If you’re reading this, chances are you have either signed up to be a lexicographer on the YorubaName project or you’re considering joining the ranks of our volunteer lexicography team. If so, chances are also that you have a general idea about what lexicography means. Still I’ll say, to save time for those who don’t, that our work in this department has to do with annotating, tone-marking, providing and researching meaning, researching name geo-locations, and generally being the last line of defense before a name entry is published.

So, thank you for your interest.

This job is quite important. First, if you are a volunteer lexicographer, you have do one thing first. Go, right now, and install our free tone-marking software on your computer. You will be needing it for your work.

In this post, I will try to clarify much of what the lexicographer’s job entails, with illustrations and texts. I’ll give you a feel of the dashboard which I’ll assume, for now, that you haven’t yet had a chance to work with. This would be an introduction to all the features in the back end open to you as a lexicographer, so you can make sure that an entry is good to go before it is published.

Types of Lexicographers

Currently, we have two privilege levels for all lexicographers. There is a Basic Lexicographer and Professional Lexicographer. Both have very important and complementary roles. Both roles are also subjected to the privileges of the head lexicographer who has a slightly higher privilege than both.

The Basic Lexicographer is a new lexicographer whom we have not yet tested, but who is willing and able to work. The “basic” tag says nothing of their ability beyond the fact that we have not yet been able to assess their capabilities. Most Basic Lexicographers will eventually graduate and be given Pro Lexicographer status if their work convinces us of their lexicographic capability and their ability to deliver excellent work without supervision.

Duties and Privileges of the Basic Lexicographer

• Add new names to the dashboard: This can be done through the homepage, like every other user, or through a personal dashboard account which, as a lexicographer, you will already have. The names you add will not be immediately published, but they will be saved in a place where someone with the Pro privilege can check and approve them.
• Modify names already in the dashboard: You will have access to the dashboard to see all the names already indexed in the dictionary. You will be able to open and edit any one of them, especially those that are not complete, or those with meanings that could be better defined. These changes, again, will not go live immediately, unless approved by someone with the Pro privilege.
• Accept names suggested by users: As a basic lexicographer, you will be able to see all the names suggested by our users. Some of them are legitimate Yorùbá names we don’t yet have in the dictionary while some are names that are not Yorùbá at all but sent in as a prank or by mistake. It will be your role to know which to accept and which to reject. You will have the privilege to do both.
• Sort out feedback messages: As a basic lexicographer, you will be able to see all the feedbacks given to any name entry through the “improve this entry” button on the homepage. You will be able to accept or delete these feedbacks, and/or incorporate them into the name entry as necessary.
• You will not be able to delete any name in the database. Neither will you be able to make a final publishing decision on your edits. These will go through a second layer of approval before they go live.

Duties and Privileges of the Professional Lexicographer

• You will be able to do everything the Basic Lexicographer can do.
• You will have the power to publish these names directly without further approval, which makes your role very important.
• You will also be able to approve/reject changes made by lexicographers with the Basic privilege.
• One of your key roles will be to collaborate with those with Basic privileges, suggesting corrections and improvements to their work, and recommending any notable Basic Lexicographer for upgrade to Pro status. 
• You will also coordinate with the head lexicographer whenever necessary and in making certain decisions that may affect the running of the dictionary.

Welcome to the Dashboard

When you’ve been accepted as a lexicographer for YorùbáName.com, you will get a username and password with which you will be able to login to the dashboard.

When that happens, you will see the log-in page like this:

And when you get in, you will see the dashboard itself which looks like this:

The red box tells you how many names we have in total. The green one says how many have been published/indexed and are available to the public. The blue one shows how many have been suggested/added by the public but haven’t been worked on at all while the yellow/orange box shows the names that are currently being worked on but haven’t been published.

Further down, you can see names recently added and published. But more importantly, you can see the feedback by the public and the date the feedbacks were made. As a lexicographer, you will have access to all these features and will be able to click on them and make changes as necessary.

The “Find Entry” search box also allows you to search for any name in the database. This is especially useful if you’ve come into the database specifically to work on a name that has just popped into your head.

Searching for it here will take you directly to that name, where you can begin to work on it.

This is a name edit mode:

At the bottom of each page in the edit mode – depending on your lexicographer privilege – you will find the button to either save your work, publish your work, or delete the entry.

As you will see, not all the fields are compulsory/required, which means that a name entry can be declared “complete” with just a few compulsory fields filled out. It is our aim, going forward, that each name entry should have a certain threshold to be considered complete,  giving the user a rich linguistic, cultural (and perhaps onomastic) experience on every single entry of the dictionary.

Working Offline

Lexicographers of both Basic and Pro privileges will be able to add names into the dictionary via an offline spreadsheet which can be downloaded from within the dashboard. What this means is that even if you don’t have regular access to the internet, you can download this spreadsheet where you can enter all the names you gather. And when you finally get online, you will be able to upload all the names at once.

But even if you are not adding any names to the dashboard, you can take on the role of the lexicographer that regularly monitors entries without complete fields (e.g. an entry without a complete or verifiable meaning, or an entry without proper tone-marking, etc) and then goes to friends, researchers, or people bearing these names on social media in order to verify the correct spelling, meaning, or tone-marking on their names. Your work is equally as important.

We are also looking to involve scholars affiliated to higher education institutions, professors whose students could directed towards this purpose, or private researchers all around the world, who have time on their hands to visit local Yorùbá villages in order to help improve the geo-location for all the names we currently have. There may yet be other ways to further our lexicography work besides what we’ve articulated here: let us know what you have in mind.

There are a few other lexicographer roles that don’t deal with the dashboard at all. These may also interest you: helping to generate name-related quizzes for our social media accounts, looking out for rare names in the dictionary for highlighting on random days on our social media pages, or helping to come up with interactive ideas from the dictionary that can engage our multimedia audience. This might be best for those who might not have too much time on their hands but still want to help out in some way.

Conclusion

As this is just an introduction, I hope I have given you a broad idea of what to expect. As a lexicographer, you will be joining an active group of people who find names and words fascinating enough to spend hours of their daily time with. We welcome you with open arms and hope that, more than anything, you find the experience as entertaining and educative as you find it challenging and enlightening.

If you are just deciding to join us in Lexicography, send us an email at volunteer@yorubaname.com with “Volunteering for Lexicography” in the subject line.