Most people are aware of Wikipedia, the open, collaborative encyclopedia.\u00a0 But Wikipedia exists in over 280 languages, not just English, and one of the larger versions is in Latin.\u00a0 Vicipaedia, the Latin Wikipedia (http:\/\/la.wikipedia.org), has over 100,000 articles on topics ranging from Gaius Valerius Catullus<\/em> to Dinosauria<\/em> to The Simpsons<\/em>.\u00a0 It is a good general encyclopedia, written in good classical Latin.\u00a0 It’s also a world-wide community of Latinists.\u00a0 In this essay, I will introduce Vicipaedia and give some pointers on working with it:\u00a0 reading, researching, or editing.<\/p>\n Vicipaedia Latina is moderately large, one of the fifty largest Wikipedia versions, with over 108,000 articles.\u00a0 Though it’s only about 1\/40th the size of the English version, measured by number of articles, it’s about 1\/18th the size of the Dutch, German, Swedish, and French versions and 1\/10th the size of the Spanish version.\u00a0 There are about 40 very active editors and 300 regular contributors, making hundreds of edits every day.\u00a0 Vicipaedia contains all of the “1000 Articles Every Wikipedia Should Have,” a list compiled by the broader Wikipedia community.\u00a0 Articles in Vicipaedia are generally not translations from English Wikipedia, but are freshly written in Latin.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n Wikipedia, in any language, does not pretend to give the final word on any subject \u2014 rather the opposite, in fact.\u00a0 It is a reference work, not a work of scholarship, intended to give general orientation to a subject, with pointers to other resources.\u00a0 Within those limits, Vicipaedia does a very good job;\u00a0 its information is accurate, and every article is required to cite sources, to have links both to and from other Vicipaedia pages, and to have links to resources outside Vicipaedia \u2014 assuming they exist:\u00a0 after all, not everything in the world is on the Web.\u00a0 English Wikipedia has more and longer articles, but Latin Vicipaedia, like all the other official Wikipedia versions, maintains the same standards of quality.\u00a0 Wikipedia is one of the best general encyclopedias currently available,[2]<\/a> and certainly the most convenient;\u00a0 its Latin version is not only a useful reference but a significant work of neo-Latin.<\/p>\n Vicipaedia covers the same range of articles as any general-purpose encyclopedia, but, not surprisingly, it is particularly strong on subjects in classical antiquity.\u00a0 For example, the article on Caesar is long, with illustrations, a time line, and links to copies of Caesar’s own works and Suetonius’s life (outside Vicipaedia). On the other hand, the article on George Washington is much shorter and that on Louis XIV of France shorter still;\u00a0 both of those rulers have major articles in English Wikipedia.<\/p>\n Just like all the other Wikipedia versions, Vicipaedia is a collaborative encyclopedia.\u00a0 Anyone can edit pages, either anonymously or with an official user name.\u00a0 A group of magistratus<\/em> (called \u201cadmins\u201d or \u201csysops\u201d in English Wikipedia), elected by the community, oversees the project, sending greetings to new users, checking for problems, and so on.\u00a0 Several automated jobs run over the system as well, verifying that pages conform to the basic standards.\u00a0 For example, if a page has no links to other Vicipaedia pages, or no links from other pages, an automated job will notice this and put a flag on the page to notify users of the problem.<\/p>\n Regular contributors to Vicipaedia are classical scholars, teachers, students, and other interested people from all over the world.\u00a0 Some of the most prolific editors are in France, Germany, Switzerland, the Philippines, Taiwan, Britain, Austria, Finland, Canada, and various parts of the US.\u00a0 Our native languages include English, French, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Hungarian, and German.\u00a0 Some write under our real\u00a0 names, some use aliases or nicknames, and some remain anonymous.\u00a0 We can discuss Vicipaedia and particular articles at the \u201cVicipaedia Taberna\u201d (a page for general discussion), the discussion pages associated with each article, and users\u2019 own discussion pages.\u00a0 On those pages, conversation takes place both in Latin and in other languages, most often English and German.\u00a0 Vicipaedia is run by consensus;\u00a0 if something needs to be done, users just do it, or if it\u2019s a large or complicated task, we begin by proposing it on a discussion page.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anyone interested joins in the discussion, and once everyone is agreed on what to do, we work together to make the changes.\u00a0 For example, last year a user proposed redesigning the front page.