The Ezgender Wiki has moved to Miraheze!

I wish what I just said was an exaggeration. The LGBTA Wiki Staff wasn’t consulted at all about this, but was abruptly told today the following:

We are excited to introduce LGBTQIA+, a new wiki community that will serve as the home for all information about sexuality and gender identity. This will be a consolidated version of the former wiki pages and at launch will include just the main articles needed to help people who are searching for information. We worked closely with a number of LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies as we developed this wiki and to ensure the most accurate information continues to live on this wiki, there will be an emphasis on sourcing articles. For example: as content is added to this wiki, only official terms that are recognized by people working on LGBTQIA+ issues will be approved.

As we begin to consolidate our LGBTQIA-related wikis, we will redirect all users to our LGBTQIA+ wiki. To ensure our content is inclusive and provides a wide range of information, our admins (who are LGBTQIA+ community members) have thoughtfully been building out wiki pages that represent a wide range of topics covering all identities, sexualities, historic LGBTQIA+ events, activism and more.

One exception to the merge is the Ezgender wiki, which will host articles outlining specific genders, orientations and pronouns, including pages of xenogenders from other wikis. The main LGBTQIA+ Wiki will have a page on xenogenders (with examples), but not the thousands of pages as on other wikis.

We are giving you the upcoming few weeks to make sure that your content is migrated to EZGender as necessary or, if you so choose, exported to another host.

[Please click here to read the full announcement from Fandom Wiki Staff]

No one on Ezgender Wiki Staff was consulted about this at all, and now  from my understanding, we quite literally will become the ONLY Wiki able to host specific xenogender terms. Essentially fandom has made the decision our wiki will be the literal only place that continues to list xenogenders and microlabels, and the combined wiki they’re creating will only feature terms “official terms” “recognized by people working on LGBTQIA+ issues”. So, site wide transphobia and an encouragement to gatekeep xenogenders. This is a recipe for disaster in general - For example, there are plenty of prominent activists who claim pansexual, nonbinary, or bigender aren’t “officially recognized.” 

Everyone at Ezg feels this is a ridiculous decision that undermines the spirit of LGBTQI+ education and opens room to gatekeep “un-recognized” identities. I’ve been talking to Staff from LGBTA Wiki, and they feel the same way.

Here’s what you can do to help:

Please sign this petition letting Fandom know you disprove of this decision.

Comment on the announcement post linked above and let them know you don’t think this decision was fair and something else should be done. Don’t be insulting, but tell them this is a bad decision.

From what we can tell, it seems this decision was already final by the time Sannse made the announcement. 

Currently, we have not been provided:

A list of all of the Wikis that will be merged

An exact timeframe for the merge (Only gotten vague “weeks”)

Any sort of elaboration on who those “number of LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies” even are, so we have no idea if for example the Wiki they’re making is written entirely by white perisex L/G/B cis people, etc…

I’ve posted a public letter on their LGBTA Wiki Message Wall, and I will share it here as well: (Under the cut due to length) - Kris/Ez

The "LGBTQIA+ Wiki" is a wiki being created by the mods of FANDOM. Not LGBTA Wiki- FANDOM, the site that hosts LGBTA Wiki. The creation of this Wiki was made alongside an announcement that every single LGBTQ+ focused wiki is being "merged" (deleted), with "common" identities being on this new wiki, and "uncommon" identities like xenogenders being put on the Ezgender Wiki.

First and foremost: This is not "merging." Do not let the admins make you think otherwise. This is deleting without consent, without a good reason. No mods on any wiki were informed of this, nor did they get a say in this whatsoever. Not LGBTA. Not Ezgender. Nobody. Many, many people have been furious on LGBTA Wiki over this new development, but FANDOM has supposedly already made up it's mind.

You might be asking- especially if you didn't like the LGBTA Wiki before- why is this a bad thing? Well, there's a lot to it...

1. It is without the consent of any creators involved.

Not only was LGBTA Wiki not informed, but neither was Ezgender or any other Wiki, such as the Nonbinary Wiki, Gender Wiki, or Kenochoric Wiki. It was made on the behalf of staff on FANDOM. This is an act of usurping creators and normal community members in order to force out a wiki that the site personally wanted. This is unacceptable behavior.

This not only undercuts creators, but admins as well, and everybody who has ever submitted and worked on pages for these wikis. People's hard effort was put into these pages, and now it is all being deleted for the sake of a wiki that is significantly worse.

2. It is blatantly against xenogenders and other microlabels.

This wiki will not be allowing xenogenders or any other "uncommon" identity, despite exactly 0 people liking this idea. Comments by the new admins on this topic have been rude and dismissive at best. Forcing this onto Ezgender Wiki, and making them be the one who holds all the microlabels, is creating so much sudden traffic and panic that nobody on that Wiki was prepared for.

