In the ID3v1 spec (see end of document), the genre “psychedelic” is misspelled as “psychadelic.” Which means it’s misspelled in the id3ren tool I recompiled for BeOS, which means that RipEnc has probably created tens of thousands of misspelled attributes on people’s BeOS systems over the years. I could have recompiled it with it spelled correctly, but didn’t want to affect compatibility with other tools on that genre. I should have done it anyway. Now the misspelling shows up in a screenshot that’s going to end up in my BeOS/OSX piece on osnews.com on Monday. And I’ll look like an idiot, even though that institutionalized misspelling has been bugging me for years. I wouldn’t have thought of it except that mneptok spotted it and called me on the carpet for it.
How much of history is mistakes compounded by time and propagation?