Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos

Reliable sources

Is dictionary.com a reliable source?--Andeh 06:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Nope. See here. alphaChimp ^laudare 06:19, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, what about Microsoft Word 2000's or higher dictionary?--Andeh 06:25, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Poss reconsider

Bizarre as in Some Bizarre Records. Rich Farmbrough 22:53 11 August 2006 (GMT).

Attempt

If a fix for attemp is desired, "\b(A|a)tt?em(p|t)(|ed|ing|s)\b" --> "$1ttempt$3" seems to work for all cases. I don't think it matches any real words.—Mrkwcz 17:23, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Opposites

What about alternative beginnings to words, as in opposites like accessible and inaccessible? Instead of having two separate entries to check and maintain, we could easily just have one:

<Typo word="Accessible/Inaccessible" find="\b(A|a|Ina|ina)ccessab(le|ility)\b" replace="$1ccessib$2" />

This would simply require a rule that opposites (starting with in-, un-, etc) should not be placed alphabetically, but placed with their root word, and in many cases in the same regex.

An other strategy would be a rule that any word covered like this outside its normal alphabetical order should have a comment line placed in the alphabetical list where it would have gone.

Euchiasmus 12:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea, reducing duplication is always good. thanks Martin 18:58, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Victuals and eke

I removed these new additions:

Typo word="Victuals" find="\b(V|v)ittles\b" replace="$1ictuals"

Typo word="Eke" find="\b(E|e)e(ke|ked|kes|king)\b" replace="$1$2"

Typo word="Eke" find="\b(E|e)e(k)\b" replace="$1ke"

Typo word="Ekes" find="\b(E|e)eks\b" replace="$1kes"

"Vittles" is so old a misspelling that it's kind of its own word now, not to mention the cat food Tender Vittles, etc. (see the Google search).

"Eek" is a really common onomatopoeia for screaming, among other things. There are a lot of false positives on this Google search, and the words on the list should have 0 false positives. "Eeks" seems the same (lots of legit uses), there seem to be two legit uses of "eeke", and there are only 4 mainspace results for "eeked", 2 for "eeking", and none for "eekes". --Galaxiaad 18:34, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, sorry. I even happen to know that Eek is a town in Alaska (you can't get there from here, or even from there—Google Maps fails!). But has "eek"-the-onomatopoeia been verbed? "The scream queen eeked out a living"? BTW, I've just made probably a few hundred changes to the list—I gather that you're genuinely interested, so you might want to take a gander.--BillFlis 23:36, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, all the changes are impressive and a bit overwhelming. I definitely want to look though. I didn't mean to sound harsh in my previous comment; sometimes it's hard for me to sound human instead of just stating facts, heh. Hm, doesn't look like it's been verbed, but there is the plural in "Eeks and Squeaks". (The instances of "eeked" actually were typos for "eked" but there were only 4, which isn't enough to merit inclusion.) Hey, I'm just wondering and you'd probably know: what does the word="whatever" bit actually do? --Galaxiaad 13:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I thought your points were well-taken. I figure the word="whatever is just informational. My understanding of the AWB is that it's not a bot, it just helps someone make the same kind of edit over and over very quickly. I have a question about how it uses this typo list: I've noticed that some of the rules here have sort of the opposite of a false positive; that is, the correct spelling will trigger a change, back to the correct spelling. There's no harm done, but isn't this inefficient? Should I be stamping these cases out?--BillFlis 14:27, 26 August 2006 (UTC)