\u00a0 He made a mockup and raised the question in the Taberna.\u00a0 Over the next month, a dozen users discussed the appearance of the page:\u00a0 how to greet users, how many columns to use, what other features should be added.\u00a0 When everyone was content, the new design was put in place.<\/p>\n The first version of Wikipedia was in English, created in January 2001, but versions in other languages followed quickly.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Latin Vicipaedia got its first articles on 25 May 2002:\u00a0 Nuntius<\/strong>, giving a brief list of sources for news in Latin;\u00a0 Mensis<\/strong>, defining the term and giving the Latin names of the months, starting from March in Roman fashion;\u00a0 Suecia<\/strong>, because the editor adding these pages was from Sweden;\u00a0 and Iasser Arafat<\/strong>, for whom the entire content at first was \u201cJasser Arafat praesidens Palaestinensium est.\u201d\u00a0 At the end of its first year Vicipaedia had just a thousand articles.\u00a0 By the end of 2006 it had ten thousand, and during 2007 it began to grow more rapidly.\u00a0 The hundred-thousandth article arrived on 18 December 2013;\u00a0 it was Iosephus \u0160koda<\/strong>, a brief sketch about a Viennese doctor, 1805\u20131881.\u00a0 At this writing Vicipaedia has 108,307 articles.<\/p>\n Vicipaedia is not the first on-line collaborative encyclopedia in classics;\u00a0 the Suda On Line<\/em> started in 1998 and has involved over 150 translators, editors, and programmers.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 But whereas Suda On Line<\/em> contributors \u201cmust request authorization and must ask to be assigned specific entries\u201d (Mahoney p. 100), access to Vicipaedia is entirely open.\u00a0 Anonymous users contribute every day.\u00a0 And while the Suda On Line<\/em> is finite and bounded, since it is a translation of and commentary on the existing Byzantine encyclopedia, Vicipaedia is unlimited:\u00a0 it accepts articles not only on classical antiquity and the Bible<\/em>, like the Suda<\/em>, but on everything from movies to types of cheese.<\/p>\n So how can you use Vicipaedia?\u00a0 First, let\u2019s look at how it works.\u00a0 We begin with the front page:<\/p>\n The pull-down menus labelled Ars & litterae, Scientia, Societas, Technologia, <\/strong>and Lingua Latina<\/strong> give access to high-level, general articles that are good starting places.\u00a0 For example, under Scientia<\/strong> are links to such articles as Chemia, Mathematica, Anthropologia, <\/strong>and Philosophia<\/strong>.\u00a0 The front page also shows the month\u2019s featured article, picture, and sound, all chosen by Vicipaedia\u2019s contributors.\u00a0 The featured article here, Gerasimus Lebedev<\/strong>, is about an 18th-century Russian scholar and theater producer;\u00a0 the Latin article is much longer than the article about him in English Wikipedia.\u00a0 Featured articles of recent months have included Plato\u2019s Theatetus, Litterae Civitatum Foederatarum, Canada<\/strong>, and Feles<\/strong>.\u00a0 Below the Pagina Mensis is a section of news, with recent headlines.\u00a0 Key words in each section of the page are hyperlinks to articles within Vicipaedia.<\/p>\n At the top right of this page, and of every Vicipaedia page, is a search box.\u00a0 If you enter the title of an article here, you\u2019ll go directly to that article.\u00a0 Articles often have alternate names \u2014 the page whose official title is Publius Ovidius Naso<\/strong> is also called Ovidius<\/strong> and Naso<\/strong>, for example \u2014 and if you search for something that is not the name of a page, you\u2019ll get a list of pages whose names match your search terms.\u00a0 Here, for example, is a search on \u201cmeow,\u201d which shows that this phrase appears in the articles Feles<\/strong> and Communicatio felium,<\/strong> not surprisingly:<\/p>\n For each page you can see a snippet of the text near the search word, the size of the page in kilobytes (\u201cchiliocteti\u201d) and words, and when it was last changed. There is also a link that would allow you to create a page called Meow<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Finally we come to the articles themselves.\u00a0 Here is a short one by way of example:<\/p>\n The title of the page, at the top and in the browser titlebar, is Quintus Ennius<\/strong>.\u00a0 Some words in the text of the page are hyperlinks to other Vicipaedia pages, such as poeta<\/strong>;\u00a0 these are blue.\u00a0 Others, in red, are links to pages that do not yet exist, such as praetextatas<\/strong>.\u00a0 The page has an illustration, showing Ennius as Raphael imagined him in his painting \u201cParnassus,\u201d and Raphael\u2019s name in the picture caption is also a hyperlink.