[Wikipedia-l] Common typos (was: Tucci528)

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

> I've been pondering.
> There are some typos and common spelling mistakes which are
> no-brainers to catch and fix, but require a lot of grunt work.
> Would it be possible, or desirable, to have a system which does
> a search for one particular error at a time, eg "recieve", and
> corrects all the pages it finds in batches, of say 20, to avoid
> loading the server?  Obviously, this will deal with only a
> fraction of the overall typo checking, since many things depend
> on context (eg "its" / "it's").
> Would this be best implemented as a system tool, or as a seperate
> script (like the Eason's Bible Dictionary import)?
> -- tarquin

I think it should be a general policy that we should not allow
any automatic process to alter content.  The value of Wikipedia
is that real human beings with understanding and judgment have
edited the pages.

What if there were a page about common English mispellings
that had "recieve" there intentionally?  Or perhaps it could
be someone's name, or a foreign word used in context.  I
remember having a Vietnames co-worker named "Teh" who was
constantly running into the problem of spell checkers changing
his name to "The".