Wikipedia talk:Lists of common misspellings/Archive 2

British spellings?
I've barely been looking for a few minutes and found a number of British spellings on these lists. I'm an American, for the record, and I don't see a reason as yet why these British spellings are considered "typos" (mostly I'm seeing -our spellings while -or spellings are recommended). Can someone tell me why this is the case? Is there a consensus that these are not necessary or should be considered errors?  Lazy Bastard  Guy  02:00, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, it is a misspelling in some documents; in particular, in an American English document, "colour" is a misspelling. Like many of the entries in these lists, it may be correct in some documents.  There is a convention on these pages of distinguishing misspellings that stand a good chance of not being misspellings in Wikipedia by not including the Wikipedia search link.  I looked at color and honor and they are that way and they also say explicitly that it's a British/American thing.  I think all British/American variations should be represented in the lists that way.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 02:54, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * My two cents is that they shouldn't be on a list such as this. Some articles use British English, others American English, and this is decided independently on a case-by-case basis (e.g. topics of British origin are likely to receive British English articles). However, from what I've seen, most articles do not have a defined version of English in use at all, making either one (or others such as Canadian or Australian English) valid as well. That, to me, says they are to be used or removed at an editor's discretion, and probably shouldn't be considered as typos.  Lazy Bastard  Guy  03:10, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The entries with a comment and no search link are there to remind editors that they are not misspellings. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I understand that, but I still don't think they should be on a list such as this, because it, to me, implies that they are not right in context. Again, only a handful of articles compared to the rest have a consensus where editors decide whether to use British or American spellings, and on all other articles, anything goes - which basically means neither form of a given word is wrong, which means editors can change it back and forth as they please, which doesn't solve anything. It just strikes me as odd to have them on this list, that's all.  Lazy  Bastard  Guy  16:20, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * As far as I understand it, there's no need for a consensus and in the absence of one it is not true that "anything goes". In the absence of an overriding reason (for example, if it's a clearly American or clearly British topic), articles are generally expected to be kept in whatever style is currently established. So if an article is using American English, then adding new material with British spelling would be wrong and arbitrarily changing from one to the other would be wrong. Thrub (talk) 18:45, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * In fact, WP:ENGVAR seems quite clear on that. Thrub (talk) 18:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

We can debate this ad infinitum, but it seems clear to me my views on the issue and those of the community differ. I don't really care anymore, but I do still view these as words which probably shouldn't be considered typos per se. I'm done here.  Lazy Bastard  Guy  19:14, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm going to withdraw my earlier comment. It was based on the title of the page and the fact that "color" is definitely a common misspelling of "colour" (as an American, I frequently misspell that when writing in British English).  But now I've reread the lead of the main article and it is clear that the page is not supposed to be a list of common misspellings per se, but a list of things that are more likely than not to be a misspelling if found in a Wikipedia article.  So either the lead should change or the British/American variants should come out.  The linkless entries appear to be for things that are more likely than not to be a misspelling in a Wikipedia article, but not definitely a misspelling, so that does not apply to British/American variants.


 * There is no need for entries to tell people what isn't a misspelling; the normal Wikipedia editing process will take care of someone accidentally adding a non-misspelling to the list - i.e. someone will come along soon enough and fix it.


 * Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 02:39, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Broadcast vs Broadcasted
Why is "broadcasted" linked here? I unlinked it and added "variant of broadcast" in a bracket only to be reverted. Wikipedia is meant to give a global perspective, isn't it? Many countries do not consider "broadcasted" as a misspelling, So why is it that the opinions of users from certain countries are always dominant? It is clear that "broadcasted" isn't a misspelling, as it is included in most dictionaries (eg: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 etc). Because some people THINK one is more preferred doesn't make the other incorrect. Wikitionary, a project of Wikimedia includes it and here, another project of wikimedia contradicts it.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 19:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd like more information on that reversion too. The summary is "Needs consensus and is proscribed in any case" and I don't see any evidence that consensus is lacking or that the edit or "broadcasted" is proscribed by something.


