Jump to content

Talk:LGB Alliance/Archive 22

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 15←Archive 20Archive 21Archive 22

History, Founders, Reliability of Pink News

There is now yet another high quality source (Amelia Gentleman in The Guardian) that describes the only two founders of LGB Alliance as Kate Harris and Bev Jackson.

  • "LGB Alliance was founded in October 2019 to campaign for the rights of same-sex attracted people by two veteran lesbian activists: Bev Jackson, a founder member of the Gay Liberation Front in 1970, and Kate Harris, who was previously a volunteer fundraiser for the leading gay rights organisation Stonewall. They were concerned at the implications of Stonewall’s decision to alter its definition of sexual orientation in 2015 from “same-sex attracted” to “same-gender attracted”."

This could not be any clearer. It also corroborates - yet again - the information on their about page and their history page.

Pink News, on the other hand, has published a piece listing five founders, in the exact same non-alphabetic order as they first appeared in this wiki article:

"The LGB Alliance was formed by co-founders Bev Jackson, Kate Harris, Allison Bailey, Malcolm Clark and Ann Sinnott"

This is the second time they have done so, and if they haven't just copied and pasted this information from Wikipedia at some point it is quite the coincidence. No other source anywhere listed those five names in that specific order before this article did.

I would like editors to take seriously the fact that while Pink News may be an acceptable source for events or controversies, they are not a clearly reliable source for basic factual matters about LGB Alliance, such as who founded it. They should be used with caution.

We have multiple high quality sources to indicate there were only two founders, including the org itself. We need a clean out of all the numerous old, dubious, ambiguous and disputed sources and make this whole thing drastically simpler and less WP:SYNTH. It should not take five sources to establish the founders, and the only single sources for all five in one place post-date this wiki page.

We can cite their about page and this new Guardian article to establish the only two founders are Kate Harris and Bev Jackson. Any citation for founders beyond Kate Harris and Bev Jackson should be based on a high quality source that directly disputes who the founders are, not simply any passing mention that could at this stage be an error (such as OpenDemocracy's description of Eileen Gallagher as a 'founding member') or even WP:CITOGENESIS. Void if removed (talk) 09:31, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Not this again. -- Colin°Talk 09:47, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, this again. New, high quality source, stating again, unambiguously only two founders. Recent sources are much clearer on this than the older ones and should be favoured, per WP:RSAGE.
  • "newer secondary and tertiary sources may have done a better job of collecting more reports from primary sources and resolving conflicts, applying modern knowledge to correctly explain things that older sources could not have, or remaining free of bias that might affect sources written while any conflicts described were still active or strongly felt"
As the org has got more serious press it has also got more accurate press. The outliers tend to be biased sources like Pink News, who are now printing information suspiciously identical to this Wiki page. Void if removed (talk) 10:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
First up, this is all an absolutely massive waste of time. Second up, I don't understand the desire to extrapolate from the sources who list two founders to infer only two founders. Third up, I don't understand the obsession with the word "founders" anyway. Does it really have such a specific meaning?
If we can keep the peace by describing them as something like "founders and initial active members" or "founders and key early members" then I'd be happy with that but I don't see any argument to remove the five names. All five are key people in this tiny organisation and all five should be named in some significant capacity.
I fully share Colin's exasperation here. We do not have any sources saying that the other three were not founders. As far as I know, none of them has objected to being described as "founders". If they have then somebody please say as that could well be relevant but, assuming that they haven't, this is all an absolutely massive waste of time. --DanielRigal (talk) 10:22, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
We've been over this lots - at least one (Malcolm Clark) directly disputed the label "founder", multiple times, with Pink News head of news, and this was never corrected.
Multiple high quality sources say two and only two. It is not a waste of time - the history laid out in multiple sources is that the entire org was the brainchild of two lesbians, who worked for months to organise the initial meeting to launch their own organisation. Corroborated - again - in this column from today.
This article cannot reflect that history, because in 2021 editors synthesised a list of five names from passing mentions in multiple sources and focused on The Times letter as a possible starting point. That's understandable given the paucity of coverage at the time, but high quality secondary sources are doing a better job, which should be reflected here.
> We do not have any sources saying that the other three were not founders.
Yes we do. We have multiple sources saying there were precisely two founders. We have multiple sources saying those two founders invited the others to the meeting to launch their organisation. We have zero sources saying there is any controversy about who founded it. We have statements from at least one of those listed explicitly denouncing coverage that says he is a founder. Are you expecting a piece in the Guardian saying this Wiki page is wrong? OpenDemocracy called Eileen Gallagher a founder - should we add her until The Guardian publish an article saying she isn't?
We should follow what reliable sources say and we should not combine sources to reach conclusions that aren't clearly stated in a single source because that is WP:SYNTH. Void if removed (talk) 11:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
The "founders and key early members" approach or similar seems the right one here. There seems to be no ambiguity that two indiviudals, and only those two, started the process, but it's also clear that other people had significant involvement in the first formal stages: roughly speaking the distinction seems to be between "founders" and "founding directors", with some media reports unhelpfuly conflating the two. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 12:42, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I think the lede and about box should say who the founders are, as they are very clear, and the others mentioned inline in the history. Same as the trustees. Void if removed (talk) 13:03, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Fine with me. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 13:24, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
A "founders and key early members" approach would be unverifiable bordering on original research. We have many reliable sources, see the discussions from November 2022 and February 2023 that name founders other than Jackson and Harris. We do not, to my knowledge, have sources that describe those other individuals as "key early members" or some other synonym for the same meaning. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:25, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
This has been discussed to death. The points you are making Void are no different to the points that you made in November 2022, and February 2023 that other editors did not find convincing. Would you please just drop this stick?
The outliers tend to be biased sources like Pink News While The Times certainly has a bias in this area, it is a different bias to that of PinkNews and they are still considered by many to be a high quality source. Yet, in January 2023 they quite clearly said Clark, a co-founder of the LGB Alliance, a national advocacy group. Sinnott appears to have been out of the news cycle for a while now, with the most recent article even mentioning her being over a year old. As for Bailey, CTV News in January 2023 said Alliance co-founder Allison Bailey sued the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:22, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Again, all of that is irrelevant because you are combining multiple sources to reach a combined conclusion not supported by any single one of them, which is WP:SYNTH.
This comes up again, because - once again - we have an unambiguous, high quality source saying there are two founders. Not mentioning someone in passing in some Canadian article that isn't even about LGB Alliance at all, but actually saying very explicitly this is who founded the organisation, when and why. This is very different. This is a good secondary source for the founding of the organisation.
If this were a new article, with none of the baggage of the synthesis that took place here in 2021, we would take their about page, and this latest article, and that would be it. It is obvious that titles have been misreported over the years, and the longer this is maintained here, the more WP:CITOGENESIS there will be.
At this point you have to ask: what standard of evidence would it take? This is a serious question. It is unrealistic to expect all the past errors to be corrected - although some have - and that's why we should defer to WP:RSAGE. Void if removed (talk) 18:40, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Ok, firstly this cannot be a case of citogenesis. This article was created on 15 January 2021, however we have reliable sources predating the creation of the article that mention founders other than Jackson and Harris (The Times, October 2019, PinkNews, January 2020, The Times, January 2020, The Guardian, February 2020). So that argument straight up doesn't hold water.
we have an unambiguous, high quality source saying there are two founders You are repeating the same arguments you made in November 2022 and February 2023. Those arguments were not found convincing by other editors present.
If this were a new article, with none of the baggage of the synthesis that took place here in 2021, we would take their about page, and this latest article, and that would be it. No. If this were a new article, we would report only what independent, reliable sources with a reputation for fact checking and corrections state about the organisation. In this case, those sources state that there were founders other than Jackson and Harris. They stated there were other founders prior to the creation of this article (see my list earlier in this reply), and newly published articles by the same sources continue to do so (see the lists when we discussed this previously, along with those from my last reply). Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:25, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
You have no HQ sources that list all five as founders, so you're still engaging in WP:SYNTH, and dragging up old, questionable sources (and aware of the issues with those four so no point hashing it out again) is exactly why WP:RSAGE exists, else ancient mistakes like this will live forever. A high quality recent secondary source should override editors interpretation of conflicting older sources.
Every time a new high quality source comes out that so clearly states when and by whom the organisation was founded, this article looks more and more wrong and the risk of WP:CITOGENESIS increases (and I argue is already happening in the case of Pink News, which says something about their fact-checking on this subject).
I'm not going to continue to argue the same points, but it is absolutely right that new sources like this receive consideration. Void if removed (talk) 09:12, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Companies House lists Malcolm Clark as a director from the same date as Bev Jackson. Likewise Anne Marie Sinnott and Katherine Rosemary Harris: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12338881/officers. As @DanielRigal pointed out, "the 2 founders Bev Jackson and Kate Harris" does not mean there are only the 2 of them.
With respect, @Void if removed, @Sideswipe9th provided links that show this can't be CITOGENESIS. In the UK, effectively all major news organs provide reporting has anti-trans bias; that Pink News is one of the few that does not does not make it unreliable. I'm inclined to agree that the problem here is more of a STICK than CITOGENESIS or SYNTH. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 09:20, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
It's the classic problem of the distinction between "founders" (who had the original idea and called the first meeting) and "founding directors" or equivalent (who has roles when the organisation first took formal shape), with media reports using the word "founders" indicriminately for both. It's pretty clear here that Bev Jackson and Kate Harris were the original founders, with the rest following immediately afterwards, but you will struggle to find reliable sources formally confirming all that in one place. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 10:51, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Having been involved in the efforts of setting up non-profits itself, I'm not sure the distinction between "people who had the original idea" and "people who added expertise and effort to bring the organisation to fruition" is all that useful. And if we struggle to find RS confirming something, then I'm not sure it's all that clear. I don't believe the distinction is important here; we have plenty of sources dating before the article saying that all of them were involved in founding the organisation; we have none saying the others were not. I'd suggest it's RS to say that Clark, Sinnott, Bailey or Gallagher were not founders. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 11:39, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Per WP:ABOUTSELF, as I have said many times, the fact that we have Malcolm Clark explicitly saying "I'm not a founder" to Ryan John Butcher, Pink News' head of news, should be enough to cast doubt on both the claim that he is, and also Pink News factual credibility as a source, given this has never been retracted or corrected. Void if removed (talk) 12:15, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Given that being involved with a group widely seen as being transphobic is, to say the least, controversial, a person's denial that they were a founder is not the same as them not being a founder.
Given that Companies House says he was a director of the organisation from the date of its establishment, it might be said that that such a claim were exceptional.
A person claiming a thing that a news organisation believes not to be true an thus does not correct or retract does not cast doubt on the credibility of the news organisation. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 16:23, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
The idea that he's in any way embarrassed is absurd. There's not one shred of evidence to support that, and years of evidence that the opposite is true. What he has actually said is:
"I don’t run @ALLIANCELGB. Two wonderful lesbians, for whom I’m full of admiration, founded it. I’m merely on the management team which is all LGB with a lesbian majority and overseen by a group of eminent trustees. You can find out more on our website."
And also:
"Yes I’m a director. Didn’t say I wasn’t. Two lesbians founded the organisation months before it was incorporated. They organised the launch event. It’s a lesbian led organisation."
He wrote an opinion piece just this past weekend stating it is "an organization (transparency alert) which I have strongly supported".
This article puts the founding at the launch meeting on October 22nd 2019. They became a limited company a month later in November 2019, which is not "from the date of its establishment". These are different things, again, you are engaging in WP:OR, and misinterpreting primary sources.
And, once again, the response of Pink News' Head of News to Clark's insistence that he wasn't a founder was:
"oh, fair. noted."
I would say the claim that he is a founder when he and the organisation and recent secondary sources all corroborate that he is not is actually the one that is WP:EXCEPTIONAL. Void if removed (talk) 09:40, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
You might be right that he's not distancing himself from it because of transphobia allegations per se. But your quotations actually demonstrate that there seem to be clear marketing reasons why he and others prefers he's not listed as a founder. So we end up at the same point namely that sources after looking at the evidence, dispute his denials of being a founder. Nil Einne (talk) 07:24, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
No sources dispute it and not a single one anywhere says anything about his denial being false. Editors here dispute it, and that's WP:OR.
The continual assumption of bad faith as the first and most likely explanation with no evidence is really inappropriate. Perhaps it's just true? Void if removed (talk) 07:50, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Per WP:ABOUTSELF the charity's own "about" page should be sufficient, absent a source directly calling their story into question. Void if removed (talk) 12:10, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Just to note that WP:ABOUTSELF is a "may be used" permission in a section about "Sources that are usually not reliable". It's really a "if you have absolutely nothing better, and editors still think it is important information to include, then we'll accept that as a source". Not a rule that whatever an organisation says about itself is gospel. -- Colin°Talk 09:42, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Here's my summary.

