John W. Du Bois Joost Kremers Judith Meinschaefer Kumiko Murasugi Leslie Saxon Lisa Galvin Lise Menn Loretta O'Connor Ludovica Serratrice Margaret Dunham Maria-Henrietta Iliescu Marianna Di Paolo Mary Dalrymple Michael Israel Mira Ariel Neil Olsen Peter Grund Pollet Samvelian Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero Ricardo Gómez López Rick Nouwen Robert Cirillo Sarah Thomason Shlomo Izre'el SJ Hannahs Stefan Th. Gries Susan D Fischer Susan Meredith Burt Tatjana Scheffler Thomas Koller Urtzi Etxeberria Ute Smit Will Fitzgerald WIM VANDENBUSSCHE, VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL Yael Ziv - Plus 9 anonymous donors DONORS (Up to $50) Agnes Sandor Akiyo Cantrell Alessio Frenda Amy Campbell Anne Schwarz Ashley Fidler ben wes Benedetta Bassetti C.L. Cannizzaro Catharina Peersman Catherine Anderson Cecile De Cat Christopher Sams Clare Wright Erik Willis Goh Kawai Gunther De Vogelaer Heather Taylor Helen Stickney Istvan Kecskes Judith Tonhauser Kent Johnson Lara Reglero Laurel Fais Liberty Lidz Lorraine Levin Marianna Chodorowska Pilch Mary O'Brien Mayrene Bentley Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine Nerea Madariaga Nynke de Haas PHILIPPE DE BRABANTER Rebecca Sachs Richard Waltereit Richard Winters Rizwan Ahmad Sandra Smith Sara Mack Sarah Harmon Sebastian Sauppe Seizi Iwata Shim Stefan Dollinger Stefan Karl Serwe Suzanne Aalberse Sébastien Marengo Tamás Biró Tometro Hopkins Tracy Lennertz Yuni Kim - Plus 14 anonymous donors ****************************************************** MAJOR SUPPORTING PUBLISHERS Brill http://www.brill.nl http://www.brillonline.nl Cambridge University Press http://us.cambridge.org Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/ Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd http://www.continuumbooks.com Edinburgh University Press http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/ Elsevier Ltd http://www.elsevier.com/linguistics http://www.elsevier.com/linguistics Equinox Publishing Ltd http://www.equinoxpub.com/ Georgetown University Press http://www.press.georgetown.edu Hodder Education http://www.hoddereducation.co.uk John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ http://www.benjamins.nl/ Lincom GmbH http://www.lincom.eu www.lincom.eu MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/ Mouton de Gruyter http://www.mouton-publishers.com Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/ Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/ Oxford University Press http://www.oup.com/us http://www.oup.co.uk Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com Rodopi http://www.rodopi.nl/ http://www.rodopi.nl Routledge (Taylor and Francis) http://www.routledge.com/ Springer http://www.springer.com Wiley-Blackwell http://www.blackwellpublishing.com OTHER SUPPORTING PUBLISHERS Association of Editors of the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics http://www.fl.ul.pt/revistas/JPL/JPLweb.htm Graduate Linguistic Students' Association, Umass http://glsa.hypermart.net/ International Pragmatics Assoc. http://www.ipra.be Linguistic Association of Finland http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/ Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke - LOT http://www.lotpublications.nl/ SIL International http://www.ethnologue.com/bookstore.asp St. Jerome Publishing Ltd http://www.stjerome.co.uk Utrecht institute of Linguistics http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/ ****************************************************** INSTITUTIONS Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus American University of Armenia Basis Technology Bridgewater State College Brock University Carriebeam Consulting CEA LIST Central Intelligence Agency City University of Hong Kong CNRS CommonHealth Concordia University CSIRO Datascope Recruitment Denison University Dongduk Women's University Educational Testing Service Finnova AG Bankware Gallaudet University Global Business Network LLC (GlobNet) H5 Hanyang University Hapax Ltd. Heriot-Watt University Higher Colleges of Technology Hokkaido University Högskolan Dalarna IBM Canada ILTEC Indiana University Iowa State University Janya Inc. Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Johns Hopkins University Justus Liebig Universität Gießen LADO International College Lexicon Branding Macquarie University Magpie McNeil Technologies Memorial University MITRE Corporation Monash South Africa Morgan State University Nangwik Services National Taiwan Normal University New York University Northern Arizona University Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems Northwestern University Nuance Communications Oxford University Press Pittsburg State University Q-go Qatar University Queens College/CUNY RiverGlass Ruhr Universitaet Bochum Ruhr-Universität Bochum School of Oriental and African Studies Sensory, Inc. SkyGrid, Inc. SVOX AG SYSTRAN Software TeleNav Teragram Corporation The Fizzback Group The University of Montana The University of Sydney The University of Tromsø/The Faculty of Humanities U of Maryland University College London University of Aizu University of Alabama at Birmingham University of Amsterdam University of Arizona University of Bielefeld University of British Columbia University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) University of Chicago University of Florida University of Georgia University of Goettingen University of Groningen University of Illinois University of Konstanz University of Macau University of Michigan University of Namur University of Notre Dame University of Nottingham, Ningbo University of Nottingham, Ningbo China University of Oregon University of Oslo University of Pennsylvania University of Rochester University of Southampton University of Texas - Pan American University of Texas at Austin University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg University of Tromso University of Tromsø University of Ulster University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee University of York University Oldenburg Universität Mannheim Université catholique de Louvain Université du Québec en Outaouais Utrecht University; Faculty of Humanities Vantage Linguistics Xtranormal Yale University ****************************************************** -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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