We haven't been t trying to provide a complete phonetic index--though this might be a useful goal for a (very large) project. But some terms are so often confused that it is generally helpful to include them. Obviously the truly illiterate will not be reading WP, but the beginning readers will, and the readers of WP-en will certainly include those with minimal proficiency in the language--and English spelling is a notorious source of difficulty to learners. Further, many English speaking well-educated people are dyslexic or have other difficulty with written language--not all will be helped by adding homophones, but some will. The balances between what is helpful and what is out of place must vary--in general I would say WP-en has too few, not too many.
One of the terms in your disambiguation page example is jiu, a Chinese wine. If I had only heard the word, i would be most unlikely to guess at the English spelling. Even if I were a Chinese speaker, I might not have been able to guess at the spelling in a language so foreign as English.
On 11/20/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 20/11/06, Jacky PB dpotop1@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello,
I stumbled into a nice little problem concerning desambig pages. I am not sure this is the right place to present it, but I could find no policy on it.
So, when going on en.wiki, at "Jew (disambiguation)", you will find that it does not only include the various meanings of the word, but also many unrelated but homophonous words (i.e., words that are pronounced more or less the same way).
One editor explained me that this is normal, because, I cite: "A great many peole can't spell, as a read though the talk pages of messages shows".
The answer is apriori pertinent, and I think it raises greater questions: Is phonetic search a goal of wikipedia? Should we think about possible wrong ortographs of words and put them on wikipedia?
If the subject has been discussed before, please point me to it.
Thanks, :en:User:Dpotop
Wikipedia aims to serve as a resource for the literate, the semi-literate and (possibly) the illiterate. As we are a global project, we should not start with too many assumptions as to the level of education of our users (even if we were a national project, this wouldn't be a good place to start from).
Anything to help our users (as long as it is not too much to the detriment of our main goals) is worth doing.
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com) _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l