[Wikipedia-l] Changes and suggestions (was Re: slight change to the announce-l list)

[Ray Saintonge]

Brion Vibber wrote:

>>So, since others protest and undelete the
>>redirections, some asked if it would be possible to
>>somehow catch mispellings, redirect the mispelled
>>title to the right-spelled page, *and* dynamically
>>display a message at the top of the article saying
>>"you asked for "fachisme", this word does not exist,
>>and is probably a mispelling of "fascisme".
>>
>
>It has in the past been suggested to have a special type of redirect for
>misspellings. These could have a "you're an illiterate idiot, from now
>on please type 'X'" message display when visited or searched, but be
>hidden from lists like the Allpages list or general search results.
>
I've never favoured automatic redirects for misspellings.  A lot of them 
are really typos that can come from just hitting the key on the keyboard 
that's beside the one that you want.  With common misspellings the sort 
of thing that Brion (oops I just had to go back and correct this from 
Brian) suggests has a lot of merit.  A simple redirect presumes what a 
person wants, and the worst offenders will probably not even realize 
that they have been redirected.  

Ec