User talk:Tamzin: Difference between revisions

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{{ds/aware}}

I don't like the idea of getting pings over someone putting a box on my page that says I did nothing wrong while vaguely insinuating that I did, so I'm just parking these here instead. This user is aware of the designation of the following topics as contentious topics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, or related conflicts the Arab–Israeli conflict abortion the English Wikipedia article titles policy and Manual of Style the Balkans or Eastern Europe articles about living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles complementary and alternative medicine climate change discussions about infoboxes and to edits adding, deleting, collapsing, or removing verifiable information from infoboxes COVID-19, broadly construed Falun Gong governmental regulation of firearm ownership; the social, historical and political context of such regulation; and the people and organizations associated with these issues gender-related disputes or controversies or people associated with them genetically modified organisms, commercially produced agricultural chemicals and the companies that produce them, broadly construed the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes) India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan post-1978 Iranian politics the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed pseudoscience and fringe science the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people the Troubles They should not be given alerts for those areas. {{ds/aware|ap|gg|a-i|blp|mos|tt|ipa}} Update 18:24, 25 October 2021 (UTC): You know what, screw it. Keeping track of which to list is more trouble than it's worth, and I don't need any one-hit immunity. I'm aware of all of them. Even the weird ones like the Shakespeare authorship question or Waldorf education. If anything, I'm more likely to think something is a DS topic when it isn't, than vice versa.

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Absolutely deserved for uncovering the Swaminarayan-sockfarm. A lot of work is waiting, but you did great! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:14, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for giving me that SPI idea, and for the guidance that came with it!

🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs | please use {{ping}} on reply)} 03:21, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	Hi Tamzin, I'm Kevin. Thank you for your diligence on the Moksha88 SPI; had it been a less thorough report, it may have been overlooked or neglected, especially after the negative CU results. We're lucky to have had you looking into this. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 06:15, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

	The Civility Barnstar
	Without getting into the messy question of whether or not the other editor's professed ignorance is plausible, I think it's clear your calm, non-judgmental efforts to explain why their comments were offensive have been helpful and appreciated by all. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:25, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely second this. Your essay is excellent, as well. You're doing the (proverbial) Lord's work, and with much more patience than I. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:07, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I'm SSG123. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Teahouse. Thanks. Nosebagbear (talk)

​Block me if you must, but you'll never catch my socks!

(They're very cozy slipper-socks with like a stylized dog face on the top and then little fake ears on the side. Very cozy socks. AND YOU'LL NEVER CATCH THEM!) -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 13:28, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed the new one. It's an interesting one, and a matter I've thought about how to phrase. I suspect myself a lot of neurotypes odd in the general population are the default baseline on Wikipedia, but there's only so many ways you can say it without sounding like you're insulting someone (and I freely admit I can be less careful and more flippant with my word choice than you often are, certainly when I'm in the ANI peanut gallery). I've noticed there's an unfortunate correlation between editors who freely disclose neurodivergence and editors with significant competence issues, and I've wondered what consequences it has for the project as a whole in terms of interacting with people who are more clearly not working on neurotypical principles than our already high average -- though, of course, many disclosed neurodivergent editors are substantial and obvious assets. Vaticidalprophet 04:01, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, something I'd been thinking about for a while, and felt spurred to put into words after seeing an exchange on your talk page actually. As to correlations, there's a bias there, right? In terms of who wants/needs to disclose. If an editor quietly chugs along writing articles, doing gnomish work, etc., without ever getting into any conflict, then why would they want to disclose something that could subject them to ridicule or at least passive discrimination? (And there's editors who rack up 100k+ edits while barely touching anything metapedian.) Whereas some editors realistically have no choice: If they don't disclose, they may be treated as intentionally disruptive; whereas, if they do, they might at least "downgrade" that perception to CIR. Just like a person who is mild-to-moderately hard of hearing may be able to not disclose this fact in a workplace if they don't want, whereas a deaf person really has no choice in most contexts.

I'm active in a number of spaces online that are majority-neurodivergent. (I'll claim the label "neurodivergent" without comment on the label "autistic".) They all have to deal with the issue that, in such spaces, people are more likely to be sensitive, and also more likely to offend by accident. In the context of a collaborative project one can broaden this to a greater likelihood of people stepping on one another's toes. What strikes me is that these spaces' main advantage in contrast to Wikipedia is that they're honest with themselves about what's going on. Conduct decisions are made with the presumption that the participants' motives may not have been what you'd infer of a neurotypical person. Hence my new personal rule.

That said, it's not like there's easy answers here. Several years ago an openly autistic admin was desysopped for discussing violence against another editor in a way that was intended, by all accounts, to come off as mean but not as a true threat. It was an unambiguously desysoppable offense (although I'll admit I didn't take that view at the time). And yet, I think a lot of neurodivergent people can relate to making a joke that made perfect sense in their own head but came off very differently to their audience. (To be clear, I don't think that they raised autism as a defense, and I don't want to imply that their misconduct was "because autism", but at least the general circumstance is one that neurodivergent people tend to find ourselves in.) What's the solution there? I don't know. There's an overlap between statements that are reasonably insta-indeffable or desysoppable, and ones that a neurodivergent person can make without intending it to read that way. And if that's where we're starting from, how do we handle all the more minor cases?

So that's why I added this personal rule. Feel free to make any wording changes that preserve the meaning, if you think they'll make it less prone to misinterpretation, since it's just such a difficult thing to discuss, walking a tightrope between what could be perceived as being anti-accountability and what could be perceived as ableism. But regarding what you said about ANI: I think the best thing we can do about these topics is discuss them when there's no immediate reason to discuss them. If everyone's thinking about a specific editor when they discuss the topic, that will color their opinions.

P.S., not to come across as talking down to someone only a few years my junior, but a lesson I learned in my first wiki-life, reflected in the second paragraph in my userpage: The best thing you can do for your wiki-mental-health is avoid any page where the word "indef" gets thrown around. -- Tamzin (they/she) | o toki tawa mi. 05:08, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To open in response to your last comment: well, a lot of people are scared of ANI, but I'm scared of political articles, and I'm sure I've seen you edit those. 😛 We all see different hotspots.