  • "Bev Jackson and Kate Harris" are the "Founders of LGB Alliance" according to LGB Alliance,[1] and nobody disputes they organised the first meeting in October 2019.
  • The incorporation at Companies House 26 November 2019 lists four directors.[2] "Beverly Ruth Jackson, Ann Marie Sinnott, Katherine Rosemary Harris, Malcom Clark".
  • The court document in the recent Mermaids appeal[3] notes "LGB Alliance is incorporated as a company limited by guarantee. Its founding members and directors are (1) Beverley Jackson; (2) Ann Sinnott; (3) Kate Harris; (4) Malcolm Clark." These are "CHRONOLOGY AND AGREED FACTS".
  • In the above case Dr Belinda Bell, Chair of Trustees of Mermaids, states[4] "LGB Alliance’s views can be found in its publications, on its Twitter account, and in communications by Beverley Jackson, Ann Sinnott, Katharine Harris and Malcolm Clark (the four founding directors of LGB Alliance) as well as Allison Bailey, who has acted as a co-founder and remains one of its main public-facing figures (she is credited by LGB Alliance for having “helped us set up” [BB1/7] and gave the keynote speech at its October 2021 conference)".
  • Allison Bailey, the only one to have a Wikipedia article, is described literally everywhere as a co-founder of LGB Alliance, including in our own article on her.
  • The term "founder" simply means someone who helped setup an organisation, but has no distinction between "had the initial idea", "first talked about it together on the phone", "organised the first meeting", "attended the first meeting", "gave money to help set it up", "was among the initial set of directors", "was one of the very first members". As noted in previous discussions, the term "founder member" has occasionally been used as an incentive for people to make an early donation and apply for membership, that they can then brag about ever after, but that doesn't seem to have occurred here. Sources could use the word "founder", "founded", "co-founded" and "founder member" to describe the same person. There's no accepted cut-off.
  • As Void themselves has already noted, there is a narrative they are keen to promote that LGB Alliance is a lesbian-led organisation founded by two lesbians. One of the founders we list is heterosexual and resigned under a cloud, which fits better in the idea that LGB Alliance is a gender-critical (feminist) / anti-trans group, than that it is a group for lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Another founder we list is a man, and last time I checked, LGB Alliance were pretty keen on the idea that "lesbians" and "women" didn't have a penis. So he doesn't fit into their narrative that this is a lesbian led/founded organisation campaigning for women's rights.
  • It is entirely possible there hierarchy of foundership at play here, with some being earlier or "more important" than others. It may also simply be an ego thing, with Jackson and Harris both wanting everyone to know it was their clever idea and everyone else had a lesser role. But we don't have sources that say as such. So we just simply lack the ability to explain the disagreement in our sources between two or four or five.
  • We have excellent indisputable evidence for two founders (LGB Alliance) or four founding directors (companies house, court documents, etc) and Allison Baily is reported by countless sources as a co-founder.
  • We have recent sources listing all five. Pink News is claimed by Void as simply copying the Wikipedia article. We can't know but as a newspaper covering LGBT matters and critical of LGB Alliance since the beginning, I'm not convinced their journalists need to read Wikipedia to get their facts.. The other source listing five is Bell in the Mermaids appeals. I don't have to hand a convenient link about Wikipedia's attitude to court documents as sources. However, for the purpose of us hammering things out on this page, this is a statement presented to a court and presumably under oath and the claim made is not under any dispute: those four were indeed founding directors and Bailey is indeed their most prominent figures and frequently referred to as a co-founder.
  • Listing all five as founders is not wrong. They all helped found LGB Alliance. That this doesn't fit with the narrative LGB Alliance want to project (lesbian-led, lesbian founded, campaigning for women's rights) isn't Wikipedia's problem. They had a heterosexual woman and a man among their founding directors and Allison Bailey told the world she was a co-founder and provided the tweets to a court to prove it. Not our problem. -- Colin°Talk 16:24, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Good summary. I'd also add that any falling out between the initial key players is not our problem unless Reliable Sources write about it in a non-trivial way. It is not for us to help them to de-emphasise people who they no longer wish to be associated with. So long as we are sure that the word "founder" lacks any precise legal meaning in the way that, say, "director" does, I'm more than happy that this is the correct approach. --DanielRigal (talk) 20:51, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Colin and Daniel here. -sche (talk) 21:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree that 'founder' doesn't have a precise meaning and given the full facts, these people can all legitimately be referred to as 'founders' or 'founding directors', 'founding members' or whatever each one's role was. But why is this list in the second sentence of the lead? Only one of them (Bailey) has a linked article, so the general reader learns nothing from the naming. Those 'in the know' may know about each one's sexual orientation, but that isn't a very good reason for listing the names in the lead para IMO. Pincrete (talk) 05:00, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm not fussed about where it appears in the lead. Bailey has an article because of their court case, and no other reason. They aren't notable for anything else. Jackson apparently co-founded UK's Gay Liberation Front in 1970. Harris was a volunteer fundraiser for Stonewall, from which this group split. Clark is a TV producer. Sinnott was a Labour councillor who quit her job because trans women were allowed to use female toilets.[5] We don't restrict our articles to mentioning only other people if they have articles on Wikipedia. As a young organisation that has "yet to get around to" doing much, being founded is pretty much the highlight of their achievements. -- Colin°Talk 07:57, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
What I should have said is that as most of the 5 founders are not notable, there really is no good reason to name them ANYWHERE in the lead. Doing so in the body would give the opportunity to clarify exact roles. Incidentally, if Jackson really was a significant part of the founding of the UK GLF, that actually makes her a very big fish, even if in a relatively small pond. UK GLF was an extremely 'in your face" campaigning group and probably the first of its kind in the UK, openly and unapologetically campaigning for LGB people. But notability isn't inherited and sources cover these historical connections fairly scantily in relation to LGBA.
However, it really isn't very rational to paint these 5 as near-nobodies, in an near-insignificant org, but simultaneously insist on listing them in the lead. What useful info does naming them convey to the reader? Pincrete (talk) 10:38, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Bev Jackson was not only a founding member of GLF, she was also the spokesperson at the first ever gay rights demo in the UK, in November 1970.
The October 22nd launch of LGBA was - according to Bev Jackson's witness statement - precisely because of the cancellation of a GLF event at the LSE:
  • "I had been invited to join the panel of a public-facing event at the London School of Economics on 22 October 2019 to mark the 49th anniversary of the formation of the UK Gay Liberation Front. This event was cancelled in July 2019 immediately following an email I sent to the moderator outlining my views on the problematic composition of the panel. My email is at [Exhibit BJ13]."
  • "Kate Harris and I then decided to hold an event nearby LSE on the same date, which would focus on our concerns about the direction taken by the LGB rights movement. This became the meeting at which LGB Alliance was formed."
Void if removed (talk) 10:51, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, Colin; that's a very helpful and clear summary — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 06:40, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
"We have recent sources listing all five."
The five are listed non-alphabetically and there is a less than 1% chance of producing them in that precise order by chance. Pink News and GPAHE however have both listed them in exactly this order, after they first appeared here. Nowhere lists those five as "founders" in any different order. Pink News also describes their founding as starting with the letter to The Times, as this article does (and not how they describe their own founding), and I pointed out in the archive how swathes of the GPAHE report seemed plagiarised from this wiki page. Put those together with the high odds against getting those names in that order and this all looks like quite blatant WP:CITOGENESIS.
Also, aside but why doesn't this fall under WP:BLPGROUP? Void if removed (talk) 08:59, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
"presumably under oath and the claim made is not under any dispute"
No, the tribunal was not under oath. Also, Bell's statements here were not part of the agreed facts. This is a wholly inappropriate primary source - a submission by someone actively attempting to shut down the organisation making unevidenced statements about how a person "acted" as co-founder, that wasn't even agreed by both parties? I urge you to reconsider suggesting this is in any way a viable source for a factual claim it doesn't even make (speculating from the outside whether someone was "acting as" something is not the same as being it).
Especially since I gave Bev Jackson's witness statement here about a year ago to demonstrate that she and Kate Harris were the co-founders, and was rebuffed as it was an inappropriate source.
But if we're talking about witness submissions, Bailey's evidence in her case against Stonewall/GCC was only that she attended the meeting, tweeted about it on the way home, and joined the steering group on October 23rd:
  • "I met Kate Harris at a get-together in a Covent Garden flat. Later she would invite me to the launch of LGB Alliance. I met Bev Jackson for the first time at that launch on 22 October 2019"
  • "I was not involved in setting up or preparing for the 22 October meeting."
  • "I got the bus home from the meeting. While I was sitting on the bus, I sent out the tweet of 22 October 2019 (Bundle Page 2129). There was no prior plan for me to do so, and nobody knew or asked me to do it. It was spur of the moment that reflected my relief that something concrete was being done to challenge Stonewall and gender identity politics that had taken over lesbian and gay rights. In fact, I found out later that there had been a plan (or at least, the recognition of a need for a plan), which I was not aware of, to set up and announce the formation of LGB Alliance in a more formal and structured way. By sending that tweet I effectively launched LGB Alliance prematurely and by accident. From 23 October 2019, I worked with Kate, Bev, Malcolm Clarke and Ann Sinnott on the Steering Group, and continued to do so for the first 7 months of LGB Alliance’s existence."
  • "During 2020, I decided to step back from LGB Alliance. I was very sad to do so. I am still a staunch supporter of theirs. I was delighted that they asked me to give the Key Note speech at their conference in November 2021."
Bailey's own press release states "founding member". You say Allison Bailey "Allison Bailey told the world she was a co-founder and provided the tweets to a court to prove it", but I don't see that anywhere. In fact she said, on November 9th, 2019
"On Tuesday 22nd October 2019, at Conway Hall, London; an historic institution committed to placing logic, reason & evidence before dogma & enforced thinking, Kate Harris and Bev Jackson, founded & announced the birth of the LGB Alliance. Hats off to you both, and thank you."
It is obvious that Kate Harris and Bev Jackson worked together for several months to found LGB Alliance, organising the October 22nd meeting and inviting all the attendees and speakers, after which the other three joined to form an initial steering group, four of them going on to become directors of a ltd company a month later.
Continually conflating early directorship, joining the steering group, a founding member and founder is inappropriate, and the amount of effort being poured into selectively highlighting primary sources to justify this WP:SYNTH over the clear objections of the named individuals, the org itself, and recent high-quality secondary sources is puzzling. Void if removed (talk) 10:35, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
"I am suing Stonewall Equality Limited to stop them policing free speech.
I am a barrister and I helped to set up a new organisation for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, the LGB Alliance, to provide an alternative to Stonewall. In retaliation, Stonewall had me investigated by my chambers, in an attempt to cost me my livelihood.
"The need for a new lesbian, gay and bisexual organisation: the birth of the LGB Alliance
In 2019, I helped to set up the LGB Alliance with other campaigners and activists who felt, like me, that organisations such as Stonewall had...
Then in October 2019, she was involved in setting up the Lesbian Gay Alliance to resist transwomen self-identifying as women."
Launch of LGB Alliance and Resulting Twitter Storm
On 22 October 2019 (tweet 3) the claimant sent the “launch tweet” that led to an avalanche of tweets in response, and to the Garden Court actions complained of as detriment. Commenting on the launch of LGB Alliance in London she said:
“this is an historic moment for the lesbian, gay and bisexual movements. The LGB Alliance launched in London tonight, and we mean business. Spread the word, gender extremism is about to meet its match”.
The claimant’s launch tweet generated a strong reaction on Twitter, some of which was specifically directed at Garden Court
The claimant has argued that her reference to “what we have endured getting LGB Alliance off the ground” included by implication Garden Court’s action against her.
Then in October 2019 the Claimant launched (with others) an organisation known as the LGB Alliance to campaign for LGB rights without the gender theory espoused by Stonewall, and made various tweets in connection with that launch.
There is also evidence that some members of Chambers, and some employees, were concerned about the Claimant’s launch of the LGB Alliance in October 2019, and the tweets that the Claimant sent around that time
"In 2019, Ms Bailey founded the LGB Alliance, a charity which argues ..."
"Allison Bailey, a barrister and founder of the LGB Alliance campaign group, brought a discrimination claim against Garden Court Chambers, where she worked"
"The decision, on Wednesday, that LGB Alliance founder and barrister Allison Bailey had suffered..."
"Ms Bailey founded the LGB Alliance group in 2019, which argues that..."
Such was Bailey’s disenchantment, she helped set up the LGB alliance which advocated for the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.
Bailey, a criminal law barrister, founded the LGB Alliance in 2019. The group argues that there is...
Allison Bailey, works as a criminal defence barrister at Garden Court Chambers in London. She is a founder of the charity and pressure group LGB Alliance and holds gender critical beliefs.
[Ms Bailey] founded the LGB Alliance group,
inaugural meeting of the LGB Alliance last week...I was at the meeting, ...Allison Bailey, a criminal defence barrister, who had sat just in front of me. Her apparent crime? To tweet:
“This is an historic moment for the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual movement. *LGB Alliance* launched in London tonight, and we mean business. Spread the word, gender extremism is about to meet its match.”

