4 ms·

Wow, I would expect there would at least be a single mention of "born Dagny Benedict" somewhere at the beginning of the background section as is typical in othe

by usui 9mo ago

Wow, I would expect there would at least be a single mention of "born Dagny Benedict" somewhere at the beginning of the background section as is typical in other pages. If this is intentional, to omit this entirely seems like it unnecessarily politicizes the issue rather than documenting the history of a person.

littlestymaar 9mo ago
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.
- usui 9mo ago
  > 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
- lukan 9mo ago
  "if someone changed their name and ask for not being called their former name ever again" Writing someone was called XYZ, is not calling the person by that name again. It is just stating a historic fact.
  - philistine 9mo ago
    Not all historic facts are relevant. Using someone’s old name when relevance can be achieved by stating the person was transgender is preferable.
    - reorder9695 9mo ago
      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.
      - squigz 9mo ago
        > I personally prefer not having other people decide for me which facts are and aren't relevant Then reading Wikipedia probably isn't a great idea.
        littlestymaar 9mo ago
        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.
      - komali2 9mo ago
        > 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.
      - grayhatter 9mo ago
        > 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?
- graemep 9mo ago
  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?
  - littlestymaar 9mo ago
    > 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.
  - squigz 9mo ago
    > It makes it harder to find other sources of information on someone No it doesn't. Googling or searching on Wikipedia for either name yields the same page.
- mrighele 9mo ago
  > 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] ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali
  - komali2 9mo ago
    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?
    - eimrine 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - komali2 9mo ago
        So, you don't think I'm wrong? The OP used "he" because they have a transphobic agenda? > because we use to call a person who will always have hairs on his face as "male". We may not have solved the question, "what is a woman," but you have brilliantly solved the question, "what is a man": a human with eyebrows.
        eimrine 9mo ago
        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.
- kmaitreys 9mo ago
  I don't think what should be neutral account of factual events should take into account if it would be rude to an individual.
  - littlestymaar 9mo ago
    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 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.
    - kmaitreys 9mo ago
      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?
      - littlestymaar 9mo ago
        > Why do you think the person was bullied? 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.
- dungg 9mo ago
  [flagged]
beardyw 9mo ago
[flagged]
- usui 9mo ago
  This is a naive take that belies the reality of pages with a lot of traffic, and is the reason why there can be controversial discussions in the talk pages. I know nothing about the history of this page, which is why I said "if it's intentional" regarding any deliberate scrubbing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies#Editing_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie... EDIT: On further inspecting the page history, this definitely looks intentional, or at least is a controversial page.
- edgineer 9mo ago
  The page is protected, the general public can't edit it. There was already discussion on the talk page, "Should Nex's given name be included?" with consensus of "no." That discussion was archived, but you can see it here [0]. From what I can see, the word "Dagny" has been retroactively redacted from all history of the page and its talk page. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Death_of_Nex_Benedict&oldid=1217222681 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Death_of_Nex...
  - curtisblaine 9mo ago
    > From what I can see, the word "Dagny" has been retroactively redacted from all history of the page and its talk page. If this doesn't sound 1984-esque I don't know what does.
    - eimrine 9mo ago
      This fact per se is not enough 1984, but the reason of that, end especially the power standing at the very beginning of that reasoning is certainly like that.
    - komali2 9mo ago
      1984 describes an insurmountably established Soviet-esque state with omniscient surveillance and omnipotent monopoly on violence. We're discussing a FOSS website that many people use. There's quite literally nothing stopping you from making "unwoke" Wikipedia or whatever. You probably could even get Elon Musk to signal boost it.
dungg 9mo ago
[flagged]
philistine 9mo ago
You’re hitting the wrong aspect of the problem. You should use someone’s old name when it’s absolutely necessary, not as a matter of course. People change their name for a reason after all, and if their latest one suffices, let it be. In the case of this person, they were not notable under their birth name. Unfortunately, their transgender status is the whole reason they’re notable, and the article clearly states that they are. I don’t need that person’s old name to understand the situation.
- ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
  Pretty much every married woman (who changed/added to her last name) has her birth name written there, even if she was never notable/known as Knavs or Skłodowska. More info is usually better than less info, if you personally don't need to know something, that does not mean that that info should be removed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump
  - grayhatter 9mo ago
    Most people, who adopt a different married name, don't do so because they consider their former name to be offensive or insulting. If I'm proud of my name, you should include it. If I'm ashamed of my name, you should omit it, unless it's important context or information. You have to have a clear articulable reason above, it's a real detail.
  - komali2 9mo ago
    > More info is usually better than less info This is strictly untrue for an Encyclopedia, which seeks to present only a summation of relevant and highly notable information about a person, making it far different than e.g. a biography.
  - littlestymaar 9mo ago
    > Pretty much every married woman (who changed/added to her last name) has her birth name written there, even if she was never notable/known as Knavs or Skłodowska. None of them changed their name on purpose nor rejected it, the comparison is moot.
lelanthran 9mo ago
> Wow, I would expect there would at least be a single mention of "born Dagny Benedict" somewhere at the beginning of the background section as is typical in other pages. If this is intentional, to omit this entirely seems like it unnecessarily politicizes the issue rather than documenting the history of a person. It's all very 1984-esque; I'm seeing shades of "We were never/always at war with Oceania/Eurasia". This is revisionist history, and the scrubbing of previously correct but now incorrect "history" should be viewed with suspicion. ----------------------------------------------------- The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth.
- littlestymaar 9mo ago
  > It's all very 1984-esque; I'm seeing shades of "We were never/always at war with Oceania/Eurasia". This is a hilarious take. There's little things less “1984-esque” than a small self-structured collective organization enforcing the preference of an individual on how they should be named. It's the opposite of “a dictatorship imposing its views on individuals through propaganda”, it's a collective of people helping an individual, dead for not being as society wanted them to be, have their personal wish fulfilled even after death. People who want to dead name the victim, are the one who want to erase the individual to make it fit the mold of society, they are the totalitarian hivemind, they are the Tom Parsons of our reality. Orwell being a lifelong anarchist socialist, there's very little doubt on which side he'd be in that debate.
grayhatter 9mo ago
> If this is intentional, to omit this entirely seems like it unnecessarily politicizes the issue rather than documenting the history of a person. I feel as if you're trying to inject a political motivation about the decision to omit that detail when a simpler one is better. If something of little note is offensive to the person you're talking about, it's disrespectful to them as a person, to their humanity, to mention it. E.g. You would only mention someone was born, to parents who were avid members of the KKK, if and only if, their life story related in some way. Otherwise you're trying to introduce some preexisting bias that doesn't belong. In this example, if this person left their community to fight racism. The information about the set of likes reasons they got involved, are worth the bias of introducing the assumptions you're reasonably allowed to make about their parents. If they find that religion offensive, and spent their life exclusively on epidemiology, it's wrong to include that detail, true or not. Then, do consider the "political" aspect, that has led to the deadname policy that Wikipedia has. Many people, who for their own cultural reasons, want to disrespect someone, will refuse to address or refer to some individual the way they want to be. That behavior is no different from calling some one fuckface, and refusing to address them differently. You've selected something they find offensive, in order to bully and harass them, needlessly. Given that toxic reality, for cases like this, it's better to defer to not mentioning the name they were given at birth, because that detail might be used against them. Again, there might be some stronger reason you would want to include it. But it's better to err on the side of respecting the individual.

