WIKIMOVE/Podcast/Transcript Episode 13
Nikki: Welcome to the second season of WIKIMOVE. In this podcast we discuss the future of the Wikimedia Movement. I'm Nikki Zeuner and with me is Eva Martin.
Eva: Hi everyone! Nikki and I are part of Wikimedia Deutschland’s Governance and Movement relations team. This episode was recorded on September 21st 2023. Things may have changed since then, but what we still know…
Nikki: …is that by 2030 Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us. You know, when my daughter heard me saying that, she said “this is culty”.
Eva: This podcast is also available on podcast apps and YouTube. If you want to reach out to us, you can do so via the WIKIMOVE meta page or you can send us an email. All the relevant links are available in the show notes. Nikki, tell us a bit about today's show!
Nikki: In today's show, we're interviewing two non-binary wikipedians and longtime contributors to Wikipedia. They have fought for better representation and less harassment on the projects for many years and their experience shines a light on why the Movement strategy really was written, particularly the pieces around ensuring safety and inclusion and around the need to identify topics for impact. And to bridge the knowledge gap on our projects. We will hear from the front lines of the daily grind towards a harassment-free environment and towards ways to appropriately represent trans and non-binary people on our projects, talking about safety and inclusion. Our Movement strategy includes a recommendation on that very topic, it is our recommendation number three: provide safety and inclusion. The recommendation says, and I'm quoting from the text, ‘We will establish Movement-wide standards for an inclusive, welcoming, safe, and harassment-free environment. This will enable us to better attract and retain new and diverse volunteers and grow as a movement’. Even before this recommendation was written, a universal code of conduct was started to be developed. It now has enforcement guidelines to support the communities in ensuring a safe environment for their contributors. Yet there is still a lot of work to be done and this is not just about codes of conduct and about policies but it's also about culture. So the lack of a safe and inclusive environment is one of the causes for the gender gap and other knowledge gaps. Halfway through 2030, which is the end of the Movement strategy as it's written now, we ask ‘What has improved concerning the safety of our contributors, what are the challenges that still need to be addressed, and, what has improved on how trans and non-binary persons are described and represented on Wikipedia and wikidata?’. Eva, do you want to introduce our first guest?
Eva: Sure! Today we are talking to Pax Ahimsa. Pax is a queer black Trend blogger and photographer and a longtime resident of San Francisco. They have been an editor on the English Wikipedia for 15 years and they have contributed many of their original photos to Wikimedia Commons. Their hobbies include video gaming, word puzzles, playing the piano and singing. You cannot see it, but they have an amazing piano in their background right now. We are very happy to have you with us today Pax!
Pax: Thanks very much for having me!
Nikki: Tamzin Hadasa Kelly is a Wikimedian of 11 years who lives with their polycule in Cape May County, New Jersey. They have written Wikipedia articles on topics ranging from LGBTQ subjects, to unusual legal cases, to Mike Tyson’s tattoos, I'm going to look that one up. For non-Wikimedia hobbies they play board games and take long walks on the beach. Tamzin, we are so happy to have you on the pod.
Tamzin: Thank you all for having me! Thanks Pax for bringing me into this!
Eva: We would like to start by talking a little bit more about you and your work on the Wikipedia projects. Pax, can you maybe tell us briefly about yourself and what you've been doing within the Movement?
Pax: Sure! I have been an editor on the English Wikipedia for 15 years, but I've only been really active the last few, concentrating specifically on improving the representation of marginalized people, especially black and trans folks like myself - that's my main focus right now. I also have taken a lot of photos at social justice rallies and of trans folks and I use those photos to enhance my article.
Nikki: Thanks Pax! Tamzin, can you tell us briefly about yourself and your work on the Wikipedia projects?
Tamzin: Yeah, I, like Pax, I've only become more active in the past few years. I write about a lot of things which include LGBT subjects. I've written about a Jewish prayer that was written by a lesbian couple. I've written about a zine called “fucking transwomen” that was actually the first document published anywhere about transgender womens sexuality. As an elected volunteer administrator I do a lot of work on our harassment policies and especially hate speech, which is not limited to trans people but often winds up centering on that because that's currently the biggest culture flash point, at least in the west.
