Wikipedia, search, curated trending topics, all the local content laws and moderation policies on a critical site like Reddit for example, Community Notes, the definitions of words in our online dictionaries — all together, this is something we at Pirate Wires refer to as the “information beat.” How do we learn about the world online? What policies, people, and secret information architecture shapes what we know, and how we know it? For over a year, our editor at large Ashley Rindsberg has done fantastic work here. And especially on Wikipedia.

Recently, Congress announced an investigation into Wikipedia, triggered in large part by Ashley’s October report in Pirate Wires, “How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative.” The piece tells the story of 40 anti-Israel editors — the Gang of 40 — as they make a collective 850,000 edits to 10,000 articles, completely reshaping the PIA (Palestine Israel articles) topic area.

Regardless of how you feel about the Israel-Palestine issue in particular, the importance of understanding the origin of ostensibly objective information that shapes our feelings about such issues should be obvious.

If interested in this subject generally, you can, and should, read Ashley’s entire piece linked above. Then, I would probably just check out his author page, which lists all of his work in the space. Now, back to this morning’s great, quick piece on the totally wild drama behind the scenes of the Wikipedia article for yesterday’s tragic shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, as editors on the talk page go to war over the issue of the shooter’s gender.

Stay tuned for more.

-Solana

In the aftermath of the Minneapolis shooting, a political fault emerged around the alleged shooter’s transgender ideology. That split quickly carried over to Wikipedia, where, in the article’s Talk page, editors began creating ground rules around what could and could not be said regarding the perpetrator, Robin Westman, a biological male who identified as a woman.

On Wednesday, the day of the shooting, a small number of editors began heavily policing the article for unwanted edits concerning misgendering and deadnaming of the perpetrator. At 3:01pm EST, one of the editors who began removing gendered content, SuperPianoMan9167, reverted an edit that stated, “He identified as a woman” to “She identified as a woman.” The same user also removed mention of the perpetrator’s birth name, Robert Westman, arguing that “Wikipedia does not include someone's birth name, even if it is sourced, unless they were notable under that name; to do otherwise is deadnaming.”

By the standard of Wikipedia policy, which is pro-trans, this position is correct. Wikipedia’s Manual of Style states:

Unless a living transgender or non-binary person was notable (by Wikipedia's standards) under a former name (a deadname), the former name should not be included in any page (including lists, redirects, disambiguation pages, category names, templates, etc.), even in quotations, even if reliable sourcing exists.

However, as another editor noted, this case precipitated a clash with a different Wikipedia policy: relying on reliable sources to support claims. That editor, Ergo Sum, argued that “[The birth name] is in the headline of arguably the most famous and reputable newspaper in the world [The Times]. To expunge it from WP is so absurd as to warrant invoking WP:IGNORE,” the latter being a policy that holds if a given rule prevents an editor from improving Wikipedia it should be ignored.

Deadnaming and misgendering debates continued to heat up on the Talk page, where SuperPianoMan9167 explained, “content that was removed is also misgendering the perpetrator by referring to them with masculine pronouns.” Another editor, jolielover, suggested removing a “[sic]” (indicating an error) in a quote by the shooter’s mother referring to them by their preferred pronouns. Elliegwen also objected to the use of “the wrong pronouns,” in cases where the article mentioned “his mother.”

Editors were keen to express their disgust at the shooter, with the strong caveat that gender rules must nonetheless be applied, no matter how grotesque the individual. “It doesn't matter how insensitive it is (trust me, I think she was a terrible human being); it's Wikipedia's job to get the facts straight. If she identified as a female, then that's what what [sic] Wikipedia should reflect, no matter how disgusting of a person someone is,” wrote EF5. SuperPianoMan conceded that the shooter’s birth name could, after all, be included, given that it had been reported, “but the poorly sourced and misgendering content has got to go.”

The debate about using Westman’s birth name continued nonetheless, with Ergo Sum reiterating that it had been used in the press, and other editors pushing back. “The shooting happened after the name change. Westman’s name was Robin at the time of the shooting. Once again, please read MOS:DEADNAME. Their deadname or the name change does not matter one bit,” wrote quidama.

Ergo Sum — noting that editors were arguing to keep the birth name out of the article on privacy grounds after it had been reported by leading global newspapers — shot back, “We have stepped into the absurd, friends. The utterly absurd.”

This had the effect of kicking the encyclopedia hornet’s nest. “If this is our definition of absurd, then I am absurd. It seems that not only must we accept the word of a newspaper, but we must even accept the word of a headline. And you call yuorself an epistomologist [sic],” wrote Phil Bridger. Quidama wasn’t far behind in expressing her (his, their?) disgust at the idea of including Westman’s birth name, in violation of “the emerging consensus” on the topic.

The article, at time of writing, makes no mention of Westman’s birth name, and uses “she” and “her” exclusively throughout. As of this writing, it makes one mention of the fact that Westman was transgender. Outside of that single mention and the Talk pages, where it forms the majority of the debate, the only other reference to the term in the article itself comes in the form of a quote by Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey concerning hate directed towards the “trans community.”