Wikipedia talk:List of redirects from misspellings

April 2006

I dispute that these are useful. They hide the misspelling from the user. If you search for "Tolkein" and nothing comes up, you will realize that you have mispelled the name and search again (rather than thinking that WP doesn't have an article on the topic, I should hope). 5 seconds lost. If you search for "Tolkein" and just find yourself redirected to J. R. R. Tolkien, you'll never notice and continue to spread this annoying misspelling. dab (ᛏ) 15:45, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

While I agree with some of what you say, I think they are indeed useful. If you don't know how to spell a word, you may have a very hard time finding the article, if there's no such redirect. Wikipedia's search engine doesn't help much either; maybe if it were smarter we wouldn't need the redirects.

Furthermore, there is an indication in the page that you were redirected there, although, it's true, it can be easily missed if you haven't learned to look for it.

Also, about spreading the incorrect spelling, I hope someone who types "Tolkein", after getting to the page and reading the article, will notice the correct spelling. --Cotoco 16:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

They may not notice their error; even if they do they may think their misspelling is a valid alternative, especially for words like "persistence" which is sometimes misspelt "persistance".--Bermicourt (talk) 08:58, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Links in User space

Do we correct misspellings in user space and user talk space? Cricketgirl 14:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Generally, we do not. Only mainspace misspellings since they affect the quality of the encyclopedia.--Xnuala (talk) 16:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

"Bates colelge" -> Bates College

Is this a useful redirect? I imagine it should be deleted. Equinox ◑ 15:05, 9 February 2020 (UTC)