LGBTQIA+ Wiki:Article Guidelines

The LGBTA+ wikia is intended to be a resource to learn about sexualities and genders, particularly those that don't have much information about them online. Before making a new page or edit it's recommended that you read this page to ensure your page meets the suggested requirements.

You do not have to ask before making pages.

Rules

1. Obviously follow the community guidelines. Hate speech will result in an indefinite ban, this including anything that promotes TERF, truscum, or exclusionist ideology.
2. No trolls. Joke pages will be deleted.
3. Any pages that imply fetishes or pedophilia are LGBT+ will be deleted and the user will be banned.
4. Do not plagiarize. You can paraphase or quote sources if you can't find a better way to put the information, but try to put things in your own words or add something to it.

What Should Be In A Page

When writing you should assume that the person reading your page has little to no knowledge of this term, the LGBT+ community, and internal LGBT+ politics. Explain your topic from the ground up, do not use overly complex and specific terminology unless it's necessary.

Present your article objectively. Unless it is about a hate group, or a problematic identity (such a sapiosexual or metrosexual) you should not try to tell the reader why they should or should not use the term. You should not say that a term is bad or should not be used unless it is aforementioned "problematic identities". You should objectively describe what the term in, and if necessary describe who identifies with the term and why. Do not bring up "discourse" or similar things in the article unless that discourse is important to the formation of term as we know it (such as the case with allosexual) in which case put it in the 'history' section.

Prescriptive vs Descriptive Definitions

Prescriptive definitions of terms focus on what a term "actually means" or how it "should" be used. Descriptive definitions, on the other hand, focus on describing how to term is used in practice. For example, a prescriptive definition of bisexuality would say that bi- means two, and therefore bisexuality is the attraction to two genders only, no more and no less. A descriptive definition of bisexuality would see that, while some bisexuals are only attracted to two genders, the general view of gender has changed greatly in the past few decades; many bisexuals are attracted to non-binary people, so bisexuality could be described as the attraction to two or more genders.

On this wiki we should try to strike a balance between prescriptive and descriptive definitions. You should open your article by talking about the most widely used definition of a term. The majority of your article should focus of this most commonly used definition. Whether that usage of the term is prescriptive or descriptive doesn't matter.

To bring up the prescriptive definition of a term you could say something like "Traditionally this term means [prescriptive definition] however, in modern times many people define it as [descriptive definition]". To bring up the descriptive definition of a term you should bring up how other people might use the term that doesn't completely fit the most strict definition of the term. As an example from the agender page: "While some agender individuals completely lack gender, some may call themselves agender their gender is neutral or neutrois, or their gender is unknown or undefinable..." These alternate definitions should should only be a minor part of the article, the majority of the article should focus on how most people use the term.

Do not say that people using a term in a certain way are using it "wrong". Unless the creator has explicitly stated that the term was not intended to be used in such a way, or this alternate definition is genuinely wrong and reinforces negative stereotypes about the group in question there is no "wrong" way to use an identity.

Required Sections

These sections are required when making an article.

Definition:

The definition can be short, but try to write more than a single sentence. A short paragraph or two is preferable. Even if the orientation is easily explained try to write multiple sentences. If you're struggling to write more try explaining what this orientation is not, talk about similar orientations, or why this orientation is different from similar ones. If you cannot write more than one or two sentences please use the article stub tag.

The format of this section should follow the format of all the other pages on this wiki, meaning the title of the article should be in the first word or nearly the first word and it should be bolded. Any alternate words for the same term, alternate spellings, or abbreviations should also be stated in the first sentence and be bolded.

Flag:

Please include a pride flag if applicable. High quality PNGs are preferred. The DeviantArt page Pride-Flags is a good source of many high quality pride flags.

Categories:

In an effort to insure that category pages don't get flooded with irrelevant pages, and to insure there aren't any redundant categories there is an effort to make sure each page only has one or two category tags. These are the curtain category tags used. You can visit the pages to get an idea of what sort of things are in these categories.

• Ace-Spec Identity
• Aro-Spec identity
• Gender
• Microlabel
• Sexuality
• Terminology : (This is a good place for pages that do not neatly fit into any of the other tags.)
• Identity: (This tag is for things that are not sexuality or genders by themselves, but are still things that one can identify as. For example, butch, sex repulsed, and gender nonconforming. There is often overlap between this category and the terminology category.)
• Xenogender

Category Rules of Thumb

Keep the following rules in mind following dos and don'ts when it comes to tagging categories.

