--- Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote: > Andrew Dunbar wrote:
I seriously don't see how anyone can seriously be opposed to having a dictionary with correct spellings. :/
Now this statement is pure rhetoric. I'm in favour of correct spellings and I'm sure everybody is.
But
there's more than one way to solve a problem and I'd like everybody to think this through and consider all possible ways to fix it before jumping in and making major changes.
You seem to be thinking of this as a much more "major change" than it really is. Again, this is only about removing an arbitrary technological restriction.
Again, spell out the restriction instead of using this fuzzy language.
Sure changing an "Uppercase first letter" option is minor from the point of view of implementing it.
And splitting many many pages which are currently together is a major change. Some of the repurcussions are also major.
I'ts not "only" about flipping this switch, it's about all the long-term side-effect as well.
- Case fold nothing. (Timwi)
Heh, I'll focus on this one if you don't mind ;-)
That's what this one is. We currently case-fold the first letter. This is a major side effect of making it uppercase.
Against 2:
- People are going to add duplicates thinking
their
word is not in the dictionary.
Are you thinking of people adding an article on, say, [[malayalam]] when the correct spelling [[Malayalam]] exists?
Yes. And adding the german for "Kind" on the page for "Kind" because they don't realize it's already on the "Kind" page. Remember there are going to be hundreds or thousands of pages which will look like this after the simple switch is flicked, and people will continue to copy it.
Again, this is irrelevant to the discussion, it has nothing to do with the question at hand.
It has everything to do with it. People currently do type in words without regard to the first letter, sometimes carelessly, sometimes seeing that that's how Wikis currently work.
People can *already* create pages at wrong spellings ([[Malaialam]], say).
Surely you can't be suggesting that these are the same problem. You don't have to be a bad speller to overlook the change in handling the case of the first letter.
Yes, the switch would increase the potential, but adding redirects in the right places reduces it again, and so this is not an argument against.
Wiktionary doesn't work as well with redirects as Wikipedia. You can't put a redirect on "kind" to "Kind" because "kind" is also a word. This is a very common situation on Wiktionary.
- Quite a large number of entries will have to be changed back to uppercase after the script is
run.
Have you read my original mail? Assuming your beloved current workaround
The more you use this POV language, the closer I get to becoming annoyed. Do you mean your original mail in this current discussion or in the old discussion which you feel already settled everything? I have read what others have written. If they have the wrong impression as well as me, you probably haven't been clear enough. Can you provide a link to the mailing list archive or simply repeat the relevant part in this thread please?
actually works, *no* pages will need to be "changed back". Some might still need to be moved to lower-case, but only very few. You don't have to participate in this clean-up process if you don't want to.
If your script is dependent on my "beloved" workaround, then perhaps you are assuming that the workaround has been implemented on all pages, which it certainly has not.
- Words which differ only by case of any letter
must
be on separate pages. (proper nouns vs. common
nouns
vs. abbrevations & acronyms)
This is one major thing where you're going wrong. Why "must" they? They don't.
Because they have different case. This is exactly what your change means.
Unless you mean that we could continue to put "bill" and "Bill" on the same page. Obviously we could but it would be absurd to put "Bill" on a page other than the one titled "Bill" on a system which supported it. Or are you going to suggest putting redirects on all these pages?
Because the name of the article is currently always uppercase, all the headings generated by the Wiki software are in uppercase - which is very unprofessional for a dictionary.
Bingo.
So we agree on at least some of the symptoms, but not on the cure. Or at least not on how hastily a cure should be administered...
I've read some peoples' opinions that they would prefer one entry per page but this is never going
to
work because of homographs anyway.
One could always have article titles like [[kind (English)]] vs. [[kind (Dutch)]]. This makes linking extremely cumbersome, though.
Exactly. Hopefully this would never happen.
Hippietrail.
Timwi
Wiktionary-l mailing list Wiktionary-l@Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - sooooo many all-new ways to express yourself http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com