I see the problem, but imagine this like a search and replace function in a texteditor: I usually don't hit "replace all", but look at every particular instance and decide, if it should be replaced.
There's a reason that feature is often jokingly referred to as "search and destroy". If someone wants to create a script to find all instances of a certain thing, and make it easier for him to change it, as long as there's a human being to look at the text and approve each change individually, I would have less objection to that, but that's still a bit too much automation for my tastes; it's likely that the human will become quick-on-the-button to approve the changes if 99% of them are OK--but that's exactly the case where he should be most vigilant.
Don't misunderstand--I have nothing against automated processes that /add/ new pages, or processes that that change programmatic features (like updating the wiki syntax or moving titles), but the actual /content/, the /meaningful/ human-entered text that constitutes an article, should only be changed by another human.
I don't know what kind of limits there are for scripting on WikiPedia, but what have done it other places is have approval on each item (like the Search Replace analogy).
Have a search result that lists hits on a certain miss spelling (ie "recieve") and displays the word in bold with surrounding context. Then have a check-box next to each "hit". A user (either and Admin or trusted editor) could then look at it and if it looks like it needs to be changed then they check the box, if not then they don't check it.
When the finish the page they submit the form and it only makes the changes they specifically approved. This would be as effective (in reducing "auto pilot" errors) as just doing a search on the word and manually replacing it. In fact it might be better because much of the repetitive tasks are removed so the editor is less likely to just go auto pilot and change everything.
Don't know how practical this is with WikiPedia's software, but that is my suggestion.
At 05:45 PM 09/13/2002 -0700, lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
Don't misunderstand--I have nothing against automated processes that /add/ new pages, or processes that that change programmatic features (like updating the wiki syntax or moving titles), but the actual /content/, the /meaningful/ human-entered text that constitutes an article, should only be changed by another human.
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