In MySQL, which collation should I choose?

Collation is not actually the default, it's giving you the default collation as the first choice.

What we're talking about is collation, or the character set that your database will use in its text types. Your default option is usually based on regional settings, so unless you're planning to globalize, that's usually peachy-keen.

Collations also determine case and accent sensitivity (i.e.-Is 'Big' == 'big'? With a CI, it is). Check out the MySQL list for all the options.

Collation tells database how to perform string matching and sorting. It should match your charset.

If you use UTF-8, the collation should be utf8_general_ci. This will sort in unicode order (case-insensitive) and it works for most languages. It also preserves ASCII and Latin1 order.

The default collation is normally latin1.