There's a tricky ethical question here: if someone changed their name and ask for not being called their former name ever again, you can either ignore their will, which is rude, or chose to follow it but then you are doing a disservice to the public's understanding.
The secind option used to be the norm on wikipedia even 15 years ago, but Anti-trans activists using dead-naming as a slur against trans people triggered the shift from the second option to the first.
As usual assholes are why we can't have nice things.
> There's a tricky ethical question here: if someone changed their name and ask for not being called their former name ever again, you can either ignore their will, which is rude, or chose to follow it but then you are doing a disservice to the public's understanding.
Calling somebody with his former name and mentioning his former name in a Wikipedia page are two completely different things. Using the fact that the former is seen as rude by some to avoid the second is in my opinion just an example of the level of extremism of the pro-trans activists.
But if in fact it made sense, shouldn't we completely remove any reference of the previous name also from the pages of people like Yusuf Islam [1] or Muhammad Ali [2] ?
Many married women are known under their husbands last names, from Maria Salomea Skłodowska, Betty Marion Ludden to Melanija Knavs. Some celebrities even use stage names, such as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.
Many of these women are not really known under those names, but somehow, they're still listed on their wiki pages.
Most of the married women on Wikipedia didn't get the choice of keeping their own name, so we cannot really compare it to someone who changed their name.
Same for stage names, people don't use stage name because they want to escape their former name, they use stage names because it's cool.
And when people use a pseudonym and want to keep their real identity secret for personal reasons, their name doesn't appear on Wikipedia, and nobody is ever complaining about that! It's as if people were obsessed by trans people in particular…
But it's not a secret, the name has been mentioned in mainsteam media on multiple occasions, and even here, in this thread on HN.
> It's as if people were obsessed by trans people in particular…
Yet, they keep every other name on wikipedia, especially if we're talking about peoples legal names, except if the person was trans for some reason. Wikipedia is the one making exceptions here for one group in particular.
Nope. When it's an unknown transgender person who died for being themselves, perhaps it's stupid to put the older name there. World renown Ellen Page is deadnamed right there at the top. Because they were known for decades worldwide under that name.
The goal of an encyclopedia is to have a high signal/noise ratio. If you put literally everything on a subject on its page there, it becomes fundamentally useless.
And in that particular case, the only people you satisfy by putting the info there, are the bullies who caused their suicide.
> But it's not a secret, the name has been mentioned in mainsteam media on multiple occasions, and even here, in this thread on HN.
Most pseudonyms aren't real secrets either, plenty of people knew the real name or face of people posting under a pseudonym but that doesn't make it OK to post it on Wikipedia.
> Yet, they keep every other name on wikipedia, especially if we're talking about peoples legal names
Ah yes, “every other” except for the ones they don't. We've already talked about people with pseudonyms right here!
> Wikipedia is the one making exceptions here for one group in particular.
One group that happened to be harassed (and, unfortunately often, assaulted) for having changed their name in the first place, hence the “exception”: the group is exceptionally vulnerable.
In the Universe, yes. In the closed system of Wikipedia, no, it's a well defined term with clearly established criteria, tested over the years on thousands of Talk pages on controversial pages, of how to achieve consensus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
> Calling somebody with his former name and mentioning his former name in a Wikipedia page are two completely different things
Except when people keep vandalizing Wikipedia renaming people there with their dead name. And yes it happens over and over and over again.
Because the most active extremists on the topic are by far the anti-trans crowd. (And it's not even close, there are trans people assaulted every week, sometimes going as far as murder this is extremism).
And again, Wikipedia keeps mentioning the former name when it's necessary (look for Bradley Manning on Wikipedia, the page redirects to Chelsea Manning but the old name is state because it's important).
According to MOS:GENDERID [1], a person's former name can be used when they were notable under that name. You're trying to make it out as if there's some nefarious double standard when there's not, editors just want Wikipedia to be clear and encyclopedic.
It's incredible that in a discussion about brutal violence against a child, the child victim is being painted as the "extremist"!
The use of the masculine pronoun here when we're referring to someone who transitioned from male kind of gives away that you're probably less concerned with searchability and preservation of history, and more concerned with promoting a transphobic agenda. I suppose it's possible you were using it as a generic pronoun, but in that case I would have expected "they." Am I wrong?
If someone uses "he" word it does not means antitransism. My point is that trying to euphemize "he" word is anistraightism. And I am even not an antigayist.
If your words can be reversed so easily it means that you have no idea but a pure propaganda instead. Famous anti-white-straight-man-ism seems as a dangerous thing to me, so I oppose this unfamous Davos-protracted diversity woke ideology.
We're talking about the male pronoun used in the context of a discussion of a trans woman, not some kind of men's rights thing. Did you think I was arguing that saying "he" is bad because all men are evil or something? That's how faithless your interpretation of the arguments of non transphobic people has become?
> Woke is essentually anti-nationalism and anti-white-suppremacism.
Then, depending on your definition of nationalism, it sounds like it's an unimpeachably good thing to be Woke, so I'm super confused where you're coming from here.
To be clear: I was saying that the OP was purposefully misgendering Nex Benedict in order express their transphobia.
Wake up, please. Noone else except of white suprematist will support your protransism, think about it. Analyze what nations typically are against it and who will protect you in the special place where you have written that comment when the yellows will come. It is OK to be transgender, but only while you are protected. White suprematists may protect transgender values but they need a freedom to be free from that kind of euphemization you are spreading.
I personally prefer not having other people decide for me which facts are and aren't relevant, I think that is unhelpful and potentially dangerous (some people think what happened in Tienanmen Square isn't relevant to the general population, do you agree?).
