[Wikipedia-l] Re: Creating redirects for spelling mistakes

[Karen AKA Kajikit]

Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> 
> --- Pierre Abbat <phma at webjockey.net> wrote:
> > On Saturday 20 July 2002 21:34, Toby Bartels wrote:
> > > Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> > > >I only redirect common misspellings. In this
> > case, I
> > > >would redirect "Colombus" and ignore "Idendity".
> > >
> > > [[Colombus]] is arguably a variant spelling, not a
> > misspelling.
> > > But [[Idendity]] certainly shouldn't redirect to
> > [[Identity]],
> > > since [[Identity]] doesn't even exist!!!
> >
> > "Colombus" could just as easily be a typo for
> > "Colobus". I think we shouldn't
> > be making disambigs for typos, so the page should be
> > deleted.
> 
> I agree, disambigs for typos would be a bad idea.
> Redirects for common misspellings have proven useful,
> however. If a person typed "colombus" but meant to
> type "colobus", they would end up at the wrong page
> with or without a redirect.

The way I look at it is this - I am a reasonably good speller, but I am
dyslexic and there are some very common mistakes that I make often -
confusing 'a's and 'e's in words, ommitting or adding double letters
where they dont' belong... and if I realise that I have misguidedly
tried to link to one of these words then I make it into a redirect
because it's not a rare mistake. On the other hand, there's not much
point in redirecting more than half of the misspellings or it'll get too
confusing. Someone once suggested a special type of redirect
''misspelling of'' that would differentiate between alternative names
for something (like Alexandre Dumas and Alexander Dumas) and
misspellings (margarine and margerine - one of my most-confused
words...). 

-- 

Karen AKA Kajikit

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