[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #13971: "Wordpress" being turned into CamelCase "WordPress" breaks URLs

[WordPress Trac]

#13971: "Wordpress" being turned into CamelCase "WordPress" breaks URLs
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 Reporter:  tfotherby     |        Owner:          
     Type:  defect (bug)  |       Status:  reopened
 Priority:  lowest        |    Milestone:          
Component:  Formatting    |      Version:  3.0     
 Severity:  major         |   Resolution:          
 Keywords:                |  
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Comment(by caesarsgrunt):

 I am absolutely outraged by the whole way in which this has been handled
 by the core devs. In my opinion, this incident highlights the increasing
 contempt and disdain shown by the WordPress core devs towards both the
 users of the software and the non-core developers who pour their time into
 the project.

 In the first place, it is clearly not the business of Automattic, or of
 the WordPress core devs, or of anyone else, to 'correct' my spelling
 ''without my permission''. If I write something, '''you have no right
 whatsoever to change it''' unless I ask you to. Are you going to start
 forcibly auto-correcting other words now? Automatically 'fixing' my
 grammar? Where do you draw the line? If I write 'Macbook' should TextEdit
 forcibly fix it? Should Mozilla forcibly prevent me from incorrectly
 writing 'FireFox' in any textarea? Should Word forcibly prevent MS-haters
 from from writing 'Micro$oft Windoze'? Surely any reasonable person can
 see that this censorship is not right.

 (I might add at this point that it has often annoyed me that the word
 WordPress is not supported by the built-in spellchecker, and that the
 right way to guide people towards correct spelling of the name is to add
 it to the spellchecker and treat it like any other misspelled word.
 Highlight it, and let me decide to fix it or not.)

 Now, let us give the devs responsible for this abomination the benefit of
 the doubt, and assume that they were naïve enough not to think of the
 creepiness factor, and that the obvious bugs which this blind global find-
 and-replace could create didn't occur to them either. Even so, once these
 factors have been made apparent, and so many users have voiced their
 concerns, it is '''utterly unforgivable''' that these concerns and brushed
 aside in this we-know-best-and-you-don't-matter way.

 How could any sane person think that forcing the correct spelling of one
 name is important enough to (a) slow down my site, even my a few
 microseconds (b) introduce bugs, even rare bugs, or even the faintest
 possibility of bugs and (c) trample on my freedom of speech?

 (An interesting case study - supposing I wanted to write about how to
 spell WordPress on my blog. Impossible, right? Just a simple example of
 the type of thing you're preventing people from writing.)

 Oh, yes, you say you're not forcing this on anyone, I can disable it with
 a plugin, etc. Right. So, to disable this crap, I have to actually install
 a plugin. Slow my server down more. Run more code by a potentially
 untrustworthy author. Increase my maintenance overheads. Etcetera. There
 is no way to justify requiring a plugin to fix a bug like this. Besides,
 that's not the point, this just shouldn't exist in the first place.

 I still love the WordPress software. I used to love Automattic. But as
 time goes on, the leadership becomes more and more dictatorial. Every day
 the core team becomes more arrogant, more pigheaded, more self-important.
 Every day, the user becomes less important to the core team. And every
 day, you become more like the major corporations who don't care about
 their users. It's a sad transition to watch, but it seems to be too late
 to do anything about it. The situation has reached this point: if there
 were a viable fork, I'd switch today. I know a lot of others would too.

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/13971#comment:100>
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