I could keep going. So we have Companies House and accepted court documents saying there are four founding directors. We have Bailey's own laywers in court saying that not only did Bailey help set up LGB Alliance but it was Bailey herself who launched it with their tweet. And Bailey's own fundraising page says she helped setup LGB Alliance. So you are telling me that Bell, in their court documents, deliberately lied about "Beverley Jackson, Ann Sinnott, Katharine Harris and Malcolm Clark" being founding directors and deliberately lied that "Allison Bailey, who has acted as a co-founder", because she's from Mermaids and so incapable of telling anything truthful about LGB Alliance in a court of law? The world and his dog says you are wrong and Bell is absolutely correct, Void. Please drop the stick. -- Colin°Talk 11:12, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

What you said was: "Allison Bailey told the world she was a co-founder and provided the tweets to a court to prove it".
I note in this response you haven't provided evidence of Allison Bailey telling the world she was a co-founder.
And don't say I'm accusing people of lying when I am not please. Void if removed (talk) 14:00, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Ok, if they weren't lying, why did they write something you insist isn't true, to a court of law. You say she is "someone actively attempting to shut down the organisation making unevidenced statements" but in real life people don't put little [1] citations after everything they say. If I say Rishi Sunak is prime minister of the UK, you don't argue I'm making an unevidenced statement. What possible motivation would she have for getting those facts wrong? LGB Alliance agreed and accepted the court documents that listed the four "founders and directors". LGB Alliance on their own website says "She helped us set up LGB Alliance and publicised our launch with a tweet on 22 October 2019." Why are you trying to discredit Bell who is stating accurate and widely accepted facts, in a court. I'll tell you why, because you have run out of argument and are just randomly picking up something to fling.
Only you seem to be stuck on the difference between "helped to setup" and "founded". A person who single-handedly launched it to the internet on Twitter after attending its inaugural meeting. Those are the tweets in the court. She got into problems with her employer for launching LGB Alliance. It doesn't get much more "foundery" than that. But really, Void, if LGBA's best mate Julie Bindel says Bailey founded the LGB Alliance, and the entire cross spectrum of the UK press says she founded the LGB alliance, why does do you keep making repeated requests that this widely accepted fact be removed from the article? -- Colin°Talk 15:58, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Since we know the distinct roles filled by each of these individuals, (and possibly others) why don't we record them? Simply lumping everyone into a list isn't very informative. On one level, the organisers of the initial meeting are clearly the key founders, on other levels everyone attending that meeting and voicing support is a founder - or founding member. Other names quickly became attached. Some people adopted legal roles following the meeting - usually an indication of legal and reputational 'standing' and experience, rather than their centrality. Bailey appears to have (informally and seemingly not wholly intentionally) 'launched' LGBA. What is the advantage of treating these people as "equal" founders? And why are they listed in the lead with no info attached to their names. We might as well be recording who answered the phone at the beginning in terms of info imparted IMO. Pincrete (talk) 08:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
While some of this information helps us discuss it on the talk page, we need to go with how sources describe the individuals, rather than extrapolate from who attended which meetings. All five of these people have at times been described by reliable sources as LGB Alliance founders or as someone who founded LGB Alliance. I don't think Void would accept your suggestion that everyone who was at the inaugural meeting is a founder or founder member. For example, Debbie Hayton above, describes being at the meeting, and I don't think anyone has suggested they founded LGB Alliance. One could attend out of interest but not be involved. Founder is a suitably encompassing term that includes anyone involved in setting up an organisation, and it is also a term used by our sources. We don't have sources that speak of two as "key founders" and at the same time speaking of the others as some kind of lesser founders, and we really do need such in order for us to state this distinction. I accept it isn't an ideal situation and there does appear to be that kind of distinction, but it simply isn't one that any source has described. I don't accept that our list "isn't informative". These people founded, setup, LGB Alliance, and they are important people in either its history or continue to be important to the organisation. Colin°Talk 09:30, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
I am absolutely fine with the other three being referred to in the body as founder members or early team members, or (in the case of Clark and Sinnott) the directors when it became a ltd company. None of those are disputed and can all be sourced. That is the approach I have advocated since I first foolishly raised this, thinking it would be a trivial change, many months ago.
I merely maintain there is a distinction between founder (the two who instigated the org), and those who joined at the point of founding. The first two should be mentioned in the lede and the about box, the others described in the "history", along with all the current cruft that is attached to them.
We don't have sources that speak of two as "key founders" and at the same time speaking of the others as some kind of lesser founders, and we really do need such in order for us to state this distinction
So having synthesized a list of five from multiple separate sources, that cannot be undone except by a new source naming all five in one place, and stating three of them aren't founders? This is an unreasonable standard of evidence. We have never had any sources that speak of all five together in any capacity except the ones that are now 99% likely to have been copied from here. But we have a couple that name four in distinct fashion:
Debbie Hayton in the Spectator:
"Its founders Bev Jackson and Kate Harris were veteran lesbian campaigners. They were joined by filmmaker Malcolm Clark and barrister Allison Bailey"
LGB Alliance - Who What Why When
"LGB Alliance was founded at Conway Hall on 22 October 2019 by two lesbians -- Kate Harris and Bev Jackson."
"But Kate and Bev – and the rapidly-assembled little team including Allison Bailey and Malcolm Clark" Void if removed (talk) 14:19, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Just to be clear, it is not WP:SYNTH that we are doing. Synthesis is about a source for fact A and a source for fact B and concluding fact C without a source linking that conclusion. We have a source that A and B are an X and we have a source that C is an X and we can say A, B and C are all X's. It is actually synthesis that Void is doing. Because they are taking a source that says A and B are an X and concluding, without a source that says so, that C is not an X. And further more, doing so in the face of multiple sources that say C is an X. -- Colin°Talk 15:03, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
You can't just add these together like that, "founder" is not an adjective disconnected from surrounding events.
It isn't like source A saying X is a company's director, and source B saying Y is a director, therefore X and Y are both directors. A straightforward job title like "director" doesn't relate to mutually exclusive claims about a particular event in time.
"Founder" relates specifically to a single historical fact: who founded LGB Alliance? You are answering that question by combining multiple sources.
Source A says only X and Y founded LGB Alliance.
Source B implies Z founded LGB Alliance by calling them "founder", but without actually saying "X, Y and Z together founded LGB Alliance".
Combining sources B and A to decide for yourself that "X, Y and Z together founded LGB Alliance", when no single source made that claim, is WP:SYNTH. Void if removed (talk) 09:57, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I was making the point that 'founder/founding member' etc are not precise terms. Since you outlined each person's role in order to justify inclusion as 'founders', why not simply include each person's role as outlined. Two women organised an initial meeting, other people came on board as directors, Bailey became involved and released a tweet that. This is more informative than a generic undifferentiated list, which is at least partially contradicted by more recent sources. Pincrete (talk) 15:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
There are no sources that "contradict" what we wrote. No source says Bailey wasn't a founder. No source says those four were not founding directors. No source, in fact, says there is any dispute over who should count as a founder. We don't really have good sources that go into the specifics of who did what. Most of that detail is coming from Twitter and what people said in court, etc. We've mentioned here as they are informative to our discussion, but they don't really have use as article sources. If all these extremely high quality sources say Bailey was a founder, who are we to say she is not, and just someone who got pre-emptively over excited on Twitter. -- Colin°Talk 18:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