 * But I don't understand your arguments against including this in the list. First, we shouldn't get hung up on the label "incorrect", as there isn't any clear definition of that for English in general or even English on Wikipedia.  The real question with respect to listing "broadcasted" here is whether it would be good for editors who choose to do so to change "broadcasted" to "broadcast".  I can see several reasons one might prefer for Wikipedia to use "broadcast", including the value of consistency across the encyclopedia, the much greater popularity of "broadcast", and historical consistency.


 * But I'd like to hear more about the regional dialect claim, because Wikipedia does try to protect regional variations, but I often see people think they see a regional variation when there really isn't one.


 * And are there people who object to "broadcast," or just people who don't object to "broadcasted"?


 * Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 18:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * My argument is this; why should it be "linked" as a misspelling, when it clearly isn't one? And your case of consistency on wikipedia isn't valid, because wikipedia allows variations of the English language; This clearly shows that the usage of spellings/words on wikipedia has never been consistent, and that Wikipedia was never structured to be consistent with it's spellings.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 18:45, 5 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I got your argument about it not being a misspelling, and tried to argue in response that whether it is literally a misspelling (or "incorrect") is not really worth arguing about and we should pay more attention to the purpose of the page. (In fact, I recently was on the other side of this issue in this talk page, where I noted that "colour" is a common misspelling (because it is found in many English documents where "color" is correct), so should be listed, but ultimately was convinced that the fact that whether it is technically a misspelling isn't really the point).


 * As I noted, Wikipedia does make a special case for regional variation, where it explicitly does not try to be consistent. But that doesn't mean it isn't desirable to have Wikipedia be consistent in other cases.  That's why I'm interested in whether there are regions where "broadcast" is seen as incorrect.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 03:36, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Jamie Tubers brought this up following my changes to Gidi Up arguing that "the article is written in a specific variety of English (Nigerian)" after which he reverted my changes. I have no knowledge of Nigerian English, but note that broadcasted was later changed to broadcast by an IP based in Lagos, so someone in Nigeria didn't feel that it was correct either.


 * Broadcasted was added to Lists of common misspellings/B by User:Mild Bill Hiccup on 15 January 2008 - as can be seen in this edit - I would welcome his observations.


 * As with Giraffedata, I wasn't aware of it being part of any dialect or regional variation. Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 04:11, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Broadcast appears in all dictionaries, so should be used throughout, as per COMMONALITY - "Wikipedia tries to find words that are common to all varieties of English".''
 * As I stated at User talk:Jamie Tubers:-
 * ''Some dictionaries include broadcasted, but the use is proscribed, so it should not be used, other dictionaries, e.g.Chambers state "Sorry, no entries for Broadcasted were found".


 * James then argued that ""took" doesn't exist at all as a word in most dictionaries" whereas, of the two dictionaries I had already cited; Wiktionary has an entry for took and Chambers redirects to take rather than stating "no entries were found" as it does for broadcasted.


 * WP:ENGVAR opens with "The English Wikipedia prefers no major national variety of the language over any other" and later explains that articles with strong national ties should use the appropriate spelling, color v colour, center v centre etc. Howevever, the very first sub-section of WP:ENGVAR is COMMONALITY, and it is on that basis that broadcast should be used, rather than broadcasted, especially as the word is proscribed in some of the dictionaries that do include it. - Arjayay (talk) 08:42, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


 * After reading the Commonality guideline, I agree that if a word is common to wider varieties, it should be used. And Arjayay keep saying it's proscribed...BY WHO?!!! Some british educators? That's still regional and shouldn't apply to the WHOLE WORLD! The Chambers dictionary you also keep referring to is a british dictionary, so also useless!!!! Because it contains more dialects than the average british dictionary doesn't mean it contains all! Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) pointed out "Colour/Color", i see both words are present in the list of misspellings, but were not linked. All I'm saying is that the same should be done to "broadcasted" - A better explanation maybe given like "(broadcast should be used per COMMONALITY)". If someone like me had seen that, then I'd understand perfectly why "broadcasted" shouldn't be used and not because some UK professors proscribed it.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 10:48, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

If I use an edit summary of "Broadcasted > Broadcast as WP:COMMONALITY" in future, can we agree to differ, and move on? Arjayay (talk) 11:22, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I quoted "proscribed" from the Wiktionary entry that I had linked to.