I'm definitely familiar with what you say about knowing it, or how different it is to be in an environment where people openly discuss that moderation and norms are shaped by neurodivergence, as opposed to the weirdly "everyone knows but no one knows" Wikipedia environment. I'm unsure if it's possible at all on Wikipedia to change the latter to the former, simply because we (in the societal sense) currently conceptualise neurodivergence as a product of diagnosis. Even for things like autism (and I concur, with hangups and caveats that are all frankly well outside the scope of what I aspire to discuss onwiki, with the "will claim neurodivergent, will pass without comment on autistic" identification here) where there's a relatively robust self-advocacy community, it's still in some ways reasonably and in some ways not treated as offensive to tag someone as autistic who hasn't been tagged as such in a medical context, and plenty of things I'd very much like to have robust self-advocacy communities outside of medicalization do not. There's an age factor here, in that a lot of the core editor (and especially content-writer) base is from age cohorts where a lot of what's diagnosed now wasn't, for better or worse.

As for Ironholds, well. I'm familiar from the "read about it after the fact" perspective with that case, for whatever that counts as familiarity. I don't think the behaviour I read was at all appropriate, and I think it's reasonable to expect an admin of any neurotype to know that. Simultaneously, the thing that really interests me about that case (using 'case' here in the broader sense rather than the ArbCom term of art) is the "seven RfAs" bit, and seven RfAs is characteristically autistic to me, for both good and ill. It shines through as both the way one can ascend past a lot of the mental limitations allistic people self-ascribe, and work tirelessly towards the pursuit of a goal, and simultaneously the way one can just not know when to quit.

To circle back around to ANI, I've been thinking about it because it actually did come up there lately, and in part due to a thread I'd created; the subject of that thread was...outed? as autistic by linking to a diff he'd written at a much smaller venue by a well-meaning party partway through, and he clearly wasn't happy at all about it. At the same time, in a different thread, another disclosed autistic editor suggested the reason a third party might have been acting in the problematic way that got him brought there was that he could be autistic, and the readers of that thread interpreted it as a personal attack on the subject. The discussion is worthwhile reading (and my comments in it reference a third, related case where an editor was clearly in severe distress over being a thread subject in a way that nearly went very poorly indeed, and where some of the reopening comments trying to address it were imo atrociously worded). Vaticidalprophet 05:31, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's actually those ANI threads—including a remark you made about how many/most editors at least have subclinical "symptoms" of autism (scare quotes mine)—that first got me thinking about this topic. Just because I never comment there doesn't mean I don't stay up to date on the latest drama. I agree that there's a cultural/generational issue here, and such things will always be a challenge for an international, intergenerational project. A norm like tone-tagging (beyond the common "/s") could do a world of good, but I think it'll be at least a decade till you could get a majority of editors on board with something like that. (Not like, making it mandatory by any means; just instilling it as a norm.)

The other day, in the course of saying something about Wikipedia, I explained to my partner what deletionism and inclusionism are, and she'd said something like, "I hate to tell you, but I think I'm an inclusionist." Today, shortly after sending my last message here, something suddenly hit me, and I said to her, "Wait, what makes you think I'm a deletionist?" To which she said, "Because you need everything to be just a certain way." I'm guessing you know the kind of "certain way" she meant.

And it occurred to me that you can pretty easily predict how drama-heavy a particular area of the wiki is going to be by just how strongly people need it to be a certain way. There's a reason I refuse to touch any edit that has anything to do with categories. There's a reason that the major topic area with the worst-written articles is, by far, math. And you can call the tendencies that beget this "neurodivergent", or just... "particular"... And those particularities carry over to administration too. Ironically, I would argue that the very resistance to change things in a more overtly neurodivergent-embracing direction is itself of tendencies that, in many cases, fall into what I'll again call "either neurodivergent or just very particular." ANI being a mess of massive walls of text is the way that Makes Sense, so that must never change, no matter how flawed it is. For Wikipedia to stop being hostile to newcomers, we'd have to restructure some things that are The Way They Should Be, so I guess it'll keep being hostile. And so on and so forth.

As to Ironholds, to be clear, I didn't mean to make it seem like a "wink wink nudge nudge" thing which case I was referring to; rather, I was trying to use it as a general example since, as I said, once you get into any one specific case that complicates the analysis. (Mx. Ironholds is, incidentally, a researcher and commentator on autism issues these days, though they're no longer active here. And yes, that's an off-wiki identity still linked on their userpage, before anyone says anything.)

Back to your point about the ANI threads: It'd be nice to have an essay as a companion to WP:CIR (maybe WP:Idiosyncratic editors) that discussed how best to handle competency issues in ENDOJVP editors but stopped short of saying "All of these editors are probably autistic." I know you followed the somewhat tragic tale of the now-3X'd SoyokoAnis (talk · contribs). I'm certainly not going to try to diagnose her with anything, but in the threads about her there was clearly a lot of dog-whistling and subtext, as there is basically anytime CIR comes up with an adult native English speaker, because, yeah, CIR is usually about language/culture, age, or neurodivergence. Perhaps it would be nice in such contexts to have a diplomatically-worded essay to point to that nutshells to: "Some editors interact with the world in very different ways than others. Maybe this is for neurological reasons, or maybe it's just how they are." and then... And then what? Then a conclusion drawn from that, but I'm not yet sure what that conclusion should be. (And not that in her particular case there would have been a different outcome necessarily; just that it allows for more honest discussion.) -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 06:50, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, Soyoko. I admit to less sympathy to her than you or Elli (who was my main point of contact with her saga), but that's not to say a lack of it. She didn't scan to me as adult (and, as someone who first edited as a young child, I suspect some of our current policies about not disclosing the ages of young editors might actually be counterproductive -- but that's another issue...), with the consequence I was mostly viewing her CIR issues through the lens of youth rather than neurodivergence, but I can't exactly say the latter was never a consideration. It did stand out to me that the RfA candidate she insisted on nominating was a disclosed autistic editor.

I know of two essays currently about specific neurodivergences. I can't pretend to like either of them. I'd happily MfD WP:AUTIST, where its every word strikes me as Making Things Worse, if I thought that proposal had a chance in hell (I've already spent my nominating-bad-essays-and-failing points for the month). There might be something useful in its bones, though; it apparently hit someone's sense of "this is me" enough for WP:OCD to be based on it. Vaticidalprophet 21:11, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, thanks for the ping to this interesting discussion (hope I'm not barging in too much).