To expect a source to explicitly say all the people who weren't founders is comical. When good, recent, neutral sources (such as the Gdn), consistently refer to the same two people, as having 'started the ball rolling' it effectively contradicts the broader list of 'founders'. No one has questioned that those four were not founding directors, it is reliably sourced that this was their role. So why should the article not say so, rather than the generic 'founder'? Bailey's role is similarly documented. What -of any value to the reader- is being defended by insisting on an amorphous blob 'list'? Pincrete (talk) 05:41, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Of course I'm not expecting a source to list "all the people who weren't founders". But we have sources saying each of these five people "founded" LGB Alliance. To even being to consider that this is "contradicted", as you put it, we'd need sources disagreeing. Void appears to think that a source saying A & B founded LGB Alliance, and not mentioning C, is implying that only A & B founded LGB Alliance, and nobody else. If we take that interpretation of our sources, what are we going to do with all the sources saying C founded LGB Alliance. Go look at all the many top-tier sources above saying Bailey founded LGB Alliance, and not mentioning the two that Void is so keen we list alone. So the idea that "founded LGB Alliance" is without doubt a statement of a clearly restricted list of founders cannot be so. Instead, what many people here have taken, is these are not contradictory statements, and not all our sources are using the word "founder"/"founded" in a restrictive manner.
Pincrete, when we have reliable sources all using the word "founder" for these five people, and no reliable sources, none at all, saying that this is wrong, why should we use an alternative word or attempt to give different roles just because an editor thinks they are wrong. And it seems only you are finding this list to be of no value. Clearly it is of value, as it has filled the talk pages of this article on several occasions. -- Colin°Talk 06:47, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Filling a talk page isn't my measure of 'value to the reader'. I regard discussion about whether someone was a 'founder' largely fruitless, since it clearly can have a number of uses. But the only 'universal' usage is attached to the two women who organised the initial meeting, but I'm not even stuck on using the term 'founder' for those two - that they organised the meeting is well documented, that others took on other roles is equally well documented, as is Bailey's involvement and actions. Why exclude reliably sourced detailed information about the genesis of LGBA in favour of an uncharacterised list? A list which is at least partially contradicted by other info. Pincrete (talk) 08:25, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
"Void appears to think that a source saying A & B founded LGB Alliance"
You seem to be saying that when we have at least half a dozen primary and secondary sources that say "this org was founded by two people, x and y" it is fine to interpret that as "but there could have been a dozen other people and we should add them in from any passing mention over the last 3-4 years".
Even if your logic held, we also have HQ recent sources that say:
"LGB Alliance was founded in 2019 by two lesbians, Kate Harris and Bev Jackson"
Which would preclude there being any other lesbians, which would rule out Bailey. And Malcolm Clark has explicitly said he isn't a founder.
What do you want? An investigative piece in The Times that says "only these two people, no-one else, and wikipedia is wrong"?
"what are we going to do with all the sources saying C founded LGB Alliance"
What we do is:
  • Agree that unless someone is called "founder" , "co-founder" or explicitly stated that the org was "founded by" them, then they don't get called "founder" on this page, in the lede, or in the about box, but can be mentioned in whatever capacity we decide in the history section (ie. nothing that says "founding member" or "director" or "helped" or "was involved" or "acts as" or "helped start" equates to "founder"). Without that agreement, there's no point discussing sources.
  • Take as a starting point the information on their website that is corroborated by The Guardian and The Times, unless there is a story specifically and directly disputing the founding of the organisation, per WP:ABOUTSELF
  • Ignore older sources that don't specifically name all individuals together as founders, because assembling a composite list from individual mentions is WP:SYNTH and should never have been approached like this in the first place.
  • Treat passing mentions of someone being a "founder" in headlines or in stories that aren't directly about the founding of the organisation or that are not backed up with a direct quote as less notable and reliable than a story that explicitly states eg. "the org was founded in 2019 by x, y and z".
  • Treat older sources as less reliable than newer ones, per WP:RSAGE
Once that's done, you are left with a conflict between what they say - backed up at a minimum by the Guardian and The Times - and what Pink News says. And what Pink News says is 99% likely to have been copied from here, and if we cite it is WP:CITOGENESIS Void if removed (talk) 08:39, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
We have some options
1. Each time our sources say ".... founded LGB Alliance" we interpret this as fully definitive of who the founders were. This is Void's interpretation AFAICS. When we do that, we have sources saying one thing and sources saying entirely another. We have very high quality sources for each of these, especially Kate, Bev and Bailey. If we arbitrarily picked one (Kate and Bev, say), we have no reasonable way of telling the reader that we randomly decided Bailey wasn't a founder, even though many high quality sources says she was and even though our Wikipedia article says she was. If we picked another (Bailey, say) and stick 10 citations on the end of the sentence just to rub it in, we have no reasonable way of telling the reader that LGB Alliance themselves are mistaken or lying when they say Kate and Bev founded it. Void suggests picking the most recent source, because that suits their case today, but they'll be upset if Bailey gets into the news again. Because "recent high quality sources" will then describe, in their interpretation, Bailey as being the only founder of LGB Alliance. This path is madness.
2. Each time our sources say ".... founded LGB Alliance" we interpret this as non-limiting. If I say I saw two cats in my garden today, I'm not suggesting there weren't ever any others, or that the list of cats in my garden is infinite or uncountable should one pay attention. With this interpretation, our sources do not disagree. Indeed, to pick on your two lesbians comment, my comment about the two cats in my garden does not preclude there being a dog. This is the simplest option and no sources contradict.
3. Our sources might be doing either of these but have differing ideas of what it means to be a founder. For example, when LGB Alliance say Kate and Bev founded LGB Alliance, they are thinking about who had the original idea and organised the first meeting. But when countless sources are commenting on Bailey, mainly in the context of their court case, they are thinking about who helped setup and launch LGB Alliance, and Bailey certainly fits that role, being present at the first meeting, being the one who launched it on Twitter, and going on to offer further setup assistance. And the "founding directors" are certainly "founders" otherwise they wouldn't be "founding directors", and we have high quality sources for those four, which excludes Bailey, as she's not a director. This is a more complex option, and we can't get into their minds to know whether it is true, but it also allows us to agree that no sources contradict. Provided we use an encompassing adjective, we can draw our Venn diagram round them all.
Really, Void, I think it best if you accept our sources have different interpretations of what it means to be a founder, and that most of them at least are not being definitive. I'm sure you'll agree that none of our sources, when they say Bailey founded LGB Alliance are telling us that Bev and Kate did not. It is best, surely, to find a way to live at peace with what other people wrote and thought, rather than demand that most of them are completely wrong. -- Colin°Talk 13:27, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
For some reason, you have no difficulty outlining the roles played by each of these individuals - and sourcing that outlining - in order to justify lumping the together under the the generic 'founder', but object to recording in the article what the various roles were. I'm not hung up on the specific term 'founder', though the people who had the original idea and organised the first meeting, are obviously the people most often described thus. If people involved in the setting up are worthy of being named (in the body), why is what they did not worthy of being noted? The issue of whether person A or is a 'founder' to some sources, but not others becomes irrelevant if you outline their role. There is no need to say anyone wasn't a founder if you just say what their involvement was. Pincrete (talk) 15:35, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
The sourcing for the role detail is generally weaker than the sourcing for "founder". We can cite weak sources on this talk page in order to get a picture, and discuss, but we can't use them in the article. The people using the "generic 'founder'" are reliable sources. If we additionally want to elaborate on their roles, and we happen to have high quality sources to use for that, then I don't have a problem with adding that information. It does seem like our sources have different interpretations of the word "founder" but we can't just go with Pincrete's favourite interpretation, and ignore the sources that use another. That's a bit like rejecting sources saying someone is a rock musician because they don't fit with your own personal idea of what rock music is. -- Colin°Talk 16:14, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Have the sources specifically said that they're using "different interpretations of founder", or is this something users have interpreted on their behalf? Homeostasis07 (talk/contributions) 22:31, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Have the sources specifically said that they're all using the above users' restrictive interpretation of founder, or is that something users have interpreted on their behalf? (It's the latter; as far as I've seen, no reliable sources say the other people [who reliable sources say are founders] aren't founders.) -sche (talk) 02:14, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
