Aliasing theatre → theater
Link to alias

Reason:

A theatre is a theater (alternative spelling)

Which theater?
I was taught that one does Musicals and Shows at a theatre, and sees movies at a Theater.

So I looked into it.

MoonMoon is right...for one unofficial dialect of American English. In other unofficial dialects of American English, the two are used interchangeably as alternate spellings with no meaning difference just personal spelling preference (which is what I was raised with). But Officially "theatre" is a 'misspelling' of "theater" for American English, which is why my spellcheck keeps telling me it's spelled "wrong" lol. But "theatre" is also the actual proper spelling for both those words in British English.

So while aliasing them together makes sense (because the majority of people think of them as the same word, relying on context to tell them apart, and they only quibble over the spelling). I'm starting to wonder if it's a problematic word to keep as a tag. We already have movie_theater for the one with movies. We could keep theater/theatre for stage productions like plays/operas/stage performances. Or we could come up with a different tag for those. Though I'm having troubles thinking of any, so maybe it just needs a good wiki to help train people which is which between "theatre" and "movie_theater".

Though if we do it that way, then I think it'd be better to alias the other way around with theater to -> theatre as a visual clue to help further distinguish them visually that it's not just shorthand. Which would work.

furrypickle said:
So I looked into it. (...)

I don't think it'd be a good idea to mix American and British English spellings on tags. We should either choose one or the other for all the tags on the site*. And since American English is more commonly used, I'd go with the original suggestion.

*: If it's possible at all.

EsalRider said:
I don't think it'd be a good idea to mix American and British English spellings on tags. We should either choose one or the other for all the tags on the site*. And since American English is more commonly used, I'd go with the original suggestion.

*: If it's possible at all.

I agree. And they've standardized mostly towards the American spelling/terms for tags (because the site is based on America). Or at least that's what I've heard and seems to be the case.

But in this case both spellings are American, so we have a choice between "theater" or "theatre" as the spelling everyone will see. They'd be aliased to each other so that no matter which spelling was used, it would lead to the same place. (So there won't be any confusion of trying to remember which way to spell it). But one of them will be the 'face' of the tag that people will see listed in the tag list.

And I was just saying that we could use the spelling difference to our advantage to visually create a point of difference. Otherwise "theater" would look like it's just the shortening of "movie_theater" and eventually someone is going to ask if they are really supposed to be the same tag. lol

But if we alias the other direction, then it'll be theatre and movie_theater that people will see as the final tags. That added spelling difference will automatically make sense to the northestern american dialect (and elsewhere) which already uses the 'theatre' spelling for drama/plays/stage/theatrical productions. But to everyone else it provides an important visual point of difference to clue people in that it's not being used synonymously this time (because a lot of Americans use both spellings all the time and then rely on context to figure out which way it's being used this time).

So 1, a clear wiki explaining what it's being used for as a tag here [the context needed by westerners], and 2, the spelling distinction keeping them visually different [important to north-easterners], would both work together to help Americans from both sides of the country keep them straight, and help keep the usage as distinctly separate tags. That's why I was suggesting to reverse the alias direction, because using "theater" for drama/theatrical/stage-only wouldn't quite match usage anywhere and it'd just be arbitrary (and confusing to north-easterners). But using "theatre" for drama/theatrical/stage-only would be commonly recognised in varying degrees by most Americans as long as it's easy to keep track of and clearly explained somewhere. Which seems like the perfect compromise between the varying American usage from different sections of the country.