Is there a way of having a language sticker for Scottish Gaelic?

Question

I know the language choice in profiles refers more to the language of the country / that the records were kept in which for Scotland was mostly English.
I would like a Scottish Gaelic language sticker because the 1891 census in Scotland recorded whether people were bi-lingual or monolingual, and it is one of the few ways of finding the last Gaelic-speakers on some family lines. Their language use also helps verify their origin in Gaelic-speaking areas.
Can an existing sticker be adapted? I have only just started using them, so I don't know what the possibilities / limitations are.

Comments

Catriona, some stickers and templates have restricted uses. The Languages sticker is not allowed on historic profiles. That is what was meant. It's purpose is to indicate that a Member speaks specific languages.

For your purposes, I would suggest calling out the language (Scots Gaelic) in the Biography.

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Don't give up! WikiTree's learning curve is really steep (some find it easy - I wasn't one of those folks). BUT. It goes fairly fast & the more you play, the easier it gets.

"Members-only" stickers can only be added by a WikiTree member to their own profile. Your question was how to identify/find ancestors who spoke Scottish Gaelic, but even if gd (code for Scottish Gaelic) was an option with Template:Languages, using that sticker on a profile of someone born before 2008 will trigger a database error (DBE 846).

Profiles have a language option, but Scottish Gaelic is not listed as an option. From the Language Selection help page: "On a person profile's edit page you will see a field for selecting their language. This is currently only used to improve the automatic place name suggestions that may appear when you are entering or editing a birth, marriage, or death location."

Back to stickers...

To see ALL stickers, see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Stickers - Stickers are a type of template, and are created using the base template for a sticker, which automatically adds them to the Stickers category (TMI: the base template for Template:Languages is not the Sticker template, but its base template also adds Category: Stickers automatically.)

Speaking of automatic - Automated: Template Sticker lists all stickers, with additional information and a displayed image of the sticker, but it's only updated once a week (the Category updates immediately, although if a sticker is created while you have the page open in your browser, you'd need to refresh the page to see the new one).

There's also the "Relationship Stickers" space page that collects stickers that can be used to show heritage - see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Relationship_Stickers#Scotland (the space page is not updated automatically). And the Scotland Project has a space page for its "Templates, Stickers and Images".

Many of the stickers listed on the Relationship Stickers space page can be found under Category: Heritage Stickers (which has a subcategory Members-Only Stickers). 

And last but not least - the primary function of stickers is just to add a bit of bling to a profile to highlight something in the text. As noted on Stickers help page:

Stickers are used for honoring a person or otherwise highlighting something that's deemed to be important about them. When used on members' own account profiles they can be used casually; you're encouraged to have fun with them and highlight anything you want other members and visitors to know about you. On ancestor profiles please abide by the agreed-upon style rules below.

Hope that helps. Give me a holler if you have questions about stickers. You might want to contact the Scotland Project to discuss the possibility of a category for people who are known to have spoken Scottish Gaelic.

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Yes, I gathered about the restricted use of language stickers. However, just mentioning the language in the bio doesn't really cut it. Use of Gaelic is a real cultural marker that says a lot about the persons origins and resistance to the erasing of traditions.

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Does the 1891 census have a finite list of language options? If so, maybe something like

Category: Monolingual, 1891 Scotland Census

and

Category: Bilingual, 1891 Scotland Census

With categories such as "Scottish Gaelic Speaker, 1891 Scotland Census" (under both - or if you want to ID those who spoke just Scottish Gaelic, then you'd need "Scottish Gaelic Speaker, Bilingual, 1891 Scotland Census" and "Scottish Gaelic Speaker, Monolingual, 1891 Scotland Census").

You'll need to coordinate with the Scotland Project's Categories Team.

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Thanks, good to know if I ever have the time.

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if you do, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:1891_Scotland_Census_Records would be a place to start

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Interesting to know that category exists. But no indication of what it is supposed to be used for and doesn't appear to have been used for any profiles. Or am I missing something?

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on the category page:

"This category contains profiles of individuals found in the 1891 Census of Scotland"

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Except it doesn't. Unless they are somewhere I can't see. In which case what is it good for?
Or perhaps they are only in subcategories? But without any explanation and instructions it is impossible to make head or tail of this.

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Catriona,

The whole concept of categorization includes levels--  subcategories. Category:1891 Scotland Census Records is broken down by region, so yes, you need to click on one of the subcategories to see who has (so far) been categorized under this census.

Edited to add: think of it like an "outline" or "table of contents" with subcategories being indented lines or paragraphs.

If you want to be able to FIND all profiles of people who spoke Gaelic in 1891, then you need to use categories to do so. And Liz has explained how best to do that. And, I'm sorry, you'll need to become familiar with how wikitree organizes and names categories.

If you want to HONOR the fact that someone spoke Gaelic in 1891 (and you don't care about finding them or grouping them all together), then a sticker is the way to go.

Liz is the queen of stickers and has made many that have helped many people. If there's a sticker that could be used for this purpose, Liz would know it.  If there's sufficient interest in the creation of a new language sticker for non-living people, a) you'd need to get approval for it (and so far, I haven't seen others step up who would want a language-for-non living people sticker), and b) then Liz could create one.

Answer 1

I didn't find any language oriented Stickers. Didn't find any categories, either. Finding Categories can be done from the Find pull down menu. If on a category page, the link to Wikitree+ allows for various search options.