Eva: Tamzin, you just mentioned harassment and that's definitely a topic we need to talk about today. Pax, you've talked in the past about the harassment that you suffered due to your work on the English Wikipedia. Do you maybe want to tell us a little bit more about your response to this harassment and the abuse on the Wikimedia project?
Pax: Sure, several years ago, I think it was in 2016, an anonymous editor who didn't like some edits that I made to a page vandalized my user page on the English Wikipedia and when then proceeded to vandalize my user pages on all the other projects and stalk me throughout the encyclopedia for months, it was a big headache… Anyway, as a result of that, that year there was an inspire campaign, which was to propose alternatives to combat harassment on Wikipedia. So for that campaign I proposed to protect user pages by default, from [being] edited by anonymous or new users, so that was my response and the Community fortunately agreed to this. Now there is a filter that users can choose to opt out of. But it's a filter that prevents anonymous and new users from editing anyone's user page and it's active on the English Wikipedia but the source is available for other language wikipedias to adopt as well.
Eva: That's very impressive Pax and let me maybe just I'm very sorry that you had to go through all this harassment and abuse. Pax: Thank you! Even though the harassment just started on my user page, it ended up going on for many months and the person even stalked me on my blog and it was very damaging. Unfortunately trans folks experience a lot of this sort of thing. This is just the tip of the iceberg what I experienced, especially compared to what many trans women have to endure. So even though this user-filter would only help in the regard of protecting one particular aspect of this harassment, I just thought this is the least that we can do.
Nikki: Tamzin, let's hear from you. If I understand correctly, you are one of a few openly non-binary admins on the English Wikipedia, correct me if I'm wrong there, what are the tools that are at your disposal to deal with vandalism, abuse, harassment?
Tamzin: Yeah, I do want to make clear that my approach to trans-related vandalism, harassment, I try to keep entirely distinct from my position as a trans person. It's not that I feel I would be biased or anything, but, I'm opposed to all kinds of bigotry and it just happens that a lot of the bigotry I deal with winds up being transphobia and a lot of what people want to talk about, people don't ask me about all the times I block racists block, religious bigotry. To the extent that my background matters it's that I know what the kind of dog whistles look like. I don't know how internationally accessible a term that is, but when people are saying one thing, but they're meaning ‘I hate trans people’ and sometimes that means then explaining to other administrators ‘this comment might look reasonable if you're not entirely familiar with the topic area but actually what they're saying here is, you know what have you’. So I've kind of done the article version of what Pax has done and that I've created an edit filter that detects misgendering of transgender and non-binary people's articles. If someone changes every ‘he’ in an article to ‘she’, it will, sometimes at least catch that, it's an imperfect system but does a pretty good job! Then I follow up on that on the manual side by when an article's getting too much of that, which, I mean, no amount is an okay amount but is getting more of that than our regular processes are able to handle, I'll in various ways limit editing to that article for some period of time. Then I've also been outspoken on the idea that if you're saying hateful things on Wikipedia that just counts as disruptive editing, I wrote an essay I'm very proud of called ‘Hate is disruptive’ which we had a long-standing dispute over, like, ‘oh do we have we don't have an explicit policy that says you can't be a Nazi or whatever’ and you know, my intervention in this has just been to say ‘no’ if someone is, well, either using actual hate speech or pursuing a hate agenda, but also if they're just letting everyone know they really like the Nazis or really like some other hateful cause, that's disruptive editing, that we, as administrators, are empowered to take action against for the good of the community. So I've blocked people from editing for a lot of that, mostly not over trans matters though, mostly over racism, caste-based discrimination, all sorts of things.
Eva: We will definitely link your essay in the show notes of this episode, Tamzin. Pax, I know that you've been around in the Movement for quite some time and you are an experienced editor and volunteer, but you also mentioned some of the things that particularly underrepresented groups may be facing on our project. Can you maybe tell us a few words about how you prepare new editors, and maybe particularly vulnerable editors, or new trend editors to face the environment on the English Wikipedia?
