LGBTQ+ Wikipedia Editing: Tagging Categories

Categories are Wikipedia way of tagging entries to connect individuals who share some common trait.

• LGBT categories should be used for people who have come out, or historical individuals regarded as LGBT by the consensus of scholars
• Since tags don’t have citations, the categories added should be supported in the text of the article

• Generally use the most specific subcategory, for some categories people should be in both more general and more specific, especially subcategories that are broken out by gender or sexuality. This prevents for example: all American women writers being removed from the American Writers category.

• Wikipedia uses subcategories to “diffuse” really large categories, for example LGBT people into smaller subcategories
• Sometimes categories are “non-diffusing”, and people should be in both the more general and more specific categories.

Example: LGBT Sportsperson

• Non-diffusing: Should be in both LGBT sportspeople and Sportspeople
• Diffusing: Should only be in LGBT sportspeople from the United States but not LGBT Sportspeople
• The purpose is to break up what would be really big categories like LGBT people, while not leaving only straight, white, cis, men in categories like sportspeople.

Once you've selected an article you can add appropriate categories by editing it in the visual editor, expanding the hamburger menu and selecting categories.