The Confluence installation and upgrade documentation do not explicitly say what the correct collation should be for a confluence database in MySQL, and there is conflicting information on subsequently linked pages.

This page, the one which tells you how to create an new database for Confluence with a MySQL GUI, does not specify what database engine, character encoding, or collation one should use when creating a MySQL database.
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Database+Setup+For+mySQL

This page, which is specifically about known issues in MySQL, mentions that if you're having errors on import from Hibernate, then you should use utf8_bin (which is a binary string comparison and therefore case sensitive)
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Known+Issues+for+MySQL

This page, which is about character encodings in MySQL, shows one how to create an empty Confluence database using the mysql command line client and uses the utf8_general_ci encoding (which is a case insensitive comparison).
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Configuring+Database+Character+Encoding

This page, from an external source, helped me quickly understand the difference between utf8_general_ci and utf8_bin
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/archive/index.php/t-10344217.html

I assume using utf8_bin is correct, but it would help greatly if you could clarify what is correct and update the documentation accordingly. Thanks!