Graham Linehan cannot be a Wikipedian

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CrowsNest
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Graham Linehan cannot be a Wikipedian

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Oct 22, 2018 6:57 pm

For those who don't know, Graham Linehan is a famous sitcom writer. He's unashamedly left wing, readily signing onto the idea that "reality has a left wing bias" and that the mainstream right wing party in the UK is the "nasty party". As our political bias thread demonstrates, this would make him a perfect fit for Wikipedia. If he was dumb enough to think of Wikipedia editing as a worthwhile activity, which I'm sure he does not (because he's clearly smart).

He's also a transgender rights activist, who recently lent his considerable social media presence to the campaign against changing UK gender recognition law to allow self-identification, on the grounds that this would be abused by predatory men. This led to a Twitter spat with another trans activist, which led to Lineman retweeting a tweet which contained her original pronoun and old name and photo. For which he was warned by police for harassment. Of course the Wikipedia write up of it is hopeless, but you get a good summary from the BBC, of course....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45777689

It was a minor story over here in Britain, but it is amusing, because this now means that Linehan cannot be a Wikipedia editor. Officially, he would be regarded as incompetent. Why? Because recently, the Wikipedia community saw fit to declare they see nothing wrong with one of their most powerful Administrators holding this view (among many others).......
If you believe that trans people should be identified by deadnames or their assigned-at-birth gender, regardless of current transition status, please leave now, Wikipedia has no time for that shit
Linehan is, according to Wikipedia doctrine, now a transphobe. People are lining up on the talk page of his Wikipedia biography to accuse him of transphobia and generally smear him, the point of the exercise seemingly to merely find the source that supports it, so it can be added. As anyone can see from the BBC link, this would at best be a chronically biased way to refer to this man's politics, undoubtedly the view of activists of the opposing view, not the theoretical unbiased observer.

If you want a clearer idea of how Wikipedia views transphobes, you can find this message in the edit history of the page which talks of deadnamers.......
Transphobes to the wall
If the Wikipedia Administrators believed that message was "grossly offensive/innappropriate", per policy I would no longer be able to see it some eighteen hours after it was posted on that highly watched page, because it would have been suppressed.

To reiterate, I see absolutely no reason why Linehan would waste his time and intellect editing Wikipedia. But it's not a great look that their unashamed alliance with the progressive left has now excluded even Linehan from their idea of who is Wikipedia people.

THIS GUY!

https://mobile.twitter.com/Glinner/stat ... 0156089344

This is the real Wikipedia. Nutters, one and all.

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Re: Graham Linehan cannot be a Wikipedian

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:04 pm

Of course, there are those who might say Linehan cannot be a Wikipedian precisely because he is an activist, and activists of any stripe are not likely to be suitable as Wikipedia editors. And I would agree, with the caveat that their voices should at least be heard in the editing process. But the point is rather moot, this being a classic example of how Wikipedia works in theory, but not in practice. Wikipedia is to activists, what honey is to bees, and since Wikipedia has no effective system of governance, you are ten times as likely to meet a Wikipedia Administrator who is an activist of some stripe, than one who makes it their life's work to keep them under some semblance of control.

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