Wikipedia is... an interesting environment, I guess, for neurodivergent people. Given, well, the way the site works, I think it's likely to attract them (what normal person spends their free time writing an encyclopedia for free?) Most people find the whole concept entirely foreign.

As for Soyoko, yeah, I think it's likely a combination of some type of neurodivergence and youth - neither of which are incompatible with Wikipedia, but if someone with them makes wrong assumptions about how the site works... it's not gonna be fun. Hell, looking at my first edits, I'm surprised I didn't get many warnings, given how terrible they were.

I dunno. This is kinda a ramble because I'm not sure exactly what I should say here? I guess, "be kind" has mostly worked for me - and is what, I think, worked for getting me on the right track. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:37, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Elli: I do think that Wikipedia's generally moving in the right direction on all of this. As I said to SoyokoAnis, I really doubt she would have been extended as much AGF back when I made this account (2012), which is one thing that made her situation extra frustrating. Then again, one still sees cases where if CIR issues aren't resolved after the first or second attempt at intervention, someone just hits the block button. I recently saw one of my least favorite things, a "Sock of someone or other" block. They're used as an excuse to say "We can label this intentional disruption rather than CIR because they're probably socking." Somewhere between begging the question and a thought-terminating cliché. But still, overall, progress, yeah. (Also thanks for dropping in to this chat. )

@Vaticidalprophet (but also still @Elli): I don't know if I'd agree with deleting WP:AUTIST, but I do think it misses the point. Partly because it's hard to describe the "honeypot" effect without resorting to stereotype. Partly because it's hard to describe autism itself without resorting to stereotype. But the essay manages to cut too much slack to neurodivergent editors while still not giving neurotypical editors particularly good advice about how to deal with us; and the advice it does give isn't very helpful when most neurodivergent editors are not open about it (if they even know themselves), and applying the label speculatively is, as you've said, a thorny issue.

So, seriously, if you (either of you) would be interested in working on an essay with me, I think there's room for improvement in the neurodivergence essay category. I'm interested in the idea of something that isn't explicitly about autism, but rather, without outright saying so, says "We're all at least kinda autistic here". I'm thinking of a title like WP:Needing things to be a certain way. In my mind, the essay would start out with something like, If you edit Wikipedia, that means you see a need for things to be a certain way. Quite likely, your first edit was noticing that something was incomplete or incorrect and fixing it. But why does it matter that the world know that the Third Amendment has been incorporated against the states in the Second Circuit but nowhere else? Why does it matter whether "Ljubljana" is spelled correctly in an article about baseball? Because things need to be right. All of us, to some extent, see things this way. And then go on to discuss how this applies to things like WP:CIR, WP:CIV, WP:TE, WP:POINT, and WP:RGW. And then give actual useful tips that can be applied to all editors, not just ones with autism userboxen. Stuff like:

• Accept that Wikipedians are more likely than most people to have strong opinions on "little things" like punctuation or reference style. To you, they might be small, but if those things are important to the way things need to be for someone, they can become very personal.
• Someone's view of how a conversation should work may not be the same as your view, or indeed, as the view of society at large. In particular, certain editors may value straightforwardness as a virtue significantly more than others, often based on a feeling that conversations are simply meant to work that way. This should not excuse incivility, but understanding this may help to reach constructive solutions in conflicts.
• It can be very hard for Wikipedians to let go of something they are passionate about, even when consensus is against them. If this leads to someone becoming disruptive on a topic, then even as you nudge their focus elsewhere you should be respectful of their passion. And whoever comes up with a way to gently keep editors from returning to these passion topics will have averted the indefblocks of countless mostly-constructive contributors.

Wouldn't be the whole list, just the first three things that come to mind. In neurodivergent terms these are "sameness"/general particularities, communication issues, and special interests, but framed generally it's just a lot of the stuff we see all the time on Wikipedia. -- Tamzin (they/she) | o toki tawa mi. 06:47, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hey!! Hope all is well. StroopWaffles are still on my radar but since I am a bad cook, waiting for the next bakery run lol. Don't wanna take up anymore of your time then I already have but had a question about copyright and thought maybe you could guide me in a direction. New account doing some edits here: Jay Sadguru Swami. Nothing bad but they added some off-wiki links to a branches youtube video in the see also section. Someone else had undone the links addition a few days ago and I think the undo made sense so I reverted back to that and left a talk page entry. The user dropped the lyrics on the page. This is a ritual/prayer so I figure similar to a poem or song. This is the closest I could find for a policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lyrics_and_poetry and not sure how copyright hits something that is a few centuries old but if I read the policy correctly, the article should focus on "analytical framework" so didn't know if lyrics flies with policy. Not opposing the edit if it meets policy. More-so wanted to educate myself on what is allowed. Thanks for the time. Kbhatt22 (talk) 23:25, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Kbhatt22: Sorry for my slow response to this. As noted below, I'm gonna be away from Wikipedia for a bit, but did want to follow up. Haven't looked into this particular case, but as a general answer: Something a few centuries old wouldn't be copyrighted, but overquoting can be a stylistic concern as well as a legal one. Otherwise we'd be no different than Wikisource. As to what's a valid external link, see WP:XLINK. If you have more copyright questions, my favorite person to nag is User:Firefly.

While I'm away, if you want to take a more proäctive role with the stuff listed at WP:NPOVN—striking stuff that seems fine, tagging stuff that doesn't, etc.—please feel free. If the thread gets archived, feel free to copy the list of affected pages into my userspace, maybe User:Tamzin/Moksha pages. And if any talk-page stalkers want to chip in on that effort at NPOVN, I would hugely appreciate that.

