4 ms·

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 wil

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]

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]