The LGBT studies WikiProject Newsletter! Issue XVI: July 23, 2008

Hello, members and friends of WP:LGBT! Updates about our latest happenings in the gayest corner of Wikipedia.

Project News

Homosexuality at Good Article Review!

An unfortunate effect of a group less active than in the past is that our articles lose integrity. This one is at Good Article Review for that reason. The talk page is quite active as a result. You have the opportunity to help. This is the corest of our core articles, and it needs some attention because it gets a lot of controversial input from many sides. If you can spare any time to edit the article, please do what you can.

Paragraph 175 is at Featured Article Review!

Soon after we were informed that Homosexuality is being scrutinized, we heard the same for one of our few Featured Articles. As a participant of the Featured Article process, I think this is actually a good thing. The standards for Featured Articles are getting higher with time. But as a member of this project, that means that a few of ours may be de-listed unless someone can swoop in and save them. This one has to do with the designation of homosexuality as a crime in Germany. Most of this article's sources are in German. If anyone has any particular skill in this area, please lend a hand!

Gay bathhouse is at Good Article Review! Wtf is going on?

I know you folks think I have much experience in a gay bathhouse, and I hate to disappoint you, but I actually do not. I seem like the sort of person who likes to stroll about in a towel. Shocking, no? It appears that Ashleyvh is single-handedly addressing all the problems with this article at its GA Review. While that's pretty impressive, it's also no doubt exhausting. Can anyone help out there?

Two GAs and a nominee!

In what I hope will counter the jolt of re-evaluating three Good or Featured Articles, José Sarria and Janet Jackson as gay icon passed as Good Articles, and Black Cat Bar (famous San Francisco oft-raided gay bar) is nominated, all by Otto4711. Rock on, man. You're a machine. Good luck with your nominations. What is it about women that make them gay icons? And are there lesbian icons that aren't lesbians? How about bisexual icons? Am I the only lesbian who reacts with soul-trembling fear at the sight of Angelina Jolie?

LGBT articles for deletion

New WP:LGBT studies member Pinkkeith has done this cool thing. If you click on that link, you'll see all the articles, categories, templates, and miscellany up for deletion. They're usually there because they're not considered to be not notable. That can be a relative concept, and sometimes it has to be argued that topics pertaining to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues are notable.

Completely naked women!

Ha! Made you look! Even the guys are looking. Gay pioneers Kay Lahusen's and Barbara Gittings' collection of photographs are up at the New York Public Library. Want to see images of the first Pride march in 1970 in New York City? How about Sylvia Rivera, drag queen extraordinaire, and Stonewall Riots participant? Or the contact sheet for The Ladder that showed full-face lesbians in print for the first time in US history? Ok I did mention naked women, and it's true. I found naked pictures of Barbara Gittings. But I scrolled through all of them and you'll have to as well. I'm not that mean, though. Here she is in the shower. How cute is she?

Tagging articles

It seems a recurring issue which articles to tag, and what to say about a topic that's tagged. Certainly, because an article falls under our scope doesn't necessarily make the person gay. Florida Governor Charlie Crist has been rumored to be gay in some newspaper accounts. Although we all know Fred Phelps is supergay, he won't admit it so instead he does the absolutely awfulest anti-gay things on the planet to deflect suspicion. NAMBLA, the red headed stepchild of the LGBT world, is tagged with an explanation we have yet to decide if we'll keep.

Member Spotlight: Benjiboi

In the lurking I do around and about on Wiki, I've long been astounded at the forbearance Benjiboi has for the utterly insane. Perhaps not so much, since the message on Benji's talk page notes frequent absences due to homophobia and transphobia. But it takes some kind of ... something that I don't have to face the constant anti-gay POV Benji does.

Benjiboi is a a bit of a WikiFaerie, a WikiGnome and also a member of the Article Rescue Squadron in addition to being a LGBT project member. A few of Benjiboi's favorite links for making the wikiverse more fab are:

1. Manual of style, a must for anyone redecorating an article.
2. Reliable sources in content review processes, a wonderful and fully linked essay about sourcing and why we need more and better sources.
3. Google scholar, which also searches Google books, is a great help in finding reliable sources.