So, yeah, be back in a bit. I know you've got one or two other experienced Wikipedians to rely on for guidance. :) -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 03:09, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Yes, always happy to help with copyright queries. :) firefly ( t · c ) 08:59, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Tamzin: Thank you so much for the reply and please take care. I wish you the absolute best. You are awesome and amazing on Wiki and I am sure you are equally awesome and amazing off wiki too. You are extremely valuable to the Wiki community, especially to noobs like myself, so I am rooting for you with the best of wishes. Its not much but sending you a big Baymax Hug Kbhatt22 (talk) 22:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Firefly: You don't know what you signed up for lol. My indecisiveness gets annoying really fast but I promise I will behave haha Kbhatt22 (talk) 22:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You're not funny, but here's something that's definitely not a laughing matter - why aren't you an admin yet? Once you're back, I'm sure there's plenty of people who'd nominate you ~TNT ^(talk) 19:01, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW I agree entirely with TNT. Definitely something you should be considering :) firefly ( t · c ) 19:17, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No doubt about that. When I've seen your talk page comments I have always been really impressed and feel like someone with those skills would fit perfectly in the role of an admin. --Trialpears (talk) 19:24, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

​I already am an admin, on the very prestigious testwiki and testwikidatawiki, thank you very much! No, but in seriousness, thanks for the kind words, y'all. I had this conversation with Tavix and Ritchie333 a few years ago, and think I was right to not take either up on his offer then; I don't think I was quite ready. Despite having been around a while, I feel like I only came to really understand Wikipedia in the past year. And, to paraphrase John Wick, people keep asking if I'm ready to be an admin, and yeah, I'm starting to think I'm ready.

As I've said before, I consider my account's rename last October to be a soft clean start (redlinking to remind myself to write that wrote it!), not because I necessarily had anything to be ashamed of, but just because I didn't really like the person I'd been. My philosophy with this has been that I wouldn't speak much of past accomplishments, and in return would ask people not hold past failings against me. (The failings may well be more numerous in my mind than in reality, but either way.) I couldn't really ask the latter of RfA voters, so I'd be willing to run at least partly on my pre-User:Tamzin record, but primarily I'd want to run on my work in this incarnation. Work I'm very proud of, but which I feel is a bit incomplete, and a bit short-lived.

Excluding this mental health leave, which is thankfully coming to a close (which is good because I've been itching to fire up AWB and fix the 170ish articles that mislabel a Swedish source (ISO 639:sv) as being in Northern Sami (ISO 639:se)), I've been continuously active since January, so I think I'd want till at least this coming January to build up a bit more of a recent track record, as well as show my commitment to maintaining a reasonable activity level, especially given that I was almost completely inactive from March of 2018 through September of 2020. I'd also want to wait till I've done a bit more quality content work and gotten 'zinbot approved at least for the task I've already coded for it and hopefully for a few others. But I'm reasonably confident that I can get all that done by January.

On that note:

1. In general, yes. I'd like to run, shooting for January.
2. To the person who recently emailed me offering a nomination, if you're reading this: I'll get back to you presently about what that might look like (a.k.a. try to talk you out of it ;) ).
3. @Firefly: We all know you're overdue for adminship yourself, and you've been active again about as long as I have. Wanna flight it up? Can flip a coin on who goes first, or run at the same time.
4. I'm always very worried about echo chambers and groupthink, so if anyone's reading this and thinks they'd be landing on the oppose side of things or would be on the fence, please feel free to let me know your concerns, here or by email, so I can either adjust my parameters of what I should do before running, or at least draft a good response to a potential tough question.
5. @TheresNoTime: I'm the funniest person you've ever met, and you know it. :P

-- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 08:08, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I’m immensely flattered that you think I’m qualified to run! I would definitely be up for an ‘RfA flight’ as and when the time came - assuming I could find anyone silly enough to nominate me and they thought I was ready around the same time. :) I absolutely echo point 4 of your post and invite anyone with concerns about my eventual suitability to let me know. Mostly though I’m just glad you’re up for running! firefly ( t · c ) 18:27, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You already know you could get a nom today =) --Trialpears (talk) 18:47, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Trialpears, I do, and for that I am greatly appreciative :) firefly ( t · c ) 20:19, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mean to be a buzzkill but I'm still bearing the scars of my own RfA and that was six years ago this week. It was brutal. My advice is

• a) make sure that those people who believe in you are aware that you are having an RfA...some people don't look at their Watchlists and may not even know that an RfA is happening;
• b) start an RfA at a time when you feel strong and can be present 100%. You shouldn't respond to every criticism but you'd be surprised how often an editor starts an RfA and suddenly becomes busy and disappears from Wikipedia for a few days. Those are never successful. You have to be present;
• c) Stick with it through the entire week. There is generally a burst of support at the beginning and then the opposers show up after a few days. I think there are some editors who would be admins right now but they withdrew their nomination after the critics began speaking up. But unless it's an unexpected tidalwave of "No"s, the close votes can go back and forth and it could turn in your favor if you hang in there and don't throw in the towel.

Just a few ideas for anyone considering an RfA. Right now, it looks like you have a lot of support! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:08, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if you had time to think more about the hoax discussion? Your input was very helpful, and as a neutral party, you may be better able to build a consensus there than someone like me. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:34, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tamzin. I am a friend of Sidarta Ribeiro, I follow his trajectory as a scientist and writer and now that his book The Oracle of Night is being released in English I thought he deserved to have his Wikipedia page – which was outdated and with some objectively wrong information – updated and correct. I am not being paid for this work nor am I working with Luiza Mugnol Ugarte. All information I have added regarding academic titles, papers, positions, research areas, awards and publications is strictly factual. There is no way to consider “hard”, objective and correct information as “promotional”, right? The only part of my updates that can be discussed as to whether or not they are promotional is the description of The Oracle of Night book. Compared to other book descriptions published on Wikipedia, I don't consider it out of the box. But since all text of this type has an authorial, subjective dimension, if you find my description of the book inadequate, OK, then let it not be restored. (If I have time, I can try to make a “less positive” synthesis.) Given these considerations, I ask that the additions e corrections I made in the introduction, and in the sections “academic degrees”, “fields of research”, “awards” and “works” be restored. As it is strictly factual, all the information I have added in these sections would be the same if included by anyone else who properly updated the page. (Incidentally, this information can be confirmed in a single document: the “Lattes Curriculum” of Sidarta Ribeiro, published on the official resumés platform of the academic community in Brazil, in which the insertion of false information implies legal consequences: http://buscatextual. cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.do. If appropriate, I can add this link to the page after the information is restored.) Flavio Righetto (talk) 00:17, 20 August 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flavio Righetto (talk • contribs) 22:10, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for including the link! I didn't know it existed before, and I believe it will be very helpful moving forward.

