[WikiEN-l] Human-assisted spelling bot?

[William T. Mahan]

Hi,

I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, but I've recently become interested in
helping to fix spelling errors in the English wiki. Using a database dump,
I put up a list of articles with commonly misspelled words in my user
space at [[User:Wmahan/Articles with commonly misspelled words]].

In an effort to go through this monstrous list more quickly, I made a
script that loads the edit page of an article from the list and fixes any
commonly misspelled words. It also displays a list of all words not found
in a spelling dictionary, and I can substitute from of a list of suggested
replacements with the click of a button. I review all changes before they
are submitted.

I asked for approval of this plan on [[Wikipedia_talk:Bots]], and it was
suggested that I mail this list. I think that this human-controlled script
will be:
1. harmless, because I review and discard any incorrect fixes
2. useful, because I can easily correct not only misspellings on the list,
but any clear misspellings I notice
3. not a server hog, because it is limited by how fast I can approve
changes. It should use less overall bandwidth than fixing every article by
hand because I only request the edit page for the article, rather than
loading the article and then following the "edit" link.

Do others agree? I'm open to any suggestions about whether this idea is
worthwhile, possible improvements, etc. The script uses a web interface,
so I can make it available for people to examine if there is interest.

-- Wil