Case sensitivity of article titles

[Warren Schudy]

Is there a good reason why article titles are case sensitive? It's kinda annoying to link to a page, get a red link because the case is wrong and have to track down the correct case. For example, who would guess that [[CZ:Using the Subpages template]] has "Subpages" capitalized but not "template"?

It's certainly good for the system to remember the capitalization of a title, but why not automatically redirect links to other capitalizations?

[Derek Harkness]

I'd ditto the above complaint. I see few reasons for having case sensitivity and a whole host of problems that are directly caused by it. There isn't an easy solution though. I've done searches. I have to wonder why the coded it this way in the first place. What was the reasoning. There must have been one as by default, the database is case insensitive. You have to add extra code to make it sensitive.

[Aleta Curry]

I can see the complaint for the sorts of CZ pages Warren is mentioning, but doesn't it make sense to have case sensitivity for article names, so users will sort of have a clue about whether something is a proper noun or not?

Then again, the first letter of the word is not case sensitive, so...I don't know what I'm talking about! 

[Joe Quick]

I can see the complaint for the sorts of CZ pages Warren is mentioning, but doesn't it make sense to have case sensitivity for article names, so users will sort of have a clue about whether something is a proper noun or not?

Then again, the first letter of the word is not case sensitive, so...I don't know what I'm talking about! 

And if people don't know whether something ought to be capitalized, why would we expect them to type it into the search bar correctly?

I would guess that the case sensitivity comes from cases where a capital letter turns the word into a new subject.  Imagine if "nasa" were also a famous basket weaving tradition.  Then again, that's what we have parentheses for...

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

THe CZ rules for capitalisation are the same as anywhere: only if it is a real name and it is essential [e.g. NASA or Republic of Moldova, etc]

In my opinion, the capitalisation of "Subpages" is wrong and should be removed.

[Aleta Curry]

I can see the complaint for the sorts of CZ pages Warren is mentioning, but doesn't it make sense to have case sensitivity for article names, so users will sort of have a clue about whether something is a proper noun or not?

Then again, the first letter of the word is not case sensitive, so...I don't know what I'm talking about! 

And if people don't know whether something ought to be capitalized, why would we expect them to type it into the search bar correctly?

But that's just it.  I was thinking they'd get an error message/not find what they were looking for, so they'd have to try again and they'd know better next time.

I would guess that the case sensitivity comes from cases where a capital letter turns the word into a new subject.  Imagine if "nasa" were also a famous basket weaving tradition.  Then again, that's what we have parentheses for...

Well, no, because the system doesn't differentiate between [[Polish]] and [[polish]], correct me if I'm wrong.

[Warren Schudy]

THe CZ rules for capitalisation are the same as anywhere: only if it is a real name and it is essential [e.g. NASA or Republic of Moldova, etc]

In my opinion, the capitalisation of "Subpages" is wrong and should be removed.

About two-thirds of the articles linked from CZ:Home use title case (e.g. http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Editorial_Council_How_to_Make_a_Resolution). Even http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Naming_Conventions has a capital "C"! As it stands, the de facto standard seems to be sentence case for articles and title case for CZ articles. Shall I move them to follow the same standard as articles, e.g. "CZ:Naming_conventions"?

[Warren Schudy]

But that's just it.  I was thinking they'd get an error message/not find what they were looking for, so they'd have to try again and they'd know better next time.

You should get a job as a software salesman - it's not a bug but a feature!

Well, no, because the system doesn't differentiate between [[Polish]] and [[polish]], correct me if I'm wrong.

The first letter isn't case sensitive, but later letters are.

It seems clear to me that pages should remember their case for display purposes, but article titles should be compared for equality in a case-insensitive manner. So the system would remember to display "How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles" with that capitalization, but if a user linked to that with some other case, it would automatically redirect. Surely no one in their right mind would create two pages that are disambiguated only by case, so why not do this? My only explanation for this behavior is that it must be somewhat painful to implement with the current source code so no one has bothered.

(Post edited shortly after submission.)

