There are various intersections of the LGBT community [lower-alpha 1] and Wikipedia. LGBT people who edit the online encyclopedia often face cyberbullying and other types of harassment. Wikipedia content about LGBT individuals is often vandalized, but various Wikipedia user groups, WikiProjects, and the Wikimedia Foundation endorse campaigns to promote inclusion on Wikipedia. Availability of Wikipedia's LGBT content, in countries that otherwise suppress information about LGBT issues, has been praised.
In 2011, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) made it a strategic goal to recruit more women, people of color, and other underrepresented individuals as editors, including LGBT people. [1]
In 2019, Rachel Wexelbaum, an associate professor at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, United States, wrote, "For LGBTIQ+ people and those searching for LGBTIQ+ information, Wikipedia has proven invaluable in countries where LGBTIQ+ publications, media, or visibility may be criminalized or cut short due to AIDS NGOs leaving those countries." [2] It can also be valuable for those in communities where this information is socially marginalized; [3] : 91 a notable example is the experience of transgender author and activist Abby Stein, who discovered the idea of being transgender on the Hebrew Wikipedia. [4] Wikipedia is often consulted by LGBT youth seeking information on sexual health, as Wikipedia's coverage of health-related topics is backed by numerous medical journals. [3] : 91 Some Wikipedia editors, however, have reported struggles with encouraging LGBT health organizations to participate in contributing LGBT-specific health information to Wikipedia. [1]
In some cases, particular language editions of Wikipedia have slanted toward anti-LGBT content. The Croatian Wikipedia has been criticized for advancing anti-LGBT propaganda and for other reasons. In addition, the only active administrator of Amharic Wikipedia, at one point, enforced the Ethiopian government's anti-LGBT laws on the wiki. [5] According to Business Insider , an anonymous editor using an IP address coming from the United States House of Representatives, who claimed to be a Capitol Hill staffer, made a series of edits about the transgender community, including some that were critical of transgender individuals. [6]
The English Wikipedia's style guidelines on identity state editors should describe transgender and non-binary subjects using their preferred name and pronouns corresponding to their most recently stated gender identity. However, such articles are frequently targeted with vandalism, misgendering or deadnaming their subjects. [7] In August 2008, the article about Ina Fried, a transgender journalist for CNET , was caught in an edit war over which pronouns to use for her. She stated that Wikipedia did not have a stylebook on gender, unlike the Associated Press Stylebook, and said that while she found it "somewhat confusing" to see the gender changes on her page, she "found the debate interesting." She later added that it was a "reasonable compromise" to remove all pronouns in her biography entry. [8]
After Chelsea Manning came out in August 2013, editors debated the title of the article about her. At the time, Slate praised actions by Wikipedia editors, saying that Manning's article was rewritten quickly and with "remarkably little controversy". [9] However, in October 2013, The Guardian noted that the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee had "banned a number of editors from working on articles related to transgender topics or individuals," noting that while some were banned for "making transphobic comments about Manning", others received the same punishment "for pointing out the bigotry". Two of the restricted editors had insisted on referring to Manning as a man, while another editor who alleged the existence of "a 'consensus' of virulently transphobic" Wikipedia editors was sanctioned for a "battleground approach" by the committee. [10]
Following Caitlyn Jenner's gender transition in 2015, Kat George of Bustle wrote, "We can start learning about the proper use of gender pronouns, with Caitlyn Jenner's Wikipedia article as a perfect example of the correct before and after language we should be employing." [11] The name and pronouns to use for Gloria Hemingway were a matter of discussion for over 15 years. In February 2022, after a week of debate, votes were evenly split between using Gloria and "she/her" pronouns, or continuing to use her birth name. An editor closed the discussion in favor of renaming; the decision was appealed but upheld by an administrator. [12]
Wikipedia editors experience harassment, and in one case, a transgender editor was publicly deadnamed. The WMF has expressed concern over situations where transgender editors could be repelled from Wikipedia due to online abuse. [7] BBC News said in 2020, "Many, particularly women and members of the LGBTQ community, have complained of abuse and harassment from other editors." [13] Editors can report harassment to administrators via email or notice boards, which can cause harassers to be barred from editing. [7]