None of our sources define the words they are using, which is not a common thing to do when writing. I proposed several options above; there may be more. We don't know whether our sources are being definitive in their list or partial, and we don't know precisely what each source means by "founder". But there are several options that do not require our sources to be mutually at odds with each other, which would be an odd situation to be in since many of the sources are highly reliable. The campaign by Void is dependent on multiple high quality sources to be talking out of their backsides, and it is also reliant on the most recent sources happening, just by chance, to agree with him. It isn't really tenable. -- Colin°Talk 06:35, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
In your examples:
1 - if this did happen, we'd have to report that sources disagreed. But there is not a single source that says "founded by" Bailey alone. There are multiple that say Jackson and Harris alone, and every other mention is lower strength ( ie, title in passing, not "here's how LGBA was founded"). In fact I propose that any source that doesn't explicitly say "LGBA was founded by..." or similar, should be discounted as irrelevant. We have good clear sources now, we don't need to go fishing through dozens of passing mentions and interpreting them.
2 - this is WP:SYNTH and if you truly believe this is appropriate, we should probably add Eileen Gallagher to the list, even though we can verify she only joined in 2021.
3 - this requires applying your own interpretation to conflicting sources. That's not how to go about this. Incorrect information about a small chaotic organisation must be superceded by better, later sources, once the dust settles and where there's no actual controversy.
You keep ignoring the plain, longstanding denials of eg. Malcolm Clark, the fact that at least two original sources have been corrected since publication, and the increasing possibility of WP:CITOGENESIS over the last 2 years.
Hypothetically, let's say I'm right: Jackson and Harris are co-founders, and the others recognise and endorse this. What evidence exactly do you think it would take to reflect that here and overturn the synth list? Void if removed (talk) 09:01, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
There are plenty sources that say Bailey founded LGB Alliance, without mentioning Jackson and Harris, and without saying "co-founder". I think you are stretching things to suggest such comments are "in passing". Her role wrt LGB Alliance is the entire reason she got into trouble with her employer and ultimately went to court, which is the only reason this person is in any way notable. That she "founded LGB Alliance" is not a passing remark in such articles. And I find it hard to think anyone would be impressed with your argument that you could only mention Muhammad founded Islam if the source was about Islam and not about Muhammad.
This is English we are dealing with, not a computer program. We all have to work out what people meant by the words they wrote. You are determined to interpret a meaning for our sources that lead them to conflict with each other in the most fundamental way (i.e. every single source that says Bailey or Clark founded or co-founded LGB Alliance is dead wrong). I'm not ignoring Clark, though you only have a tweet for that. The best way to think about this problem really is #3 where each source and each person and each of us all have our own ideas of what it means to be a founder. So perhaps in Clark's view, he doesn't count as a founder. Whoopee do for him. Or maybe he was told to say that but is pissed off about it and has to toe the party line. Who knows and who cares. In the view of journalists writing about him, he is a co-founder. Bailey is clearly very proud of her role in setting up LGB Alliance and most sources writing about her describe her as a founder. Deal with it, Void. We are all different and thank the Lord we are. -- Colin°Talk 12:25, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
"Only you seem to be stuck on the difference between "helped to setup" and "founded". "
Founder has deeper implications than just being around to help in the beginning, or joining early. As I have said before: Bob Mellors and Aubrey Walter are recognised as the founders of the UK GLF by historians and by all of the founding members of the UK GLF, Bev Jackson included. Tesla went through a whole lawsuit after Martin Eberhard tried to sue Musk for calling himself "founder". I'm sure you can find lots of sources saying Patrick Moore was a co-founder of Greenpeace, but despite controversy stoked by Moore himself the wiki page doesn't say that because the org itself says he wasn't and reliable sources corroborate this. Given his stance on climate change, some have sought political advantage by inflating his importance, but HQ secondary sources have sorted out the truth of the matter and it is those that are relied upon, not a continual revisiting of ancient erroneous or partisan sources. Who an org considers its own founders is not for you to decide simply because you don't personally think it matters. Do you really think "who cares, call them a founder, it doesn't matter" would have been an adequate resolution to this actual controversy?
In the case of LGBA there is absolutely no dispute except that created by editors on this page - there is not a single story anywhere expressing any controversy over who the founders of LGBA are. The org have published what they consider to be the truth, and HQ secondary sources corroborate that.
From the timeline they have published there are four months between the July cancellation of the GLF panel event at the LSE and October 2019, during which Kate Harris and Bev Jackson worked together to prepare to launch this new org with a meeting on October 22nd. Bailey accidentally and unofficially announced the org on a bus on the way home. At least three of the invitees joined the management team after the meeting.
That three early members among an unknown number in a tiny, accidentally-announced organisation sometimes got misreported as "founder" is exactly why WS:RSAGE exists. Some examples of misreporting will never be corrected and continually bringing them up cannot trump newer sources that have had the time to sift through contradictory reports.
"What possible motivation would she have for getting those facts wrong?"
Again - she said Bailey acts "as if". That's speculation, she's giving her opinion, with no evidence that it is actually true, and acting "as if" is not being. She said the other four were directors. That was agreed in the facts. Becoming a director in November is not "founder". You are applying your own novel interpretation to primary sources to override secondary ones.
"Julie Bindel says Bailey founded the LGB Alliance"
Julie Bindel said "helped set up". There is absolutely no point weighing up sources unless there is some agreement that "founder" and "helped set up" are not synonyms.
I think "founder" requires a reference that explicitly says "founder", "co-founder" or "founded by", and I think a recent source describing the founding is stronger than an older source that simply labels an individual in passing.
If we can't even agree that, then this is even more futile than the last time this came up. Void if removed (talk) 13:39, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
I accept Julie Bindel did not use the word "founder" but are you going to claim to me that the Daily Mail, The Times, the Law Gazette and the House of Commons library, to pick just a handful of sources, are so addled with gender ideology that they were mistaken when they explicitly state that Baily is a founder of the LGB Alliance.
Bell did not say "as if". They said "who has acted as a co-founder". So she quacks like a duck.. And Bell did not say "the other four were directors". She said they were "the four founding directors of LGB Alliance". And the earlier agreed court document described all four as "Its founding members and directors". Anyway, I'm not arguing Bell should be a source, merely mentioning this is someone who ought to know what they are talking about, writing to a body that cares very much if you tell porkies, who disagrees with you.
Wrt Greenpeace there are two differences. As you note, the dispute over who counts as a founder of Greenpeace is widely described in publications. We don't have that. If we had such a dispute in sources, we could say the list of founders is disputed and we might have a mechanism to group them in some hierarchy of foundership. The Greenpeace article does not say Moore is not a founder; it has no opinion on that. The BBC only corroborates that Greenpeace themselves dispute whether Moore was a founder. The BBC article does not have an opinion of who the founders were, only what X said and what Y said.
But the second difference is that Greenpeace is a 50-year-old organisation with 1500 staff and a budget in 2011 of a quarter of a billion dollars. Legal difficulties and controversial posts on Twitter aside, LGB Alliance has done less than your average local scout group or parent-teacher association. Nobody is going to write "The controversy over who founded LGB Alliance" in the Times, because the Times is only interested in LGB Alliance while culture wars over trans people sells newspapers. If LGB Alliance actually became a small organisation in support of LGB people, nobody would write about them at all. -- 14:14, 11 July 2023 (UTC) Colin°Talk 14:14, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Please stop invoking WP:RSAGE as though the only sources we're discussing here are all from when the Alliance was newly formed. Earlier in this discussion I linked two sources published this year, a CTV News article that you dismissed for mentioning someone in passing in some Canadian article that isn't even about LGB Alliance, and an article published by The Times consisting almost entirely of content from Malcolm Clark that you've not acknowledged. Both of these articles were published within a day of each other in January 2023.
Also in the November 2022 discussion on this point that I'd linked to earlier, I provided a list of reliable sources in my comment at 21:56, 25 November 2022, covering a period between January 2020 through to November 2022.
If we only had sources from say 2019/2020 when the organisation was formed, you might have a point. But when we have reliable sources that were published just a few months ago, the argument that this is something that only older and less reliable sources are doing fails entirely. Sideswipe9th (talk) 15:26, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

