Talk:Transsexual/Archive 12

Improvement Proposal
offered a superb suggestion in the now-defunct relist of the merge proposal (see Talk:Transgender). I would like to propose that we attempt a rewrite timeboxed at one month and see if we can avoid a repeat of the above discussion. We can also use a concept from the world of software agility: Try; fail; fail better next time; repeat until success is achieved. RoxySaunder's original text is as follows:

"There is enough content specific to this topic (and enough sources discussing it as its own concept) to warrant a standalone article. The mess we're in now is that much of the body just consists of excerpts of other trans-related articles, except sloppily using transsexual in place of transgender, or conflating it with some specific subset of trans people (e.g. those with dysphoria or who have medically/legally transitioned). This (not the article itself) is inaccurate and offensive. Following the guidance of various style guides, Wikipedia should probably not use transsexual to label any group of people except those who specifically identify with the term. Drop non-terminology content and keep Transsexual as an article about the term, and its use as a historical medical term and present-day identity label. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 05:58, 26 July 2023 (UTC)"

I believe that a WP:WORDISSUBJECT article is an excellent compromise, but also think that an inclusive project (including a community review LONG before anything is posted) is important on a contentious topic like this one. I am unsure of the protocol for staging the collaboration for a major rewrite but will offer whatever assistance I can. Do we stage it as a subpage of this one, or in a sandbox? I am more than happy to spin either one up if someone can tell me the right approach. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 16:05, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I endorse this excellent solution. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:14, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Also endorse. But I want to alert anyone interested in this about some of the possible pitfalls to watch out for in articles about words. Such articles need to be very clear that the subject is the term, and probably require a hatnote (see (LGBT, for example), a carefully written lead sentence that doesn't just seem like a sloppy WP:REFERS error that nobody has bothered to remedy, scrupulous attention to proper use of italics when called for by MOS:WAW (basically, anywhere you can stick the word in front of transsexual in the text without changing the meaning of the sentence means it should be italicized; see use–mention distinction), and vigilance to prevent loss of focus, or divergence between body and lead, as the inevitable good-faith editors drop by later and change the lead to what they think is justifiably about the concept. The fact is, word-as-subject articles are rare (WP:NOTDICT does not prohibit them, but this may be misunderstood), and many editors, even experienced ones, don't always get it. A case study of the headaches this can cause can be found at Talk:Cisgender (warning: long discussion; tl;dr: someone changed the lead to be about the concept and not the word, leaving the article neither fish nor fowl. Took quite some time to dig out of the hole this had caused, and there are still some loose ends.)
 * A remark was made in passing somewhere here to add parenthetical disambiguation to the title of articles about a term to further clarify what was going on with a word-as-subject article, as even all the other measures mentioned don't seem to be enough, such as what occurred at Cisgender, despite everything. Following that idea here would mean that the article title would become Transsexual (word). Given my experience with this issue in various word-articles, I support this, even though it would require a change to WP:AT, but I think it is necessary. This is a sub-battle that can and must be dealt with separately, and doesn't directly concern the proposal to rework this article, but it is part of the whole concept of the possible minefield awaiting you when you rework the article to be about the word, and I wanted you to be aware of it going in. (That "remark" was not a formal proposal, but should be turned into one, at WT:AT has been added: here. )
 * The list of sources after you're done with the overhaul will probably be entirely different than it is now, with the exception of those in the section. If you spawned just that one section into a standalone article, you'd have an article with 48 references, so you're good to go as far as notability; so no worries on that score. Don't forget that in-links may need to be adjusted to point to transgender instead, or some other location. There are currently 2,797 of them, and this would be infinitely easier if this article could be renamed Transsexual (word), and might require a bot if it can't.
 * I'm pretty overloaded so probably can't help as much as I'd like with the actual conversion of the article, but I'll try to monitor the discussion and help here if I can. Thanks, and good luck with this really good proposal. Mathglot (talk) 01:23, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * So the best way to approach this is... (1) Talk subpage with comments here; or (2) a subpage on my sandbox with comments here; or (3) a subpage on my sandbox with comments on my talk (or another sub-) page? I have never done this before but am pretty good at following tips. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 01:35, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Not your sandbox, ideally; should be more public than that. Another possibility might be to do it at a WikiProject. I'd wait a bit for more suggestions; there's no hurry. Mathglot (talk) 01:42, 27 July 2023 (UTC)  updated to add proposal links; Mathglot (talk) 02:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I would support having an article about the term at this title (as I said during the merger discussion), a la how we have an article on the term Negro, but Negro Americans, Black Americans, etc as a group are covered at African Americans. As to procedure, I would encourage either of the other editors who highlighted issues with the non-admin close of the merger discussion to proceed with a close review before we get too deep into this, since some possible outcomes of the close review have the potential to make writing a term article at this title much simpler. -sche (talk) 01:53, 27 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I've got a good piece of news to report: it turns out, that there are already a decent number of articles that use '(word)' or '(term)' as a disambiguator in the article title; so if we added to this proposal a request to move the title to Transsexual (word) as well, we can show that there is already precedent for it, and I believe it would be a lot clearer to our readers what the topic was. For details, see WT:AT. Mathglot (talk) 06:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)


 * each of you raised issues with the close of the merger-discussion above; would either of you like to formally request a review of it? Especially given the additional comments made on Talk:Transgender and now in this section, it seems clear that the actual consensus is for there to not be two articles describing the same people (but instead for this article to describe the term), in which case a more accurate closure of the merger discussion would simplify moving forward on that. -sche (talk) 21:44, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The additional comments made on Talk:Transgender were a consensus to not merge the articles. Your position on this issue is simply not representative of the sources or the community consensus. On either article. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 22:12, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Last1in They were? What am I missing? CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 22:21, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've asked the closer of that discussion if they'll self-revert. If not, I'll make a close challenge at AN. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:57, 17 August 2023 (UTC)


 * After some discussion on my talk, I think that the close of the merger discussion is irrelevant to this scope change proposal. The merger would have resulted in this article ceasing to exist. But this proposed scope change will keep the article, merely shifting its focus to the terminology. I haven't seen any objection to the scope change, and think that we could probably just go ahead and implement it. Absent objection, lets make it happen? CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 06:30, 16 September 2023 (UTC)