Editors in anti-LGBT areas experience more virulent harassment. LGBT editors from countries where being LGBT is criminalized often use aliases and edit from various IP addresses so their work is not traced back to them. [1] In one instance, an editor was blocked by a Wikipedia administrator since their username suggested they may be gay. The administrator was eventually blocked for those actions when WMF's Trust and Safety Team got involved. Amir Sarabadani, an editor, stated that in 12 years of editing Persian Wikipedia, users were often hostile to articles related to homosexuality. He said that his work as an administrator there helped make abuse less tolerable and that homophobic content that was previously acceptable now resulted in blocks. [7]
In October 2022, a group of 40 French public figures, including director Céline Sciamma, writer Virginie Despentes, writer and graphic novel illustrator Jul Maroh, writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado, and journalist and filmmaker Rokhaya Diallo, in conjunction with the National Transgender Association of France, signed an open letter, published in L'Obs magazine, to Wikipedia, denouncing "stigmatizing behaviors" against transgender, non-binary, and intersex people on Wikipedia including misgendering, deadnaming, the use of pre-transition pictures, and harassment of openly trans editors. [14] [15]
The Wikimedia movement has seen campaigns and hosted edit-a-thons [16] to improve coverage of LGBT topics. [17] [18] [3] : 91–92 Wikipedia Loves Libraries, one of these initiatives, saw the Tom of Finland Foundation become the first LGBT cultural heritage institution to participate, hosting "Queering Wikipedia" edit-a-thons. [1] Wiki Loves Pride is a campaign from June to October to create and improve LGBT-related content across Wikimedia projects. [19] Wiki Loves Pride has promoted coverage of notable LGBT people. [20] Art+Feminism has been described as "a campaign to improve the site's representation of women and nonbinary individuals". [7] WikiProject LGBT studies, [lower-alpha 2] which works to create and enhance articles on LGBT topics, is present on 28 Wikipedias, as of 2023 [update] . [3] : 92 An LGBT portal for organization has been overseen since 2006. [1]
Wikimedia LGBT is a user group affiliate of WMF, [3] : 92 established in August 2012. [1] In 2022, WMF joined human rights and LGBT organizations in opposing the Kids Online Safety Act introduced in the United States Senate. The groups argued that "over-moderation" would "cut off members of marginalized younger groups who rely on online services to learn about sex education or access LGBTQ+ resources". [21] [22] In 2023, organizers of Wikimania requested a unisex public toilet for the duration of the conference at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre. One was temporarily converted from an existing restroom usually designated for women, prompting "some hostile reactions" online, according to Today . [23] [24]
British physicist and Wikipedia editor Jess Wade has worked to improve coverage of LGBT topics on the site. Every day in 2018, Wade wrote at least one Wikipedia article about a woman, person of color, or LGBT figure in science to expand the diversity of Wikipedia's coverage. [25]
Leslie Feinberg was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, communist, and author. Feinberg authored Stone Butch Blues in 1993. Her writing, notably Stone Butch Blues and her pioneering non-fiction book Transgender Warriors (1996), laid the groundwork for much of the terminology and awareness around gender studies and was instrumental in bringing these issues to a more mainstream audience.
Wookieepedia: The Star Wars Wiki is an online encyclopedia for information about the Star Wars universe—including information on all the films, the books, as well as Clone Wars, The Clone Wars and its introductory film, Rebels, the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and any upcoming Star Wars material. It is a wiki focused on the Star Wars universe with some articles reaching up to 60,000 words, and is written almost entirely from an in-universe perspective. The name is a portmanteau of Wookiee and encyclopedia, a pun on the name of Wikipedia. The logo, too, is a visual pun showing the incomplete second Death Star as opposed to Wikipedia's incomplete "jigsaw logo".
The Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. This community directly builds and administers these projects with the commitment of achieving this using open standards and software.
OutRight International (OutRight) is an LGBTIQ human rights non-governmental organization that addresses human rights violations and abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. OutRight International documents human rights discrimination and abuses based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics in partnership with activists, advocates, media, NGOs and allies on a local, regional, national and international level. OutRight International holds consultative status with ECOSOC.
Wikivoyage is a free web-based travel guide for travel destinations and travel topics written by volunteer authors. It is a sister project of Wikipedia and supported and hosted by the same non-profit Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Wikivoyage has been called the "Wikipedia of travel guides".
