Proposal:Decapitalize article names

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Summary

In Wiktionary, article names are not capital by default. This is because most words are capitalized only when required by (somewhat variable) rules. In Wikipedia and some other Wiki projects, however, all article names must start with a capital letter. Some words that are required to start with a small letter are therefore mis-entered in Wikipedia's URL system, and editors often wrongly capitalize the first word in the title when writing the content of the article.

There is currently an option {{Lower case title}} that forces the first letter to be decapitalized, but this is used only in rare cases such as iPhone where the first letter must be small.

Proposal

In Wikipedia and all other projects where the articles must begin with a capital letter, automatically decapitalize all articles. Editors will gradually recapitalize where necessary.


Motivation

Some words are supposed to start with a small letter. Editors frequently copy the capitalization in the article name resulting in articles with improper capitalization.


Key Questions

This proposal is primarily aimed at English Wikipedia, but probably applies to some other languages/projects as well.


Potential Costs

This will cause a period of chaos as editors recapitalize article names that require capitalization, but the final product will be superior.


References

Community Discussion

Do you have a thought about this proposal? A suggestion? Discuss this proposal by going to Proposal talk:Decapitalize article names.

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