Member Spotlight: Becksguy

Becksguy didn’t start actively editing until May 2007. His most frequent tasks on Wiki include reverting vandalism to LGBT articles and creating new project-related articles. He comes from New York state, and to prove not all of us are teenagers (ha! I am so totally 15!) he's in his 60s and retired.

Becksguy considers his biggest triumph on Wikipedia so far was a DYK in December 2007 for the first-ever newspaper report on what became AIDS, in the New York Native. He's also helped save several project-related articles from deletion. His lowest moment here was getting involved in the discussion on a particular terrorism related article, thinking he could help calm the roiled waters on an extremely contentious subject with multiple edit wars and passionate editors.

Here at WP:LGBT, he creates and improves articles that present notable LGBT related subjects in a fair and balanced way, and tries to include more of the significant alternative sexuality related subjects without being an activist, and works to better source project-related articles.

On Wikipedia as a whole, he says, "I think we need to learn better what processes work for a massive collaborative project. Some of what worked well for a more informal small project doesn’t scale up well. Process is not as important when the participants know each other. We need to get more of the current members to be more active. If more members were energized, the project would be able to accomplish more. We should be, in effect, the smaller and included Wikipedia for LGBT related subjects. Overall, I wish we could focus more on content creation and improvement, and less on vandal fighting."

Fresh faces to brighten our pages

Welcome to all of our new members!: Balin42632003, supposedlydisposable, Axiomdragon, antcjone, Jamesgregg76, Taulapapa, Mushii, Pinkkeith, Gr8lyknow, EricV89, Varnent, Ged_UK, Richie wright1980, Auriel If you have a question about anything, drop your question on our talk page. We'll do our best to answer.

"A Supreme Court decision in 1958 reversed a 1956 ruling by a federal district court that U.S. postal authorities were correct in prohibiting the mailing of the Mattachine Society's ONE magazine. The lower court had ruled that ONE was not protected by the First Amendment because the magazine's contents 'may be vulgar, offensive, and indecent even though not regarded as such by a particular group ... because their own social or moral standards are far below those of the general community ... Social standards are fixed by and for the great majority and not by and for a hardened or weakened minority.'" - Michael Bronski in Pulp Friction, 2003

Thanks for being weak and having lowered standards with me. --Moni3 (talk) 00:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

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The LGBT studies WikiProject Newsletter! Issue XVII: November 12, 2008

Wake up WP:LGBT! It's time to kick in gear and get some things done!

Project News

Wake up!

I say this to myself as much as I say it to all of us. I work a lot by myself or with individual editors who spend time at Featured Article Candidates. It seems on November 5 a fog was lifted off my brain that helped me realize that we have massive potential in this project to get things done. Take this allegory, for instance: On Wednesday, Nov. 5, 1980, my 10th-grade American history teacher started class by unfurling The New York Times. She pointed to its triple banner headline: “Reagan Easily Beats Carter; Republicans Gain in Congress; D’Amato and Dodd are Victors.” “Save this paper,” she told us. “This is the start of a whole new era.” Judith Warner from The New York Times

It definitely seems a start to a whole new era now. If planets align correctly to remind us that whatever advances we may have made in electing what appears to be an extraordinary president in the US, the moons that revolve around those planets also serve to illustrate it's not that simple. Florida, Arizona, and California all appear to have banned same sex marriage. As someone who was married in California and lives in Florida, this is particularly poignant. We seem to be at the juncture of two converging paths. If we maximize our efforts and take the right ones, we might just be able to affect some change for ourselves.

The power of Wikipedia and California Proposition 8 (2008)

Though what we do is an interesting hobby for some, we have the power to make a difference. California's ballot initiative to ban gay marriage was a fierce fight. It's being challenged right now, but just look at how Wikipedia played a role in that: in October 2008, 360,238 people read its article. On November 5, an astounding 467,000 people read it. I commend the editors who work on that article—both those who support and oppose it. A look at the talk page shows a concerted effort to keep it civil and accurate.

What can we do?