To what extent is this a question in the real world and to what extent is this just a question here on this page? If there is a genuine dispute out there about this then maybe we can document it by saying something like "Its founders have been variously reported as..." however if, as seems to be the case, this question only really exists in here (and maybe in the LGBA's tea room) then that isn't really worth ongoing discussion. It is not for Wikipedia to get involved in the LGBA's internal disputes even if one exists. If members of the LGBA really have fallen out, and are trying to rewrite their history accordingly, then that's extremely funny but it's not an issue for Wikipedia unless it gets significant coverage in Reliable Sources. If not, that sort of thing is best saved for Twitter.

The argument here is fairly close to being a WP:ONEAGAINSTMANY situation. I'm not going to report anybody but I would remind everybody that editors have been topic banned from GENSEX articles for bludgeoning Talk pages in the past and, in my understanding, maybe even for somewhat less than this. I really do think that it is time to drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:15, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

+1. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 18:07, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Not helpful. The article does have issues. I recall someone here saying not too long ago that substantial portions of the article reads like a laundry list of (paraphrasing) "here is a collection of random things I found online about an organisation I dislike" (in the archives-on mobile, can't link now, will do later if requested). And I believe if that content was removed, a reasonable case could be made at AfD. That would arguably be the ideal outcome. Leove it all on Twitter and save us all the headache. I don't know... Aren't we all sick of the minutiae of this article (like the use of the word "founders") bursting out in to 20k+ disagreements at this point? Homeostasis07 (talk/contributions) 21:35, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
The article has already survived one AfD and it is incredibly unlikely to ever be deleted. Regrettably, "It has an exceptionally annoying Talk page" is not a valid criteria for deletion. ;-) If you want to raise any issues then please start another section. Of course, there is a risk that that discussion of that might also spiral out of control but if you try to raise the point in a clear, well defined and policy based way then maybe we can avoid it. Whatever you might come up with is unlikely to be any worse than this. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:07, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
No chance of me doing that. I've already invested what I consider to be too much of my on-Wiki time to this article/talk page. I'm genuinely not all that interested in any case, and my one attempt to correct what I considered to be unsourced material in the lead was reverted by a now-topic-banned user as "POV tag-bombing", despite that same user admitting on the resultant talk page discussion that the prose was not cited to the then-current sourcing, and that it was my responsibility to go through every other source on the article to fix the sourcing issues I identified. Thankfully, the issues I identified were eventually corrected by another editor after months of discussion, but the entire topic area is clearly toxic, and with ArbCom sanctions being what they are... what's the point? Discussions like this is what we're left with, where well-meaning users are deterred and/or banned from ever contributing to the topic area again. C'est la vie on Wikipedia c. 2023. Homeostasis07 (talk/contributions) 00:04, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
While I agree the article has problems, and it was probably me who made the "here is a collection of random things I found online about an organisation I dislike" comment (which applies to both sides in the trans culture war). But I'm also realistic that while the culture war is ongoing in parts of the internet, newspapers and politics, there will continue to be a battle to include/remove/correct/paint articles according to activist positions. But I think we are all now quite sick of this "founders" dispute, and I don't see any movement towards a resolution. I think we should, at this point, simply agree to disagree and find something more useful to do. -- Colin°Talk 10:30, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Revisiting this old chestnut with a compromise proposal after reading WP:WSAW. I collated all mentions I could find of LGBA's founders chronologically here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Void_if_removed/sandbox/LGB_Alliance_Founders I have noted that the current five were definitively WP:SYNTHed on this page between 2021/08/31 and 2021/09/16 from passing mentions. No single source mentions all five together as "founder" prior to that date, and this should never have been permitted in the first place, but we are where we are. I have 62 sources that state only Kate Harris and Bev Jackson were founders, including high quality reports explicitly stating they are the only two founders. This all accords with what they actually say about themselves. I have 29 that support some combination of others, 9 of which (including all 8 that claim there are 5 founders) post-date the WP:SYNTH here. I think that no source that mentions all five together after that date should be considered trustworthy, especially not when so suspiciously presented in the same non-alphabetic order as was WP:SYNTHed here, the fact this has been now copied verbatim off Wikipedia by Pink News is hard to deny IMO. I accept however there is no consensus for changing the current 5 "founders" to the 2 founders LGBA claim, despite the majority of sources supporting this, and I concede it is hardest to square with the widespread coverage of Allison Bailey's tribunal. However I still think there is a substantial error here and WP:SYNTH that has gone on here far too long and it should be addressed, per WP:WSAW The compromise I suggest:

  • Removing "founders" from the sidebar.
  • Removing mention of "founders" from the lede
  • In History, say something like: "LGB Alliance state their founders are Kate Harris and Bev Jackson. Allison Bailey, who first launched the organisation on Twitter, has also been described as a co-founder by some reports, and both Malcolm Clark and Ann Sinnott initially served as directors.".

