This is very tiresome and a typical example of Wikipedia competitive uberpedantry There is only one spelling of strasse  strasse This is not a matter of spelling it is solely a question of how letters are written The use of  for ss is a German orthographic convention not a different spelling It is not a convention used outside Germany and Austria and is not recognised by the great majority of Englishreaders They will read it as strabe Using it is an insult to readers and is just a form of showing off by Wikipedia editors Arguing for the use of  in the English Wikipedia on the grounds that they write it that way in Germany is the same as arguing that Beijing ought to be written  because they write it that way in China Or perhaps we ought to write all German placenames in Gothic script