[Wiktionary-l] Re: De-capitalisation-isation

Wed Jun 23 00:23:38 UTC 2004

Muke Tever wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:07:02 +0100, Timwi 
> <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> 
>> Really? Can you provide links? I only remember people emphasising 
>> that  they don't mind because they think the current work-around work  
>> perfectly for them. I seriously don't see how anyone can seriously be  
>> opposed to having a dictionary with correct spellings. :/
> 
> I disagreed,  
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000018.html
> Polyglot said it could be done but he would vote against it also:  
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000020.html

I'm sorry, but I can't extract any arguments against this change from 
either of the two e-mails, only vague fears of something going wrong, 
and a description of why the current ugly workaround "works". The only 
relevant thing I can see is your comment that "having separately-cased 
forms of words on different pages might overemphasize the difference 
between some senses of a word"; but this, too, is not an argument 
against the switch, only an argument against having two pages for 
Cynosure. Surely you can put that on one page ([[cynosure]] perhaps) and 
have the other be a redirect. This definitely does *not* apply to things 
like [[Kind]].

But anyway ... this doesn't matter. I suppose we should have a vote, 
then. I'll set one up on meta:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_Wiktionary_case-sensitivity_vote

> By the way, how does search handle the existence of pages differing by  
> capitalization?  If someone searches for <greek> (v. [1]), which
> doesn't  exist, are they sent to <Greek>, which does?

This is irrelevant here, because the same question already applies to 
multiple-word titles.

> Are users who 
> are used to case-insensitive search, or don't know the proper 
> capitalization of the  word, sent to <greek> when it is made, when they 
> might have wanted <Greek> better?

Of course they are, but I sure hope that [[greek]] will contain a link 
to [[Greek]]. This is not an issue relating to the change I'm advocating 
here; this is a more general concern with the contents which is to be 
solved separately.

> Will every word where capitalization 
> is semantic have to be made  into a disambiguation page?

Huh?

> I would *much* prefer that pages, instead of being case-sensitive, be  
> case-insensitive (even more than they are now, perhaps), with the page  
> title in title case, and the regular capitalization indicated inline, 
> as is now normally done.

Are you sure you're not just saying that because you're afraid of 
unforeseen consequences, or because you're simply used to the way it 
works now? I seriously don't think anyone would want to turn 
case-insensitivity on if we had started case-sensitively right from the 
start.

Timwi