Rolf Lampa wrote:
Soundex.
The title variants, or, very often due to differencies in spelling, is an old problem which was solved a long time ago, long before computers came about. The (old) solution was based on the fact that sound comprises differencies in spelling etc, hence "Soundex" :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex#History
Difference spelling can be automatically translated to and from a Soundex scheme, on the fly. Soundex is "machine readable" as well as writeable, and can be computed by search engines instead of being stored (Redirects would still take care of "conceptual" differencies in titles, which requires human interaction).
Soundex is different and it would not exactly be creating a YARR system (Yet Another Redirect Redirect).
Soundex is not exact, though; according to the example in the article, both Robert and Rupert reduce to the same Soundex string, but [[Robert Everett]] and [[Rupert Everett]] are two very different people. Also, Soundex makes no provision for handling accented letters vs. their plain equivalents, or a common foreign spelling or name for an article titled with the English word (deviled eggs and oeux mimosa was an example given earlier in the thread).
I agree that perhaps a system of phonetically similar searches needs to be implemented for the searchbox or MediaWiki search in general, but there are more advanced algorithms than Soundex available, and that still doesn't address all the issues covered by the alias proposal.
--en.wp Darkwind