Talk:Brooks Catsup Bottle water tower

Spelling of catsup vs. ketchup

First, let me say that I'm a native-born Pittsburgher and a Heinz partisan. The spelling 'catsup' is almost repellant to my eyes. However, I truly believe that it is the spelling which belongs in this article per WP:ENGVAR, because "catsup" is (at least historically?) the spelling preferred in certain regions of the United States and Canada, including (apparently) the region in which Brooks Catsup was produced. The image in the infobox of the tower clearly shows the "catsup" spelling. Rendering "catsup" as "ketchup" is essentially the same as tweaking all spellings of "honour" into "honor"—not only unnecessary, but also frowned upon, especially when the article's most-relevant region or culture preferred the first spelling. —Bill Price (nyb) 14:53, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree with you in part, and disagree in part. I think the article should be left with the local "catsup" spelling, as that is what the water tower calls itself, and is consistent with local idioms and practice. OTOH, I know that the Ketchup article is spelled differently. I put back the redirect catsup, which honors both sets of facts. The former redirect won't show unless the reader hovers on the word. BTW, notyhourbroom, i think your edit summary would have been both more accurate and less likely to cause offense (in some editors) if you had used the word "Undo" instead of "Revert" -- I do acknowledge that you did put in the good faith caveat. But I also know that some editors dislike when someone purports to "revert" them. Happy editing. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:18, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm using Twinkle, which has Rollback-AGF as a built-in function. I've never heard of the differing connotations of "revert" versus "undo", but I'll trust you that this exists. Regardless, I still disagree with the edit, though I expanded on my reasoning in a different forum and didn't think to pull it back into this talk page. I've reproduced my comment below. In short, bypassing redirects reduces flexibility in the development of future content. In this case, catsup could, in the future, plausibly redirect directly to a section of ketchup which discusses regional variations. Bypassing the redirect would essentially "hijack" the user directly to the main article instead of the more specific section intended. I understand your point regarding the mouseover, however. —Bill Price (nyb) 16:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

The following message was originally posted on the talk page of Bigturtle (talk · contribs) and has been reproduced here due to its relevance to the discussion.

I reverted your recent edit because I mistakenly interpreted it as changing the displayed word "catsup" to "ketchup". In fact, what you did was avoid the redirect by directly linking through to "ketchup", while preserving the originally-displayed word "catsup". I apologize for my misunderstanding. The edit probably wasn't necessary, though—one of the great strengths of employing redirects is that they can later be modified to point to specific sections of articles, so that, for example, all redirected forms of catsup might in the future point to a "Regional spelling" section of the ketchup article. Given their greater flexibility in adapting to future changes, I prefer to preserve redirects when possible. Thank you. —Bill Price (nyb) 15:10, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Replicas 2600:1015:A002:85AD:38CB:89CD:1AE4:D66D (talk) 21:38, 21 October 2024 (UTC)