While I'm here, I 100% agree with controversial opinion #3.

BilledMammal (talk) 00:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm Tamzin. I wanted to let you know that I saw the page you reviewed, Opposition to human rights, and have marked it as unreviewed. If you have any questions, please ask them on my talk page. Thank you.

(Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

-- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 02:08, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Outrageous, Tamzin. I demand you resign your patrollership. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 02:10, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Tamzin: you okay?CycoMa (talk) 21:11, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly not, with this blatant abuse of NPR by Tamzin. Someone needs to hold her accountable. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:17, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for correcting my silly mistake at User talk:Hayleez. Presumably I accidentally some past version of the page, but I have no idea how I came to do so. JBW (talk) 21:14, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes I suspect the devs throw little things like this into MediaWiki just to gaslight all of us.^{[humor... mostly]} -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:19, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Who knows? JBW (talk) 21:25, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@JBW: P.S., you might want to check out User talk:Favaroon (with thanks to Spicy for the find). If I were clerking this at SPI I'd recommend an indef for Favaroon for evasion of scrutiny after warnings on the Hayleez account, but no sanctions for the Hayleez account since your warning does the trick, preventativeness-wise. But I wouldn't fault an admin who just indeffed both. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:44, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, Tamzin. If I had known about that when Favaroon was still active, I would certainly have blocked at least that account, perhaps both. Also, if I had known about it when I posted my message to Hayleez, I might perhaps have blocked then. However, as things are, since Favaroon has not edited since the admission of sockpuppetry, and Hayleez hasn't edited since my warning, I am inclined to leave things as they are for now. Obviously that will be subject to review if and when either account resumes editing. It also occurs to me that, since the editor is known to have switched to a sockpuppet because of being warned by another editor, they may do so again following recent warnings, so if any similar editing starts up from a new account it may be worth looking at. JBW (talk) 14:25, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@JBW: That's fair enough. I'll keep an eye out. Might set rc_scanner to flag CSD taggings by new accounts for a bit (which TBH is a good use case regardless). I'll let you know if I spot another. Or I'll just SPI it at that point because that'd be three. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 14:53, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously you can choose to contact me or go to SPI as you prefer, or both. SPI cases sometimes languish for a ridiculously long time before any administrator gets there, leaving the sockpuppeteer to carry on. I can't promise to always be available, but it's likely that I'll be quicker. On the other hand, if a CheckUser seems necessary I won't be able to help. JBW (talk) 20:24, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I like "cetacean needed". JBW (talk) 14:27, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A little nod to one of the only jokes to survive in mainspace by consensus; ctrl+f it at List of cetaceans. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 14:53, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! I never knew about that. JBW (talk) 15:11, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the kind message but I have had requests denied because I didn't inform the suspected sockpuppet. So, I'm afraid I will have to continue to check that box until there is an option to only inform the sockpuppet. Sjö (talk) 07:49, 2 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Sjö: Thanks for following up. Can I ask when/where that happened? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 16:21, 2 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t remember now, I have been active for a long time. But I checked the guidelines and as they say that notification is just an option, I’ll try making reports without checking that box. Sjö (talk) 17:25, 2 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I wasn't sure where to file it, it wasn't the sockpuppetry as much as it was all the threats, insults and sabotage attempts. I'll be on the look out for this user, he's been quite a pain for the past 2 months.--MexTDT (talk) 06:28, 5 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I notice you struck/hid some comments at Talk:SIC, apparently by a sock user. I created a redirect SIC (journal) at the request of that user - I had no reason to suspect them of being a sock as the request seemed reasonable. Should that redirect also be deleted? It seems to me a valid redirect, even if the user requesting it was not valid, though it's not an area I know much about. --Hrossey (talk) 17:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Hrossey: Per BANREVERT, it's at any editor's discretion whether to revert contributions by a sockpuppet. In this case, I'm being very aggressive with his non-mainspace contributions, since that's what he's most focused on, and I want to send a clear message that he is not welcome here. It may sound cruel, but sometimes deleting someone's hard work is the best way to dissuade them from coming back. I've mostly left his content work alone because I don't think it'll make much of a difference in whether he returns. (The one thing that might make a difference is rolling back Pierre Albert-Birot (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), but it was in such a poor state before that I just can't bring myself to. I'd feel differently if his ban were for content disruption, but it was always about disruption at RfD and RM.) My point in all this is: Up to you. You created the redirect, so unlike the other stuff it can't be G5'd. If you'd like to tag it for G7 deletion, that's your call, based on what you think is best for the encyclopedia. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 17:34, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that explanation. It seems to me that it is probably best to leave the redirect in place as it is potentially useful - this sock editor should be getting a clear enough message from your response to his other contributions! --Hrossey (talk) 22:21, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Then SPI was an odd choice of occupation :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 02:22, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

​Heh, I reworded that. Touch more blunt than I intended. But yeah, guess what I mean more is, I don't like calling people liars unless I'm willing to stake a block on it. Doesn't really make sense to say "I'm confident you broke policy and then came to SPI and lied directly to a clerk about it... But I'll let you off with a warning."

Btw, speaking of occupations, congrats on the promotion! Is it true CUs make triple what clerks do? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 02:42, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the pay raise is nice, but what's really cool is we get free lunches twice as often! -- RoySmith (talk) 13:48, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith: You aren't meant to mention the lunches! ~TheresNoTime ^{(to chat)} 13:55, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I thought it was OK as long as we didn't say what the lunches were, where they were served, or who made them. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:00, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"A lunch has already been made and didn't taste very good. The cook felt the lunch tasted a bit like a lunch we had a while ago, but most of the diners felt it tasted too different." -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 19:07, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Tamzin. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 19:56, 19 October 2021 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

I thought I'd replied to you a week ago, but I just found my reply among my drafts; apologies! Vanamonde (Talk) 19:56, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please have mercy! I don't want. El_C 13:46, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@El C: Yeah, that's a whole lot of socking effort for an article with <1k pageviews per month (where probably half those views come from admins and clerks). If someone just set a script to block anyone with less than 20k edits who touches it, there'd be no false positives in the last 20 edits, going back to mid-July. (Not that anyone should do that. But it's a funny thought.) -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 19:52, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is it just me or is "Pecka patrijarsija" tilted? Also, I'm seeing double — four Pecka patrijarsijas! Anyway, should I just WP:ECP and be done with it...? El_C 20:02, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@El C: Part of me wants to say, "Oh, just let them tire themselves out edit-warring there." Not like the content they're edit-warring over is particularly offensive, just your run of the mill "What country is this?" nonsense. Another part of me says "Yes but we don't use mainspace for honeytrapping." And a third part says "That article needs some love and ECP won't help with that." So I dunno. If it were my call I'd probably leave it be for at least a few more iterations, but I'm not too familiar with these banned users—only read up on this last night—so take that with a grain of salt.