Comments

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:Languages - but this sticker is a "Members Only" sticker (meaning that it can only be used on the profiles of active WikiTree members).

The code for "Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic" would be gd (from [this list]). However, using "gd" with the Languages template creates a broken link.

If you can give me the text in Gaelic, I can create the template that the Languages sticker needs to have a Scottish Gaelic version. See French & English versions of the needed text at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:Sandbox_Liz8/docs

edited to note that the Languages sticker is for members only

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Hopefully someone will be able to translate the text. This won't help with the original request but it would be nice to not have this Sticker generate errors.

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Don't understand 'pull down menu' or 'category page' or 'Wikitree+'. I don't find anything works intuitively and I don't understand the language used for things or people's replies.

I can get some categories but beyond a few basic ones I have no idea how they are structured to find ones I want. The category list pages I have found give sublists of sublists of sublists but I haven't found an actual list of categories I might be interested in.

I don't understand how categories are supposed to be used or what to use them for, so not much point in starting to use them.

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At the top right of a WikiTree page is a link that says "Find" that will bring up the Find pull down menu. The Category entry takes you to the category of categories. In the top right of that page is a link to WikiTree+ which is a general search mechanism for searching for categories in different ways.

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Yes, I get to the categories, and I can go to sub and sub and sub categories, but navigation is terrible and the search doesn't help. Drill down through five or six pages and I end up on a page about a particular category but with no indication of what I would have to type in when I am in a profile to get that category. I have no idea how to find more than a small selection of potentially useful categories when I am actually in a profile. For example if I am in a profile and I type in Nurse, I get a selection of things, some locationally specific, one category of just Nurses. If I typing in Nursing Sister I end up with a very specific category of something in New South Wales. How on earth do I find out what categories there are that I might want to use without typing in endless combinations of things to see what might turn up, or without navigating through all the sub sub sub categories and reading all the individual category pages?

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have you gone through the How-tos for New Members? I had been a member for a few years when they came out & still learned a thing or two - see the links collected at [Category: New Member How-To].

Categories are used as a tool to find things, but they can be frustrating when cannot find useful ones. I use the location categories a lot to group profiles of family and neighbors.

For Scotland locations, see subcategories under Category:Scotland, which is a "top level" category (meaning no people profiles should be added to it). To easily see subcategories, click the "Navigate" link at the upper right of the category page. For Category: Scotland, that will take you to [this page].

Looking through that page, I found Category: Local Council Categories & its Navigate page - and I discovered that I don't understand how Scotland's location categories are organized... Looking at a couple of the profiles managed by the Scotland Project (from its [Watchlist]) helped - see for example the categories for Crichton-Stuart-39 & Crichton-Stuart-1 - it looks like the project categorizes primarily based on clans. The Navigate page for Category: Scottish Clans is helpful (where I found [Category: Clan Watson], which includes some info & links to more).

A lot of category pages have useful info, but they don't always say how to add the category to a profile page so that the profile is added to the category. Use double brackets around the category name, including "Category:" - e.g., [[Category: Clan Watson]] (templates use double braces - {{Scottish Ancestor Sticker}}

And ... took a bit of clicking around in Category: Scotland Project, but I found https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Scotland_-_Categorisation_Guide that should be helpful if you wanted to pursue categorizing profiles of people born in Scotland.

Again - hope that helps. I'm much more comfortable with stickers (templates), but I have learned some tricks for categories - like the Navigate link - that help.

Cheers, Liz

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I've been here three years and it's still mostly gobbledegook to me. I understand why so many people join and then seem to become inactive.
I'm not going to repeat my previous comments about the difficulties in even trying to find what categories there are. There is no way to 'easily' see subcategories of subcategories of subcategories ...
I don't have the time to go through all these links, so I guess I will never understand or use Categories.
In fact the few I have used I seem to have used wrongly, so I will remove them again as I find them.
I don't have famous people or nobility or anything like that. Just ordinary people in ordinary places doing ordinary jobs. And don't get me started on Clans.

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re: your comment: "There is no way to 'easily' see subcategories of subcategories of subcategories"

Click the Navigate link at upper left of whatever category page you are on. To see another level of subcategories, click the "Increase Level" link in the heading row of the table.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:1891_Scotland_Census_Records ->

https://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebCategoryNavigate/Category.htm?category=1891%20Scotland%20Census%20Records

To see "sibling" categories, click the icon in the Parent row:

Parent Scotland_Census_Records

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Hm, like I said, not at all intuitive for me. To get there I would have to find the category page in the first place. And then the categories look incredibly specific. I don't see any that would be relevant to anything I am doing or at least I wouldn't know what I'm allowed to used and how. Anyway, I need to get on with my life now.

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Edited to add: Liz, thanks for the reminder about Navigate on the category page (for me it's in the upper right, not upper left).

One way I have found that effectively finds categories is simply to type into the browser URL window:

Wikitree category name-of-category

Where "name-of-category" is the name of the category I'm hoping to find.

(I use the same approach for finding help pages: WikiTree help categorization (for example).)

Answer 2

Hàlo, Catriona agus tapadh leat! I, too, speak Scottish Gaelic. The sticker would be a nice addition. Here is hoping it happens!

Comments

I'm not a Gaelic-speaker and that isn't what I was asking about. But if you want a sticker for that some other replies tell you how to go about trying to get one.