Stanton McCandlish is one of the most prolific Wikipedians, most recently coming awfully close to being voted into a seat on the encyclopedia's highest dispute resolution body, ArbCom, which would be quite an achievement for anyone who isn't already an Administrator. He's probably blown any chance of that now.....
Unfortunately for Wikipedia, he's also a transphobe. He's denying it if course, but the list of established and respected Wikipedians (I know, but in their world, they are) lining up to decry him as one, is large, and the page he wrote which caused this outrage, distributed across Wikipedia by their community newsletter The Signpost, is now notable as the first and apparently only time something they've published has had to be retracted.
It has even moved Jimmy Wales to comment.....This column has been blanked because, in retrospect, it failed to make its intended point, while causing pain to other editors.
His response to all this criticism has largely been various forms of what he himself said here.....In terms of discussing matters of our own community's editorial judgment we should use the term 'editorial judgment'. It is my firm belief that Signpost is a community effort that should serve our community's values and needs, and that there is zero reason for it ever to be 'edgy' with humor or to in any way offend anyway. I haven't read the piece in question, but in general I would say that if something is published there which is later regretted, it is worthwhile to delete it. This is a wiki, after all, and the most fundamental fact about a wiki is that it can be edited and changed.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:25, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Pretty ironic given the substance of his piece was essentially Comply Or Fuck Off, as he explained here....Fortunately, I'm a private contractor and secretive about my clients, so .... none of you can get me fired from anywhere by pursuing off-site channels.) This whole gaggle of vengeance seekers should be ashamed; you're doing grievous harm to WP as an open venue. "Only like-minded thinkers need apply, and you'll be really, really sorry if you're not one of Us."
— SMcCandlish 11:07, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Couched as a Manual of Style issue, the fighting over which was previously his most notable contribution to Wikipedia and the reason why he has never been seen as Administrator material (even though he's really no worse than what they already have), it really isn't, something which the majority seem to have realised.A number of ranty editors utterly missed the point. It's about Wikipedia editors engaging in language-change activism trying to push non-mainstream stylistic strangeness, including a) fake pronouns like zie and hirm, b) unusual trademark stylizations, and c) excessive honorifics. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the off-site usage or the values of those who engage in it. It's about and only about encyclopedic usage. If you want to go change WP:MOS to say "It's okay to exactly mimic the appearance of logos, to write of Jesus and Mohammad with "Our Lord" and "Peace Be Upon Him" before and after (respectively) their names, to inject made-up pronoun shenanigans like ze and xir into our articles", well, good luck with that. Never going to happen. — SMcCandlish 17:55, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
On his Wikipedia page, this guy says he is a "Web developer, IT consultant, nonfiction author, civil liberties activist and nonprofit executive, as well as amateur pocket billiards (pool) instructor, former online news editor, policy analyst, archivist, independent publisher, and also an amateur artist, among other things."
I'm putting his details here, because Wikipedia in its wisdom doesn't let Google index stuff like this, which means that even though the guy has a pretty big online footprint, it doesn't cover this aspect of his life. Who knows, maybe his client list is exclusively transphobic, and his civil rights and non-profit roles have limitations to their generosity of spirit, but I'm guessing they won't be and don't.
Interestingly, on his Twitter, https://mobile.twitter.com/smccandlish, he seems to be begging for work as recently as February 14th, two weeks before this was even published. I guess that would explain why he doesn't fear anyone alerting any of clients, he probably doesn't have any to contact.