 * fair enough, as long as it isn't linked as a misspelling.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 11:37, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


 * By "linked as a misspelling", you mean having a link to a Wikipedia search on the "Lists of common misspellings" page. That linking apparently means more to you than it should.  All it means to me is that someone might want to change "broadcasted" to "broadcast" throughout Wikipedia, and as we seem to have established that there's consensus that "broadcast" is an instance of desirable cross-national commonality, the link seems entirely appropriate to me.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 03:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Is the new change fine with everyone?--Jamie Tubers (talk) 00:28, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * The change is to add "[broadcast] should be used per WP:COMMONALITY". It's fine with me.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 16:00, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Fine by me - a civil discussion coming to a sensible conclusion - let's move on - Arjayay (talk) 18:11, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Spelling correction by hand II
Echoing Tabletop's comment above, I can't imagine spelling correction without careful consideration of context.

Experimenting I tried 'conventinal' and got two hits... woo. Then tried 'conventionel' and got a couple hits, but looking strange, as in Odilon Barrot. Turns out that 'conventionel' is a French word designating a former member of the National Convention, and the word in the article is straight from the EB 1911 text. Seeing another glitch I fixed that there and added an inline comment mentioning the French word and that it is not a typo.

Similarly, another time I tried 'infinit' and got lots of hits. Many were from such-named music groups, or from technology-related companies or products. So clever... But quite a number were either from quotes of old English or were quotes/usages from Romanian!

The misspellings are wrong unless they aren't, and only the context can tell you whether modern English spellings should be applied. Automation or incaution will definitely cause errors. Shenme (talk) 05:13, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmm, forgot to add... Would it be possible sometime to add notes to listed misspellings? For example, 'infinit' should caution "Romanian?" and 'conventionel' should caution "Revolutionary France?". Shenme (talk) 05:16, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, some of the list entries have notes like that. I'm working on the F list currently; there, you'll see that the annotations at "florescence", "fo", "followup" and others include warnings that the spelling may be correct as it stands. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:19, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Having seen "in arrear" in article Obligatio consensu... I wondered. Shirley that must be "in arrears", right?  Found this: "Also, Chiefly Law, in arrear."  Since the article is about law terms, "in arrear" must be left as-is.  Somewhere it has to be stressed that mindless fixes are bad - mindfulness is needed!
 * Oh, and I'll go add 'dimished' to the lists - found about 18 of those - diminishing them now. :-)  Shenme (talk) 06:33, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Spelling correction by hand III
When Tabletop finds a likely error, such as "Febuary" missing an "r", he does a search to find out how many such errors exist, say 23. He then goes through the 23 pages having at least one such error, and corrects them if the context supports this move. When this word is part of a file name, such as "un.org/map/febuary/tanmania.prg" then it cannot of course be corrected. There are other no-goes which won't be mentioned here.

On correcting the first occurrence of "Febuary" on a page, Tabletop searches the page for same word again, since that page may have multiple repeats of "Febuary".

Tabletop's edit summary would be something like "Spell Febuary => February (23)" which shows
 * what the error was (in case any putative reverter needs this information)
 * what the correction is.
 * how many pages (23) contained the error at the start of the searches (hits).
 * will sometimes list other correction found by chance, say
 * "Spell Febuary => February (23); dimished => diminished"
 * Tabletop may also test for other related mispellings like "Februrary", "Feburary" and "Februay", etc.

With this methodology, the search string is loaded with "Febuary" and used for perhaps 23*2 = 46 or more checks, which is efficient.

Occasionally you misread the context and someone else reverts the correction. Can't be helped; bound to happen sometimes.

