----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl (CBM)" cbm.wikipedia@gmail.com
On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 12:25 AM, Jay Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
They're not the same page. Wikipedia page titles are case sensitive -- except that the first character is forced to upper case by the engine.
Does that search not return both? Why would we have both?
Like you said, the system is case sensitive. These redirects are created because the software doesn't handle case changes correctly otherwise. For example the following link leads to a "no such page" error because the appropriate redirect does not exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_heights,_Michigan .
Ah; one is a redirect. Sorry; I hadn't actually looked.
It would be possible to code around this, so that the redirects would be simulated if they don't exist, but it hasn't happened. In practice, people like me like to type a title in all lower case, and so we have redirects to make it work.
I seem to remember having been on the wrong end of a protracted version of that exact argument, a couple years ago on this very mailing list. :-)
No, on reflection, it was actually "why aren't redirects handled at HTTP level". Let's not open that one again, though.
Cheers, -- jra