Pax: Sure! Well, in general, I always tell editors who are new to Wikipedia to start out just with things like fixing typos, fixing broken links on just general subjects. Don't try to tackle subjects like transgender history or anything controversial right away. Then when you're more comfortable with how wikipedia works, and the culture around editing, then you can venture into deeper stuff. But when you do get into controversial issues like being trans, which unfortunately is considered very controversial, you need to realize that you're going to face a lot of transphobic vandalism and you're going to have to decide how much of that you're willing to accept because it can be very stressful. I encourage people to take breaks. I mean, this is a completely volunteer job, no one should volunteer to be abused for free, or for pay for that matter, but certainly not for free. I've had to take many breaks. I was just looking at my editing history the other day and you see like in one year I have thousands of edits and then the next year it dwindles down substantially because I just had to step away for a while. So, I encourage, trans folks in particular, to take care of themselves first because as much as I want more transgender people represented amongst our editors, as well as in our articles, we can't do so at the expense of our own mental health.
Eva:Yeah definitely Pax, thanks for sharing this.
Nikki: One of the things we talked about in the prep calls is that this issue of the neutral point of view, Pax, you said many trans editors get their edits reverted based on, and you said something like that Tamzin, that if you block somebody you try to stay out of it when it might be a trans or queer issue, so just this whole idea of neutral point of view, I find it so difficult and this definition of neutral point of view is sort of the knowledge or the people who have edited and run Wikipedia until now are cis, male, I mean let's say it, you know the demographics are defining what's neutrality there. Anyway I'm rambling on, can you talk about this and sort of talk about it from your own point of view?
Pax: Yeah, I mean, from my point of view, what is considered a neutral point of view on the English Wikipedia is that of a straight, cisgender, white male and I am none of those things. I mean, I'm legally male, I transitioned from female to male for legal and medical purposes, but I am non-binary, I'm not straight, I'm black, you know, and I'm open about all of these things on my user page, which I certainly do not recommend that anyone be if they're not comfortable with attracting negative attention. But I choose to be transparent about my identity to make a point that I am editing from that frame of reference and everybody is editing from a frame of reference whether they consider it biased or not, you can't help but be influenced by being a certain race, or gender identity, or sexual orientation. It just so happens that the ones that are most dominant are considered neutral. So when people accuse me of editing from a biased perspective because I'm trans, or because I'm black, or because I'm queer, they have to realize that they have their own biases as well, so yeah, I think that's really important to emphasize.
Tamzin: Absolutely! I think there's really two concepts that sometimes get conflated as neutral point of view: Neutral point of view, I don't think it’s actually a great term to describe either. When it comes to article content, what we really mean is a ‘consensus point of view’, because on a question like ‘did the Holocaust happen?’ or ‘is slavery bad?’ we don't take a neutral point of view, we take the consensus of reliable sources, which is ‘yes’ to the first question and ‘yes’ to the second question. What we really probably should have called it 20 years ago when that policy was written, was ‘consensus point of view’ because we're absolutely non-neutral intentionally on lots of our articles and that's a good thing, and I hope anyone who quotes that chooses to quote that with the full context. When it comes to individual editors we don't have any rule about neutrality for an individual editor and I think, Nikki, I think if I've given you the impression that I stay away from anything because I'm trans, I wouldn't say that. There's some topics or subtopics that I have interacted with in my capacity as an active editor in the LGBTQ-topic area that as a matter of English Wikipedia policy, I'm therefore supposed to not be an administrator too close to anything I've worked on as a Content editor, but you know, I don't consider myself too biased to act in the general concept of trans topics because if trans admins were, then why not cis admins too? I have as much or as little bias inherently as any cis person. I've actually found like, this wouldn't necessarily have to be the case, but I often am a bit more open-minded on some things than some of our cisgender administrators when it comes to giving someone a chance because I have seen every possible flavor of transphobia and there's times where I look at someone and I'm like ‘oh maybe if we let this person talk this through maybe this is going to go in a better direction’ and then some cisgender admin's like ‘nope transphobic - blocked’, like, okay, I was gonna give them a chance. Sometimes you want a block to be made by a more distant person if possible, but, I think the kind of misapplication of the ‘neutral point of view policy’ to individuals has been a dangerous thing and has been weaponized against people from marginalized groups and that's not even a complaint about the policy. The policy says nothing about individual people's views, it understands, in fact, that editors will be biased, that the sources we use will be biased, and it's all about, if you actually read the thing, which a lot of people don't, it's about reconciling those biases to get the ‘right answer’. Some people turn that into like a ‘oh, well, I'm a Centrist so I must be unbiased’. It's like, ‘no, centrism is still a bias’, or, ‘I'm in the majority group, I'm cis so I can't be biased on this trans topic’ - nope, that's still a bias! Everyone has a bias.
