The Faerie Quarrel

On December 2, I changed The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, changing all instances of "faerie" to "fairy", with the edit summary of Changed "faerie" to "fairy" - Can screw up searches, spelled as "fairy" in actual game, and only weird people use the spelling "faerie". Soon thereafter, I recieved the following response on this Talk Page. I'm leaving it here to show we all are idiots at one time or another.

A Modest Proposal

Changed "faerie" to "fairy" - Can screw up searches, spelled as "fairy" in actual game, and only weird people use the spelling "faerie" - T2X, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask changelog

I sincerely apologise for this inexcusable folly made on my behalf.

It is all suddenly so clear. E.g. in ‘'The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past’' the word faerie is spelt 'faerie', thus in order to be consistent with searches the use of the word within that article should be written as ‘faerie’ (fortunately the article does not contain that very word thus the problem never arises). Nevertheless, in the GBA-port the spelling ‘fairy’ is used, and in order not to exclude archaic players (not to mention weird people) from searching Wikipedia it ought to be written faerie/fairy.

One soon realises the utter preposterousness of this since such an article would not show up in a search for the synonymous word ‘faery’. Thus this exemplary meaning taken from the Majora's Mask article:

This time it is not Navi, the original fairy, but a new fairy named Tatl.

Should be replaced by:

This time it is not Navi, the original fairy/faery/faerie, but a new fairy/faery/faerie named Tatl.

Simply because the latter one is more friendly to the search-variant and less prone to ‘screwing up’ user’s searches. After all, people should not have to be bothered with such rubbish as thesauruses.

Unfortunately, this is a rather lengthy procedure in order to make things right. Therefore I propose that someone hack up a script in order to search and entirely destroy this menace known as “synonyms” on Wikipedia once and for all. One can only begin to imagine the uncountable amount of ‘screwed up’ searches it is responsible for.

Masken 22:59, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A Modest Rebuttal

Yeah. I'll admit it was rash of me to change it, and I did show my bias against alternate spellings.

My initiative for changing it was consistency. Anyone surfing the [of Zelda games] category would have hit twenty articles, five of which mentioned our mythological creature. Four of those articles use the spelling "fairy", with the only exception being the previous version of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Now, to the change comment, The search reason may be a poor one, and the weird comment was a bad choice. But in the game it is spelled "fairy", and that along with the consistency issue was reason enough, I think.

I apologize for the comment. It was rude of me. My only experience with the spellings "faery/faerie" is dealing with gothic schoolmates who argue with others over the spelling incessantly.

And so, I am sorry. I meant no malice.

--T2X 01:02, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

Masken's Reply

Consider your apology accepted. Your claim for consistency is a valid one and I agree with your thesis. It was your change comment that tainted the actual edit in my book, hence the post at your talk page. Nonetheless, I'm glad that this brief quarrel could be put to an end without one of us opening the open a can of worms as spelling flames. --Masken 12:20, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

AOL/AIM

RE: Talk:AOL_Instant_Messenger

Trillian IS free. I've never paid one red cent for it. CobaltBlueTony 19:21, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what features you are looking for, but the free version works well enough for me.

Here's the feature comaprison between free and pro:

http://www.trillian.cc/compare/

CobaltBlueTony 19:46, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

List of Ohio State University people

Hey, thanks for asking first. I would have asked before forking as I did with Rice, Stanford, and a few other schools, but no one seemed to be objecting so I decided to just be bold and go ahead with the fork. The reason I used the title I did was that all the other universities that have similar pages have similar titles. See the page at Category:Lists of people by university affiliation or just click on the link at the bottom of the List of Ohio State University people - apart from a few anomalies they all use "List of x people". Some do say "List of x alumni", but I feel that a more general page allows one to have separate headers for alumni, faculty, and current students, if necessary. Let me know your opinion. - Mark McCartney (talk) 18:52, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

Alex Lingo is a master of racquetball

Proposed deletion of Wikalong

The article Wikalong has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Article is not sourced from reliable, independent sources (WP:V), nor does it show how the subject is notable (WP:N)

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Marasmusine (talk) 13:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]