Showing posts with label Wikipedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wikipedia. Show all posts

Sunday, November 25, 2012

This is Weird

This is Google's summary that pops up when one searches for William Seward:
When I saw the location of birth, I thought it interesting, but plausible, that Florida was as specific as they could get. Then with the place of death, Auburn, I thought I had spotted something that needed fixing in Wikipedia. I assumed Auburn, AL, but I also know there are other Auburns, and so intended to look it up. But then I visited the actual Wikipedia page, which provides this information:

Florida, NY and Auburn, NY. So Google decided (likely with no human intervention) that if they said "Florida," people would automatically think of a place in NY, and if they said "Auburn," people would immediately realize it was the Auburn in New York. Oops.

Now I need to see if anyone famous was born in Athens or Calcutta (Ohio, of course) or Lisbon (Maryland) and see where Google says they were born.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Wikipedia Can't Spell Mate, No, Wait, the Gnome Project Can't Spell Mate

All along I've been spelling mate as mate, which is the spelling that seems to prevail within the Linux Mint 12 Documentation. I was annoyed that Wikipedia spells it  maté, an example of hypercorrection. Mate is an herb or a tea made from the herb. This is what the project is named after, and is the correct spelling. Someone decided that Americans would be more likely to pronounce correctly if it is misspelled as maté. The problem here is threefold:

  1. the misspelling maté puts the emphasis on the wrong syllable,
  2. the misspelling maté is a different word, and
  3. maté is first  person preterit form, I killed. Okay, two and three are arguably the same objection.
The discussion at the Wikipedia maté page saved me from making a change to the page that someone would have to back out of later. Someone pointed out that the spelling is incorrect, but someone else pointed out that the spelling is the one used by the gnome project, and it's not Wikipedia's place to correct the spelling of a project name, but rather to use it as-is. I agree, but I will not be using the misspelling.