• DO tag categories. All articles should have at least one category.
• DO ask if you're unsure what categories you should use.
• DON'T tag aro-spec or ace-spec identities as "sexuality". Aro/ace-spec identities have their own tag to avoid the sexuality page becoming too full.
• DON'T put xenogenders in the "gender" category. This is also separated so the gender category is not completely flooded. An exception can be made for specific genders where it's genuinely unclear what category it would fall into. (Such as genders where it's unclear if it was intended to be a xenogender or not, or genders that do not fit the standard definition of xenogender but are still called a xenogender by the creator.)

Recommended Sections

These sections are not required, but are highly recommended since the LGBTA+ wikia tries have as much information about each orientation as possible.

History:

Who coined this term? When and on what site did they do it? Is there any other interesting information about the origin of this term? Include sources.

In some cases only an approximate date can be found. For example, if the original poster deleted their Tumblr account you could find someone who reblogged the post shortly after it was originally posted and find the date there. In cases like this you should say the term was coined "on or before [date]".

How to Find Dates on Tumblr Posts

This is how it will look, the date is underlined in red.

Not all Tumblr themes readily show the date posted. In this case here is how to find the date. This definitely works for Chrome, I'm not sure if it would work the same for other browsers.

1. Right click the page and click "Inspect". OR press Ctrl+Shift+I.
2. With the inspect window open press Ctrl+F.
3. Type "date".
4. Either the first or second instance of the word "date" should be "datePublished". Next to that you will find the date you want. It's in year-month-day format. See the above picture for more information.

Flag:

Who designed the flag and when? What is the meaning of the colors? For the creator and creation date sources are required. For the color meanings sources are not required but are recommended.

Etymology:

Is this term derived from another word? Does this term use roots from another language? This section can be as short as a single sentence. 

Resources:

Obviously, sources are good to have, but are not necessary as it can sometimes be hard to find things like the first recorded use of a term, especially for more obscure terms. If you do include sources please make sure your links are up to date.

Formatting

Try to keep the formatting and spelling the same as already completed pages. The diamoric page is a good example of how a page should be formatted.

Format

1. The page title should be first word of the page, and should be bolded. Any alternate terms, alternate spellings, and abbreviation should follow as soon as possible and should also be bolded.
2. Add links to the first instance of a different article/topic mentioned in an article. Do not link to pages outside of this wiki. Use references for external sources.
3. The main image should appear at the top of the page. Any alternate flags and other images can either appear after the main flag or in the flag section (or other relevant sections). All images should be captioned. The default caption for a flag is "The [name] flag." If the flag is not fully accepted but is the only available flag/most common flag you can write "A commonly used [name] flag."

Language

1. Try to emulate the Wikipedia style of writing.
2. Don't use words like "you", especially when talking about a hypothetical person with the identity in question. Remember that the proper third-person singular pronoun in English is technically "one", so when one is writing in a formal style one should attempt to use it in place of "you" or "they" when talking about a hypothetically person.
3. When talking about identities, especially genders, avoid using doubtful language such as "they believe they are..." or "they identify as...". Instead use terms like "they are..." or "their identity is..."
4. Don't misgender people when talking about them in history section. If the term was coined on Tumblr or DeviantArt the creator might have their pronouns on their profile. If they don't have their pronouns listed or it's unclear which pronouns to use it's recommended to simply refer to them by their user name.
5. Do not use "he or she" or "s/he" or anything similar. Either use "one" (see point 2) or "they".
6. Words in other languages should be italicized. Their translation should be in quotes. For example: "Diamoric comes from the Greek prefix dia- meaning "passing through" and the Latin word amor, meaning "love"."

Spelling and Grammar

1. American English spelling should be used, unless it's in a direct quote. The exception to this is the word gray/grey, which can be spelled either way. It is spelled with an E for greyasexual and greyromantic.
2. The months in all dates should be spelled out completely. Do not use abbreviations.
3. The word non-binary should be spelled with a dash. The exception is when the word is part of a larger word such as deminonbinary.
4. When non-binary is the first word in a sentence the N is capitalized but the B is not.
5. Avoid using "enby" or "enbys", instead say "non-binary" and "non-binary people".
6. If a Tumblr blog is run by a single person the first letter of the username should be capitalized like a proper name. If the username has a dash in it the first letter of each word should be capitalized. If the Tumblr blog is run by multiple people is can be capitalized but does not have to be.
7. It is always written as trans men/trans women, never 'transmen'/'transwomen'.