[Wikipedia-l] disambiguation, homophonous words, and helping illiterate people

Tue Nov 21 01:34:45 UTC 2006

On 20/11/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I stumbled into a nice little problem concerning
> desambig pages. I am not sure this is the right place
> to present it, but I could find no policy on it.
>
> So, when going on en.wiki, at "Jew (disambiguation)",
> you will find that it does not only include the
> various meanings of the word, but also many unrelated
> but homophonous words (i.e., words that are pronounced
> more or less the same way).
>
> One editor explained me that this is normal, because,
> I cite: "A great many peole can't spell, as a read
> though the talk pages of messages shows".
>
> The answer is apriori pertinent, and I think it raises
> greater questions: Is phonetic search a goal of
> wikipedia? Should we think about possible wrong
> ortographs of words and put them on wikipedia?
>
> If the subject has been discussed before, please point
> me to it.
>
> Thanks,
> :en:User:Dpotop

Wikipedia aims to serve as a resource for the literate, the
semi-literate and (possibly) the illiterate. As we are a global
project, we should not start with too many assumptions as to the level
of education of our users (even if we were a national project, this
wouldn't be a good place to start from).

Anything to help our users (as long as it is not too much to the
detriment of our main goals) is worth doing.

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)