Wikipedia talk:Adopt-a-typo

Please Any Suggestions are welcome. Be bold!

Comment

I think it's a great way to get new users involved in the project and feel like they're doing something useful. It's a worthwhile sub-project of its parent, the Typo Team. Perhaps it should be moved as a subpage? Also, I notice that the letter 'a' in 'adopt' is lower-case in the title. Is that intentional? -- œ^™ 15:09, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, WP:Typo Team has been requested to be renamed to WP:WikiProject Typo Team, so this might cascade here as WP:WikiProject Adopt-a-typo... 70.24.244.198 (talk) 07:09, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Intend to change the way userboxes work

I have been intending to change the way the userboxes work for this new project. I think it is much better if the user can click on the userbox to perform their search. So I intend to make the first parameter link to their search and the second parameter be the "gender" of the search, which by default will be neutral (i.e., yellow). This will also require some restructuring of the templates. Ideas or comments are encouraged beforehand. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:31, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I suppose that the color of the user box was originally intended to indicate the gender of the user. I think that perhaps the color is best to indicate gender on the search. Maybe not. I'll have to think about it more. In many case, it would be great to have four different versions of the icon (male-male, male-female, female-male, female-female) and that way, all cases could be covered. I will request that of somebody. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:39, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I have asked user Ezra Katz at Commons to create a full set of these icons for all male/female/neutral combinations. If created, we can solve this issue once and for all. Jason Quinn (talk) 21:04, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Generate a list in AWB

It could be that I've totally missed the point somewhere but I can't figure out how to use anything on this page to make it easier to search for typos in AWB. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:16, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Jamesmcmahon0. This page has nothing to do with AWB. If there was something that made that confusing, it should be clarified. Basically, the idea behind "adopting" a typo, is to create a userbox that quickly searches for a particular misspelling (so you can fix any hits that are found). That's it. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:34, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Is this about typos or spelling errors?

The example of a typo given in the article is not a typo at all, but a spelling error - "privledge" instead of ""privilege". So, see the question in the heading. HiLo48 (talk) 03:52, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi HiLo48. I didn't realize that there was a difference between the two. It seems to me like this project is devoted to both typos and spelling errors--I think colloquially there isn't a distinction made between the two. --Mcps39 (talk) 19:46, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

I see them as two very different things. I am quite proud of my spelling skills. I believe I can achieve a high standard in several of the different versions of English, such as US English, and Australian English, my native tongue. Rarely make a mistake. But my typing is crap, especially when I'm on my phone. HiLo48 (talk) 21:46, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Making the 'search link' function more literal, to eliminate false positives?

Request: Would it be possible for the string of characters entered in the 'search link' subfields to be taken literally, including any spaces?
Reason for asking: For hyphenated words, searching on the non-hyphenated typo currently returns the correctly hyphenated occurrences as well as the real typos.
Example: Take the word 'hurdy-gurdy', which should be hyphenated. When I try to identify articles containing the typo (i.e. without the hyphen), by submitting the search link as follows (note the blank space between 'hurdy' and 'gurdy'): ...

{{search link|hurdy gurdy|hurdy gurdy/Hurdy gurdy/Hurdy Gurdy|ns0|ns14|ns100}}

... the list of articles provides all combinations of the words 'hurdy' and 'gurdy', including all occurrences of the correctly spelt 'hurdy-gurdy', even though I specifically submitted the search argument without the hyphen.
Why is this a problem? When I submit the above search link, I receive a list of articles which include all occurrences of 'hurdy' and 'gurdy', regardless of whether they are separated by a blank (=typo) or a hyphen (correct spelling). So, the more typos I fix, the more I have to wade through page upon page of correct spellings before I reach the next typo to fix.
Possible solution: The search link function could be enhanced to enable to submitter to code the search argument between single or double quotation marks, thereby indicating that only that specific string should be scanned for; i.e.

{{search link|"hurdy gurdy"|"hurdy gurdy"/"Hurdy gurdy"/"Hurdy Gurdy"|ns0|ns14|ns100}}

... would hunt for those explicit character strings, and thus ignore the correctly spelt occurrences ('hurdy-gurdy'). This way, every time I re-submit the search link, I would receive only the names of articles which still have the typo, and my time would be spent much more productively.
Thank you for reviewing this anomaly and also for considering a solution, perhaps as I have outlined.
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.^(talk) 17:50, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Who has the Burden of Proof When Typo is Propagated in Name?

