2023:Program/Submissions/Easily confused words and how to find them - SYTLAA

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Title: Easily confused words and how to find them

Speakers:

WereSpielChequers

Wikipedian since 2007, mainly active on Commons and EN Wikipedia but have edits to dozens of other Wikimedia wikis. Worked for Wikimedia UK from 2013 to 2015.

Pretalx link

Etherpad link

Room:

Start time:

End time:

Type: Lecture

Track: Community Initiatives

Submission state: submitted

Duration: 30 minutes

Do not record: false

Presentation language: en

Abstract & description

Abstract

Every language has words that can be easily confused, this is a talk by the editor who has spent the last decade hunting down some of the more amusing confusions that used to exist on EN wiki. Attendees will get some opportunities for audience interaction.

Description

Every language has words that can be easily confused, a native speaker of English can read of calvary regiments, Prime minsters, rock stars preforming and actors guest staring and may not consciously notice the typos. But run those same words through auto translate into another language and they can be very confusing.

WereSpielChequers has been correcting such typos on English language projects such as Wikipedia, but also in recent years WikiBooks, WikiVoyage, WikiSource and more besides.

Using a combination of search, AWB, and dedicated software kindly written for him by others, WereSpielchequers has probably fixed in the region of 100,000 of these sort of errors on the English language projects over the last 14 years.

This session will explore some of the more amusing errors that he has found, some speculation as to how language might have changed if these errors weren't fixed, and some opportunities for audience participation.

Those attending this session will be given a few examples of things that can be done with tools such as bots and AWB, whether or not you know how to use these tools.

If we can have some whiteboards and marker pens attendees will be invited to participate in the session.

Further details

Qn. How does your session relate to the event themes: Diversity, Collaboration Future?

These are the minor cosmetic errors that a native language speaker can subconsciously compensate for, that a proficient speaker can probably work around, but which will look bizarre to someone relying on automatic translation. So fixing these errors is a collaborative exercise to make our projects more usable by people who are venturing beyond their native language.

It is also an opportunity to offer uncontentious but useful edits to newbies onto any language of Wikipedia and many other wiki projects.

Qn. What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Everyone can participate in this session

Qn. What is the most appropriate format for this session?

• Onsite in Singapore
• Remote online participation, livestreamed
• Remote from a satellite event
• Hybrid with some participants in Singapore and others dialing in remotely
• Pre-recorded and available on demand