\u00a0 A reader \u2014 perhaps an intermediate Latin student \u2014 who doesn\u2019t know some of the terms in the article, like Naevius<\/strong> or Magna Graecia,<\/strong> has only to follow the links to learn more.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n At the far right of the page title, just above the illustration, is a small dot.\u00a0 On this page it\u2019s a green dot, indicating that this page is in good Latin.\u00a0 Other pages may have a red dot, indicating that the Latin is not good, or a larger notice indicating that the Latin is positively poor.\u00a0 Some pages have a yellow dot (or no dot at all), which means that no one has yet judged the quality of the Latin.\u00a0 The convention is that editors don\u2019t grade their own pages, but may grade pages they haven\u2019t written;\u00a0 everyone is encouraged to fix grammatical errors.<\/p>\n At the bottom of the page are names of categories, connecting related pages.\u00a0 For example, Ennius is in the categories of \u201cPoetae Latini\u201d and of\u00a0 \u201cNati 239 a.C.n.\u201d\u00a0 The category names are hyperlinks to lists of other pages in the same category \u2014 other Latin poets, for example.\u00a0 Categories can belong to other, more general categories, as \u201cPoetae Latini\u201d belongs to the categories \u201cPoetae\u201d and \u201cAuctores Latini.\u201d\u00a0 They can also include narrower categories, as \u201cPoetae Latini\u201d includes \u201cPoetae Latini Brittaniae.\u201d\u00a0 Thus the category structure classifies Vicipaedia\u2019s articles by topic, helping readers explore a subject, drill down for more detail, or broaden scope to more distantly related areas.<\/p>\n At the left-hand side, under the heading Linguis aliis<\/strong>, are links to the parallel page in other Wikipedia versions.\u00a0 We see that there are articles about Ennius in Esperanto and Basque (Euskara), among other languages.\u00a0 When you move your mouse over the name of a language, you\u2019ll see the name of that language\u2019s page and the English name of the language.\u00a0 For example, if you mouse over \u201cEuskara,\u201d you\u2019ll see \u201cEnnio \u2014 Basque\u201d next to the mouse pointer.\u00a0 A list like this appears in the left sidebar of every page in every Wikipedia version, and you can use it as a quick-and-dirty multi-lingual dictionary:\u00a0 for example, from the English page \u201cCat,\u201d the links show you that a cat is called chat<\/em> in French, p<\/em>\u014dpoki<\/em> in Hawaiian, paka-kaya<\/em> in Swahili, m<\/em>\u00e8o<\/em> in Vietnamese, and, of course, feles<\/em> in Latin.<\/p>\n The Historiam inspicere<\/strong> link next to the search box above the page title shows the revision history of the page.\u00a0 From the history, we see that this article has been edited 71 times, by fourteen named editors, five anonymous editors, and fifteen automated processes.\u00a0 When it was first created, in May 2003, the article contained a single sentence:\u00a0 “Q. Ennius, poeta, morit. CLXIX ante Ch.”\u00a0 The text was expanded in June 2006;\u00a0 the illustration was added in September 2011.\u00a0 In February 2008 it was judged to be good Latin, and marked accordingly.<\/p>\n You can use Vicipaedia to get general background on a subject, as you\u2019d use any other encyclopedia.\u00a0 Of course, since it is<\/em> an encyclopedia, students shouldn\u2019t be citing it in scholarly papers, just as they shouldn\u2019t cite Encyclopedia Britannica<\/em> or other print encyclopedias.\u00a0 But to find out when Ennius lived, or other basic facts, Vicipaedia is convenient.\u00a0 It\u2019s particularly useful if you\u2019re preparing a mini-lecture in Latin, for example about an author a class is just starting to read.<\/p>\n Students can also read the articles on their own.\u00a0 Here is one exercise I have used with intermediate-level students (third semester in college):<\/p>\n You have read the story of Lucretia from Valerius Maximus and from Eutropius, and will next read the version from Titus Livius (usually \u201cLivy\u201d in English).\u00a0 Look up each of these authors in Vicipaedia and answer the following questions about them:<\/p>\n In this exercise, students are introduced to Vicipaedia and asked to gather information from articles.\u00a0 They are also encouraged to explore: \u00a0following links within pages, looking at the history of a page, looking at users\u2019 pages.\u00a0 This exploration not only demonstrates some of the tools and conventions of Vicipaedia (and Wikipedia in general) but also gives them a chance to read a bit more Latin.<\/p>\n A later exercise in the same semester was designed to expand students\u2019 awareness of Latin literature:<\/p>\n Return to Vicipaedia Latina.\u00a0 Read the pages entitled Litterae Latinae<\/strong> and Certamen poeticum hoeufftianum<\/strong>;\u00a0 explain briefly what each is about.