If we do that, then we can actually start to incorporate some of the history laid out in their history page, which starts from the meeting of Kate Harris and Bev Jackson in mid 2019, and inviting the others to the initial meeting at Conway Hall after the cancellation of a GLF event Bev Jackson was due to attend, rather than the current incomplete narrative. By removing the founders from lede and sidebar and making no claims in wikivoice, it makes it less contentious, we move away from making a wikivoice claim that I think is untenable and based on some longstanding improper WP:SYNTH, but by narratively incorporating all five we don't then have to change any of the body that refers to those five, or downplay their involvement. Is there any appetite for this compromise? Void if removed (talk) 08:14, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the careful work @Void if removed! I'd support your compromise proposal. AndyGordon (talk) 12:20, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
I too support the wording now proposed by Void. -- Alarics (talk) 10:06, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm sad to see this brought up again, in the absence of better sourcing. Given the long-standing consensus, I don't think a few new comments have shifted where we're at. Past participants have already refuted the SYNTH argument, and they've shown (as does your analysis) that there are sources predating the edits here that list the founders. This "compromise" does in fact downplay the involvement of multiple people. I've reverted. Should we ping prior participants? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:05, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
Ping away. Feel free to check the sandbox page I linked above, where I've highlighted in green the recent corroborating sources, including Sexed by Susanna Rustin.
Noone has ever refuted the SYNTH analysis. That's simply untrue, they've just argued it didn't matter. And what you've said about my own analysis is also untrue.
I've offered a good faith compromise to fix this that doesn't downplay anything, that's also untrue. Void if removed (talk) 05:50, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
@Firefangledfeathers: I have no interest in this particular issue, but as far as I can see, the edit by Void if removedhad consensus. I think you should self-revert. Sweet6970 (talk) 11:54, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
@DanielRigal, Colin, Jonathan A Jones, Sideswipe9th, OwenBlacker, Nil Einne, -sche, Pincrete, and Homeostasis07: you've previously participated in this discussion about whom to include as founders of the LGB Alliance. We have some renewed discussion and could use your input. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:03, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
I think the main thing I see in the sandbox is that there are high quality sources supporting all five of the currently listed co-founders. Of the above refutations, I think the most convincing to me was Colin's point:

Just to be clear, it is not WP:SYNTH that we are doing. Synthesis is about a source for fact A and a source for fact B and concluding fact C without a source linking that conclusion. We have a source that A and B are an X and we have a source that C is an X and we can say A, B and C are all X's. It is actually synthesis that Void is doing. Because they are taking a source that says A and B are an X and concluding, without a source that says so, that C is not an X. And further more, doing so in the face of multiple sources that say C is an X.

And I just don't buy your rebuttal. As for downplaying, I just don't understand. Would you say your proposal and the status quo both give equal prominence to Bailey, for example? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:09, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm not actively editing so won't significantly participate but will just note that if we're going to exclude or give lower priority to sources with 5 founders post inclusion in our article because of the possibility of WP:CITOGENESIS, I think we also have to consider suspect all sources which say there are 2 founders post-2022, and possibly before, when the two founders came to be heavily pushed by those involved. If we aren't trusting sources because they might simply be parroting us without much independent consideration or research should we doing the same for when they might simply parroting the official narrative without much independent consideration or research. (I mean realistically most sources are going to treat this is WGAF issue even if it's clear that the official narrative seems to be heavily pushed and there are reasons to suspect it might not simply because of accuracy but there PR reasons why it's preferred.) Nil Einne (talk) 02:34, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
Are we going to throw a first birthday party for this accursed thread? If so, I'll bake a cake and flavour the icing with cyanide.
My view remains that the word "founder" is not legally/technically/magically very significant. I genuinely do not understand why we are placing so much importance on this one word. All the major early players should be mentioned. We can say something like "founders and original key members" if we want to avoid calling them all "founders" or "co-founders". I understand that some of them seem to have fallen out and that maybe some are embarrassed by association with the others but that's not our problem. If they were notable at the outset then we should mention them, albeit not in an excessive way. --DanielRigal (talk) 02:50, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
Please see the edit I made which FFF reverted, which I believe to be a reasonable compromise and which has language similar to what you suggest.
I understand that some of them seem to have fallen out and that maybe some are embarrassed by association with the others
There is absolutely no evidence of that. Void if removed (talk) 12:24, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I genuinely do not understand why we are placing so much importance
So accept my offered compromise and move on.
the two founders came to be heavily pushed by those involved
You are presuming bad faith that, again, is simply not true since the very very first source I gave in that list is a tweet thread from LGB Alliance stating their two founders are Kate Harris and Bev Jackson.
they might simply parroting the official narrative
And - again - it is not the job of wikipedia to avoid "parroting the official narrative" (which is quite a WP:POV statement) it is what reliable sources say. If reliable sources "parrot the official narrative", then so be it.
Sources which are so blatantly cribbing info from Wikipedia as Pink News has are questionable. Void if removed (talk) 12:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
@Void if removed: As I said, I'm not actively editing so this will be my final comment on this matter. But I will kindly ask you Void to please refrain from putting words into my mouth. I never said anything about "you" pushing a narrative. I am only referring to the founders pushing a narrative. Unless you are claiming to be one of the founders, then my comment clearly does not apply to you. And to be clear, WP:AGF has absolutely zero to do with assuming good faith from what other parties say about matters. In fact, that's completely against Wikipedia policy. We don't care whether Donald Trump keeps saying he's the the least racist person if sources say this is not true. We're inherently supposed to be suspicious of what self-interested parties say, since they very often have reasons to wish to present things in a certain way which they for whatever reason prefer, and often may even genuinely believe that what they are saying is correct and in some cases may even arguably be correct by some definitions (as others have noted this could very well apply here), when those who actually look at the history, evidence, facts, common understanding of words or terms, etc etc; from a reasonably impartial PoV will come to a different conclusion. It's why we instead generally rely on reliable secondary sources rather than what people or organisations say about themselves when there is any hint of contention. And you yourself have provided one strand of evidence that there is a certain PoV being relied with the "wonderful lesbians" and "lesbian led" quote which we can see on this very page. And if you're saying that they've been pushing this narrative from the beginning, then you haven't countered my comment, you've provided further evidence for my point. To be clear, I did not look in a great deal when the claim was first made and tried to indicate this ambigiouty in my first reply above precisely because it was largely irrelevant to my point. Whenever the narrative was first presented, whether in 2022 or 2020 or whatever, it's either unimportant in which case it doesn't even matter if sources have come to a different conclusion which the people involved disagree with; or it is important for some reason in which case we have to consider why it's important, and considering there seems to be reasons why that version may be preferred, it's even more important we trust reliable secondary sources to sort through this. Note I never intended to suggest we should not trust reliable secondary sources. Rather all I was trying to say is that you cannot on the one hand discount reliable secondary sources who have chosen like us to list 5 founders because you claim they have not done their work properly and are simply parroting what we are saying; while simultaneously claiming we should trust them when they may simply be parroting the official narrative. If you want to trust reliable secondary sources, then you need to trust them all unless we have very good reason to distrust them. Unproven allegations of citogenesis are clearly not it since if we go down that route then we should go down that route for sources which appear to be simply parroting the official narrative. The alternative is we simply trust sources to have done their job properly and decided for themselves which founders list is supported by the available evidence and facts, which is generally what we have to do unless there is good evidence to the contrary which AFAICT there is none. The weird stuff about non-alphabetical is simply not it. Especially since from what I understand, you have proven that pretty much all of the 5 founders have been called founders by reliable secondary sources independently at one time and predating us ever mentioning them indicating that in fact reliable secondary sources have for whatever reason, came to the conclusion that each of those 5 people can reasonably be considered a "founder". Nil Einne (talk) 15:29, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I never said anything about "you" pushing a narrative.
To be clear: I'm not saying you're accusing me of bad faith, I am saying you're suggesting LGBA are acting in bad faith, something for which you have no evidence at all. I did not invoke WP:AGF.
we instead generally rely on reliable secondary sources
And what we have are mainstream press and now a book being really quite specific who exactly the two founders were, corroborating what they have said WP:ABOUTSELF since 2019, and Pink News cribbing from Wikipedia. Void if removed (talk) 15:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I stand by my comment, quoted above, that we are not guilty of SYNTH. I think different people attach different importance and meaning to "founder", with some sources happy to consider this as someone who was there from around its beginnings. I think according to some definitions, perhaps favoured by LGBA, there were just the two who founded it. But other uses of that word permit more. I suspect Void hasn't found/listed all the sources claiming Bailey is a founder, so those are underrepresented. I accept their explanation that Bailey isn't as foundery as the other two, but it is really really hard to discount the numbers of reliable sources saying Bailey founded LGB Alliance. I think Void's listings assumes "co-founder" means "one of two" but the dictionary doesn't have that restriction, and once you lose that, I don't think we do have anything like a majority of sources explicitly saying there are just two.
There's perhaps an analogy with how parties get described as "populist" or "far right". Different people draw the Venn diagram bubbles differently to include or exclude some parties. Is the same happening here. As a compromise I'd be ok with a footnote saying something like "LGB Alliance state their founders are Kate Harris and Bev Jackson; other sources include more". Colin°Talk 10:45, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
That is, essentially, the good faith compromise I offered here which FFF reverted.
And I'll just explicitly add the quote here, but the recently released book "Sexed: A History Of British Feminism" by Susanna Rustin states:
LGB Alliance was founded by two lesbians, Kate Harris and Bev Jackson, who felt that Stonewall, with its focus on gender identity, no longer represented gay, lesbian and bisexual interests.
So I think the compromise is fair. Void if removed (talk) 11:59, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm not seeing what part of diff was a compromise (it looks like just removing reliably sourced information about some of the founders), but if we were to keep the reliably sourced information about the various founders, and then merely add additional reliably sourced information in the form of the footnote Colin proposes, sure, whatever. -sche (talk) 14:50, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks (I suppose) to Firefangledfeathers for caling me back here. My willingness to spend time on this potentially endless debate is pretty limited, but for what it's worth I think that the "good faith compromise" from Void if removed is about as good as this is going to get, and if we can't agree on something like that then the next best thing would just be to take the whole paragraph out. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 14:55, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I said above it will be my last comment but just noticed this. I agree with Colin that assuming co-founder means one of two is problematic. I'd note that our article Organisational founder itself says "If there are multiple founders, each can be referred to as a co-founder" and it has Henry Dunant's image as an example of a co-founder. His article also has him as a co-founder. Yet AFAICT, there are 5 people generally accepted the the co-founders of International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and two of the other articles Gustave Moynier and Théodore Maunoir also list them as co-founded/ers meaning we have 3 articles with co-founders of the Red Cross. (Guillaume Henri Dufour and Louis Appia have different descriptions which don't refer to them as co-founded/rs.) I suspect if you search our articles, you will find many cases where someone is a co-founder despite no dispute they are one of 3 or more. And not it isn't because we've adopted a wording that the rest of the world doesn't uses. In fact you'd likely find many of the sources also use co-founded/r/s in cases where threer or more people were involved