P.S. My favorite thing associated with historic churches in that part of the globe will always be "If you die before you die, you won't die when you die". Which I can't find coverage on on Wikipedia, but the Internet swears is (a translation of) a phrase you'll see written at Mount Athos. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 20:18, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If I do before I do do... Do-ing nothing is pretty much my favourite thing, so sounds good, let's do that. It looks tilted! El_C 20:26, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol | November 2021 Backlog Drive
On November 1, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. (t · c) buidhe 01:59, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Arrgh... it's been a while since I thought about gendered words (e.g. pronouns, "man/woman", "waiter/waitress") that reflect the person's latest expressed gender self-identification as reported in the most recent reliable sources, even if it does not match what is most common in sources (ref) in relation to contemporary Japanese popular media personalities. English-language "reliable sources" focusing on Japanese popular culture tend to be sub-par (one of the sources initially cited in relation to Utada's gender identity proactively used singular they without any request from Utada to do as much, and also seemed to be conflating non-binary gender identity with same-sex sexual orientation...), and Japanese-language sources are extremely unlikely to make as big a deal out of it as English ones because of how the Japanese language works.

Japanese doesn't use pronouns anywhere nearly as much English, because content that is implied from context (as the referents of pronouns almost always are) is usually omitted: the Japanese for "I ate it" isn't "Watashi-wa sore-o tabeta" (literally "I it ate") but rather "Tabeta yo" ("Ate sentence-terminal-particle") and "I met her" isn't "Watashi-wa kanojo-ni atta" but rather "Atta yo"; "I ate it" or "She ate it" in Japanese would only specify the subject if it were in response to the question "Who ate it?", and even then "she" would necessitate a separate indication of who the girl/woman in question is, such as pointing, which is rude. (Needless to say, the Japanese version of Utada's website doesn't use any pronouns where the English version uses "she" and "her".) I actually recently found out that both the "Japanese words for he and she" that I learned in my beginner Japanese class were recent coinages based on English/French, the "word for he" being a redefined word classical Japanese pronoun that originally referred a person or thing that is far away from both the speaker and the listener, and the "word for she" being the same word, in the classical Japanese equivalent of the genitive case, with the noun "woman" attached after it. This kind of development would not be possible, needless to say, if personal pronouns were as entrenched in the actual Japanese language that people spoke every day as they are in English or French. I suspect this is why "pronouns" aren't really a thing on Japanese Twitter (etc.) like they are in America and Europe: it's my impression that a not-insignificant percentage of American pop-stars have their pronouns listed in their Twitter profile, and this percentage probably skyrockets when one only counts those pop-stars who have stated a gender identity other than cisgender male or female, but with Japanese pop-stars (even those who also hold American citizenship and live in Europe, and "occasionally tweet in English"), the former percentage is probably close to zero and the latter may be higher, but as far as I'm aware Utada is the most prominent case at the moment, and...

So yeah, it looks like the Utada case is going to be solved by a consensus of editors based on the fact that sources affiliated with the subject use a particular pronoun pattern, but if more Japanese (etc.) pop stars, voice actors/actresses, live action actors/actresses, video game producers, etc. with anglophone fan-bases and extensive coverage in English-language blogs and "reliable sources" that are little more reliable than blogs, start coming out as non-binary, gender-fluid, etc., a discussion might need to be had about how the MOS passage you quoted applies to such cases. A huge hullabaloo was made about a decade back about whether personal websites (or websites maintained by publicists) should take precedence over academic publications with regard to MOS:JAPAN#Modern names (with reference to whether long vowels should be marked), which I think kinda missed the point there (if we take URLs or copyright information on Japanese-language websites into account, we get people named "Sakaguchi Jun'ichirō" being identified as "Sakaguti Junitiro" just because the webmaster created the URL based primarily on how Japanese text is input on a keyboard).

But I suspect that, when it comes to gender identity, personal/official websites should definitely take precedence over third-party sources that often pass for "reliable" in pop culture articles, no matter how many such sources there are or how recent they are compared to what we assume to be the latest update on the personal/official website.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I should thank you for your positive input on the Utada page! :D Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: I think we often run into a problem of overly generalizing Anglosphere gender norms to other cultures. What you're saying about Japanese language and culture is very interesting; I don't speak any Japanese, but I speak French, and even in that language relatively close to English, many English-centric assumptions prove false. The whole relationship between social gender and grammatical gender is different when applying any noun to yourself contains an implicit statement of your gender. (It's also, incidentally, the most frustrating part of transitioning when you don't speak the language often enough to form new habits. I've gotten weird looks once or twice for calling myself américain rather than américaine.) One can see a bit of that disconnect going on at Talk:Claude Cahun, where people are struggling with how to apply the subject's gender expression in French in the 1950s to an English-language article in 2021.

I'm not sure there's an easy solution to it, though, because this problem runs deeper than just Wikipedia. For instance, without taking a side on the issue of the term Latinx, I'll observe that a lot of the debate in the U.S. about it seems to come from people who are not familiar without how gender works in Spanish. A lot of English-speakers tend to expect our concept of "my pronouns are ______" to extend to languages where gender is more complex than just third-person pronouns and the occasional "son"/"daughter" situation. And that includes RS—many of which, as you allude to, barely even understand the concept of non-binary gender to begin with. So we get screwed over by the RS, and then by people who read them and then make good-faith changes based on their bad takes. The complicated pronoun situation I've been most involved in has been that of James Barry (surgeon). There's no language angle there, but nonetheless his article's been done a great disservice by the surfeit of articles in somewhat reliable sources saying "You'll never believe what this empowering lesbian, forced to crossdress, accomplished" or "You'll never believe what this pioneering trans man accomplished".