It is also extremely concerning that random FANDOM admins believe they can distinguish what queer identities deserve to be on their Wiki and which ones do not, especially since not every member on this new team is queer (some are simply "allies.")

3. It is already parroting exclusionist content that would have never been acceptable on LGBTA.

Inclusivity is important in this community. However, on this new wiki, various entries are already very concerning, with much more exclusionary language than LGBTA had. For example, with lesbian:

LGBTA: "Lesbian is a term that defines queer attraction to women.", has extensive resources dating all the way back to Sappho, numerous community made flags, etc.

"LGBTQIA+": "A lesbian is most commonly defined as a woman who has enduring emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions toward other women.", far less sources, most of them being medical, less inclusive language/less inclusive of nonbinary people, various lesbian subcultures only being included under a "controversy" section, and only one flag.

4. It is forcing the deletion of an active, thriving community that has been active for years, just to promote a less inclusive wiki.

LGBTA Wiki is not new, inactive, or unable to be used. It is a thriving community with tons of terms being added daily (something not even allowed on this new wiki). The FANDOM mods are, in short, undercutting a very active community to promote their own, shittier community, which is tyrannical.

When people force a shut-down of a community-run site to make people use their own, it should be responded to accordingly.

5. It undercuts creators and lived experiences for "medical" explanations on sexualities/genders.

The admins have said they will only be adding things that are medically backed up onto this wiki. You will see proof of this, in that most of the mspec (bi, pan, ply, omni) pages have their first source being from WebMD, a medical site. While medical information is not inherently bad, it is extremely concerning for those who are, for instance, xenogender, non-dysphoric, or otherwise not perfectly defined by a medical system, to see a wiki near-exclusively prioritize that.

The entire point of the queer community is that it is not able to be contained in medical documents or perfect explanations. This paired with their decision to not allow any "micro" labels reeks of exclusionary behavior and reminds me a hell of a lot of transmedicalist rhetoric.

6. The Wiki is brand new, has not proved it will be well run, and is barely even created.

There are very few pages on this Wiki so far. We know no information about the mods, their beliefs, or their ability to run a Wiki. If you're going to force us to use a new platform, at least make a little more than 20 pages first. While more have been rapidly made, most are stubs with no flags or resources (which, ironically, is a critique LGBTA often gets).

The admins are consistently saying "the wiki isn't done yet," as they try to shut down an existing wiki that has been far beyond enough for years.

7. The LGBTA Wiki is a resource with massive impacts on the community.

Love it or hate it, you cannot deny the impact of the LGBTA Wiki. With these major resources gone, the community will be left in the dark for the sake of a wiki that will not allow replacement pages for a lot of these identities.

Queer people, especially young ones, will either have to rely on this new wiki which is much less inclusive, or look to the Ezgender Wiki, which is still relatively new, and is far from the first thing to show up in a Google search like LGBTA Wiki is.

It's cutting the line to one of our biggest gateway websites for the community. It's deleting terms that are not posted or archived on any other site. It's removing important resources that many people will find for the first time on the LGBTA Wiki. It's. Ridiculous.

8. It's forcing division between what is and is not "normal" in the community.

The "LGBTQIA+ Wiki" is splitting off from itself and Ezgender, with the former hosting "common" identities (who decides what is common?) and Ezgender for... everything else.

Mods have already stated untrue census data about how many people are xenogender, claiming less than 2% of the community is xenogender, when in reality the census data showed that over 20% percent identify with xenogender. That is 10 times larger than what they claimed, and is just misinformation by that point.

[ID: A screenshot of one of the admins on LGBTQIA Wiki. It states, "Based on the results from the Gender census, an annual survey of nonbinary individuals, less than 2% of those survey respondents identified as xenogender. It can be assumed that for individual xenogender identities under that umbrella, that percentage is even smaller." End ID]

[ID: A screenshot from the xenogender carrd, which has a link to the gender census. It states, "In the results from the Gender Census of 2020, between 1,164-4,820 people (approx. 24.35%), out of 24,576 total results, were xenogender." End ID]

What is "normal" and "non-normal" is not a thing in the queer community. It is no more or less valid to be xenogender than it is to be a trans man. It is no more or less valid to be finsexual than it is to be a lesbian. Forcing this divide is further encouraging divide in the community, and will be alienating for many people.

... So, what can we do?

There are a few things:

1. Support the Ezgender Wiki. They already include "common" IDs; the "LGBTQIA+ Wiki" is not needed. If the LGBTA Wiki truly is no more, the Ezgender Wiki is your next best bet, and may benefit from additions from the LGBTA Wiki before it goes down.

