MediaWiki:Response to Wookieepedia's naming policy

As of this article's posting, Wookieepedia—the internet's foremost Star Wars wiki—is holding a vote on whether or not to continue to use the pre-transition names, or "deadnames", of transgender and nonbinary creative figures. Though a majority of users support solely using transgender creators' preferred names outside of article redirects, Wookieepedia's consensus policy means that a 2:1 vote ratio in favor of this change is needed for it to be implemented, and as such this vote risks failing.

The staff and userbase of TFWiki.net stand in solidarity with Robin Pronovost and other Wookieepedia editors advocating for this change in policy. We believe that the goal of building a comprehensive and accurate online encyclopedia in no way precludes treating people's identities with compassion and respect, something that the current Wookieepedia naming policy fails to do. As the internet's foremost Transformers wiki, we call on Wookieepedia's editorial community to reflect the identities and expression of the people they cover, rather than deadname and misgender them out of a misguided sense of "accuracy".

The TFWiki staff would encourage any user or editor of this wiki who is an active editor on Wookieepedia to vote in favour of this policy amendment, before the vote ends on March 30, 2021. While we do not wish to encourage sockpuppeting or gaming of the system, we strongly believe that this policy change would be the best thing for Wookieepedia and the online wiki community as a whole.

The discussion and vote for the Wookieepedia policy change can be viewed and contributed to here.

Update: On March 29th 2021, Fandom staff made a decision on the Wookiepedia naming policy; though the vote was set to pass, Fandom declared unambiguously that deadnaming was against their terms of service, thereby overruling Wookieepedia's policies either way.

TFWiki.net would like to thank Wookieepedia's userbase for pushing for the change in policy, which provides more fair and genuine coverage of transgender creators, and for making the issue public on social media, thereby allowing the Star Wars and fan-wiki communities as a whole to show their support. Additionally, we wholly support Fandom's choice to take action, which sets an unambiguous positive precedent; we hope these rules will be consistently applied across their platform in future.