Which gets us to the awkward sourcing question: Generally, someone's gender identity is the sort of thing we'd want very high-quality sources for. At the same time, we don't want to misgender someone just because major RS have been slow to pick up on something. Ellar Coltrane started taking they/them pronouns long after leaving the spotlight, and for over a month our article on them sourced their pronouns to their Instagram bio, till they got a brief write-up in a newspaper we could use instead. Given how many long-dormant BLP stubs we have (another rant for another time), there are plausible scenarios where a self-published source or suboptimal-quality source could be our only reference on someone's pronouns for decades. Not to mention people who are only mentioned in passing in articles. I've been in the news a few times in my life, mostly when I was very young. In the past I've been mentioned in mainspace, although I currently am not; but if someone were to re-add a mention of me, to get my name and pronouns right they'd have to cite like... a blog post I wrote when I came out, I guess? That's not exactly ideal, and would be weird to see alongside a cite to a major RS, but it's preferable to just getting people's pronouns wrong.

At some point we're probably due for an RfC on when, if at all, it's acceptable to use they/them pronouns in cases of ambiguous gender. I don't really want to be the one to start that, though. :D Anyways, this is turning into a ramble, but thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts. (I designate this a talkpage-watcher-friendly thread, by the way; interested to know what others think.) -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 05:43, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Arrgh. Your James Barry example made me think of George Eliot and even more contemporary women writers who used male or "ambiguous" pseudonyms (or variations on their real names), such as D. C. Fontana. By the standards of some modern popular media, we should be calling them all transgender men or at least gender-fluid, except that we're lucky enough to have good documentation of the actual reasons for their hiding the fact that they were women. Ironically, the same is essentially true of a certain living author (who I won't name, but I think you can probably guess who she is), whose views on non-cisgender rights have turned out to be somewhat questionable. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:37, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: This is as much me thinking aloud as anything else, but I'm going to ping you so I don't feel like I'm talking to myself. :) (Not to say a response is unwelcome, by any means, just that this may not really be written like a response to your own points, and you could be forgiven for not having much to say in response.) Oh I'll also ping BDD—with the same caveat—since he expressed some interest in this topic at Talk:Claude Cahun.

The way I see it, we have four categories of cases where pronouns aren't as simple as "just say what they want":

1. Unknown identity, where the person's story does not involve participating in any gender-segregated activities. It was surprisingly hard to find a good example of this (since for most historical figures we can infer gender based on segregation), but after looking around in Category:Unidentified people I did find Italian Unabomber as an example—someone we have no interviews with, no profile of, etc.
2. Known identity but unknown gender identity. For many articles we don't explicitly know someone's gender identity, but there's a general precedent that we take fem-presenting AFAB as presumptive evidence for she/her and masc-presenting AMAB as presumptive evidence for he/him. This is imperfect, but it's probably the least bad approach. Issues arise in three cases:
   1. Subject has indicated no gender presentation at all. E.g., picking another at random from that category, Neuroskeptic.
   2. Subject has presented in a way too inconsistent to draw any non-SYNTH inference from. E.g. my favorite example, Thomas(ine) Hall... I swear not just my favorite because Thomasine and Tamzin are variants of the same name.
   3. Subject's gender presentation differs from that associated with their gender assigned at birth, but they have made no statement regarding gender identity. There's tons of living people like this, but BLP forbids us from documenting it in most cases. It thus comes up more often with long-dead figures like James Barry.
3. Known identity, but ambiguous or inconsistent gender identity. Ruby Rose, Sophie Xeon, Vi Hart, and Alexis Arquette all come to mind, as does Utada Hikaru—in each case a different kind of ambiguity or inconsistency. (Often, as in the cases of Rose and Arquette, this may be someone who is genderfluid, and it may well be that they see no ambiguity or inconsistency but the sources reporting on them did.)
4. Known identity and gender identity, but it is unclear what pronouns should follow from that. Especially common in non-binary Westerners from before Stonewall who went on the record about their gender, like Claude Cahun or the Public Universal Friend.

In #1, #2.1, and #2.2, I think it's really author's preference (à l'EngVar) whether to do they/them or avoid pronouns. I think readers understand the concept of the gender-ambiguous they, given that it predates the singular-personal-pronoun they by several centuries. The important thing is not defaulting to he/him or she/her based on stereotypes. On #2.3, I've made clear my view at the Barry RfC that MOS:GENDERID should apply there the same as anywhere else: Binary presentation should be met with the corresponding binary pronouns unless there's clear evidence that the person did not identify with that gender (or, for more modern subjects, that they did not want those pronouns). On #3, I think we should default to not changing pronouns unless the subject requests it, because anything else would be presumptive, and shouldn't "compromise" on they/them. Avoiding pronouns sometimes might be the least bad option; sometimes we also just have to figure, if this person really cared that much, they'd probably reach out and ask us to change it. For deceased subjects like Xeon and Arquette, all there really is to do is follow the final statement, at least as best we can manage (bit complicated in both cases). And on #4, I dunno, I'm not opposed to they/them pronouns for someone who explicitly eschewed gendered pronouns in their lifetime like the Public Universal Friend. But they're almost the exception that defines the rule. The vast majority of people covered under #4 did refer to themselves with gendered pronouns, and I think we need to follow people's final wishes even when we suspect they might have preferred some modern option.

