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

Wed Jun 23 17:22:59 UTC 2004

Timwi wrote:

> flip the switch (so [[blah]] and [[Blah]] become separate articles)

Hi all.

It seems that I have made a number of wrong assumptions when I started 
all of this.

Firstly, I assumed that just about everyone would agree to want to have 
article titles lower-case if that is how the word is spelt. I am 
indescribably surprised that this is not the case, but oh well, that's 
wiki-democracy I guess.

Secondly, I assumed that at least a majority, if not everyone, would 
agree with me that engl. "kind" and German "Kind" are separate words and 
should hence have separate articles. (I'm sorry for bringing the same 
example over and over again, but I got used to it ;-).) Again, I'm 
surprised that this does not seem to be the case. Apparently some people 
actually *like* to have unrelated words on the same page, which 
completely mystifies me.

Thirdly, I assumed people would know what I'm talking about when I said 
"case-sensitivity" and "[[kind]] and [[Kind]] should be separate 
articles", etc. :-p

Fourthly, I fell into a pitfall that I fell into numerous times in the 
past (and, by implication, will probably fall into again numerous times 
in the future :-p). What I'm talking about here is that people 
emotionally attach to what they've got and what they're used to. There 
is a strong opposition to any kind of change, and arguments cannot 
change it. Just as long as the current way "somehow works", people seem 
to look for only the negative things (the "arguments against") in the 
proposal. The people who are in favour of the idea don't defend it as 
vehemently as the others oppose it.

Bottom line: It is futile for me to try to be of help with these kinds 
of things. I'm only glad I never even started writing that script; it 
would have been a waste of time.

Greetings,
Timwi