2. Support the new LGBTA Wiki, which is planned to be hosted on Miraheze. Not much is known about this port yet, but keep an eye on it!

3. Do not support the new wiki, and preferably boycott FANDOM as a platform. FANDOM runs off of monetary support from ads, and refusing to use their platform speaks volumes. Show the site that this behavior is not okay.

Sannse or anyone else did not communicate that this was a possibility, and their messages made it seem like whether or not we wanted it to, the Fandom Wiki would remain, so this is yet another surprise announcement from Fandom.

As frustrating as this is, though, it’ll be alright. All of our content has been transferred to the Miraheze. It’s a good idea to take a moment to look over images you uploaded to the Fandom Wiki and double check that those were imported, but we most likely have everything.

Our Tumblr URL is now MOGAI-Wiki instead of Ezgender-Wiki.

The Wiki’s Carrd URL has changed to mogaiwiki to match.

Our Discord invite link with remain /ezgender for a little while longer.

Even if you’re unfamiliar or uninterested in editing on Miraheze, you can help our Wiki in some very important ways. A major one is uploading flags!

If you make flags, please consider uploading them to the Wiki! Here’s how.

Make an account.

Check our image uploading guidelines. (The page is a bit long, but it’s just to try to clear up any questions one might have! The most important parts are just how we prefer images to be titled: [thing] {number} by [creator] mmm-dd-yyyy. This helps us keep track of dates and origins for the sake of archiving!)

And you’re done! Even if you don’t make a full page, just the act of uploading your flags as you make them is a HUGE help - It means that our staff and users who archive MOGAI terms don’t have to upload those images ourselves later!

The MOGAI Wiki is an inclusive Miraheze Wiki focused on sourcing information and collecting flags! Here’s our official blog - Feel free to send questions to the Staff here!

Wikia Links:

Official Carrd

Rules

Updates

Mascots (Coming soon)

Ezgender’s Personal Links, which you may be looking for:

Tumblr

FAQ

Resources

Ko-Fi Shop

Why? On January 18th, 2022, the future merging of all LGBTQI+ Wikis was announced by a member of Fandom’s Staff. The sole exception to this merge is the Ezgender Wiki, which was intended to remain to hold xenogenders. This change was not discussed whatsoever with Ezgender Wiki Staff, and wasn’t our choice. You can read where that was announced here, and my original announcement about it here.

It bears repeating: Fandom Staff didn’t discuss this with us AT ALL. They didn’t tell a single one of us on our Mod team that we would be absorbing the content of over a dozen Wikis. As a result, our Wiki and Discord were abruptly flooded with hundreds of new users. Before this announcement, we had 90 active users and 5 mods (2 of which were on their FIRST DAY as mod). We were faced with a flood of trolls as a result, in addition to just generally being overwhelmed.

Even if it were acceptable that Fandom Staff was giving tons of communitites little to no notice that they’d be essentially deleted and Fandom would make a new “LGBTQI+” Wiki that would only hold “””officially recognized””” identities and already has been shown to be full of lesbiphobia, intersexism, and other issues - Even if that were somehow okay… The way everyone involved has been treated is unacceptable. We didn’t matter enough to Fandom for even a heads up. I am the one that created the Ezgender Wiki, and I had to find out that this was happening secondhand, through the Wiki’s forums. 

Fandom Staff has both completely disregarded its users and doubled down on the position that this was all for the best. 

What Should We Do Now?

This is the link to our Miraheze Wiki. All of the content from Ezgender has been transferred there, all that’s really changed is we’re on a different WIki host now. This will definitely be a big change, but we’re going to do our best to make it easy on everyone. The Main Page and About page have links to resources, and you can join our Discord for quicker responses to questions.

We ask that you abandon the Fandom Wiki and join us in protesting Fandom’s treatment of us. I would personally suggest changing your Fandom account’s avatar to one of these icons and commenting on the original announcement that this was unacceptable before abandoning the account. There’s some links to contact Fandom in this post if you’d like to do that, as well.

Signal boost that this happened. What Fandom has done here is unacceptable. Transphobia, homophobia, lesbiphobia, intersexism, among many other things + a complete lack of care for the people who use the site. To top it all off, Fandom also has a rule that once it’s announced a Wiki is moving to Miraheze, that announcement can only stay up for two weeks. We’re going to be relying on word of mouth to keep this going. Please make anyone who you think might need to know aware of this.

Please be aware that from this post, we can no longer guarantee anything that remains on the Ezgender Wiki is accurate, safe, or moderated.