[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] new vote for switching off First Letter Capitalization on en.wiktionary.org

[Gerard Meijssen]

Mark,
It is simple, this posting is about things that will happen on the 
en:wiktionary. It is not an encyclopedia but a dictionary. It is not an 
English dictionary only and it includes words of potentially any 
language. In a dictionary you expect to find words as they should be 
spelled. Having them capitalised is plain wrong. Consequently the 
current methodology of linking from the en:wikipedia to the 
en:wiktionary will break. So work needs to be done to correct this. We 
hope we will be able to do a lot of the work by using bots.

I hope you will be giving us a helping hand in this big undertaking. 
Again this has nothing to do with the capitalisation of articles on the 
en:wikipedia.

Thanks in advance,
    GerardM

Mark Williamson wrote:

>...speaking of which, capitalisation is a problem on Wikipedia.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_languages will give you a page
>different from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Languages or
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_Of_languages or
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIST_OF_LANGUAGES
>
>The arguement against removing capitalisation sensitivity is in my
>opinion a very weak one: the number of cases for which it serves as a
>natural disambiguation is very very small, and even in those cases
>somebody might use capitals or not use capitals and inadvertently end
>up at the wrong article.
>
>I think we need to get rid of case sensitivity once and for all.
>
>Mark
>
>On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 17:27:41 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
><gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Muke Tever wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Who contributes simply takes the words he is "moving" (working on) off
>>>>the list - the admins have enough work with deleting all the re-directs
>>>>(or is there a way to do this automatically) maybe modifying the page
>>>>and writing "to be deleted" instead of the re-direct?
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Why delete the redirects?  You'll break all the old pages on the web
>>>that link
>>>to Wiktionary articles.
>>>
>>>You'll have to think of other wikimedia sites too.  For example
>>>en.wikipedia's
>>>"link to Wiktionary" template currently just uses {{PAGENAME}}, which
>>>will always
>>>be capitalized, because Wikipedia capitalizes all topics it treats.
>>>
>>>
>>>    *Muke!
>>>      
>>>
>>Hoi,
>>You delete the redirects because they are plain wrong. A word that has
>>has both a capitalised version and a non capitalised version will be
>>split into two versions. The usage of wikipedia's link to Wiktionary
>>currently does indeed use PAGENAME, how do you know that it still refers
>>to the correct version of the word ?? You do not ! So it needs to be
>>changed as PAGENAME is not good enough.
>>
>>It is feasible to change the PAGENAME to something else for instance a
>>genuine parameter that is either capitalised or not. I think it would be
>>feasible to have a bot check the occrurence of the old template and
>>change it for a capitalised or an  uncapitalised REAL parameter. So
>>practically all the instances of the current template need to be changed
>>anyway.
>>
>>The decision of the capitalisation on en:wiktionary has been made, now
>>it is necessary to plan a good conversion plan. It will hurt and it will
>>be a lot of work. Extra painfull is the fact that the en:wiktionary did
>>not agree to change the first time round because MANY new words have
>>been added in the mean time. I think it is better to suffer a bit and do
>>a good job than to do an incomplete job and not remove the pain.
>>
>>One other reason why you want to change the current wiktionary content
>>is because you will not add redirects for all the new words that will be
>>added in the future.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>    GerardM
>>