K, that was a lot. Respect to anyone who's read to the end of this. Responses welcome, but, as noted before, this was as much thinking aloud as anything else. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 04:19, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, Tamzin, if this is what comes out when you think aloud then you should think aloud as often as you feel the urge to. (When I do it, it doesn't end up nearly as... coherent.) I think the categories you've laid out here and your explanations of how you think they should be handled make a lot of sense – this is definitely something I want to come back to and read more closely when I have more time. ezlev (user/tlk/ctrbs) 05:12, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I see your 2. and I immediately think of ancients of whom we know some details but nothing that makes their gender (or at least biological sex) clear. Hieda no Are and Junia (both long assumed male but now widely considered by specialists to be women who were misidentified as a result of linguistic ambiguity) are interesting cases, but there are others who don't even have names, such as "the X poet", where X is the name of some work of literature written, or likely written, anonymously. A number of authors of Japanese literary works are assumed, based on their content or style, to have been written by male authors (court nobles proficient in literary Chinese, Buddhist monks, etc.) or women (members of the literary salons serving this or that empress, or more often than not just Takasue's daughter), so I guess in English they can be referred to as "he" or "she" once these authorship theories have been elaborated upon. (Needless to say, this is quite unrelated to the distinction between biological sex and gender identity, which I believe was not widely recognized until recently. I'm pretty sure throughout most of human history biological sex was of interest for the purpose of carrying on family lineages and gender identity -- or, indeed, sexual orientation -- didn't enter into the equation.) As for 2.3, it'll be interesting to see, if Wikipedia lasts as long, how our little encyclopedia will deal with such cases once such subjects have passed on and BLP no longer applies. Probably have to have an RFC in each article. 😅

As for 3., I think that, as a general rule, the "traditional" pronouns/determiners may be best, unless and until they specifically state that they don't like it, since it can probably be safely assumed that in such cases no one will find this usage either awkward or hurtful. (There do seem to be people who, for their own reasons, think anyone with any of these gender identities "should" use specific pronouns, but I don't think they can be assumed to find it personally hurtful, I'm pretty sure such people are a negligible minority even within the LGBTQ+ rights community, and I suppose they will probably eventually be outright rejected by said community for advocating a position that runs completely counter to said community's goals, similar to those who believe anyone with a particular sexual orientation should disclose said orientation publicly to "create awareness", as though public awareness were anywhere near as important as the feelings of the individual[s] in question.)

4. strikes me as particularly ... well, outside my area of interest and expertise. Japanese poets before c.1880 referred to people as kore if they were "near" and kare if they were "far away", so the idea of pronoun preferences based on sex or gender would have been completely alien to them. Modern Japanese is a bit iffier since late 19th-century literati, in translating European literature (into what essentially amounted to a new, artificial literary language) took that word kore and used it to translate "this" (or "it"), kare to mean "he", "him", or "his" (Japanese uses postpositions to mark the subject, object, and possessive/genitive), and kano-onna (the genitive form of kare and the word for "woman", literally meaning "that woman") to mean "she", "her" or "hers". Since Japanese doesn't actually use pronouns very often, especially when speaking of people (it's quite rude... I think the same is true of English, at least because it implies you have not taken the effort to learn a person's name), this new Europeanized style was comfortably adopted into the standard Japanese written language, and consequently the spoken language, and now scarcely a century later Japanese gender-minorities are being told by non-Japanese-speaking netizens that they "should" use gender-neutral pronouns in English... "Ironic" might not be the word for it, but...

Anyway, kochira-koso sorry for the long rant! ;-)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:55, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! You probably don't know me, but I watch your talk page and saw this interesting discussion, so I thought I might share my thoughts if you don't mind :)

It seems to me that the hardest cases are the ones where the subjects are long deceased, and the issue is trying to translate their gender expression at the time they lived to how we might classify them today. The discussion goes something like, if this person were alive today, they might be considered a [something, e.g. trans man], so one the one hand that means we should refer to them with [e.g. he/him pronouns], but on the other hand, we shouldn't press terms upon them that they didn't use to refer to themself. Of the ones mentioned above, the ones that stand out to me are James Barry, Thomas(ine) Hall, and Claude Cahun. (The same problem applies to historical people whose sexual/romantic orientation was unclear, but it's easier to avoid making a statement one way or the other when you don't have to deal with pronouns.)

Modern people, on the other hand, tend to declare what their preferences are for pronouns, and the question is just how to interpret that. For example, Vi Hart indicated that they have no preference and do not care which pronouns they are called by, and Rebecca Sugar stated clearly that she uses both she/her and they/them. It seems like these kinds of cases ought to be more straightforward, though evidently nothing is straightforward. Aerin17 (t • c) 22:29, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Shoot, I forgot one! (This is an addendum to my own rant, not a reply to Aerin17, whose post I appreciated but don't think requires a reply; indentation is to visually distinguish my own comments from Aerin's.) Sometimes an author will self-identify as "a man", or "a woman", or "the mother/daughter/wife of Such-and-such". (I won't pretend there isn't a gender disparity in the examples selected here; there is, but that's just because unfortunately most of the relevant examples are women whose identities are only known in connection to their male relatives.) So we know their gender (insofar as, with the ancients, we usually have no choice but to assume gender aligned with biological sex) but practically nothing else. Given that, as far as I am aware, none of the languages Japanese between around 800 CE and around 1400 CE could have been familiar with had gender-based third-person pronouns (Chinese, like Japanese, nowadays has a fairly arbitrary distinction in the written language between "he", "she" and "it", but this seems to be recent, and Sanskrit -- which some of the Japanese Buddhist clergy may have had some limited awareness of... -- ... might distinguish the three?), I don't know if any of them would care if they knew that centuries after their death people were talking about them in a language distantly related to Sanskrit and using strange pronouns that classified them by their gender, but I think such questions, regardless of how interesting they might be for some folks with unusual hobbies might be, are probably not all that important as far as we are concerned, since all of them are also very much dead. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:54, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for the ping. I started writing a few comments, but ended up like a writer in a cartoon, constantly tossing drafts into the trash. I largely endorse your four-part division above. Surprisingly, I am more inclined to accept they/them for #4. It is possible, but unlikely IMO, that such people would reject they/them pronouns today. And ultimately, we have to make some assumptions about such people—the use of he/him and she/her very much included. --BDD (talk) 21:08, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Tamzin. I'm worried that a fellow editor might have cherrypicked and misrepresented what you said, at Template talk:China–Hong Kong border crossings. Fyi. 219.76.24.198 (talk) 11:55, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would wish to convey my deepest apologies to you regarding User talk:SSG123#November 2021 and User talk:SSG123#Final warning: Editing the same pages while logged in and as an IP. You see that it was my first venture for andminship and due to lack of experience, I have committed some blunders. Please do not understand this as an attempt to pacify you but as me taking an opportunity to thank you for pointing out the mistakes which I have made and bringing them to my notice. I assure you that in future, such things will not be repeated. Thanking You, Yours faithfully, SSG123 (talk) 11:51, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]