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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   23882 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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However, Wikipedia only has one article on Alice Famousperson; it cannot simultaneously adhere to both trans-accepting and trans-rejecting standards. It cannot both include and exclude the fact that, prior to her transition, prior to anyone having heard of her, she was called Bob Nobody.

Just use ordinary standards for name changes.

Many Wiki-notable people both historical and current were changing their names and using pseudonyms during their lives, and Wiki policy deals with it.

For example, Henry McCarty, deadname of William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid appears in his page.

Excepting name changes for gender identity reasons.

Unless a living transgender or non-binary person was notable under a former name, the former name should not appear in any page

Why? Would Billy the Kid suffer less pain and anguish if someone reminded him of his unglamorous Irish origins?

Unless a living transgender or non-binary person was notable under a former name, the former name should not appear in any page

I don't think that that is too unreasonable of a compromise. Some trans advocates object to any mention of the birth name of a trans person even if they were famous under that name before they transitioned; they are just as welcome to make their own fork.

(It is my understanding that the reason so many trans individuals have such a desire to hide their deadnames is because some anti-trans persons, who have no compunction about respecting name changes in other circumstances, nevertheless insist on referring to Alice as 'Alan' as a subtle way of, every time they refer to her, calling her delusional or worse.

By way of analogy, imagine instead that Alice is a devout Catholic and Bob is a devout Protestant. Each sincerely believes that the other is factually wrong about fundamental aspects of reality, but if Alice doesn't want to talk about it, it is not considered polite for Bob to keep bringing it up when Alice has asked him to stop, and if Bob continuously referred to Alice as 'Alice, who worships a long-dead Babylonian queen, and is thus on a direct route to hell,' I think most people would agree that he was out of line.

The same principle applies if Alice is a trans woman and Bob is an adherent of the ideology which calls Alice a 'trans-identified male'; a lot of people outside the tribal cores would look askance at Bob if, every time he mentioned Alice, he called her 'Alice the delusional man in a dress who is probably some kind of pervert'; repeatedly calling her 'Alan' is, from the perspective of trans individuals and their sympathisers, an attempt to do the same thing with a minimal fig leaf of plausible deniability.)

It is my understanding that the reason so many trans individuals have such a desire to hide their deadnames is because some anti-trans persons, who have no compunction about respecting name changes in other circumstances, nevertheless insist on referring to Alice as 'Alan' as a subtle way of, every time they refer to her, calling her delusional or worse.

But "this information could be used to harm someone" is not accepted by Wikipedia in most other contexts as a reason to not include information.

if Alice doesn't want to talk about it, it is not considered polite for Bob to keep bringing it up when Alice has asked him to stop, and if Bob continuously referred to Alice as 'Alice, who worships a long-dead Babylonian queen, and is thus on a direct route to hell,' I think most people would agree that he was out of line.

It is possible to talk normally about Alice without mentioning Alice's religion at all. It's not possible to talk normally about Alice without mentioning Alice's name.

If a trans person was not notable before transitioning, their former name is of no interest to the public and there is no reason to include it, and a good reason – namely, courtesy – to exclude it. Note that the fact that they are trans is allowed to be included, since that is clearly of interest to the public.

In fact, Wikipedia is pretty consistent on this. The same courtesy is extended to, for example, the streamer Jerma985 whose real name you won't find anywhere in his article. It formerly contained a fake real name, which he presents as his real name, presumably to protect his privacy, but even that has now been removed.

This isn't the only instance of Wikipedia being courteous with respect to non-notable people or things people did before they became notable. One Wikipedia policy says (emphasis mine):

Someone who does not wish to be the subject of a [biography article] may nominate it for deletion (...) Unless the subject clearly passes the general notability guideline (GNG) or is a current or former elected or appointed official, editors should seriously consider honoring such requests. Factors weighing in favor of deletion include a problematic article history, real-world harms identified by the subject, and the subject being only minimally notable or notable for only one event.

If a trans person was not notable before transitioning, their former name is of no interest to the public and there is no reason to include it, and a good reason – namely, courtesy – to exclude it.

This is only true if there was a legal name change exactly concurrent with the transition, and everybody that noted the person did so under the new name.

See e.g. the page on the Zizians. That Ziz's birth name is Jack is notable because Ziz was arrested before legally changing name (I legit don't know if there has even been a legal name change to Wikipedia's insistent "Ziz LaSota") and as such "Jack LaSota" is the name on the court documents and in much of the press. But "Jack" only appears in the citations, with no explanation.

I've looked at the relevant policies and I see nothing that would preclude "Jack" from being included, especially if it is widely used in the press. If it's still her legal name, it's obviously acceptable, and if it was her legal name at the time of the arrest, a footnote a la Elliot Page would surely be acceptable. Have you tried adding it, ideally accompanied by an explanation on talk that cites this bit?

Former names under which a living person was notable should be introduced with "born" or "formerly" in the lead sentence of their main biographical article. Name and gender matters should be explained at first appearance in that article, without overemphasis. In articles on works or other activities of such a person, use their current name by default, and give another name associated with that context in a parenthetical or footnote, only if they were notable under that name.

I can help with the markup if you want. (I'm not going to do it myself because I don't want to link my Wikipedia account to this account.)

Yeah, I figured that you saying that was a possibility.

This is kind of awkward to point out right now, but... I already quit Wikipedia. I thought the problems could be fixed bottom-up. Maybe they could have. I'm now convinced that they can't, not since No Nazis* and the lab-leak purge - attempting to fix them is now considered evidence of being an enemy infiltrator. So I'm on strike as a WP editor, for years now, because "no longer lend our strength to that which we wish to be free from" i.e. the admin/crat class and to an extent WMF.

*If you want to be bitterly disappointed, look at the history of the talk page on that essay. I thought I had it bad when my objections got hatted as NOTFORUM; afterward, they just straight-up deleted all the dissent against it.

Well, then I guess we'll never know.

I found your post on Wikipedia talk:No Nazis, and I don't see why it was hatted when the surrounding threads were allowed. In case you were suggesting your post was deleted, it wasn't; it was archived, as is standard practice on talk pages with lots of activity.

Regarding the lab leak hypothesis, the consensus in the mainstream media early on during the pandemic was that it was baseless, so that's what Wikipedia reported. Wikipedia isn't really set up to deal with instances of the mainstream media lying. The entire thing is based on the assumption that they are reliable. See: Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth. (Not that they I'm saying they were lying – I don't have a strong opinion on the lab leak hypothesis.) Your only hope is that eventually the media will correct the record. Sometimes the principle fails and the media do lie, but what's the alternative? Trusting random Substacks? If you're going to suggest evaluating the evidence yourself, it's worth noting that the publicly available evidence for the lab leak hypothesis is largely circumstantial or speculative, like the alleged implausibility of this happening right to the next virology institute.

I've looked at the relevant policies and I see nothing that would preclude "Jack" from being included, especially if it is widely used in the press. If it's still her legal name, it's obviously acceptable, and if it was her legal name at the time of the arrest, a footnote a la Elliot Page would surely be acceptable. Have you tried adding it, ideally accompanied by an explanation on talk that cites this bit?

Well, then I guess we'll never know.

I changed my mind. Here.

(The former discussion was here; the edit removing it was here.)

I didn't technically do what you asked me to do, for reasons I explained in that post, but would you still consider this an adequate test?

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