\u00a0 Choose one name from each page that you don’t already know about (and for which there is a page in Vicipaedia \u2014 a blue-linked name rather than a red link);\u00a0 follow the link and read the resulting page.\u00a0 Which names have you chosen?\u00a0 What have you learned about them?\u00a0 You may write these answers either in English or in Latin.<\/p>\n The two pages named here are largely lists of authors.\u00a0 Litterae Latinae<\/strong> says a bit about the main periods of Latin literature, then lists authors from each period.\u00a0 Certamen poeticum hoeufftianum<\/strong> describes the competition, held from 1844 to 1978, and lists all the winners.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Students were surprised to find out how much post-classical Latin literature there is, and how many authors they\u2019d never heard of.\u00a0 While articles about major authors like Vergil and Ovid can be quite long, the articles about other Latin authors are generally shorter, so this is a fairly tractable assignment for intermediate-level students.<\/p>\n In more advanced classes, I have asked students to contribute to Vicipaedia.\u00a0 To do that, it\u2019s necessary to learn how editing works.\u00a0 Anyone who knows Latin is encouraged to edit, just as anyone who knows English is welcome to contribute to English Wikipedia.\u00a0 Students should probably wait until they can write a reasonably correct paragraph \u2014 editing Vicipaedia isn\u2019t necessarily a good exercise in Latin 1 or 2 \u2014 but high-intermediate to advanced students often enjoy contributing, interacting with other editors, and creating something generally useful.<\/p>\n To get started editing, simply click the \u201cRecensere\u201d link at the top of almost any page.\u00a0 Vicipaedia\u2019s \u201cvisual editor\u201d lets you work with the text of a page much as you would in a word processor.\u00a0 It\u2019s also possible to edit the wiki markup directly (with the \u201cFontem recensere\u201d link) but this is rarely necessary.<\/p>\n The editing display looks much like the page itself, with a couple of tools at the top.\u00a0 Note that the browser title bar now says “Recensio paginae,” to remind you that you are using the editor.<\/p>\n The “Paragraph” tool lets you create section and sub-section headings.\u00a0 The underlined capital A gives a list of character format options:\u00a0 bold, italic, and so on.\u00a0 The next image, which looks like a couple of links of a chain, lets you add a link to another Vicipaedia page.\u00a0 If you click on a word that is already linked, you will see the name of the target page.\u00a0 If you select a word or phrase that is not yet linked, then click this tool, you can supply the name of another page to be linked to, by default exactly the same as the word or phrase you’ve selected.\u00a0 The next tool lets you add a list, like the one-element list under “Vide etiam” in this page.\u00a0 The “Insert” tool helps you add special characters, illustrations, mathematical formulas, or other unusual features.\u00a0 Finally, next to the “Abrogare” button is a tool for page options, in particular for adding the page to suitable categories.\u00a0 Once you’ve made changes, the “Save page” button at top right will be available, and when you click that, your changes will be saved and immediately visible to other readers.<\/p>\n What should a page contain?\u00a0 The conventions for Vicipaedia articles are documented at Vicipaedia:Praefatio<\/strong> and the pages linked there.\u00a0 Pages should always start with a definition or identification of the headword;\u00a0 this is called the \u201cA est B\u201d convention.\u00a0 Examples are \u201cFeles<\/strong> est species parvorum mammiferum carnivorum familiae Felidarum,\u201d or \u201cArithmetica<\/strong> est disciplina numerorum.\u201d\u00a0 Ideally, a page should include an illustration, references to sources outside Wikipedia (whether on line or not), and links to other pages within Vicipaedia.<\/p>\n Vicipaedia maintains lists of pages needing particular kinds of improvements, and these can be good places to start editing.\u00a0 Students may expand on short pages (called \u201cstipulae\u201d or \u201cstubs,\u201d and in Categoria:Stipulae and its sub-categories), correct poor Latin (see Categoria:Latinitas), add captions for images (see Categoria:Imago sine descriptione), and so on;\u00a0 see Categoria:Corrigenda for a general list of categories of pages needing work.\u00a0 Of course students may also add pages, particularly pages that are linked but do not yet exist (shown as red links).<\/p>\n Here is an assignment I have used with advanced classes:<\/p>\n In this assignment, you will add an article to Vicipaedia,\u00a0<\/em>the Latin version of\u00a0 Wikipedia.