Eva: True, Tamzin you just mentioned you sometimes being more open-minded than some of the cis-admins. It seems like your approach is ‘assume good faith’, which is essential to the Wikimedia projects. I want to ask you something, I think we mentioned this in our prep call, it's just that a lot of wikipedians don't know how to write about trans topics in general and I know that some guidelines have been developed to help them and to guide them. Can you maybe say a few words about it?
Tamzin: We have been fighting over guidelines on trans topics for like 10 years. We, as a community and after 10 years, what we have is: don't deliberately misgender people in the encyclopedia's voice, limit comments that aren't in the encyclopedia's voice that would misgender someone, like quotes about someone before they transitioned, and limit use of people's pre-transition names, sometimes called dead names, that's a pretty embarrassing amount to show after 10 years of incredibly intense discussion. A lot of it, if I'm saying this right now from the 30,000 foot view, but if you actually try to write an article on a trans person, a lot of that advice actually isn't that helpful because you'll just very quickly run into a case of like ‘this is a quote that's talking about them having gender dysphoria, there isn't really a way I can write that, that doesn't talk about their gender assigned at birth’. My feeling as someone who edits in the transgender topic area, is that there's been a lot of desire by people to kind of regulate how we write about this where it's people who don't actually write about these topics, who, maybe sometimes they like it as a thought experiment, they just want to write about that, they just want to like have their take of ‘this would be the best way to do it’. We routinely have to come up with our own solutions, so in terms of advice for someone who wants to write about transgender topics, the best one is, to the greatest extent possible, prioritize being respectful of the subject. There will occasionally be exceptions where there's no way to write about something without saying something the person might not want you to write about. We have this idea on the English Wikipedia of ‘ignore or all rules’ which is like, every rule is meant to be broken, but one thing we often have to tell new users is ‘you're probably not the best judge of which rules should be ignored yet’ so that applies here too. If you're writing your first trans biography and you're like ‘oh I think this is a case where we should break the normal rules on how we write about trans people’ well, maybe go talk to someone who's written an article about this before and maybe they'll say ‘no, you can just reward that quote and it will be fine’, or maybe they'll say ‘oh, yeah, that really is an exception, there's no way around this here’. But, the truth is, obviously everyone should read the guidance we currently have, but it's kind of a mess and does not give actually the best guidance which is a shame, but the community consensus has been pointing toward just not like the last several attempts to create new guidance have failed because people have said ‘we've talked about this enough’ and I think that's correct, I've been one of those people of like ‘no, we don't need this much micromanagement’. Because the other thing is the biggest issues in our trans articles aren't caused by people who ever read the guidance, it's by people who don't even know that section of the guidelines exist and are just saying ‘well, he was a man then so we should use his man-name’ and that's been against the guideline for 10 years and people still do it all the time.
Pax: Yeah, consensus building is messy and you're right, it does get exhausting. I've had to drop out of many of these conversations. I used to really actively participate in any conversation on Wikipedia, involving transgender subjects, not only because I'm transgender myself, but because again, I am one of few openly trans people on the project and I wanted to make sure my voice was represented. But it really takes a toll because these conversations are open to everybody including just random anonymous people who were recruited on Twitter or whatever, to come in, and weigh in, and they don't care about the rules, whether they've read them or not, they're just convinced that we're freaks of nature or whatever and are going to say what they will and even though those comments can be, and usually are reverted, we still see them and that hurts. I mean, it literally hurts, and some people have a much higher pain threshold for that, but all of us are human beings and we need to take breaks because it's just exhausting.