It would be helpful if wikipedia could list "words" that start with say "Feb" with their frequencies of hits; low frequency words are the most likely to be errors. This would highlight less obvious misspelling, say:
 * February (987,654 hits) - obviously the correct spelling.
 * Februar  (345 hits) - German word (?) within English wikipedia.
 * Febuary  (23)
 * Februrary (3)
 * Feburary (16)
 * Februay   (0)
 * Febraury (14)
 * Februry   (6)
 * Febrary   (8)
 * and so on. Tabletop (talk) 09:28, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

The following words are from the "Lists of common misspellings".


 * Febrary  (February)  (8)
 * Februsry (February)  (0) - A and S are adjacent keys
 * Febuary  (February) (41)
 * Feburary (February) (16)
 * Ferburary (February) (0)
 * Ferbuary (February)  (0)
 * Ferbruary (February) (1)

There may be other misspellings not found in any list:
 * Februery (01)
 * Februory (02)
 * Fabruary (15) Tabletop (talk) 13:15, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

insource:
I suggest that a bot adds "insource:" to the search links. This will skip redirects from misspelled words. * (aberrant) has redirects; *  (aberrant) has not. Iceblock (talk) 22:23, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Regardless of intent, the impact of this document on wikipedia would appear to serve a pro-American-English agenda. The very brief explanation for entries is:

format: 
 * misspelling (click for Wikipedia search); correct spelling

And from this explanation, readers are liable to determine that the list does, indeed, only contain misspelt words, as there is no explanation or example of the "variant of" usage.

This article's factual accuracy is disputed.
"Variant of' is often taken to imply that one is a derivation of the other, with the original given first. In the cases I checked, the American English word preceded an older European term.  It is the meaning of variant as "differing from a standard" which is at fault here, because neither word is globally standard regardless of etymology, and no degree of correctness should be suggested by the order.  Maybe consider using "Grey (BrE) is the equivalent of gray (AE) or some such.

Basically, words which are legitimate regional spellings shouldn't be sprinkled through a list of actual misspellings prefaced by instructions on how to eliminate them from Wikipedia. Neither Commonly misspelled English words (which has inline sources) nor Wiktionary's wikt:Category:English_misspellings appear to feel the need to include valid regional words.

This article or section appears to contradict itself.
The apparent contradiction lies in the fact that it references an article on British vs. American English spellings, and then rather than leave such words to be dealt with by that article, then incorporates them into this list without marking or otherwise identifying them as regional variants, while scattering them, as mentioned above, throughout a list of actually misspelt words. Given the mention of BrE vs. AE words in the introductory text, it is not unreasonable to then assume that such words do not feature in the list.

Some or all of this article's listed sources may not be reliable.
Of the two external reference links, one is reasonable, but lists only 100 words and thus only sources a small portion of the list, while the other seems to have been automatically derived from the internet and is therefore of dubious reliability.

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations.
There are no inline citations to justify the presence or absence of any word on the list. It seems that anyone can slip in a regional variation that they dislike and we just have to take editing choices made by the project's team on faith. The ability to click on a word in order to call up a search for that word on wikipedia does not constitute a reference, and it is unreasonable to expect people to trawl through talk page archives to find justification either.

This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality.
These categories are essentially biased toward American English. I suggest that the fact that regional terms are included is highlighted in the category page text and that such words are better distinguished from the surrounding mispelt words in the lists themselves. Google searches are leading people directly to the sub-pages, where the lack of transcluded text at the top is causing them to be used as evidence that certain regional words are mispelt. Ideally, the regional terms would actually be moved elsewhere, where they would be less likely to be deleted through misunderstandings caused by this page.

As mentioned above, neither Commonly misspelled English words (which has inline sources) nor Wiktionary's wikt:Category:English_misspellings appear to feel the need to include valid regional words. --James Chenery (talk) 19:03, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
 * You seem to be thinking that this page is part of the encyclopedia. It is not; it is in the Wikipedia namespace. It is a suggestion list for Wikipedia editors, nothing more, and those editors remain responsible for every edit they make. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:01, 5 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I too believe all of these complaints are valid complaints about an article, and the templates that document them are appropriate for an article, but not this project page.