How do you fight ignorance? With information. That's what Wikipedia is for. This project is overwhelming with 8,576 articles in its scope. We can continue to work piecemeal as we have in the past, or we can focus on goals. These are examples of areas we can concentrate on.

There are more than 8,000 articles to work on. Can we build a list of priorities? Can we build enough enthusiasm to work on these? What if we had editors who oversaw progress in these areas and reported to the talk page or in the newsletter? Surely someone here wants to report on the progress of sex articles.

Tony Perkins (irony) from the conservative Family Research Council was heartened by the recent passages of gay marriage bans. The Republican Party is without direction. What's going to take the place of a moderate voice will not be pleasant to our ears. Watching and improving articles of subjects that have opposed gay rights in the past will be of vital importance very soon, I predict.

But WP:LGBT is not a very active project

All we can do is start somewhere. The first step is answering this newsletter on the project talk page. Join in the discussion.

More things we can do

• Give out more barnstars, and let each other know that what they're doing is valued.
• Create a guide to stave off burnout, because editors in this project get burned out faster than others. There are many hills to climb.
• Bring back the monthly collaboration project.
• Participate in LGBT Peer reviews.
• Get familiar with the characteristics of Good Articles and get our top priority articles to WP:GA.
• Keep our project page and open tasks template updated.
• Use the Newsletter, Moni3! You can suggest what to send out in the newsletter, too!
• Offer research materials, copy editing, ideas, and support to your fellow editors.
• Keep the project talk page informed of problems and discussions we should know about.

Proposal: Put Importance Levels on articles

If this was decided long before I was a member, maybe it's time to revisit it. Other WikiProjects, such as WP:Novels determine that some subjects have an importance category: Top, High, Mid, Low, or None (undetermined). If we decide that our most core articles, it might help to organize which articles to address first. Top importance, for example, would be Gay, Homosexual, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Sappho, Oscar Wilde, Stonewall riots, for example. High importance would be Homosexuality and psychology, Harvey Milk, Mattachine Society, Harry Hay, or Daughters of Bilitis, and so on. This can be a matter of discussion, or perhaps we could have someone in charge of determining these levels for all the articles we have tagged.

So, like Slim Whitman, "I'm Calling You"

The editors I have admired in the past, who have done great things alone, and who I think can help us all do extraordinary things now: SatyrTN, Dev920, Aleta, Becksguy, Otto4711, BelovedFreak, Benjiboi, Bookkeeper of the Occult, Queerudite, FisherQueen (I will marry you), PaulB, APK, ZigZig20s, AllStarEcho (I know you're out there), Raystorm, and my very own copy editor, Dank55.

These are the editors I've seen working (and I know I'm forgetting a few). There's more of you out there I haven't seen. Some of you are new. We need all of you. Please help.

Miami, January 18, 1977 after the gay rights ordinance was passed: While Bryant and the others were creating the beginnings of the repeal effort, (gay activists) Basker, Campbell, Kunst, and the other (gay rights) ordinance supporters congratulated themselves on their success and then quickly disbanded... There was no organized recognition or celebration of the victory. As one activist remembered, "We just went home." They had little idea of the battle that was before them. - Fred Fejes in Gay Rights and Moral Panic, 2008

Don't go home yet, please. --Moni3 (talk) 00:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

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The LGBT studies WikiProject Newsletter! Issue XVIII: June 24, 2009

Yo, happy Pride y'all - are you ready for your close-up?

Stonewall riots

How do you change the world? You can start by writing an incredible article for the world's encyclopedia. Moni3 kicks it old school again with Stonewall riots - a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn. [...] [T]hey have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. It's a featured article hitting the mainpage this Sunday to mark the 40th anniversary of the events. So first off, wow! Clever and cool. Moni3 has been recently named hottest delegate to Obama's bookclub but that may not be official yet. (Shhh!)

Otto4711 mentioned that gee we really should swamp the DYK section with LGBT-related articles for use on the 28th as well. We have eight or so in the holding area and if you push yourself to get an article together you might be able to get in on the fun. Do this now!