Tamzin: Yeah and if I can say two things about that. I think that's absolutely a great point that there's a bias in favor of people who have more stamina, who are often the people who have less emotionally involved in a situation, and even if someone is emotionally involved on like the offensive, they're usually going to be better at keeping their emotions out of it and looking cool-headed and that leads to people being perceived as overreacting, maybe actually overreacting, just because something's a sensitive, emotional, subject to them and then kind of getting in trouble for that, which I don't know if I have an easy solution to, because like, that can be legitimately disruptive behavior, but I don't think our current handling of it is great. The other thing to say is, one idea that comes up in these conversations is, ‘all the trans editors want this’. Trans editors can't agree on anything, Pax and I can't agree on anything.
Pax: That's why I invited you to join us!
Tamzin: Yeah, if you look at the actual history of the guideline, people will come along sometimes and say ‘oh this portion of the guideline is transphobic we should change it’ and if you look back and see who suggested this ‘oh a trans person suggested this’. Probably two of the most controversial aspects of our gender guidelines among trans people, which are: one, the rule that we do sometimes, like include people's dead names in footnotes, in articles that reference them, and two, that we generally don't use neo-pronouns, which are like, so one of the sets of pronouns I use is ze/zim/zir, and our guideline is ‘no we don't do that if someone only takes neo-pronouns, we use they/them instead’. Both those have gotten a lot of criticism from trans people, both of those have been defended by trans people. So there's like this fiction of like some monolithic trans cabal that wants the maximal interpretation, and just like read any of these discussions that's not what happens, and I think the strictest part of the guideline, which is about the strictest parts, which are the earliest parts about like dead-naming and misgendering, I think were written by cis people.
Nikki: We want to believe things get better and I know, Pax, you gave a presentation around the transgender gap in 2016. Do you feel like stuff is improving since then?
Pax: That was a presentation I gave at Wikiconference North America in San Diego, I believe in 2016. Just talking about the idea that the transgender gap is not so much a gap in the number of transgender versus cisgender people, because that number will always be skewed, I mean, transgender people will always be a very small percentage of the human population, from my perspective, but a gap in knowledge about trans folks, and I feel that that has improved, there's a lot more knowledge about us now. With that visibility has come, at least in the United States, an increase in violence and backlash against us. I mean, we have 50 different states in this country that have 50 different views and laws about gender and what we can do with our bodies and what we can do legally to declare our identities and I know that other countries are facing this in various ways as well. I feel like our visibility has improved but the laws are, how should I put this, our safety is in great jeopardy right now, and this is obviously speaking outside of Wikipedia, but really on Wikipedia as well, if you think about mental health, our safety is impacted there as well. One of the main reasons that I keep going is because when someone searches for something on Google or another search engine, Wikipedia results are going to come up right at the top and if the first result that someone sees is a vandalized page about a transgender person or topic, that's going to have a serious impact. If that's a vulnerable trans person looking for information that could help them, or looking up other transgender people about their lives and they see vandalism there or hate speech, that's just going to have a terrible impact, so I keep going for that reason. I don't know if this answers your question directly, but what I try to emphasize is the critical importance of Wikipedia, all volunteer projects to the world at large, which I don't think that everyone appreciates nearly enough.
Eva: Pax, I'd like to react to that. You said trans and non-binary people, their safeties are being jeopardized in the society in the world we live in at the moment. I would like to just be talking about the Wikimedia Movement as a comparison. The Movement strategy basically says that ‘we want to create an environment that's safe enough for anyone who shares our vision to be able to join us’ and I would like to hear from both of you: How can we make the Wikimedia Movement a non-hostile place? A safer place for non-binary folks? And maybe not just talking about the online spaces, but also the on-side space, when we meet together, when we get this human connection that goes beyond the Wikipedia - How can we make it a safer place?