 * Furthermore, the underlying complaint that there are entries here that are not wrong in certain regions is taken care of in the introduction, which warns users of the page that such entries are present.


 * There are probably people who wrongly take this page as an indictment of certain spellings and phrasings and take offense if such spelling or phrasing is one they use, but that really isn't the intent of the project. It would be better to make readers understand that than to change the project.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 16:54, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Should we correct "inputted"?
Working through Lists of common misspellings/I I ran the search on "inputted" which came up with about 110 hits. Whenever I get more than a few hits in a search I start to wonder if it's a valid word in one of the many variants of English (unless it's a really obvious typo). So I often follow it up with a search for a dictionary definition or a discussion. I was surprised to see "inputted" has an Oxford English Dictionary entry (and doesn't list it as being a dialect variation).

110 hits does suggest its a fairly rare usage (a search on "input" gives over 26,000 hits). I'm sure that if I was copy editing an article with lots of other typos and/or dodgy grammar, then I would change "inputted", but should we change it in articles that are generally well spelt and well written?

BTW "outputted" came up with 65 hits, but I've not yet checked to see if it has a dictionary definition yet. Robevans123 (talk) 08:58, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I noticed this too when I started working on the "I" list, and decided not to make any corrections to "inputted". Both inputted and outputted are listed in several major dictionaries. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:08, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Should we remove them from list, or include a note to say that they are valid (if rare) usages? Robevans123 (talk) 09:21, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
 * If the consensus here is not to fix "inputted", then it should be reformatted like the "inclosed" entry. But let's wait for Mild Bill Hiccup to comment, since he added the entry. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:33, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think we've covered before the fact that inclusion in this list is not a declaration that something is invalid English and must be removed from Wikipedia. It just means some copy editors may want to remove it.  And in this case, I don't see any reason a person who thinks "inputted" is poor writing and chooses to spend time changing it should be hindered from doing so.  Add that to the fact that I do think an article is better without "inputted" than with it, and suspect there are others like me, and I think the entry is appropriate.
 * It might be nice to have an indication for each entry of just how accepted it is, except that that's essentially just what you get by seeing how many occurrences there are in Wikipedia. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 02:56, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes - would be useful to show that the word in question does have a dictionary definition, but also is rare (or ugly!), and can be changed at editor's discretion. Also good to show that someone has investigated the word (I like John of Reading's link to onelink - a useful reference). Maybe something like:
 * (input) - is defined in dictionaries (inputted) but is rare (< 1% in Wikipedia) - change at editor's discretion
 * Would also be useful to indicate that an "unusual" spelling often shows up in foreign language usage, for example:
 * (university), but ok in French quotes
 * Robevans123 (talk) 09:48, 23 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I would support adding comments like that, as long as they are brief (maybe a footnote?). I would object, though, to anything that appears to give permission to edit, such as "change at editor's discretion" because these pages are not meant to be the Manual of Style, documenting consensus style.  (And when I see word usage issues come up at MOS, there does not seem to be interest in having such consensus).  So in place of something like "change at editor's discretion", I would give the plain fact, "some copy editors consider it incorrect".  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 18:02, 23 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I think this is a good suggestion. I've noticed it in cases where a plural that ends in "-ities" is misspelled with "-ites" (as in "abilites" for "abilities"). There are also some archaic English words that show up in quotations which match misspellings of modern English words. Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 08:01, 24 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes. That seems a sensible proposal. I'd be happy with "some copy editors consider it incorrect" as suggested. Robevans123 (talk) 22:52, 23 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I was thinking that this one was similar to the debate over the use of "broadcasted" that came up some time back, but now it appears that may not be the case. Do you remember whether, in your search, you noticed any particular patterns of use, for instance was it more common in articles about computing (and also "outputted")? Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 08:01, 24 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes - definitely showed up most in computing related articles, but with some military usage (USAF officers who are directly inputted into various units of the Air National Guard), some category descriptions in Wikipedia (This category is inputted from these Templates - I would probably prefer ...populated by these...), and a few general articles where "contributed/inserted/added" would be a definite improvement.


