I've found that Wikipedia handles transgender issues fairly well. A good
example is the Chaz Bono article. This article is an example of what
should be the most problematic case on Wikipedia: A BLP of a transgender
person mostly known for being the child of a celebrity. You would expect
the article to be a horrible embarrassment, but it's actually well done
and uses the correct pronoun throughout. The article has been frequently
attacked over the years as you can see from the talk page, but it's
always been dealt with promptly and thoughtfully. In general, I find
that Wikipedia does a good job of covering gay and transgender issues
and seems to have a healthy community of editors in those demographics.
In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of such editors on
Wikipedia is higher than in the population in general, but this is just
a guess based on anecdotal evidence. I would love to hear other people's
impressions.
Ryan Kaldari
On 5/9/12 12:57 PM, Tom Morris wrote:
Earlier today, I posted a thread on Reddit's AskTransgender group asking for
feedback on how Wikipedia handles transgender issues, specifically BLP and
pronoun issues.
http://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/tejwl/is_wikipedia_handling_transgender_identity_well/
Feel free to respond here or there.
This followed discussions relating to the widely-reported announcement by Tom
Gabel, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the punk band Against Me!, of their
intention to transition, and also previous discussions I've had by email with a
UK-based transgender non-profit.
It almost feels like how we handle gender identity and transgender issues
on-wiki is a nice little litmus test for the community's wider attitudes to
inclusion (as well as handling of sensitive BLPs).
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