Talk:Public Universal Friend

Stability

@User:Jburlinson, re diff: this article in fact displays a very high level of stability, comparable to other FAs; from last year to now there's been very little overall change, mainly wikilinks and dashes. I think you're taking "every couple of months someone makes an edit changing a few words against consensus, but is immediately reverted by other editors" to be "instability", but AFAICT that's a good sign of the stability of the consensus text of an FA, for example the FA on Franz Kafka, where almost the entire page of edit history since just March consists of as many people editing and being reverted in just a few months as this page has seen in a year. (And from last year to now, that article has seen significantly more substantive change than this one.) We could request a low level of page protection to prevent the occasional edit-against-consensus from happening, but since they're so infrequent and so swiftly reverted, I don't know that an admin would think it necessary. -sche (talk) 17:43, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

It's just happened again. This article is not stable. The same issue comes up again and again. Multiple reversions is the very definition of "unstable". GA status should be reconsidered.--Jburlinson (talk) 01:27, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Happening again and again. I'm going to recommend de-listing this as a GA; it's just not stable.

You want a GA delisted because of sporadic IP vandalism? NotBartEhrman (talk) 23:36, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

First, it's not sporadic, it's steady. Second, it's not vandalism -- at least in the minds of numerous editors. It represents a distinct point of view that is not going to go away. A stable article is one in which editors do not have to dog the article to make the same reversions over and over again.--Jburlinson (talk) 00:58, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

It's just a single IP editor with an obsession/complex, who will probably never come to this page to discuss or acknowledge the consensus, so indistinguishable from vandalism for me. Easy to block and move on NotBartEhrman (talk) 14:28, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Given how swiftly the vandalism gets reverted, I wonder if an admin would even consider it enough of a nuisance to bother apply pending-changes protection against. I doubt anyone buys the argument that an article whose text today is identical to its text a month ago, differing only in the placement of a period, is "unstable", lol — whole sections of the J. K. Rowling article have been rewritten (and stayed rewritten, I'm not speaking of the edits that get reverted) and it's still a featured article. We could request pending-changes or semi-protection of this article, like that article has. -sche (talk) 09:45, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

"the Friend"

What is the actual RS where this person is called "the Friend"? Now, I see the Wisbey 2009 source calling them "her" and "Jemima," and this Nyt review calls them "he" [1]. My issue is this: MOS:NB talks about "Refer[ring] to any person whose gender might be questioned with gendered words" (emphasis added) that correspond to their latest communicated preference, not any term whatsoever that they preferred for whatever reason. If the subject of this article identified as genderless, calling them "Wilkinson" clearly would not ascribe a gender, so would seem to be fine. I think calling them "the Friend" is iffy because the name "Public Universal Friend," over and above a merely genderless name, also evidently had theological connotations that are not vouchsafed by MOS:NB. Wuffuwwuf (talk) 21:21, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Hmm... Now I'm looking at the edit history and see someone says the consensus is indeed to call them "Wilkinson"? So why does it say "the Friend" all over the place? What are the diffs for the alleged consensus? Wuffuwwuf (talk) 21:45, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

...now that you point it out, it's not entirely clear to me where a consensus to use (rather than just mention) the name Wilkinson when discussing pre-transition events is; perhaps the editor who cited it can provide us both with a link to it. Discussion of title was here, one discussion of the name in the article body is here, and you see the two other discussions of the name (including the topic of retaining Wilkinson for pre-transition references) at the top of this page. I actually used "Wilkinson" throughout the article when I first started expanding and improving it a few years ago, but the aforementioned discussions pointed out that the person explicitly changed their full name and rejected not only "Jemima" but also "Wilkinson", and established that we should use the post-transition name for post-transition events.
Although it's now common for people to only change first but not last names when coming out, there are people who've changed both first and last names (e.g. Fallon Fox), and we indeed don't use either part of the old name in those cases. The most recent of the two book-length biographies, Moyer's, refers to "the Friend" (and "he") when discussing post-transition events. In period (and modern) texts one finds varying degrees of abbreviation, from the full "the Public Universal Friend", "the Universal Friend", "the Friend", "UF", "PUF". While we could use the full name "the Public Universal Friend" over and over, "the Friend" is more fluent and accords with RS from recent decades (Wisbey's work being from 1964). -sche (talk) 23:00, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Ok, and points taken. The problem is still that "Public Universal Friend" is simply not a name; it's basically a religious title that has nothing to do with their gender. It seems to me that the inference here is "they transitioned, so we can't use their deadname, but they didn't take a new name, so we have to call them by their invented religious title." It seems to me that there is just as much reason to do this as there would be to refer to Ezra Miller as being literally Jesus if they only took the steps of rejecting their current first and last names and not accepting new names, which is an absurd reading of MOS and cannot be true. This brings me to the fact that Moyer's book is not so clear-cut as you have described. Moyer, somewhat bizarrely, seems to call them "the Friend" when portraying their actions in a positive or neutral way, while calling them "Wilkinson" when discussing contemporary negative views of them. I'm not sure what you meant by the other book-length biography; what would that be? In the absence of substantial consistency among RS I think we should use common sense and call them Wilkinson. This is not perfect for obvious reasons but repeatedly calling them "the Friend" or "Public Universal Friend" in wikivoice lends unwarranted assent to their claim of having transformed into a prophet. Wuffuwwuf (talk) 00:11, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I was curious about use of "The Friend" as well. A google scholar search shows multiple examples of "The Friend" in books and journals.[2] Sativa Inflorescence (talk) 18:43, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

If there is indeed a lack of consensus on use of the name Wilkinson, that in itself constitutes enough instability to disqualify the article as GA. Furthermore, insistence on eliminating all use of the birth name reveals a neutrality issue by representing an editorial bias in favor of using language unique to 21st century transgender discourse. Therefore, I propose the following as a consensus statement regarding use of the birth name and "the Friend":

The subject of this article is to be referred to as Jemima Wilkinson (or Wilkinson) up to the reported death of that person. Subsequent references are to be "the Friend", the "Public Universal Friend" or the "PUF".

This is basically the understanding reached by numerous editors who've participated in talk discussions.

What do you think?--Jburlinson (talk) 02:06, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't know, delisting it seems unwarranted. Wuffuwwuf (talk) 03:50, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 December 2023

Change the name Jeremiah to Jemima, the name Jemima appears incorrectly as Jeremiah twice in the early Life section and possibly elsewhere in the article. the person whom this article is written about is named Jemima not Jeremiah. 2600:6C65:717F:DFA9:91D7:5CB4:1FC1:27B2 (talk) 22:25, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

 Not done Jeremiah is the name of the Public Universal Friend's father, and all four uses of "Jeremiah" in the article seem to correctly refer to him. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:38, 3 December 2023 (UTC)