Heated Debate Breaks Out In Wikipedia Editors’ Forum Over Trans-Identifying Shooter’s Pronouns

Wikipedia’s editors’ forum filled with infighting Wednesday over the appropriate way to refer to a transgender-identifying shooter who killed two children at a Minneapolis Catholic school.

Soon after Robin Westman attacked Annunciation Catholic School’s church in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning, a small band of Wikipedia editors began to police the online encyclopedia’s article on the shooting, according to Pirate Wires.

The changes started with an editor identified as SuperPianoMan9167 swapping all instances where the shooter was referred to as a male for female terms. The editor also deleted all instances that referred to Westman’s birth name, Robert, arguing that to bring up the name Westman used before he began to identify as female is “deadnaming” and against Wikipedia policy.

“Wikipedia does not include someone’s birth name, even if it is sourced, unless they were notable under that name; to do otherwise is deadnaming,” SuperPianoMan9167 wrote. The anonymous editor said the risk of deadnaming applies to the shooter’s pronouns, as well.

The edits received pushback.

“[The birth name] is in the headline of arguably the most famous and reputable newspaper in the world [The Times]. To expunge it from WP is so absurd as to warrant invoking WP:IGNORE,” an editor identified as Ergo Sum said, referring to Wikipedia’s stance that any rule that “prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia” in a certain circumstance should be ignored.

Editors tried to argue that they were making principled arguments around Wikipedia policy that should not be understood as expressing sympathy for a transgender-identifying mass shooter.