Case-sensitive resource identifiers such as video IDs are much harder to pronounce, memorize and to write/type off.
Of course, they add more possible combinations per character in the video ID, but why not just add one case-insensitive character?
I'd rather have 7 case-insensitive characters than 6 case-sensitive characters.
Also, just a few characters offer a semi-eternally abundant number of combinations.
Just eight characters of 0-9 and Aa-Zz (insensitive) offer 36⁸=2.821.109.907.456 combinations. YouTube does not nearly have this many videos.
Also, an URL collision should not ever happen.
for instance thankfully uses case-insensitive video IDs. Unlisted videos deliberately use longer IDs (18 Base36 characters after fixed initial letter “k”), for being unguessable.
BitChute is also case-insensitive (although their URLs have both uppercase and lowercase characters, altering the letters still leads to the same video instead of 404). But their ID length of 12 letters (last time I checked) is a bit exaggerated.
Also,
### Case-sensitive resource identifiers such as video IDs are much harder to pronounce, memorize and to write/type off.
Of course, they add more possible combinations per character in the video ID, but why not just add one case-insensitive character?
I'd rather have 7 case-insensitive characters than 6 case-sensitive characters.
Also, just a few characters offer a semi-eternally abundant number of combinations.
Just eight characters of 0-9 and Aa-Zz (insensitive) offer 36⁸=2.821.109.907.456 combinations. YouTube does not nearly have this many videos.
Also, an URL collision should not ever happen.
----
[Dailymotion](http://dai.ly/x3Sexy8/) for instance thankfully uses **case-insensitive** video IDs. Unlisted videos deliberately use longer IDs (18 Base36 characters after fixed initial letter *“k”*), for being unguessable.
BitChute is also case-insensitive (although their URLs have both uppercase and lowercase characters, altering the letters still leads to the same video instead of 404). But their ID length of 12 letters (last time I checked) is a bit exaggerated.
Also, [dashes in ID strings are no smart idea.](http://archive.is/JndnB)
(post is archived)