Wikimedia UK (WMUK), also known as Wikimedia United Kingdom, is a registered charity established to support volunteers in the United Kingdom who work on Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia. As such, it is a Wikimedia chapter approved by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), which owns and hosts those projects.
The Uzbek Wikipedia is the Uzbek-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It was founded in December 2003. Articles in the Uzbek-language edition are written in the Latin script. In August 2012, a Latin-to-Cyrillic converter was added to allow users to view Uzbek Wikipedia's pages in both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts.
The Wikipedia community, collectively and individually known as Wikipedians, is an online community of volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. Since August 2012, the word "Wikipedian" has been an Oxford Dictionary entry.
An edit-a-thon is an event where some editors of online communities such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, and LocalWiki edit and improve a specific topic or type of content. The events typically include basic editing training for new editors and may be combined with a more general social meetup. The word is a portmanteau of "edit" and "marathon". An edit-a-thon can either be "in-person" or online or a blended version of both. If it is not in-person, it is usually called a "virtual edit-a-thon" or "online edit-a-thon".
Gender bias on Wikipedia is a term used to describe various sex-related facts about Wikipedia: its volunteer contributors are mostly male, although almost 400,000 encyclopedic biographies about women exist on Wikipedia, men have many more, and topics primarily of interest to women are less well-covered.
The English Wikipedia has been criticized for having a systemic racial bias in its coverage. This bias partially stems from an under-representation of people of color within its volunteer editor base. In "Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past," it is noted that article completeness and coverage is dependent on the interests of Wikipedians, not necessarily on the subject matter itself. The past president of Wikimedia D.C., James Hare, asserted that "a lot of [Black American history] is left out" of Wikipedia, due to articles predominately being written by white editors. Articles about African topics that do exist are, according to some, largely edited by editors from Europe and North America and thus, they only reflect their knowledge and their consumption of media, which "tend to perpetuate a negative image" of Africa. Maira Liriano of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has argued that the lack of information regarding Black history on Wikipedia "makes it seem like it's not important."
Deadnaming is the act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name they used prior to transitioning, such as their birth name. Deadnaming may be unintentional, or a deliberate attempt to deny, mock, or invalidate a person's gender identity.
Art and Feminism is an annual worldwide edit-a-thon to add content to Wikipedia about women artists, which started in 2014. The project has been described as "a massive multinational effort to correct a persistent bias in Wikipedia, which is disproportionately written by and about men".
Women in Red is a WikiProject addressing the current gender bias in Wikipedia content. The project focuses on creating content regarding women's biographies, women's works, and women's issues.
Gender pronouns or personal gender pronouns are the set of pronouns that an individual uses to reflect that person's own gender identity. In English, when declaring one's chosen pronouns, a person will often state the subject and object pronouns, although sometimes, the possessive pronouns are also stated. The pronouns chosen may include neopronouns such as "ze" and "zir".
Wiki Loves Pride is a campaign to improve LGBT-related content on Wikipedia and other projects in the Wikimedia movement.
Miles McKenna is an American vlogger, actor, and LGBTQIA+ advocate. McKenna is a trans man and is among YouTube's most prominent trans creators with over one million subscribers. His videos incorporate comedic skits and often include commentary on gender identity and other LGBTQ issues. Through his videos, McKenna documented his coming out and his transition, including the effects of hormone replacement therapy and top surgery.
Neopronouns are neologistic English third-person personal pronouns beyond "he", "she", and "they". Neopronouns are preferred by some non-binary individuals who feel that they provide options to reflect their gender identity more accurately than conventional pronouns.
WikiStipendiya is a WikiProject aimed at improving content on the Uzbek Wikipedia. The project is organized by the Youth Affairs the Republic of Administration of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Council of Young Artists, and the Wikimedians of the Uzbek Language User Group.
Jason Moore is an American Wikipedia editor among the English Wikipedia's most active contributors by edit count. Editing since 2007 as "Another Believer", he has specialized in current events, with coverage including the COVID-19 pandemic, George Floyd protests, and the culture of Portland, Oregon, where he is based. On Wikipedia, Moore has created and developed editor affinity groups for joint work on these topics. As an organizer in the Wikimedia movement, Moore has hosted meet-ups and edit-a-thons to train new editors.