For a transgender person, I may have known them before they transitioned for example and may not necessarily be familiar with their new name, that's a reason off the top of my head that it would be relevant to me but not necessarily you.
> I personally prefer not having other people decide for me which facts are and aren't relevant,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't any presentation of information prepared by humans, information wherein someone else decided which facts were relevant? The only way around this I can think of is personal performance of all experimentation in human history from first principles. Unfortunately you will probably need to learn those first principles through reading things written by other humans.
> I personally prefer not having other people decide for me which facts are and aren't relevant
Then don't read an encyclopedia, because the entire raison d'être of that medium is about distilling “broadly useful” facts about the world, with no pretense of exhaustiveness.
Reading any encyclopedia, for that matters. The job of an encyclopedist is literally to distill “generally useful” information, it has never been about being exhaustive.
> I personally prefer not having other people decide for me which facts are and aren't relevant, I think that is unhelpful and potentially dangerous (some people think what happened in Tienanmen Square isn't relevant to the general population, do you agree?).
I couldn't agree more, it's wrong to decide what facts someone else is allowed to know. Please tell me the most embarrassing details of your life?
Perhaps there's nuance and different standards we can apply when talking about individuals, especially individuals who have been bullied or abused? Than the standards we apply when a powerful group is trying to cover up a violent attack against another?
> For a transgender person, I may have known them before they transitioned for example and may not necessarily be familiar with their new name, that's a reason off the top of my head that it would be relevant to me but not necessarily you.
I have a very hard time understanding this example, you're concerned that you, who knew this person but only knew their older name, won't be able to find thier wikipedia page via searching for their old name? Which is true because their old name isn't listed on the page itself?
I don't find that very compelling, did you mean something different?
Its omitting information which seems antithetical to the whole point of Wikipedia. It makes it harder to find other sources of information on someone. it makes it harder to make connections between things you know.
Its really not very different from a Wikipedia article using an author's pseudonym mentioning their real name.
Should all Wikipedia articles on people omit information that the subject of the article does not want mentioned? Even if they find it distressing?
> Its omitting information which seems antithetical to the whole point of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia isn't a database of private information on individuals. On most celebrities pages you won't find their infidelities record either, unless it has some historical relevance.
> Its really not very different from a Wikipedia article using an author's pseudonym mentioning their real name.
In fact, when an author made it publicly clear that they didn't want their real name be known, Wikipedia usually respect their choice (until their real name stops being private information and gets historical relevance).
And somehow anti-trans activists seem to care much less. How surprising, really.
> The secind option used to be the norm on wikipedia even 15 years ago, but Anti-trans activists using dead-naming as a slur against trans people triggered the shift from the second option to the first.
Just to clarify, I think you mistook the order of the first option and the second option? I was confused by this statement
There's no such thing “as neutral account of factual events”, it's a “map and territory” thing, you always have to weight if something is relevant and this is always a subjective exercise.
And then you have to ponder the relevance with whether or not publishing may cause harm.
Let's take an example, unrelated to the topic: why aren't the addresses of stars, or the identification number of billionaires personal jets, listed on Wikipedia? Because it's not relevant, and can be harmful.
And it's the same thing for trans people's name. Most of the time, their birth name is irrelevant and can even be harmful. But sometimes, when it's important, the name will still be there, with the redirection and all, see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
And, by the way, this isn't a Wikipedia thing, this is how press right works! Newspapers get sued all the time for mentioning irrelevant personal information about people, and lose.
Your examples are not equivalent at all. Why do you think the person was bullied? It's additional information that makes the picture clear, which is the purpose of an encyclopedia.
Any information which is relevant to the subject of article and brings clarity should not be censored, ideally.
Also if you could understand what I'm saying, you would realise I'm not asking to put birth names of every trans person with a wikipedia article in their article. Because it's not relevant.
You keep mentioning "harm" but never exactly describe what harm? What more harm can you imagine for a person who committed suicide due to bullying?
It is not known why she committed suicide, as she did not leave a note. Bullying is unlikely to be the full picture. What most accounts of her life omit is the considerable trauma she experienced as a young child: she was repeatedly raped by her father, a crime for which he was arrested and convicted.
The Wikipedia article skims over this, instead focusing on the trans and bullying aspects. This will have been a deliberate editorial choice as well.
Thanks for more context. Yeah the article seems very neutered (I think it's fair to say lying by omission, especially to me who just learn about the incident through this thread/this article). I think that's the whole argument. Wikipedia is not news and you cannot get first hand full context picture from it.
Instead, like everything else, it's another opinionated aggregator of information.
Because they weren't behaving as their surrounding wanted them to. The reason was given in the article. You don't need to know the birth certificate name of that kid to talk about that.
In fact, the very people asking the most loudly for using this name are the crowd that bullied them alive.
I got some additional context from another reply. Your replies are vague and don't clear things for me. Just like the article.
In your earlier reply you said relevancy of something was subjective. No. Inference of facts from given information by each person may be subjective. But the information itself, must never be influenced by the subjectivity stemming from the information provider.
I get that revealing some information which maybe considered sensitive will be used by awful people. But that doesn't apply here. You cannot withhold information on the pretense that it will be used maliciously. Otherwise it's no different that dystopian stories of catching criminals before they commit crime.
The secind option used to be the norm on wikipedia even 15 years ago, but Anti-trans activists using dead-naming as a slur against trans people triggered the shift from the second option to the first.
As usual assholes are why we can't have nice things.