User talk:Kaitlin 121

This user is a student editor in Indiana_University,_Bloomington/Representation_and_the_Body_(Spring_2018) .

Welcome!

Hello, Kaitlin 121, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:10, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Transfeminism

Hi! I wanted to give you a bit of feedback with the article on Transfeminism. Be very careful when editing articles on sexuality and gender, as they are topics that are frequently considered to be controversial on Wikipedia. What this means for articles in this area is that you need to make sure that the writing is neutral and that every claim is referenced by a high quality reliable source that explicitly backs up the claim made in the article. Also make sure that all claims or viewpoints are attributed to the person(s) or group that made them, especially in cases where the claim can be seen as controversial. Make sure that these aren't written as an absolute truth (ie, something that everyone or almost everyone knows to be true and has been proven several times over in reliable sources), as in most cases what's believed to be true by one group may not be held to be true by another.

As far as the article goes, I marked one claim as citation needed and I would like to have the sentence "Issues of equality and female importance becomes less significant when the biology of transgenders, specifically, male-to-female transsexuals, plays a role" attributed to a specific group or person Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:34, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summaries

Welcome to Wikipedia.

Please explain your edits using an edit summary. This helps other editors see what you're doing, saves everyone time, and may even make it less likely you'll be reverted, if we can just fix up what you meant to do. I'm reverting one of your edits at Transfeminism, because I don't know what your intention was. It's very minor—punctuation only—in this case, but your other, more substantive edits don't have summaries, either.

Also, please pay attention to what Shalor said above, and diligently supply in-line citations for everything you add. Just marking it {{cn}} after the fact, may not be sufficient; this is a sensitive article, so we shall see. Best of luck in your course, Mathglot (talk) 04:56, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Correction: your most substantive edit does have a very adequate edit summary; thank you for that. Even edits with low byte counts however, should have an edit summary. If the History says +1 (1 byte added) next to your change, an editor can't tell whether that means that you only added a comma, or whether you removed three sections and twelve paragraphs, and substituted them with a pile of new text all your own, that happened to be almost the same length. An edit summary never hurts, and often helps. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 05:43, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Also: when responding to other editors, if you go to their talk page to respond please look out for a banner header near the top that looks like this one. This is a request from that user to respond where the discussion originally started, rather than bouncing back and forth between two talk pages. You can see another example of this banner, all filled out, near the top of my talk page. This is just a personal preference that some users have, and doesn't bind you in any way; complying with the request is a courtesy, and not a requirement, but it is a sign of respect (and that you've actually read the banners there). HTH; cheers, Mathglot (talk) 05:50, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Using proper terminology in trans-related articles

If you are going to be editing in a sensitive area like this, please become aware of what terms are acceptable, and what terms can be seen as offensive or undesirable. In this edit in section #Inclusion in mainstream feminism at "Transfeminism", you used a term that is mildly offensive to some trans* people, namely transgenders. Although there is a difference of opinion on some of these terms, including what is acceptable or not acceptable in some cases, in general the community view at Wikipedia (which is based on reliable sources, which is the way we do things around here) is that the word transgender is an adjective only. Thus, you may say, transgender people, or, transgender individuals, but not *transgenders.

Another thing you should be aware of if you're editing in this topic area, is the style guide explained at MOS:GENDERID. This is a Wikipedia guideline which means it has community support, and you can consier it a kind of standard to aspire to. There are also two essays that might be helpful: WP:TRANSNAME and WP:GENDER. Essays do not have the force of a guideline, they're the opinions of one or more editors, but they may be helpful to you anyway. WP:TRANSNAME has this to say, about the topic we are discussing:

Transgender is an adjective; hence one says "Smith is a transgender woman" (or simply "a trans woman"). The use of it as a noun (as in "Smith is a transgender", "the film features two transgenders") is often considered offensive, is deprecated by several style guides and other authorities, and should be avoided.

HTH; cordially, Mathglot (talk) 06:09, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you don't need to fix that edit anymore, because another editor, EvergreenFir, spotted the error and went ahead and fixed it for you. Just please do be aware of terminology, by following the links I left you above. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 07:24, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Mathglot! I'm a little embarrassed to say that I didn't realize that this could be seen as offensive - I'm glad that you caught it and described it in such a good, thorough manner to Kaitlin (and to me!). Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]