 * So "inputted" (along with other words such as "outputted") is not a misspelling, but is possibly worth the attention of a copy-editor and requires a bit more work that the standard checks when correcting a spelling (is it archaic? is it a direct quote? etc.). So maybe something like this (with an optional footnote):


 * (input) - dictionary definitions (inputted), copy edit?


 * (list continues)
 * (list continues)


 * Notes




 * Hopefully that keeps it all fairly brief, conveys enough information to show that it is not a misspelling, but is worthy of attention without giving the impression that it must be changed. Robevans123 (talk) 14:38, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Marking entries as patrolled
[ping!] has added text to Template:LCM Headings suggesting that editors should sign and date entries in the LCM lists after patrolling them. I'm not convinced, and won't be adding my name anywhere. Does anyone else think this is a good idea? Calvinballing's name at Lists of common misspellings/R has already been removed. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:30, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Agree with John of Reading, and I can see no discussion about this whatsoever, let alone a consensus. As someone who has checked the entire R list at least weekly since 2011 (allowing a few weeks off for holidays) I think it would just create a mess. Even I don't want to see my name repeated over 250 times on one page, and to keep updating it would take up useful editing time, so I won't be doing it either. Lists of common misspellings used to state “If you adopt a typo, please add in parenthesis "adopted" next to the word. This should help keep people from doubling up on words.” - however, this was later abandoned, and I think this should be too. - Arjayay (talk) 07:59, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
 * , and I agree my initial proposal does look messy, and am not convinced that it is the best way to solve the problem I'm trying to address, which is that from what I can tell, there's not a clear way to avoid duplicating efforts.  As someone newer to the typo-sphere, is there any formal way that I could know something like, "the Rs have been checked weekly for the past 8 years," (which is amazing by the way) without you mentioning it here in the talk page?  Or even to know, "the Rs were all checked within the last week"? One option could be to move the sign-off data into a table so that things stay lined up.  Alternately, the typos could be in larger batches (maybe groups of 20?), and users could more quickly mark that they have completed a batch rather than marking each individual one.  Or perhaps, for any editors who do check things on a regular schedule, they could make a single note on the appropriate page, that wouldn't need to be updated all the time.  That way, if someone new comes along, they could start on, say "T" instead of "R".  Thoughts on any of those proposals? Calvinballing (talk) 19:14, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Here's an abbreviated example of what it could look like if we moved the data to a table, using some entries from the letter 'y'. Regardless of whether we add a signature column, it seems to me like these pages would look cleaner if the data were moved into tables. Thoughts on that change? Calvinballing (talk) 20:14, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Looking at the history for 'H', for example, I see that no one has contributed to that page in almost three years. 'C' has just one edit in the past two years. That suggests that perhaps not all of these pages are being monitored/updated/checked against with the same once-a-week frequency as 'R'. Calvinballing (talk) 20:26, 2 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I reiterate, I am not willing to edit over 250 entries every week, (about 90 of which I do every day, which would be even more onerous) be that be arranged in a table, or any other format. As for your comment about contributing to a page, checking a list is not the same as editing it, people could well be checking the entries, but "finding" a different typo, and deciding to add to the list is an entirely different process. Furthermore, as I raised at Wikipedia talk:Lists of common misspellings/R, there are no clear inclusion/exclusion criteria for what constitutes a "common" misspelling. As explained above, Lists of common misspellings used to state “If you adopt a typo, please add in parenthesis "adopted" next to the word. This should help keep people from doubling up on words.” - I included this on the R list on 19 October 2011 as seen here, but this was removed on 5 August 2103 - as seen here - although, again, I can see no discussion about either the adoption, or abandonment, of this procedure. Obviously, there is a danger of editors stating they have adopted a typo and then not continuing to check it, due to boredom, real life commitments, or even death, so maybe a time limit for adoption could be considered? - Arjayay (talk) 21:15, 2 May 2019 (UTC)


