Talk:Samuel Croxall

Inscrib'd templating

The edit I made to this article, adding the {{not a typo}} template to the phrase Inscrib'd, was just reverted because the term had not been identified as a typo. The reason I was editing the page was because it was identified by an automated process under Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss. You can Ctrl-F this diff and see that Samuel Croxall that "inscrib" was picked up as a potential typo on the article. Now of course a human reader can clearly see it's a transcription and definitely not an error. This is why I put the template around the word and deleted it from the report. That template will prevent this or other bots (or editors running semi-automated processes) from picking up this page in the future. I think re-adding the template (or a similar template accomplishing the same thing) is the correct course of action. Sauzer (talk) 00:02, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

WP is written by and for humans, not run for the benefit of mindless machines. It's up to whoever programmes the bot to make sure it recognises such use of apostrophes. Otherwise it's a waste of editing time. Sweetpool50 (talk) 00:25, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I agree that WP is for people. However, since semi-automated processes are a big part of WP's back end, let's find a way we can agree on to prevent such a false positive in the future. I understand your point that the term is not a typo. If the not-a-typo templating is objectionable, would you be more comfortable with my using the {{As written}} template to obscure the text from future scans? For the sake of cleanliness on the editor side, the entire work title could be encased instead of just the term. Any of these options would have no impact whatsoever on the human-visible rendering of the text. Per the documentation, ultimately, any template would keep it from being picked up by WP:TT/M in the future. Sauzer (talk) 00:44, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to explain. You obviously have the technical know-how, so finding something less obtrusive for the editing page than {{not a typo}} might be helpful. The point I was trying to make was that the usage of " 'd" (to indicate an elided pronunciation) was sufficiently common in 17th and 18th-century verse to justify a bit of reprogramming of the scanning process to allow for it. It would ultimately save you and your fellow copyeditors a lot of time. That usage will occur not only in articles dealing with poets and their work but also in contexts where quotation from them is relevant. For example, in topographical descriptions (currently I'm expanding the article on Tintern Abbey, where it occurs) and for specialised story-telling, like English versions of Aesop's and La Fontaine's Fables, on which there are approaching 150 articles. Sweetpool50 (talk) 06:56, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I agree that it's a frequent enough occurrence to think about fixing rather than working around in this manner. For now, I will submit this situation as a bug to the maintainer of the bot's scripting and see what they are able to do. The script checks the text against the total body of words found in Wikitionary, so it may also need to be added there ala display'd, but I'll look into that as well. Sauzer (talk) 13:31, 9 August 2019 (UTC)