Talk:Case insensitivity of page names
Is there a page where case sensitivity is being debated actively? It drives me nuts, in the age of Google, where nobody is accustomed to case sensitivity except for C programmers and Unix hackers, and I'd like to read any reasonable argument for retaining case sensitivity. tempshill
This is an encyclopædia. It has to use precise an accurate terminology. In many many cases using upper or lower case is crucial. proportional representation means either the electoral system called PR or a general system of election based on proportionality. Proportional Representation is the proper name of the electoral system and nothing else. government of France means the generic governance of France, Government of France means the formal constitutional system or the actual current government ruling in France. republic of Ireland means Ireland is a republic, Republic of Ireland is the formal name of the RofI, not merely a system of governance. king is different to King, kingdom means something different to Kingdom, president of the United States something different to President of the United States; Washington wasn't the first of the former, but was the first of the latter, ie, people called 'presidents' existed after independence, but they weren't head of state and never President of the United States. President of the United States means a specific, narrow and singular constitutional office. No encyclopædia would contemplate abandoning case sensitivity, as it denotes the difference between the specific and the general, the proper noun and the generic term. That is particularly the case in British English, Hiberno-English and other non-American forms, all of which pay far more heed to the use of capitalisation than seems fashionable in American English. And, as so often needs to be said, wiki is not an American encyclopædia, it is a world one. FearÉIREANN 20:06, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- I realize that my original comment was not very clear. I was referring to the "Go" feature in Wikipedia, and not to article titles. Sorry. Your points are certainly reasonable, but they are relevant to article titles, and not relevant to the purposes of the "Go" feature in Wikipedia, which I would liken to a search engine. To try to state my case more clearly: I would not propose that the subject headings in Wikipedia be made all lowercase: "president of the united states". Case sensitivity in article titles and in the body text of articles does matter. Regarding the "Go" feature, a person using this feature to look up an article does not necessarily know the difference between the Red Dwarf examples mentioned below. (In this example, he probably does not.) In the context of a layman seeking knowledge by looking it up in an encyclopedia, it is not reasonable to assume that the layman knows the exact capitalization that is required to deliver the article on the topic he's searching for. An attempt to "Go" to an article on "red dwarf" should obviously point to a disambiguation page. Tempshill 03:29, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- Some people disambiguate through case. I think this is a very bad idea. Red Dwarf and Red dwarf are were totally different articles until I made them into Red Dwarf (television) and Red dwarf star. Try explaining that to a newb. CGS 18:30, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC).
- But it was OK as it was. You broke all the links when you made the new pages. They have been broken for over a month now - when are you going to get around to fixing them? (You should have changed the links first, that way nothing gets broken.) --Zundark 16:06, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- Yes, the links used to go to the correct pages, but now they don't. And disambiguating through case worked well in this case - if someone wrote "Red Dwarf" or "red dwarf" and then put brackets around it, a link to the correct page was produced. If someone does that now they will get an incorrect link (and often will not notice that it's incorrect, because most people don't test every link they make). So, even if he had bothered to fix the links, what Cgs has done is not very sensible. The pages should be moved back. --Zundark 12:48, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- For instructions on submitting feature requests, see m:bug reports. Better yet, become a developer, and do it yourself :) Martin 18:57, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- I submitted this as a bug and then saw that a duplicate of my bug had been answered by the developers: This is not a bug, it is a controversial design decision. So, my question is, where is this discussed? Thanks. tempshill
- It's been discussed many times in many places over the last year or so. I can't find them at the moment, so here's a summary of some issues: m:case insensitivity. --Brion 02:37, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- Both case sensitivity and case insensivity make some sense, but our "case sensitivity except for the first letter" does not. I'm all for switching to full case insensitivity. Taw 23:20, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)
pro insensitivity
editwell, i think this has to be done. it's just not good if somebody's typing george bush into the search field and doesn't get a result, although there's an article of that name, it's just George Bush.... that's.... not good