Tamzin: I agree with a lot of what Pax just said in terms of like, overall the world for trans people I'm like on team anti-trans visibility, I think it's been a bad thing more than a good thing overall. I think paradoxically though, the kind of backlash on trans issues in the US and Europe in the past couple years has probably been beneficial on Wikipedia because if there's one thing wikipedians hate it's like coordinated campaigns to push an ideology and like the trans-community has often been accused of that with no actual evidence of anything other than individual trans editors showing up and having opinions, and by the way, my earlier point about like people getting reverted it's not necessarily that like trans editors are reverted for being trans or anything it's that new editors are reverted for being new and most trans editors are new because they tend to be younger and you know. I have noticed a shift in the past six months or so on Wikipedia of a lot less, back when being transphobic was just some quirky ideological view that was like ‘oh free speech let this whatever’ but now that it's like associated more and more with like far-right views and anti-science, like, if there's one thing Wikipedia hate it's not violence, it's being against science, and when they see a Movement misrepresenting science, they tend to get very mad. So in terms of making spaces, and this is good to actually answer your question Eva, because it's like, I don't know, you can't make a space safe without having the people be decent. Imagine you walk into a space there's a big sign on the wall that says ‘no assaulting of people of whatever group you're in’ it's not actually gonna make you feel safer, it might, personally, it's gonna make me feel less safe if it's like ‘no assaulting trans people’, why do we need a sign saying this? But if I walk into a space and everyone's treating me decently, honestly regardless of whatever stereotype I might have that space, even if it's a place where I think know a lot of people here might have political views that you know might skew anti-trans or whatever but people are just being good to me, that's what makes the safe space, that's what makes the space safe. The main thing we can do as a Movement is education, it’s competence. I had one user who I warned because they had reverted what they thought was vandalism but was actually an improvement to comp with our gender identity guidelines and I'd said to them ‘hey that was incorrect please be more careful’ and since then they've come to me from time to time and they've said ‘hey this article goes into a lot of detail about this person's transition is that too much detail?’ and because they've just accepted that maybe they're not an expert on this, they're not the best judge and instead they'd like my input. That's been good to see that people need to know what they don't know and eventually maybe learn enough that they do know.
Pax: It's good to use the word safer space because I don't know if it's possible to have a truly safe space, especially if you're saying for everyone, because everyone is a very large group. Within the Wikipedia Movement, these conversations on Wikipedia are open to everyone including anonymous users, including people that were recruited on specific hate sites to say anti-trans things, so if I want to have a discussion about LGBT subjects with other wikipedians that I know or have a fairly good idea are LGBT or allies, I won't do it on Wikipedia. We have a LGBT user group that has other spaces that we can gather and so that's one thing that I have taken advantage of, and of course this doesn't mean as Tamzin has emphasized that we're all going to be in agreement on everything, I mean, there is not a specific trans wikipedian group and even if there was again, as Tamzin said, we would not all be in agree on everything, but at least we would have a better idea that there weren't people coming specifically to attack us for being transgender. As far as being in real life space, I haven't been to a Wikimedia Meetup in real space for quite some time, but I did watch the recent Wikimania event remotely. One thing that I was grateful to learn is that there was a gender neutral restroom, or the restroom that was originally not gender neutral, marked as gender neutral, for the duration of event and that actually got some negative attention and news coverage in the host city but it was greatly appreciated by the trans and non-binary folks in attendance from what I understand. Even though I wasn't physically there, I was very grateful, I feel that especially for my own experience of having a lot of stress transitioning from using women's restrooms to men's restrooms, I know trans women have it even worse in that regard, that's one of the rather small things but actually big things in impact that one can do to make a safer space for trans and non-binary folks, is to make facilities gender neutral where appropriate.
Tamzin: If we're just talking of the little things that help with that, gender neutral restrooms, just avoiding gendering wherever possible; obvious things like don't have Mr/Mrs as your only options for a title, consider whether you need a title at all, there's cultural implications there, if you're asking someone's name, clarify ‘do you need their legal name or do you want the name they like to be called or do you need both’ because if it's something like you're going to be getting a scholarship to travel to this event, maybe they really do need the name on your passport, but then they should know that that might not be the name you go by. That's also just like a cross-cultural thing of like first name, last name fields are very non-accessible to a large portion of the world. If you're asking, and this is always one of my things though, is if you want to be super progressive and show your support the trans community, asking someone's pronouns is a great thing to do - making the pronouns field required is a horrible idea that will actually scare away a lot of trans people who might be early in their transitions. I know for me before I transitioned it was like ‘if people are going to look at me and think he/him, well I didn't say that, they said that, so that's fine. Then if a place was like ‘no to show our solidarity with the trans community you need to say that your pronouns are he/him’. Thinking about that, talking to trans people, talking to a diversity of trans people, just like asking around what would make people feel safer at an event in a given context, all great ideas, but also understanding that no one speaks for the whole trans community and sometimes someone's idea of ‘oh I'd feel way better if this…’ might be based on their personal experience, and it's a valid perspective but might not be representative of the entire community.
