[WikiEN-l] Another rule literalism problem

[Ken Arromdee]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
> Other  than my say-so, do we have a source for the claim that someone born
> in  Detroit, Michigan was born in the United States?
> 
> Hiragana is  unambiguous.  You can look up exactly what it is.  When you  look
> it up you get "Tessaiga", not "Tetsusaiga".  It doesn't take any  
> interpretation
> to do so.  There are no serious claims that the  Japanese version doesn't
> say "Tessaiga".>>
> -----------------------------
> Then you should have no problem presenting a source which states  that.

Specific applications of general rules don't need, and except by sheer luck
will never have, sources.  Examples include:

Adding the numbers 11111111 and 55555555 produces 66666666.
Someone born in Detroit, Michigan was born in the United States.
The word "apple" is spelled using two vowels.
The word "apple" is spelled using a prime number of vowels.
The morse code sequence "-- --- ·-· ··· ·       -·-· --- -·· ·" translates
into the letters "MORSE CODE".  (Actual Wikipedia example, by the way).
The kana sequence used to spell the Japanese name of Inuyasha's sword
translates into "Tessaiga", not "Tetsusaiga".

Demanding sources for these is an abuse of Wikipedia policy.

And you're still ignoring common sense.  Common sense says that we should
not perpetuate mistakes, and "Tetsusaiga" is a mistake by any non-Wikipedia
standard.  It's true that we have some articles based around names that are
mistakes, but in these examples, either
-- the mistake is buried in etymology and wouldn't be at all recognized by
the average reader, so there's no chance Wikipedia will perpetuate a
misconception (nobody's going to look at the word "malaria" and think it's
caused by bad air, even though the name derives from a mistaken belief that
that was the case)
-- the mistake is *so* common that there's no more room for Wikipedia to
make it even more common; Wikipedia cannot possibly perpetuate it further
than it already is
-- the "mistake" was done intentionally.

Tetsusaiga is none of these.  It's an unusual case where the mistake is
very common, yet the correct name is also widely known, and where the use of
the mistake in Wikipedia may actually influence more people to make the
mistake.  Even if the guideline says we should use the name, this is too
obviously a case where the guideline has to be ignored.  That's why each
guideline has the disclaimer to use common sense and the occasional exception.
If it was impossible to ignore guidelines that don't fit strange corner
cases, we wouldn't have that.