by usui 9mo ago

littlestymaar 9mo ago

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.

usui 9mo ago
> 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
lukan 9mo ago
"if someone changed their name and ask for not being called their former name ever again" Writing someone was called XYZ, is not calling the person by that name again. It is just stating a historic fact.
- philistine 9mo ago
  Not all historic facts are relevant. Using someone’s old name when relevance can be achieved by stating the person was transgender is preferable.
  - reorder9695 9mo ago
    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.
    - squigz 9mo ago
      > I personally prefer not having other people decide for me which facts are and aren't relevant Then reading Wikipedia probably isn't a great idea.
      - littlestymaar 9mo ago
        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.
    - komali2 9mo ago
      > 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.
    - grayhatter 9mo ago
      > 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?
graemep 9mo ago
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?
- littlestymaar 9mo ago
  > 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.
- squigz 9mo ago
  > It makes it harder to find other sources of information on someone No it doesn't. Googling or searching on Wikipedia for either name yields the same page.
mrighele 9mo ago
> 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] ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali
- komali2 9mo ago
  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?
  - eimrine 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - komali2 9mo ago
      So, you don't think I'm wrong? The OP used "he" because they have a transphobic agenda? > because we use to call a person who will always have hairs on his face as "male". We may not have solved the question, "what is a woman," but you have brilliantly solved the question, "what is a man": a human with eyebrows.
      - eimrine 9mo ago
        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.
kmaitreys 9mo ago
I don't think what should be neutral account of factual events should take into account if it would be rude to an individual.
- littlestymaar 9mo ago
  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 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.
  - kmaitreys 9mo ago
    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?
    - littlestymaar 9mo ago
      > Why do you think the person was bullied? 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.
dungg 9mo ago
[flagged]

beardyw 9mo ago

[flagged]

