9

From their page about username policies:

Wikipedia usernames are case sensitive, but the first letter is always automatically capitalized.

But I've also noticed that, even though I always login by typing "matt" (not actually my username, of course), I can still login, even though they change it to "Matt". So is it really case-sensitive? And why do they do this? I've never seen any other site capitalize the first letter of a username before.

3 Answers 3

8

Usernames are a subset of page titles, and must follow the rules for page titles. Mediawiki, the software behind Wikipedia, treats by default all article titles as beginning with a capital letter (unless the first character is not a letter).

Note that $wgCapitalLinks can be used to disable auto-capitalization for page titles. According to this discussion, usernames are always capitalized for compatibility though. (might have changed since then?)

1
  • 2
    You're mostly right, but this is just the default. For example Woktionary page names are fully case sensitive.
    – svick
    Dec 8, 2013 at 3:20
5

It's a technical restriction with the MediaWiki software. All page names and page titles must begin with a capital letter.

Technical restrictions and limitations

[...] These limitations and restrictions include:

  • A pagename can not begin with a lowercase letter (in any alphabet).

Since user pages are subsets of normal pages, they are also affected by this limitation.

When you see a page title, or user page title, with a lower case first letter, they are using the {{lowercase title}} template to force the style.

1

The first letter of the username on Wikipedia is not case sensitive and is forced upper-case. However, including the code

{{lowercase title}}

at the top of your user page and talk page displays your username in lowercase.

Also remember to customize your signature on Special:Preferences, for example:

[[User:Justinacolmena|justinacolmena]] ([[User talk:Justinacolmena|talk]])

so that your username is also displayed in all lowercase.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.