The solution is to differentiate and tag inputs and outputs, such that outputs can't be fed as inputs recursively. Funnily enough, wikipedia's sourcing policy does this perfectly, not only are sources the input and page content is just an output, but page content is a tertiary source, and sources by policy should be secondary (and sometimes primary) sources, so the system is even protected against cross tertiary source pollution (say an encyclopedia feeding off wikipedia and viceversa).
It is only when articles posing as secondary sources fail to cite wikipedia that a recursive quality loss can occur, see [[citogenesis]]
I've seen a college professor cite wikipedia in support of a false claim. On investigation, the text in wikipedia was cited to an earlier blog post by that same professor.
I wasn't convinced.
1- citing wikipedia (or any tertiary source) is valid, the problem is just when the source is not cited. And also it's against wikipedia policy, but you are free to cite it elsewhere.
2- citing the tertiary source and citing the secondary source are distinct and valid. There is no "rule", in wikipedia or otherwise, that says you need to cite the underlying source. In fact citation chains can become quite deep, it would be very impractical. An example would be, you could cite the gospels when jesus talks with the devil. If we had it your way then you wouldn't be able to cite an apostle, you would have to attribute the quote to jesus, and furthermore if jesus quoted the old testament you would have to cite that? If you think the bible is an exception, consider case law, if you were to cite an attorney's defense and the attorney cited some cases, would you have to cite the original cases? If so, then which? There might be multiple, it's not just a citation chain but a graph.
In this specific example your professor was not just quoting himself, but his work is now part of wikipedia and importantly was not contested or was not successfully contested. Similarly to how a trademark works, you claim you own the trademark, and if a year or so no one contends it, you have a stronger case that it's yours.
The people who want it to be considered as a language for political reasons cannot be bothered to translate Wikipedia themselves. They read and edit English Wikipedia and understand it perfectly.
The Glaswegian taxi driver may not consider themself to be speaking a different language but, if speaking to another local and leaving aside pronunciation, they’d use words, phrases and even grammar that’s incomprehensible to someone with no experience with Scots.
I’m a “posh Scot”, raised middle class in Edinburgh so my accent is minimal and thickens up or softens depending on who I’m speaking to. Even for me, there’s a lot of words, phrases and ways of speaking I’ve had to adjust to be consistently understood by American coworkers when over the last 10+ years.
Sort of like extreme cockney rhyming slang or for a more modern example thick BME* full of slang.
* = British Multicultural English, think fam n blud, lots of Jamaican english influence plus south east asian influence.
This is supremely ignorant. Scots is its own language. It's a 'brother' or 'sister' of English, with both English and Scots being descendants of West Germanic languages.
The fact that many (all?) Scots speakers also speak English doesn't mean Scots not a language on its own.
You could make your exact same arguments that Irish isn't a language because you could ask a Cork taxi driver whether he knows any English.
Scots = a language with some of the same ancestors as English.
Scottish English = a dialect (and accent) of English
Scots Gaelic = another language, with the same ancestors as Irish and Manx.
James Joyce wrote in English, no Irish person pretends that he wrote in a third language distinct from English and Irish. The fact that they do not do so does not compromise the political basis for independence, republicanism or reunification.
If a Cork taxi driver, addressed you in Irish (very unlikely), and you asked him to speak English, the request would be both coherent and reasonable. The point you missed is that the Glasgow taxi driver would look at you with consternation and say "But, I am speaking English! What's wrong with my English?' (insert dialect spelling if you like)
Rabbie Burns wrote in the same language as his compatriots Louis Stevenson and Scott.
It would be ignorant if I did not know about the meretricious claim of a minority of Scottish people to have their own language, but it is not ignorant to reject that claim. I am Scottish fwiw.
Geordie English is closer to Edinburgh 'Scots' than to RP English or US English or Indian English. Is it a dialect of Scots?
There exists dialects that are less mutually intelligible than apparently distinct languages, and the designation of each as "dialect" or "language" is political. Language is often a proxy for culture, and political actors may wish to suppress or boost the legitimacy of such cultural expression depending on their aims.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
Please consider users of screen readers and other assistive technologies, as your nonstandard usage of nonstandard characters makes parsing your comment difficult if not impossible. Not a slight or a correction, as I am a fan of Zalgo text myself, but after being informed by others about how inscrutable it can be to the differently abled, I have reconsidered using it.
I wonder if the future of screen reading applications is bypassing these issues + avoiding parsing weird websites by just doing AI driven OCR.
AI has a hard time deriving how many r’s are in strawberry, so I won’t expect it to parse my text on behalf of others any time soon, though I don’t think you meant any harm. In the interest of respect for those who don’t have a choice in using tech to help them do what comes easily and naturally to me, I thought I’d pay forward the knowledge of how the world and our perceptions of it is as unique as every individual.
But you do you.