I adopted the typo "ya'll", meant to be "y'all". This is used in a lot of names of songs, books, etc. The artist act of "Timbaland and Magoo" have a song with the typo listed on Wikipedia. The same typo is on Discogs, and maybe other places. BUT, when I look up an image of the rear cover of the album on any purchase site (or Discogs), they have the word listed correctly as "y'all". It seems like I wouldn't need a reference to change the Wikipedia entry for the track to match the correct word on the album cover, without providing an additional reference since there was no clear basis that it should have been listed that way in the first place. Is that true, or does the burden of proof rest with the me, the changer simply because I am changing the word in question? Spawn777 (talk) 05:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

@Spawn777: Dear Typo Team colleague;

First of all, it should be quite obvious to most other editors that "ya'll" is a typo, because it actually does not mean anything. Although I am no expert in obscure forms of the English language, I have never heard "ya'll" used as a substitute for "you'll", which does mean something ("you will"). So, I would have thought you should be able easily to convince most editors that "ya'll" is a typo of "y'all", as you say, especially if there is enough context for an easy validation of "y'all" as the intended meaning.

Secondly, if the source (like in your example: the back cover of an album) has the correct spelling of "y'all", then all I would do is always to complete the edit summary with a very clear explanation, something like:

"Typo: "ya'll" > "y'all"; see back cover of [album title] at discogs website, which shows correct spelling of "y'all", as intended by the artist."

In this way, even an editor intent on challenging your edit would most likely go to the source you pointed at, to satisfy him-/herself that the initial spelling [in the source] was correct all along and that the typo occurred when the Wikipedia text was typed in by an earlier editor. Again, your example is quite simple and, I dare say, non-contentious.

I encountered a different situation some time ago, when I adopted the typo "hurdy gurdy", where the correction involved adding the missing hyphen. When the word was used throughout Wikipedia in sentences that related directly to the musical instrument as a physical object played on an album (for example), then I simply proceeded with correcting the typo because dictionaries (generally deemed reliable sources... ) show the correct spelling with the hyphen. However, for the title of artworks, where the original artist had misspelt the name of the instrument when it was adopted into the title of a painting or a book, for example, then I was unable to apply the correction, since the piece of artwork had become forever known (and generally copyrighted) under that misspelt name. You can see examples of such instances of "legitimized typos" in the list published at the hurdy-gurdy disambiguation page, like the name of the band "Hurdy Gurdy", which became the subject of Donovan Leitch's song "Hurdy Gurdy Man".

So, in your case, you should be fine as long as you always make sure: 1) there is a verifiable source of the correct, original spelling and 2) that you point this out in your edit summaries. (Until, of course, someone produces a piece of artwork where the typo "ya'll" is actually written, deliberately or by accident, on the original material itself!)

Since there is always the possibility that I might be missing some Wikipedia guideline, I am happy to be corrected by any other editor(s) who know(s) more on the subject than I do.

In any case, good luck and thank you for your contributions to our encyclopaedia.

With kind regards;

Patrick. ツ Pdebee.^{(talk)(guestbook)} 01:51, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Baby in blankets

What is this about adopting na child ByrdJessByrd42 (talk) 13:29, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Get rid of 'genders' for typos

Why are the background colors called 'genders'? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but it seems quite confusing to me specify the gender of a typo. As far as I can tell all that is meant by this is the background color of the icon. Is there any way in which this is necessary/helpful/useful? Jimpaz (talk) 21:51, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Where's the list?

Greetings and felicitations. I came back to add a new word to the list of typos to check for, and I can't find it. Where is (or was) it—this deleted page? —DocWatson42 (talk) 19:25, 22 October 2024 (UTC). Edit: I can't say that I'll be very active, but here's what I have: User:DocWatson42/My Typos. —DocWatson42 (talk) 19:27, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

There's Wikipedia:Adopt-a-typo/I Just Found A Home. Is that what you mean? Jason Quinn (talk) 20:02, 22 October 2024 (UTC)