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LGBTQ+ Wikipedia Editing: Wikipedia Editing Policies

Wikipedia Editing Policies

  • No Conflict of Interest Editing - You should not edit articles on yourself, your friends, your family, or even your foes.
  • No copyright infringement or plagiarism - Make sure you paraphrase or reword content rather than copying it.
  • Neutral Point of View Policy - Write articles from a neutral standpoint without taking sides or being overly positive or negative
  • No Original Research Policy - You need to use reliable published secondary sources, not personal opinions, personal experience, or unpublished research
  • Verifiability Policy - All information that is or could be challenged should cite a reliable published source
  • Notability Policy - All articles must meet a standard of notability - generally established by being included in multiple published sources. The notability policy is can be particularly problematic as it is often used to delete entries for marginalized individuals.

Outing

Wikipedia discourages outing, especially as it can expose people to danger and violate their right to privacy. When adding an LGBT category or adding to an LGBT list for a living person, you should confirm they are publicly out - via a citation to a reliable source.

Gender Identity & Deadnaming

Wikipedia's style guide says to refer to individuals by their latest expressed gender self-identification throughout the article and for any phase of that person's life, unless they have indicated a preference otherwise.  A trans individual's deadname should not be included in an article, unless they were notable under that name, eg. Chelsea Manning or Elliot Page, and it should only be mentioned once, in the header of the article. The policy of including deadnames for individuals famous under a previous name has been heavily criticized and is ethically questionable.

Page Protection

In some circumstances, such as frequent vandalism, pages are protected from modification by certain groups of editors. There are several levels of protections. Some of the most common are pending change protection, where changes must be approved, and semi-protection, where anonymous and newly registered users cannot edit. If you are new to Wikipedia, you may need to build a history of editing before you'll be able to edit such articles.

Any user may request protection for an article, especially one that has been vandalized.