Talk:Pictures for Sad Children/Archives/2017/July

Name change and pronoun change

The person who created this work is named Merry Graves. Graves uses feminine or gender-neutral pronouns. In the past Graves used another name, John Campbell, and through WP:OTRS email at ticket:2016110510013186 (which is semi-private) I collected verification that these people are the same.

Wikipedia does not have clear published policy at this time for addressing how to manage name changes. The manual of style at MOS:IDENTITY gives some guidance, but over the years, there have been numerous exceptions. Right now there is no central forum for discussing how Wikipedia should manage name changes. If someone wishes to start broader discussion, that might happen elsewhere and cite this article as an example. For now, since this sort of issue is most frequently discussed as an LGBT issue, I am making a post on the LGBT noticeboard at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_LGBT_studies#Pronoun_and_name_issue and anyone can discuss the general process for name changes there. Perhaps in the future this issue merits its own entry in the manual of style and could start with a list of examples of articles where this happened and summaries of what was discussed.

Until more robust guidelines are established I am changing this article to use this person's name and preferred pronouns. I am not removing mention of the person's former name, but instead will make a note that a name change occurred so that if anyone reviews the cited sources they can understand that the Wikipedia article uses another name for the person mentioned in the older publications. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:54, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Very good, Blue Rasberry. After speaking with Merry Graves I concur that we should respect her wishes. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:00, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

I do not see any reliable, verifiable, third-party sources that state that the author of Pictures for Sad Children is "Merry Graves". The only source for this information is Wikipedia itself, on this talk page and in an email. The Wikipedia guideline for articles about yourself states that Wikipedia "should not contain any 'new' information", and that "clarifications which you may wish to have added to an article about yourself must be verifiable with reliable sources." Blue Rasberry and Tagishsimon may have verified that Itsmerrygraves is the author of Pictures for Sad Children and no longer goes by "John Campbell", but since there are no reliable, published sources confirming this, it seems like original research. - PseudoChron (talk) 15:26, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

The question of whether WP:OTRS e-mails are sufficient for gender updates on otherwise non-notable persons is much bigger than this page, and such a discussion should probably be formulated in a request for change. ~Mable (chat) 16:09, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

(EC) The whole matter has been handled by OTRS. I'm sorry if you're unhappy about it, but please avoid WP:POINTy behaviour. BLPs are written with due regard for the person and seek to avoid harm. That is a greater concern in this instance than your conceptions of what is & is not OR. OTRS is an appropriate route for the handling of the sort of personal information used in this instance: that is why OTRS exists. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:16, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

PseudoChron Everything you say is correct. I confirm that what I did is outside the scope of Wikipedia's own rules. My rationale is that I feel that Wikipedia has a history of making exceptions in such cases despite the rules. There was serious complaint of harm to an individual, and so in the face of ambiguous rules, I opted to act in the favor of the individual's request to eliminate the harm.

Tagishsimon My own opinion is that what you say is correct also. However, even though this one case needed resolution, I will not say that the resolution which I presented is fair or correct or that OTRS can regularly promise this kind of verification service.

I do not have all the pieces to this controversy but we in the Wikipedia community are coming to a point when we need to collect them and discuss the best course of action. Here is what I would propose going forward -

• Identify big-name controversies where similar things happened; mention them on WP:LGBT or some appropriate forum so that they can be collected and treated consistently.
• Along with big-name controversies, collect cases from lower-profile instances, like this one which appears in only about 20 sources instead of 100s
• Compare how a few cases resolve; note them in a new style guideline
• Also review when other original research and primary sources are being used in Wikipedia. Despite WP:RS, there are some things - like names for people and organizations - which routinely are sourced to primary documents, but often not in a consistent way. I hesitate to name any cases here because I do not want to draw attention here, but if we made a neutral compilation on a rule page, then I think discussion would develop with broader input.

Part of my reason for wanting resolution in this case is that the person featured in the article had an urgent problem which needed to be addressed. I did not feel that Wikipedia's own policy was sufficiently developed to justify denying the person's request, because I know that these sorts of requests have sometimes been granted in other cases. I opted to resolve this single case to assume that the person making the request had a good reason for wanting it, and now I am hoping that Wikipedia's own policymakers can reflect on the problem and come up with more solid guidance on how to address this sort of challenge as it routinely arises. I feel that what I did here might seem extraordinary only because in many of these cases, the change is made quietly without further discussion. We need more discussion to be more fair for the general case. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:48, 28 November 2016 (UTC)