User:Paulmcdonald/Mc-Mac Opposition Essay

In the guideline Categorization of people is a section titled Other Exceptions. At the time of this writing, one of the bullet points in the section states:


 * For a surname which begins with Mc, the category sort key should always be typed as Mac with the remainder of the name in lowercase—for example, Macdonald, Maccluskey or Macmorris—regardless of how the surname is actually spelled.

The following are a list of reasons NOT to follow this guideline:
 * 1) It is not correct.  If someone's name is "McDonald" and not "MacDonald" then all references should reflect the truth
 * 2) It is confusing different people of different names should not be sorted together.
 * 3) It may violate WP:BLP One person may be an "upstanding person" and another may be a serial killer--but because they have similar last names, Wikipedians will be passing judgement grouping them together and can lead to confusion among readers and editors.
 * 4) Disambiguation solves WP:DISAMBIG has been long-standing in Wikipedia and solves any confusion easily without resorting to posting incorrect spelling.
 * 5) Inconsistent "McDonald" and "MacDonald" are considered identical, but other members of Clan Donald (such as "O'Donald", "Donaldson", etc.) are not.

Conclusion The section of the guideline WP:MCSTJR calling for grouping Mc and Mac should be ignored and removed from the guideline.

Additional note
The primary author of this essay is a "Mc" -- just thought you'd like to know!