"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com> schrieb:
We cannot allow spelling bots unless:
A. The bot is registered
B. The bot draws from an approved list
A word like /thier/ can safely be changed to "their", since it's almost
always a misspelling. However, there are many misspellings which can't
be automatically corrected.
I don't mind HUMANS whiling away their time doing a bit of spell-check
work; I do it myself, when I want to relax.
But if a machine can do it, then it probably shouldn't be done as a
logged-in contributor (robot or "bot"). Rather, let's have our zealous
programming staff write a custom spell-check program.
In my opinion that would just worsen the problem we are facing here. Although you say
'thier' can safely be changed, a bot (or spell-check program) simply changing all
references will make errors - Thier is for example a German surname.
Checking wikipedia on google, it seems that the only page on Wikipedia where it would have
been wrong, would have been [[Wikipedia:Common misspellings]], but the miss would be close
- on
quote.wikipedia.org there is an occurence where 'Thier' is an old spelling of
the German word 'Tier'.
Nevertheless, I do think that a bot can be useful in correcting spelling mistakes. Just
not a fully automatic bot. A bot of the kind of [[User:Robbot]] could considerably speed
up the process while still ensuring human control of every single edit.
Andre Engels