[WikiEN-l] Spelling Day?

Mon Nov 24 17:02:47 UTC 2003

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> schrieb:
> We cannot allow spelling bots unless:
> 
> A. The bot is registered
> B. The bot draws from an approved list
> 
> A word like /thier/ can safely be changed to "their", since it's almost
> always a misspelling. However, there are many misspellings which can't
> be automatically corrected.
> 
> I don't mind HUMANS whiling away their time doing a bit of spell-check
> work; I do it myself, when I want to relax.
> 
> But if a machine can do it, then it probably shouldn't be done as a
> logged-in contributor (robot or "bot"). Rather, let's have our zealous
> programming staff write a custom spell-check program.

In my opinion that would just worsen the problem we are facing here. Although you say 'thier' can safely be changed, a bot (or spell-check program) simply changing all references will make errors - Thier is for example a German surname.

Checking wikipedia on google, it seems that the only page on Wikipedia where it would have been wrong, would have been [[Wikipedia:Common misspellings]], but the miss would be close - on quote.wikipedia.org there is an occurence where 'Thier' is an old spelling of the German word 'Tier'.

Nevertheless, I do think that a bot can be useful in correcting spelling mistakes. Just not a fully automatic bot. A bot of the kind of [[User:Robbot]] could considerably speed up the process while still ensuring human control of every single edit.

Andre Engels