Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

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Kumioko
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Re: Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

Post by Kumioko » Mon Mar 26, 2018 3:10 am

For what its worth I recognize all those names and they have all admitted it publicly so I don't think anyone has been outed yet. I also personally don't really care what a persons preference is, but obviously that has an impact on what their political and social views are and how that might effect the outcome of content on Wikipedia.

According to this, Category:Transgender Wikipedians, there at least 168 people who openly claim to be transgender. Another 186 or so claim to reject the gender label here: Category:Wikipedians who reject a sexual preference label.

Both those cats are missing some who have openly admitted, but it gives some idea.

I'm also going to go on a limb here and assume that at least some of the 764 folks in Category:Gay Wikipedians, the 460 in Category:Bisexual Wikipedians and the 140 in Category:Lesbian Wikipedians are probably transgender as well, or at least lean in that direction.
#BbbGate

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Re: Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Mar 28, 2018 8:22 am

The End wrote:Quite a few like Sceptre, Fran Rogers (formerly Krimpet), and Tristessa de St Ange (formerly NicholasTurnbull) have previously identified as one gender and later changed it without fanfare or drama. I'm glad they did that instead of starting a new account or hiding it. They show the world has changed for the better. It could still be a lot better, of course.

Also, I owe Fran two favors for blocking the crap out of a pedophile editor years ago and beating the common sense into a nutty editor (Alarics) I railed against on the old WR. She smited them mightily.

I would have put Fran on that list but she's actually somewhat reasonable most of the time.....I still think Jokestress is the "gold standard" for a TG Wikipedian abusing Wikipedia to 'make a point" about people she didn't like. And now she's becoming one of Boing Boing's top bloggers....just can't live without a captive audience.

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Re: Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

Post by suckadmin » Mon Apr 02, 2018 11:43 am

Mutineer wrote:Humans have chromosomes. Females are XX, males are XY. It'll be the year 3000 before anybody can change that.


Well there are certainly variations on this .. not everyone is born XX or XY or to be more precise 45X or 45Y.

According to the World Health Organization "Research suggests, however, that in a few births per thousand some individuals will be born with a single sex chromosome (45X or 45Y) (sex monosomies) and some with three or more sex chromosomes (47XXX, 47XYY or 47XXY, etc.) (sex polysomies). In addition, some males are born 46XX due to the translocation of a tiny section of the sex determining region of the Y chromosome. Similarly some females are also born 46XY due to mutations in the Y chromosome. Clearly, there are not only females who are XX and males who are XY, but rather, there is a range of chromosome complements, hormone balances, and phenotypic variations that determine sex."

http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html

https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/abnormal/abnormal_5.htm

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Re: Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

Post by AndrewForson » Mon Apr 02, 2018 3:47 pm

Remind us all again why we should care if some of Wikipedia's admins are LBGTQ+? Is there evidence that they are skewing the content in favour of some particular line that they support because of their sex or sexuality? Or is it just a case of pointing and laughing at people for being different?

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Re: Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

Post by Mutineer » Tue Apr 03, 2018 4:10 am

AndrewForson wrote:Remind us all again why we should care if some of Wikipedia's admins are LBGTQ+? Is there evidence that they are skewing the content in favour of some particular line that they support because of their sex or sexuality? Or is it just a case of pointing and laughing at people for being different?


If there's a post here where our members have "pointed and laughed at people for being different," you haven't quoted it. Besides, this thread only discussed transsexuals, not "LBGTQ+."
I am "Modsquad" here, and participate, but I don't want you to think we can't have an angry argument.

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Re: Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

Post by CrowsNest » Tue Apr 03, 2018 11:11 am

AndrewForson wrote:Is there evidence that they are skewing the content in favour of some particular line that they support because of their sex or sexuality?
The following probably doesn't qualify as evidence of wrongdoing by individual administrators, but it may show a cultural bias, affected by an over-representation in the corps.

Take this article.....

List of unlawfully killed transgender people

Now, there's undoubtedly a case to be made that the list topic satisfies WP:LISTN. But unsurprisingly, the state of the list is crap, with ill defined inclusion criteria, ridiculous structure, and not even any real text explaining why it is a notable topic (the prevailing theory being trans people are being killed at higher rates than would be normal due to Trump and bathroom bills etc, with a side order of criticism of the police and the law for not properly recording/investigating/prosecuting hate crimes).

Would it be correct, or false, to assume that if this wasn't about transexuals, that the administrative culture of Wikipedia would have taken a hard line here, due to the BLP implications, and either deleted the page, or gutted and protected it, unless or until the purpose of the list and thus firm inclusion criteria were identified, and the list's contents then being fully reviewed for compliance, now and in the future?

Not for nothing has this list has been put up for deletion three times (although admittedly there is a lot of transphobia on display behind that) twice ending in no consensus, and one keep. But that keep was a closure by a non admin with a history of cluelessness, and in those keeps in that AfD, you can see a LOT of cluelessness.

