Why Did RinkAtlas Display Some Arena Names Twice with Minor Spelling or Wording Differences?

Some RinkAtlas users may notice that we list some arenas by multiple versions of their names.  In some situations, there was sometimes little difference between the versions of the arenas’ names.

An example is Réal-Boudreau Centre in Beresford, New Brunswick.  We now list this arena as:

Réal-Boudreau Centre

The reason we did this was because the database underlying RinkAtlas is aware of all international characters and it considers “é” to be a different letter than “e”.  At one point in the development of our directory, we listed the arena’s name both ways, so English speakers would be able to find the arena without first figuring out how to type “é”.

We solved this problem by creating additional metadata that you cannot see which shows any possible alternate spellings for the name of the arena.  We’ve gone back through the database and made the displayed name for the arena the name of the arena in the primary language of the area.

We hope that this clarifies the way we are managing arena names currently within RinkAtlas.