Eva: Maybe as we move towards the end of the interview I think there's a question I would like to ask you both and it relates to the world out there and how we fit in it. We often wonder what the world needs from us, particularly in the context of Movement strategy and us growing as a Movement towards our Strategic Direction. I would just like to ask you: How do you think the speed of progress in terms of recognizing non-binary people and their rights in our projects, and how do you think that the speed of progress within the Wikimedia Movement is, in comparison to the society we live in?
Pax: I can only speak from my perspective as a US-American because I realize this is a global audience and I always want to emphasize that that's my frame of reference. I do feel that the Wikipedia projects at large are somewhat more advanced than the current state of recognition and respect for transgender and non-binary folks, gain this is from a US perspective, and it doesn't mean that it's perfect, it will never be perfect, but if it weren't, at least equal to if not better than, the state of dialogue around trans- and non-binary folks in the US, I would be much less inclined to participate, because again, my mental health is an issue here, so that's my current assessment subject to change.
Nikki: Tamzin, what are your thoughts?
Tamzin: Well, I think trans rights in the US and UK, and maybe I'm less qualified to talk about other countries, are moving somewhere between moving backward and at a standstill right now, depending where you look. As I said before, I think that has had some kind of perverse positive effects on Wikipedia because it galvanizes things and forces people to take a side. There's a paradox there that Wikipedia is not a reliable source, we're also the source a lot of people base all their knowledge on. I don't know if you've had this experience, Pax, but I've definitely written an article and then a month, a few months later, I look at news coverage of that topic and it all presents it the exact same way I present the facts. It's not necessarily a new facts, it's just they've now synthesized it as ‘these are the details that matter’ and it's based on what I say. I do believe Wikipedia has the potential to be incredibly influential, for good or for bad, on these topics and that's not me saying ‘oh we should advocate for the most pro-trans reading of things’ because there's lots of topics where the pro-trans reading might not necessarily be exactly what the sources say, they might take a more, for instance, satisfaction rates after bottom surgery, the current sourcing is middling positive, where I think most trans people would have a significant more positive view of that topic. I don't want it to say what the average trans person thinks, I just want it to say what the scholarly sources think, but often that's not what's in the article and that really has potential to do tremendous, good or bad, on an issue that a lot of people are hearing about for the first time and just want to know the basics on, and a single misleading sentence could be all it takes to make a person think ‘oh, so this is bad okay I got it’.
Nikki: Those are great last words on the power of the project that we're all working on.
Tamzin: Everyone's favorite unreliable source.
Nikki: I want to thank you so much for spending time with us, this was a fascinating discussion and I learned a lot. I hope we'll get lots and lots of listeners who also learn from this and who maybe can extrapolate some of what you say also to other situations, interactions and marginalized groups and just to generally make our Movement a nice place and nicer place, a decent place, like you said. So maybe we did a little bit towards that today. Thank you so much!
Eva: Thank you so much, thank you to our two wonderful guests, this has been very insightful as Nikki just said. WIKIMOVE is a production of Wikimedia Deutschland and its Governance and Movement Relations team. Our music was composed and produced by Rory Gregory, and is available under CC BY-SA on Wikimedia Commons.
Nikki: You can visit our WIKIMOVE meta page to listen to previous episodes and suggest topics and guests for our next episodes. You can also use our meta page to react to podcasts, to connect with other listeners and subscribe to always be notified of our new episode releases. You can contact us at wikimove@wikimedia.de to continue this discussion and share your suggestions for the next episodes. That’s a wrap, goodbye, thanks!