I get the sense that the normally hard-line Admins who would be stamping down on cluelessness in areas concerning BLP, are steering clear of doing anything really decisive here, out of oversensitivity for the trans community, which they are possibly exposed to more inside Wikipedia.

As a result, we appear to have a seriously contentious list with huge potential for major BLP issues, whose primary contributors are simply two editors who are probably not unbiased when it comes to trans issues (Rob V and Jkrueger3), plus an assortment of IPs and redlinked users.

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Re: Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

Post by CrowsNest » Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:32 pm

Arguably, there is still a culture on Wikipedia where transgender sensitivity isn't part of the baked in operation of the site. Recently, User:BigDwiki tried to 'dead name' a trans person, Jazz Jennings......

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =830806089

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =832747534

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =832748905

Plus edit warring to keep his changes.

Now, this is a serious issue, because it is absolutely not justified on privacy/sensitivity grounds to record a trans person's former/legal name in their Wikipedia biography if it was not well known beforehand or is not relevant to a reader's understanding. It is quite obvious neither is the case here. (this is a separate issue to Zoloft's recent ridiculous comment that merely put this in the context of it supposedly being seen as offensive to refer to past names for any reason, as if respect for the person always trumps the other concerns - this would imply Wikipedia can't even mention Chelsea Manning used to be called Bradley).

While the edits themselves have been successfully rejected and are staying out due to admin action (so possibly only temporarily), the Wikipedians trying to stop this happening again by proposing topic banning this guy from all BLPs are running into quite a significant roadblock of opposition, on the false basis that this was not a BLP issue but merely a MOS dispute, and indeed that a topic ban for a first offence would be overkill.

This is incredibly lenient, given the user himself has said and done things which indicate he believes he is not merely mistaken or uninformed but is pushing a POV, and is unlikely to stop unless extreme measures are taken. He has not yet said he understands what he did was wrong, conceding only that it doesn't necessarily need to be mentioned in the first line, and indeed he is taking heart from how many people agree with him, or at least are saying this would be an overrraction. It really wouldn't be though, a topic ban is obviously not the most extreme option on the table for such a set of circumstances.

It is hard to see them being this unwilling to act in the name of BLP if this were racism or antisemitism or indeed even plain old homophobia. And of course, a big part of this has to be that there's evidently no specific section of BLP that they can point to, it all has to be justified using the MOS, which puts it on a par with some extremely trivial disputes.

On the flip side, there's rather too much suboptimal behaviour on display from those on the support side, where they're not so much trying to educate and turn around this user, but shame, humiliate and punish him. That merely gets people's backs up, and likely only leads to people sympathising with them, rather than the real victim here, Jennings, and any potential future victim of this guy's misunderstanding. Sadly, this also happens, but to a much greater degree, in then other areas mentioned, which also illustrates the lack of seriousness for trans specifically.

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Re: Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

Post by AndrewForson » Tue Apr 03, 2018 7:39 pm

Mutineer wrote:
AndrewForson wrote:Remind us all again why we should care if some of Wikipedia's admins are LBGTQ+? Is there evidence that they are skewing the content in favour of some particular line that they support because of their sex or sexuality? Or is it just a case of pointing and laughing at people for being different?


If there's a post here where our members have "pointed and laughed at people for being different," you haven't quoted it.
No, and I hope I don't have to either.

Besides, this thread only discussed transsexuals, not "LBGTQ+."
This appears to be incorrect. At the top of this page is a post discussing, for some reason, Wikipedians who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual.

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Re: Transexuals in Wikipedia's Administrative Culture

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Apr 04, 2018 12:52 am

CrowsNest wrote:Take this article.....

List of unlawfully killed transgender people

Now, there's undoubtedly a case to be made that the list topic satisfies WP:LISTN. But unsurprisingly, the state of the list is crap, with ill defined inclusion criteria, ridiculous structure, and not even any real text explaining why it is a notable topic (the prevailing theory being trans people are being killed at higher rates than would be normal due to Trump and bathroom bills etc, with a side order of criticism of the police and the law for not properly recording/investigating/prosecuting hate crimes).

Such shit articles about "contentious" subjects are commonplace. It's one of those "catch-all" things where random people drop media reports they were outraged about. Wikipedia can't even do "social justice warfare" well. Far too much incompetence, too many distractions, no effective leadership. The most active editors on that article, Rms125a@hotmail.com and Cameron Scott, have been trying to clean it up, and failing.

Don't be too surprised if it abruptly disappears someday and the content is put elsewhere. These killings are deplorable, but as usual Wikipedia doesn't know how to handle them routinely and reports them inconsistently. Look at Lists of murders for a meta-list full of crap lists. Lots of them involve political slants of one direction or another and were often the work of one person. Wikipedia even turns violent atrocities into pointless piles of "pseudo information" that very few people ever see. Might as well be talking about Gundam characters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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