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Why modern Wikis are abandoning CamelCase

created by lenz

(idea) by lenz (2.7 y) (print)   ?   I like it! Fri Oct 10 2003 at 9:10:07

Upper CamelCase (or CamelCaps as it's sometimes called) was the required way to create an internal link in the original wiki by Ward Cunninghman and in many of its current clones. This makes linking other nodes absolutely trivial: any word starting with a capital letter and containing at least one other capital letter is considered to be a link and treated accordingly.

This very easy convention has been rethought in many wiki implementations because:

  • it requires hacks of some sort to give nodes a single word name (i.e. you cannot simply name a node "Fish"; you'll have to name it "FisH" in order to be linked)
  • many-word node names get to be rather unreadable (imagine FloridaStatuteRegardingPublicNudity) and so people tend to use shorter names - that's OK in a small system but would be a problem in a system with hundred of thousands of nodes
Many current wiki implementations (most notably Wikipedia and OW2) are therefore moving away from CamelCase and using a form of internal linking more similar to everything2's square brackets (that's double square brackets in the case of Wikipedia); this gives far greater freedom in choosing node names of arbitrary length and with white spaces and punctuation marks in them.

printable version
chaos

CamelCase Wiki Node your Library D-Day Dodgers
Wikipedia StudlyCaps Florida statute regarding public nudity digital library
1959 Los Angeles Dodgers The guy who may as well already be dead and therefore doesn't care about the consequences of his actions and is able to move with perfect freedom for the remainder of what will likely be a tragically short life square brackets Why Johnny Can't Write
MediaWiki Los Angeles Dodgers Brooklyn Dodgers 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers
Dodger Dog Dodger Stadium link punctuation marks
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