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

THe CZ rules for capitalisation are the same as anywhere: only if it is a real name and it is essential [e.g. NASA or Republic of Moldova, etc]

In my opinion, the capitalisation of "Subpages" is wrong and should be removed.

About two-thirds of the articles linked from CZ:Home use title case (e.g. http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Editorial_Council_How_to_Make_a_Resolution). Even http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Naming_Conventions has a capital "C"! As it stands, the de facto standard seems to be sentence case for articles and title case for CZ articles. Shall I move them to follow the same standard as articles, e.g. "CZ:Naming_conventions"?

I suppose Larry (or someone) has done it systematically for all CZ articles. The answer is that either the page on Naming conventions has to be amended to reflect a different style for internal CZ pages, or they should all be changed to be consistent with normal articles. You might ask Larry the question...

[Derek Harkness]

I can see the complaint for the sorts of CZ pages Warren is mentioning, but doesn't it make sense to have case sensitivity for article names, so users will sort of have a clue about whether something is a proper noun or not?

Then again, the first letter of the word is not case sensitive, so...I don't know what I'm talking about! 

There is a difference between how we display page names and the process by which we join the user to the page he is looking for. The display should of course follow best practice and be consistent. However, the search and interlinking should be case insensitive. Let me demonstrate by example:

If a user keys in [[Joe Blogs]] or [[joe blogs]] or [[JOE BLOGS]] (yes someone people still abuse the caps lock button.) then they should be served the page Joe Blogs with the correct caps displayed on the article.

Another way to put it. We should enforce correct capitalisation on Editors and Authors but we should not enforce our capitalisation on the unsuspecting reader since they could not possibly know what our system is.

[Joe Quick]

I can see the complaint for the sorts of CZ pages Warren is mentioning, but doesn't it make sense to have case sensitivity for article names, so users will sort of have a clue about whether something is a proper noun or not?

Then again, the first letter of the word is not case sensitive, so...I don't know what I'm talking about! 

There is a difference between how we display page names and the process by which we join the user to the page he is looking for. The display should of course follow best practice and be consistent. However, the search and interlinking should be case insensitive. Let me demonstrate by example:

If a user keys in [[Joe Blogs]] or [[joe blogs]] or [[JOE BLOGS]] (yes someone people still abuse the caps lock button.) then they should be served the page Joe Blogs with the correct caps displayed on the article.

Another way to put it. We should enforce correct capitalisation on Editors and Authors but we should not enforce our capitalisation on the unsuspecting reader since they could not possibly know what our system is.

Agree 212.5%

[Paul Wormer]

The physics list of core articles is capitalized against the rules. I once started an article by clicking an entry in the list and started with an error right away.  I noticed this rather late, so  I had to move the article to a title with appropriate lowercases.

There  is also the great danger that articles are written twice. A couple of days ago I noticed the red Boltzmann Constant in the core list and for a second I considered starting it. Fortunately I remembered my earlier experience, and indeed when I added Boltzmann constant to the link it became blue. 

I did not prepare that physics core list  (although right now I seem to be the only active CZ-person with an interest in physics) and so far I did not feel responsible for it, but now that I'm writing this post it occurs to me that it is probably up to me to change it. Or is there anybody else in the room who wants to contribute?

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I did not prepare that physics core list  (although right now I seem to be the only active CZ-person with an interest in physics) and so far I did not feel responsible for it, but now that I'm writing this post it occurs to me that it is probably up to me to change it.

Be Bold. 

[Larry Sanger]

Just a quick reply--I don't feel strongly about whether CZ: namespace pages should be capitalized or not.  I don't think that the rules for capitalization of encyclopedia articles should constrain how we capitalize other pages, however; I don't see why they would.  I guess I chose upper case simply because it made the policy pages seem more Official.  It's not the neutrality policy, it's the Neutrality Policy!

But, I don't care.  If Warren wants to make the change, and no one else objects, I think he should.  On the other hand, maybe he should spend his CZ time in some more gainful pursuit, like sprucing up the content of the pages themselves...

[Warren Schudy]

I guess Larry's right that this isn't a problem worth fixing. I added an aside to http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Naming_Conventions#Typographical_and_stylistic_rules indicating that most CZ pages are title case.