Rama
Today, the French-speaking Wikipedia passed a decision to deadname trans people in their biographies.
Some will argue that this makes WP-FR transphobic, and there is certainly something to it: while Wikipedia is not a monolithic institution, and while I am critical of the phrase "Wikipedian community", it is a fact that WP-FR is effectively controlled by people hostile or indifferent to inclusion.
But this decision is utterly un-Wikipedian, and therefore lacks any legitimity, for 2 reasons:
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2) The decision puts WP-FR on a collision course with the WMF.
This is absolutely deliberate.
There is a sort of populism on Wikimedia projects, whereby people reflexively distrust external influence on the projects. People fantasise themselves as heroically resisting political influence, financial temptation and legal threats.
This makes them easy marks for far-Right manipulation.
Rama
1) there is a "Boiling Frog" effect, compounded by deliberate gaslighting from far-Right elements, that makes us lose perspective of how uncomfortable we are with the situation: is this deadname thing really that serious? Are we not getting a bit carried away by our feelings? Are not "trans activists" a bit over the top?
This 2009 resolution provides a landmark that shows how grotesquely extreme and abhorrent the WP-FR "decision" objectively is.
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The second reason why this so-called consultation is not worth the bits on which it is written is that Wikimedia projects as a whole come under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation. While the WMF does not claim direct editorial authority on specific projects, its statements of values do apply.
However the consultation on WP-FR goes frontally against the principles of "Resolution:Biographies of living people".
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people
And this calls for a few remarks:
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It is worthy of note that the people who instigated this catastrophic consultation already have several other similar consultations ready: one aims at making it official WP-FR policy to misgender trans people; the other is a reform of the Code of Conduct that would ban members of minorities from contributing to subjects pertaining to their lives.
This stream of polarising consultations is typical of the "permanent campaign" tactics of the far-Right, especially the Swiss SVP-UDC Party.
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What we saw on WP-FR was the exact opposite: a violently polarising question, with half a dozen dedicated activists with far-Right leanings misleading a large number of badly-informed voters, with an equal amount rejecting the proposition outright.
These activists claim that a skin-of-the-teeth majority, obtained by artistically carving the electorate, is a mandate to embark the whole of WP-FR into a radical, damaging course.
This is a sort of Brexit.
This is not how Wikipedia works.
Rama
the first lies in the "54%" majority claimed by the proponents of transphobic phrasing.
Wikipedia is not a democracy. It does not conduct referendums.
The purpose of consultations is to elaborate a Wikipedian "consensus", i.e. a common solution with the backing of an overwhelming majority. The solution may be reshaped during the debates as to include more people, and while nobody has a veto, a significant opposition is considered a lack of consensus.
It is a negotiation.
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