 * If this format were adopted, there's certainly no stipulation that editors would be required to comply. Doing so would be potentially helpful to future editors, but not necessary.  To lower the burder of making such updates, the signature column could be replaced with year and month.  This would still give a decent idea of how recently something had been updated, and would also make making changes a lot easier (if you complete the whole page, if it's a new month, and you choose to log that you've done so, you could just do a find and replace on the prior month's values.  This also provides the advantage of making it sortable:


 * {| class="wikitable sortable"

! Misspelling ! Correct Spelling ! data-sort-type=isoDate | Last Patrolled ! Status
 * y'all
 * Active
 * colour
 * color
 * 2016-05
 * Retired (British variant of color)
 * yacht
 * 2019-02
 * Active
 * yacht
 * 2017-05
 * Active
 * years
 * 2019-05
 * Active
 * yield
 * 2019-01
 * Active
 * yellow
 * 2019-05
 * Active
 * Yemenite, Yemeni
 * 2019-04
 * Active
 * }
 * yield
 * 2019-01
 * Active
 * yellow
 * 2019-05
 * Active
 * Yemenite, Yemeni
 * 2019-04
 * Active
 * }
 * Yemenite, Yemeni
 * 2019-04
 * Active
 * }
 * Active
 * }


 * Regarding my comment about few edits in the history, I understand that that doesn't mean no one could be checking those pages, but I do imagine that the amount that people are checking the existing typos and the rate at which people add new ones have some kind of correlation. The fact that 'H' can go unchanged for several years implies to me that one or more of the links on that page could also have been unchecked for several years. I would be willing to do the data reformatting if we wanted to go this route.Calvinballing (talk) 21:55, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The fact that one of these lists has not been edited does not mean that no-one is using it. I check nearly everything on the A to Z lists every couple of years. More at User:John of Reading/Typo fixing with AutoWikiBrowser. -- John of Reading (talk) 03:12, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Calvinballing - Reformatting the list as a table, or changing the format of that table, does not overcome the objections already made, especially as Wikipedia tables are so cumbersome, which further exacerbates the problem. This seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Thank you, but no thank you. - Arjayay (talk) 08:22, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
 * @John of Reading The link that you supplied giving your prior editing history of the lists is helpful information. Is there a way that that same kind of information could either be listed in a more centralized format that other users could also contribute to, or linked to more prominently from one of the project pages?  I had no idea what schedule these were being looked at, or even that some folks were using AWB in conjunction with the LCM lists.  My impression based on AutoWikiBrowser/Typos was that AWB use was more focused on the set of rules listed on that page, and that the reason LCM pages alongside that list was for instances that were likely to take more research to sort out false positives.  Looking at your page, I can see you have been able to use AWB with the LCM information as well.  The helpful notes and research that you turned up are not as easy to find as if they were directly on the LCM pages though.  For example, you have a note on your page `unviable > inviable - Not done, several dictionaries allow it`, however that search link is still active on the 'U' page, so it's not clear to me if your research constitutes a consensus decision on the issue or not.  Having a centralized location for the conversation seems like it would be more helpful for discussing your findings with other editors. Calvinballing (talk) 12:30, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Working through your post: (1) The page is headed "If anyone's interested, here is how I do bulk typo fixing". I don't actually recommend this method to anyone else. Working with database dumps is very slow; working with regular expressions is fiddly; the effort per fixed typo is high; and it needs constant vigilance to avoid saving false corrections. (2) Parts of the page could be copied for use as a central resource, but I'd be amazed if anyone else took up this approach. (3) This is only my schedule; other editors may be using the LCM lists differently, or may be tackling some of the same typos without looking at the LCM page at all. (4) Using AWB to work with the LCM lists allows me to tackle the whole of one sublist at once, which I find more interesting than doing one typo at a time; and using regular expressions I can skip some of the false positives efficiently - consider, for example, the "chanel > channel" suggestion in the "C" list and the 4000+ articles that use the word correctly. (5) My notes reflect my own decisions not to make certain edits and are not intended to bind other editors. I prefer to back away from anything that might be controversial, rather than seek a consensus, as I so easily get stressed during discussions. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:33, 3 May 2019 (UTC)