usui 9mo ago
This is a naive take that belies the reality of pages with a lot of traffic, and is the reason why there can be controversial discussions in the talk pages. I know nothing about the history of this page, which is why I said "if it's intentional" regarding any deliberate scrubbing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies#Editing_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie... EDIT: On further inspecting the page history, this definitely looks intentional, or at least is a controversial page.
edgineer 9mo ago
The page is protected, the general public can't edit it. There was already discussion on the talk page, "Should Nex's given name be included?" with consensus of "no." That discussion was archived, but you can see it here [0]. From what I can see, the word "Dagny" has been retroactively redacted from all history of the page and its talk page. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Death_of_Nex_Benedict&oldid=1217222681 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Death_of_Nex...
- curtisblaine 9mo ago
  > From what I can see, the word "Dagny" has been retroactively redacted from all history of the page and its talk page. If this doesn't sound 1984-esque I don't know what does.
  - eimrine 9mo ago
    This fact per se is not enough 1984, but the reason of that, end especially the power standing at the very beginning of that reasoning is certainly like that.
  - komali2 9mo ago
    1984 describes an insurmountably established Soviet-esque state with omniscient surveillance and omnipotent monopoly on violence. We're discussing a FOSS website that many people use. There's quite literally nothing stopping you from making "unwoke" Wikipedia or whatever. You probably could even get Elon Musk to signal boost it.

dungg 9mo ago

[flagged]

philistine 9mo ago

You’re hitting the wrong aspect of the problem. You should use someone’s old name when it’s absolutely necessary, not as a matter of course. People change their name for a reason after all, and if their latest one suffices, let it be. In the case of this person, they were not notable under their birth name. Unfortunately, their transgender status is the whole reason they’re notable, and the article clearly states that they are. I don’t need that person’s old name to understand the situation.

ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
Pretty much every married woman (who changed/added to her last name) has her birth name written there, even if she was never notable/known as Knavs or Skłodowska. More info is usually better than less info, if you personally don't need to know something, that does not mean that that info should be removed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump
- grayhatter 9mo ago
  Most people, who adopt a different married name, don't do so because they consider their former name to be offensive or insulting. If I'm proud of my name, you should include it. If I'm ashamed of my name, you should omit it, unless it's important context or information. You have to have a clear articulable reason above, it's a real detail.
- komali2 9mo ago
  > More info is usually better than less info This is strictly untrue for an Encyclopedia, which seeks to present only a summation of relevant and highly notable information about a person, making it far different than e.g. a biography.
- littlestymaar 9mo ago
  > Pretty much every married woman (who changed/added to her last name) has her birth name written there, even if she was never notable/known as Knavs or Skłodowska. None of them changed their name on purpose nor rejected it, the comparison is moot.

lelanthran 9mo ago

> Wow, I would expect there would at least be a single mention of "born Dagny Benedict" somewhere at the beginning of the background section as is typical in other pages. If this is intentional, to omit this entirely seems like it unnecessarily politicizes the issue rather than documenting the history of a person. It's all very 1984-esque; I'm seeing shades of "We were never/always at war with Oceania/Eurasia". This is revisionist history, and the scrubbing of previously correct but now incorrect "history" should be viewed with suspicion. ----------------------------------------------------- The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth.

littlestymaar 9mo ago
> It's all very 1984-esque; I'm seeing shades of "We were never/always at war with Oceania/Eurasia". This is a hilarious take. There's little things less “1984-esque” than a small self-structured collective organization enforcing the preference of an individual on how they should be named. It's the opposite of “a dictatorship imposing its views on individuals through propaganda”, it's a collective of people helping an individual, dead for not being as society wanted them to be, have their personal wish fulfilled even after death. People who want to dead name the victim, are the one who want to erase the individual to make it fit the mold of society, they are the totalitarian hivemind, they are the Tom Parsons of our reality. Orwell being a lifelong anarchist socialist, there's very little doubt on which side he'd be in that debate.

grayhatter 9mo ago

> If this is intentional, to omit this entirely seems like it unnecessarily politicizes the issue rather than documenting the history of a person. I feel as if you're trying to inject a political motivation about the decision to omit that detail when a simpler one is better. If something of little note is offensive to the person you're talking about, it's disrespectful to them as a person, to their humanity, to mention it. E.g. You would only mention someone was born, to parents who were avid members of the KKK, if and only if, their life story related in some way. Otherwise you're trying to introduce some preexisting bias that doesn't belong. In this example, if this person left their community to fight racism. The information about the set of likes reasons they got involved, are worth the bias of introducing the assumptions you're reasonably allowed to make about their parents. If they find that religion offensive, and spent their life exclusively on epidemiology, it's wrong to include that detail, true or not. Then, do consider the "political" aspect, that has led to the deadname policy that Wikipedia has. Many people, who for their own cultural reasons, want to disrespect someone, will refuse to address or refer to some individual the way they want to be. That behavior is no different from calling some one fuckface, and refusing to address them differently. You've selected something they find offensive, in order to bully and harass them, needlessly. Given that toxic reality, for cases like this, it's better to defer to not mentioning the name they were given at birth, because that detail might be used against them. Again, there might be some stronger reason you would want to include it. But it's better to err on the side of respecting the individual.