\u00a0 Begin with the article Quintus\u00a0<\/strong>Horatius Flaccus.<\/strong>\u00a0 Find a link either in that article, or in an article linked\u00a0from that article, to a page that does not exist (the link will be red), and\u00a0create the missing page.\u00a0 Your article should be at least 50 words\u00a0long, preferably at least 100, so choose a topic about which you can write that much.<\/p>\n Some tips on the process:<\/p>\n Students doing this for the first time generally add fairly short articles, but useful ones.\u00a0 They are also delighted to receive the traditional Vicipaedia welcome message on their user pages, and to see that other users have read and improved their new articles.<\/p>\n Vicipaedia is an encyclopedia, a Latin resource, and a community, and it grows every day.\u00a0 Anyone who knows Latin can read it and contribute to it.\u00a0 I’ve used it with undergraduate and graduate students in classes ranging from Latin 3 to a graduate composition course.\u00a0 In this article you’ve seen some of the things it can do, and some of the things you could do with it.<\/p>\n Dalby, Andrew.\u00a0 The World and Wikipedia:\u00a0 How We Are Editing Reality.<\/em>\u00a0 Somerset:\u00a0 Siduri Books, 2009.<\/p>\n Giles, Jim.\u00a0 \u201cInternet Encyclopedias Go Head-to-Head.\u201d Nature<\/em> vol. 438 (15 December 2005), 900-901.<\/p>\n Giustiniani, Vito R.\u00a0 Neulateinische Dichtung in Italien, 1850-1950.<\/em>\u00a0 T\u00fcbingen:\u00a0 Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1979.<\/p>\n Helmlinger, Julien.\u00a0 “La d\u00e9clinaison en latin de Wikip\u00e9dia d\u00e9passe les cent mille pages.”\u00a0 ActuaLitt\u00e9<\/em>, http:\/\/www.actualitte.com, 24 January 2014.<\/p>\n Lih, Andrew.\u00a0 The Wikipedia Revolution:\u00a0 How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia.<\/em>\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Hyperion, 2009.<\/p>\n Mahoney, Anne.\u00a0 \u201cTachypaedia Byzantina:\u00a0 The Suda On Line<\/em> as Collaborative Encyclopedia,\u201d Digital Humanities Quarterly<\/em> 3.1 (2009), http:\/\/digitalhumanities.org\/dhq\/, reprinted in Changing the Center of Gravity,<\/em> ed. Melissa Terras and Gregory Crane, Piscataway:\u00a0 Gorgias Press, 2010, 89-109.<\/p>\n Footnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n [1]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I will use \u201cVicipaedia\u201d to refer to the Latin encyclopedia, and \u201cWikipedia\u201d to refer to the project in general, in English and in other languages.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the quality of English Wikipedia see Dalby p. 220, Lih p. 208, and Giles p. 900-901.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lih gives the timeline;\u00a0 creation of Wikipedia p. 64, of other language versions p. 139, and chapter 6 generally.\u00a0 The hundred-thousand-article milestone was noted for example by Helmlinger.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mahoney 2009 is an overview of the project;\u00a0 her section \u201cSOL and other projects\u201d (p. 100-104 of the 2010 reprint) compares the Suda<\/em> translation to Wikipedia and similar projects.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is presumably obvious to experienced web users, but occasionally students don\u2019t realize it, and pull out another reference work or do a brute-force web search to get a gloss for a name, rather than just clicking the Vicipaedia link right on the screen.\u00a0 So if you\u2019re using Vicipaedia with a class, it\u2019s worth pointing out that blue words link to more information.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For a general description of this competition see Giustiniani p. 6, 15, 99-108.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" USING THE LATIN WIKIPEDIA IN INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED COLLEGE LATIN CLASSES by Anne Mahoney, Tufts University, anne.mahoney@tufts.edu [note: this article is re-published from\u00a0The Classical Outlook 90.3 (Spring 2015), pp. 68-90. Thanks to the author and to\u00a0CO‘s editor Mary English for … Continue reading I.\u00a0 Overview<\/h1>\n
II.\u00a0 Reading Vicipaedia<\/h1>\n
![\"Vicipaedia](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/files\/2015\/08\/Vicipaedia-Home-page-1024x696.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Vicipaedia_meow\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/files\/2015\/08\/Vicipaedia_meow-1024x693.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Vicipaedia_Q_Ennius\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/files\/2015\/08\/Vicipaedia_Q_Ennius-1024x710.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\n
III.\u00a0 Editing Vicipaedia<\/h1>\n
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IV.\u00a0 Conclusion<\/h1>\n
Bibliography<\/h1>\n