The official rules for DYKs can be found here. Once you have expanded an article 5-fold or created an article with at least 1,500 characters of prose, place your DYK thread here. Use this handy tool to count your 1,500 characters. As a suggestion, when you add your potential hook, include the character count and a link to the source(s) that confirm the hook. These will be confirmed anyway but may help.

Trans quotes needed for Portal:Transgender

The layout for the individual quotes is here (just copy/paste into one of the red links on Portal:Transgender/Random quote). Then this counter has to be upped to match the new # of total quotes (not counting quote zero).

Obama proclamation

On June 1, President Barack Obama declared June 2009 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, citing the riots as a reason to "commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans". Excerpts at the bottom.

F*ck me I'm famous

I was interviewed by Wikipedia Signpost, the weekly in-house newsletter, for the WikiProject report. The Signpost has nearly 1,000 Wikipedian subscribers and arguably many of those folks actually read it. It came about rather quickly and my worst fears - that it was an elaborate hoax by a troll - were apparently unfounded. I hope y'all feel I did fine by the project, I did my best to avoid the phrase "man-humping, cock-sucking, doggy-style loving queer" but otherwise did ok.

Free image appeal

A friendly reminder to consider taking photos while you're out and about at various Dyke marches and Pride parades. Consider donating them to the world at Wikicommons. I'm sooo totally over having to deal with lovely images being deleted and argued about. If they are just free they are then also freely usable worldwide. And no, they don't need photos of your cha-cha or hoo-hoo-dilly.

Chaz Bono

Sonny and Cher's daughter was a famous lesbian and now he's a famous transman, possibly the most famous in the world. This also serves as a friendly reminder that we recently updated Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies/Guidelines - it's not perfect but should help inform on those gnip-gnop battles that do seem to drag on, and not in the good way.

R U Popular?

Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies/Popular pages is a new handy place to see which LGBT-tagged pages are the most popular in any given month.

Article alerts

As part of the redecorating at our talkpage, the article alerts and keyword search alerts are handily located at the top of the page. Always fascinating to see what's up. All help appreciated on those.

Glambert

Adam Lambert is soooo gay - surprised? Neither is anyone else. Nuff said. David Ogden Stiers was outed but apparently he wasn't terribly in either.

Community Quilt reminder

Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies/Quilt - update it and add yourself!

Our own little IRC home

The LGBT studies project does have its own free Internet Relay Chat channel, #wikipedia-en-lgbt, for coordination, collaboration and socializing. This channel is hosted on Freenode and can be accessed in one of two ways: If you already have an IRC client, click the link to the left. If you do not have an IRC client, you'll need to get one installed on your computer first. Once you've done this, then click on the link to the left.

For more general information on IRC and a listing of other useful Wikipedia-related channels, see Wikipedia:IRC channels.

The project had at one point another channel at #LGBTproject but as the original people associated with the setting up and administration of that channel have seemed to have disappeared, this new channel has been set up. Plus the new channel is inline with required naming conventions for Wikipedia related IRC channels. So, feel free to use this channel. Such a channel gives opportunity to discuss the latest happening on articles, the LGBT project itself, latest happening in your life with "wiki-friends" here, etc.. You can say things on there you normally wouldn't here on Wikipedia (keeping it civil of course) like talk about the latest hot guy/girl or tell a joke.. you get the point. Anyway, see you there - eventually!

LGBT to-do list (held over from last edition)

• Give out more barnstars, and let each other know that what they're doing is valued.
• Create a guide to stave off burnout, because editors in this project get burned out faster than others. There are many hills to climb.
• Bring back the monthly collaboration project.
• Participate in LGBT Peer reviews.
• Get familiar with the characteristics of Good Articles and get our top priority articles to WP:GA.
• Keep our project page and open tasks template updated.
• Use the Newsletter, Moni3! You can suggest what to send out in the newsletter, too!
• Offer research materials, copy editing, ideas, and support to your fellow editors.
• Keep the project talk page informed of problems and discussions we should know about.

Click your heels three times ladies and gents, home is where hot is! -- Banjeboi

To receive this newsletter in a different format, please let us know here.
If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let Moni3 know.