Board Thread:Spelling debates/@comment-188432-20130428153100/@comment-7302713-20130429212742

The problem with the notion of universally choosing between two spellings is that we'd be violating in-universe roughly 50% of the time. That seems like a bad idea to me.

I'm with Tangerinduel and Imamadmad here: my interest is in spelling the titles of books properly and if possible maintain the spelling throughout the article.

I just see categories as a way to make this easier and keep things clear, and I think that the human problem can be tackled fairly easily. It certainly seems vastly easier compared to the alternative. I know, you're saying, didn't that just get shot down? Just hear me out:

Right now, if I'm editing an article and I get to the word Encyclopedia I'm stuck unless I both know and remember how the source spelled it. This is doable with an article like Encyclopedia Gallifreya where I can look to the title for the proper spelling. It's a much safer assumption that a page title is spelled correctly than it is that an unlinked name is. But we only have one Encyclopedia article, so if I'm editing anything else, like The Also People then I'm stuck. If I start to edit a section in an article in order to fix the lack of BritSpeak, I get stalled hard when I hit the word "Encyclopedia". Is that correct, or is that a product of the writer using American English? I don't have a clue. Worse, I don't have a way to get a clue.

This gets even more complicated when you tackle the issue of Brittanica and encyclopedias that have been spelled both ways. We seems to have consensus that for these, we go with majority rule. But if I've just read Genesys and start to work on its article, (or on Encyclopaedia Brittanica), I have no way of knowing that my going to the source material for spelling is wrong. Without anything to tell me otherwise, I go by the source. I could easily see someone moving an article page because that that's not how it's spelled in Who. That's a mess, precisely because of just how much of an exception this is.

So I propose that we add a section at T:SPELL, explaining that we use whichever spelling of encyclopedia that's used in-universe and that this varies, sometimes even in reference to the same book. We could keep a small list of which encyclopedias use which spelling on the policy page. This is important, because you're not going to know which spelling is used for Brittanica the majority of the time without being told. T:SPELL could then link to a page where we have a list of what spelling is used when encylopedia is being referred to generically. I don't think we can maintain the spelling used in the stories without a list. If the policy page explained that there was a category for each spelling then editors would be aware of this, and hopefully use them. Going to T:SPELL, and seeing what's what is great. I may not have a clue, but now I can at least buy one. But it would be even better if the article was in a hidden category "Articles that use American spelling for Encyclopedia". We could write a one line description on the category that refers people to T:SPELL. We could even add hidden text or a description on the article pages that use this.

There would be a little set-up work, but once it's in place this would be a lifesaver. It would make editing vastly easier for editors who are trying to maintain proper spelling and don't have a source to check, and it wouldn't require much work for editors to add an item to a list and a category to a page when new sources come out. They don't even have to be the ones to add the category. They just have to add it to the list, or drop a note on the corresponding talk page saying "the spelling is ____ in the newly released book _____. See page ___. And if I've understand CzechOUt correctly in regard to what the issue is with the boy, I think that this would fix it and let us enforce this by bot. Even if it doesn't, or perhaps especially if it doesn't, this enables editors to maintain consistent spelling without a bot presence.

The thing to keep in mind is that making this decision doesn't do us a lot of good unless editors know what to use when. Categories seem like an enormous aid in this. They let us have fairly complicated rules like this without requiring extra knowledge or awareness from editors.

I just want to reiterate that my main goal is seeing that titles are properly spelled. I am fundamentally against making a universal decision. I don't want Encylopedia Gallifreya being spelled AE or Encyclopaedia Brittanica spelled PED. If people are fundamentally against categories and maintenance lists, then I think we should really just let catch as catch can. I'd rather have loads of inconsistent articles then have misspelled titles. Inconsistent beats incorrect hands down. I'd like to think that we could achieve both accuracy and consistency (and I've laid out a plan that I think achieves that), but at the very least we need to be accurate.