Topic on ProleWiki talk:Editorial guidelines

Comrade @PrimersophiaXVII suggests us adding pronouns to articles about people in this style (see her message here):

• Firstname Lastname (they/them) is a...

I think it's redundant since the article, when describing the person, will inevitably use pronouns, thus making clear the gender of the person. But even for the sake of redundancy, this information could be presented in an infobox better than in the article body. The reason why is that people already have dates, which is shown under parenthesis, when they are presented:

• Iósif Vissariónovich Dzhugashvili (December 21st, 1878 — March 5th, 1953)
• Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April 1870 — 21 January 1924)
• Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (August 13th, 1926 — November 25th, 2016)

So they would be presented as

• Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (August 13th, 1926 — November 25th, 2016) (he/him)

That's my opinion, but if the majority disagrees with me, we can implement this nevertheless

The idea to use an an info box section is much smarter than using parenthesis in the article.

And secondly if redundancy was a problem, then having a person's name in the info box would also be unnecessary as it is often the first words of the article.

Take my view with a pinch of salt because I've not seriously thought about the editorial guidelines until I happened upon this discussion in the recent changes.

I pretty much agree with @Forte, in reading an article the info can be relayed to the user more elegantly/naturally. I also think it would be unnecessary to apply this standard to every individual (correct me if this is not what you are suggesting @PrimersophiaXVII) because the majority of individuals here are historical and did not even know about the T in LGBT, so the information would basically be redundant.

The idea of Lenin's infobox reading

• Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April 1870 — 21 January 1924) (he/him)

seems ridiculous, because transness has only become well-known quite recently, so his gender as a historical figure is self-evident. Now perhaps there are a couple exceptions where it would make sense because a person was especially involved in that field, in which case I think the article text itself would make it pretty clear anyhow. I don't like the idea of creating a standard which would be rarely applied - inconsistency leads to confusion.

"I also think it would be unnecessary to apply this standard to every individual... because the majority of individuals here are historical"

that's not what i had in mind, the fault of misunderstanding is probably on me there. When i said "when applicable," that was intended to exclude those who

1. haven't made their preferred pronouns public information for whatever reason, or

2. are historical figures, and therefore did not specify their preferred pronouns, as that was not a question at the time

in retrospect, i should have clarified that in the original proposal.

Got it. Applying it when applicable seems reasonable to me. Before I said "inconsistency leads to confusion", but thinking on it more I don't think that really applies here.