User talk:SpellingBot

Welcome!

Hello, SpellingBot, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! – Gurchzilla 21:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Symbol errors

Hi! Just a quick message to let you know that for some odd reason the spelling bot removed the UK '£' symbol from the Brighouse article when it changed the spelling of 'thier(Sic)' to 'their'. I have reinstated the symbol. Richard Harvey (talk) 07:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Likewise, changing "thier" to "their", it change all accent and "°" in the page to "?". See [1]. - Rollof1 (talk) 08:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to you both. Sorry about that - that's very odd. I'll look into this and get it fixed before I make any further changes. TimR (talk) 17:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Spelling

Not sure what this edit was about. First, millennium (with two 'n's) is the correct spelling. Second, and least important, the Millenium Hilton Hotel is the actual spelling. -- VegitaU (talk) 17:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. There are (fortunately) quite a few people who have the time and patience to correct misspellings, one of the commonist of which is "millenium" where it should be "millennium". As you've noted, the Hilton Hotel near Ground Zero is (for some reason) called the Millenium Hilton. In going through the various pages with "millenium" spelled with one 'n', on the odd occasion which it is correct, I've been putting in a comment in the source to inform well-intentioned editors that it shouldn't be 'corrected' to two 'n's. If it really bothers you, please remove it, and I'll try to remember not to put it back when I next revisit the page. Sorry for any inconvenience. TimR (talk) 21:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see now. Okey-dokey. -- VegitaU (talk) 22:00, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Emery Molyneux: "Untill"

Hi, the bot recently corrected the spelling of the word "untill" in the article "Emery Molyneux" to "until". Normally there wouldn't be a problem with this, but the article is about a 16th-century mathematician and cartographer, and the spelling "untill" was correctly quoted from a text from the same era. Is there any way to teach the bot to avoid certain articles? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 01:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'm sorry about the mistake. Correcting spelling is never straightforward, so I check every single change which my program finds. I've spotted (and therefore not 'corrected') several archaic spellings, such as the one you point out, but I obviously missed this one. Sorry about that. One method which makes it very easy to see that a spelling has been checked and should not be changed (by manual editing, as well as by automated assisted editing) is to put a comment in the page, which is visible when editing, but doesn't get displayed on the page proper. Some I have come across are simply like this:

<!-- sic -->

My code can put this comment into the page if I think that it's worth noting for me or others who might be tempted to 'correct' is wrongly.

<!-- PLEASE NOTE that "untill" is the correct spelling here. -->

Anything like this should be enough to prompt an editor to think twice before editing. TimR (talk) 08:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the suggestion. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 13:52, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that explanation. I can't speak for everyone, but I like having comments in articles to detail stuff like this for me, so that I don't accidental correct it when I shouldn't:). Sometimes whether or not an odd spelling like "untill" is correct can be deduced from the context, but all too often there are no contextual markers; this is especially true with proper nouns, like that of the hotel mentioned in the previous comment section.Gopher65_talk 23:23, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

persistance → persistence - clever bot!

So, go on then, I'm intrigued... how on Earth did your bot do this? :P Dreaded Walrus ^{t c} 23:07, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! No special clever magic, it's simply hard work: I look at every single potential change and decide from the context whether to make it or not. The context is critical of course: misspellings in a normal article paragraph are generally unintentional, so tend to get corrected. Misspellings in quotations should reflect the original source, whether that is correctly spelled or not. Names and titles of external websites and pages require a little more care. I tend to go to the page in question to see what it actually says, as I did in this case. Sure, it takes time and effort, but it's something I can do until I get fed up. Glad you appreciate the effort.... :-) TimR (talk) 21:56, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Do you take requests?

'improson' -> 'imprison' and 'decribe' -> 'describe' both need doing. How do we go about adding these to your list? Philip Trueman (talk) 12:09, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Certainly. Existing cases fixed and these misspellings added to the list for the future. When more of these crop up, they'll get fixed in time. Thanks for the input! TimR (talk) 21:59, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks. My next suggestion is 'exteme' -> 'extreme'. I'm going to have a think about how to find these more systematically. There has to be a better way than just dreaming them up. Philip Trueman (talk) 09:10, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

They're getting messier: 'implict(ly)' -> 'implicit(ly)', but 'impliction(s)' -> 'implication(s)'. Philip Trueman (talk) 12:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

You Pedantic Botstard...

Keep up the good work! -Rushyo (talk) 22:21, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Millen(n)ium (again)

Not sure about this [2] edit. Both spellings seem to result in a large number of G-hits for health food companies. Philip Trueman (talk) 12:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your concern. In this case, the text is referring to a letter on the FDA's website. I looked at page in question, which contains the full text of the letter from the FDA to Millennium Health. In both the page text and the page title Millennium was spelled with two 'n's, and the letter refers to another website, with both the URL and the page title and content having two 'n's. I'm sure that there are companies out there calling themselves "Millenium Health", but this case seems fortunately a lot simpler to determine than some. :-) TimR (talk) 13:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

More requests

anounc* -> announc*
coencid* -> coincid*
entepris* -> enterpris*
Philip Trueman (talk) 10:48, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. May I also suggest:

afriad -> afraid
apear* -> appear*
Philip Trueman (talk) 15:52, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

How do I temporarily block SpellingBot from updating Template:User/* sub-pages ?

How do I temporarily block SpellingBot from updating some Template:User/* sub-pages which I am working on?

On Template:User/Examples and the other similar pages I am going through the Special:PrefixIndex/Template:User_ and trying to document the User templates including "Spelling Errors" and re-directs, so that the corresponding User pages can get updated and badly or incorrrectly named templates or redirects get deleted. Specifically, SpellingBot came along and "corrected" Template:User Canada Independant West to Template:User Canada Independent West when I am trying to document (among other things) that:

• User talk:SpellingBot (links | edit)

link to the "bad" spelling of the redirect which should be deleted. LeheckaG (talk) 20:03, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I am a bit concerned that the couple updates which SpellingBot did were to a {{User_template-name}}. I can see many such template-names which have "spelling errors" and a bit concerned about the impact of such updates elsewhere? In some cases, such renaming points to a completely different template with different effects or syntax. LeheckaG (talk) 20:10, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
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