Stephen Gilbert wrote:
--- Pierre Abbat phma@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...).