And since that came up I might as well mention Reddit. There is a footnote at Aaron Swartz which notes the complexity of what "founded" means and some comment also at Reddit. And I've also liked what Wired noted [6] even if it doesn't apply here. Note our article also uses the word "co-founder" in reference to Swartz although AFAIK, there's no question there are two other people involved. I suspect this comes from the source, but in any case, you can definitely find sources referring to Swartz as a co-founder along with the other two.

Wikipedia itself is ironically another case where there has been historic dispute. In this case only involved two people however Jimmy Wales#Controversy regarding Wales's status as co-founder, History of Wikipedia#Early roles of Wales and Sanger and Larry Sanger#Status as Wikipedia co-founder all describe which this has been contentious but why it's now generally accepted Sanger should be accepted as a co-founder. (Frankly I think many Wikipedians nowadays would prefer he wasn't.)

The TLDR of all this besides not assuming co-founder means only two is that in some cases sources may very well come to different conclusions about who should be called a founder. If there are reliable secondary sources which indicate there is some dispute or contention or it's complicated, then we probably should say this somewhere. If there are none, then we just have to reflect what sources say are the founders. Like with many things on Wikipedia, it seems likely a big problem here is that this is something fairly new. If it's still an organisation people case about in 10 years, I suspect we'd have better sources on their history including their founders and their early roles etc, and whether there's any dispute and why. Until then we just have to go with what we have.

Like -sche and Colin, I'm fine with a footnote, or frankly even in article text noting who the LGB Alliance say are their founders. However I do not think this should take priority over the people reliable secondary sources list and am opposed to removing other founders supported by reliable secondary sources. Note since it's unlikely I will comment further, I'm fine with my views being largely discarded in deciding consensus.

Nil Einne (talk) 16:15, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Okay real final comment as I just realised this is a good example of what I was saying above. There's nothing "bad faith" or against Wikipedia policy about being suspicious about what Wales, Sanger, or Ohanian or any of the other people involved say about who is a "co-founder". WP:AGF does not come in to it in any way. In fact, being suspicious of such claims is what editors should be doing, and so relying on reliable secondary sources to sort through the evidence etc and decide whether calling anyone co-/founders is reasonable or not. To be clear, while I have personal views on both Wales and Sanger, I have no real opinion of Ohanian. The reason to be suspicious of him is not because of any malice or dislike, it's simply reflective of how we need to treat statements from self-interested/conflicted parties. Nil Einne (talk) 16:32, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
assuming co-founder means one of two
Please can you read the sources I'm citing. I'm not going off "co-founder" or any such thing, I'm citing recent, high quality sources explicitly saying there were two founders, Kate Harris and Bev Jackson. I've literally quoted from a book published last week just above this comment. In light of this I think my compromise is bending-over-backwards reasonable.
The Red Cross example is meaningless since "the committee of the five" is not something cobbled together from multiple sources on Wikipedia, but something that actually existed in a single source first. It is also not directly cited in the text and the only citation for the sidebar is their own website, so this is actually singly-sourced per WP:ABOUTSELF which has been my point all along.
The Reddit and Wikipedia examples are also not relevant because they refer to instances where an actual reported controversy exists and we are forced to recount the controversy.
The only place this controversy has raged is on this talk page, for 3 years. There isn't a single article anywhere suggesting this is actually controversial. Void if removed (talk) 16:46, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
In your table, under "Supports Kate Harris & Bev Jackson only".
  • this mentions Harris (not Jackson) and calls them a "co-founder". We've established that "co-founder" could be one of many founders, not just two.
  • this says "LGB Alliance founders Kate Harris and Bev Jackson" but that's no more "these are the only two" as the Telegraph saying "In 2019, Ms Bailey founded the LGB Alliance,..." is proof that Bailey actually founded it all on her very own.
  • this says "Bev Jackson, co-founder of LGB Alliance, said" doesn't mention Harris and can't be used to argue there aren't 20 co-founders. I only clicked on a sample.
I think your last point is why we shouldn't make an in-article-text fuss about our sources being variable about this. This is footnote level stuff. A comment about "some sources say" is only really justified in article body text, if we had a secondary source commenting itself about the dispute among sources.
Is anyone objecting to the idea of the footnote I proposed? -- Colin°Talk 11:41, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
That's fair, TBH when I put this together it was mostly for my own interest and its now getting scrutiny, I'll take those questionable ones out. I've added a couple for Allison Bailey I'd previously missed too.
But we simply shouldn't have to do any of this. I think:
- Their website
- The Guardian
- The Times
- Sexed: A History of British Feminism
Ought to be ample to demonstrate it, but I accept there's never going to be consensus to definitively state this as fact my compromise per WP:WSAW is to make absolutely no wikivoice claim about any of it.
I don't think stating all five in wikivoice with a footnote is enough. I think it is better to state none definitively, but ensure all five are narratively included in the history as important, as well as make any claim of who the founder is directly attributed to LGB Alliance only rather than a statement of fact, and thus the rest of the content continues to make sense.
This then reduces the significance of who is or is not the founder, what founder means, is it important etc etc to irrelevance, and lets us introduce the earlier 2019 instigating actions of Harris and Jackson in a way that makes sense to the reader. Void if removed (talk) 12:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
I still disagree with your assessment of the WP:SYNTH that happened here in 2021. The fact at issue here is: "who are the founders of LGB Alliance". This is something we need to source to one reliable source which says "the founders of LGB Alliance are".
After trimming some of the "co-founder" ones out, I find about 40 or so of varying quality spanning the entire history of the org (from initial social media posts and speeches to their website to witness statements ,reliable news coverage and now to a book of feminist history) that specifically name only Kate Harris and Bev Jackson are the founders, and by contrast only 7 that say it is the five named here, none which predate this article.
The only reasonable quality RS which says all five is Pink News, which:
  • Postdates the WP:SYNTH here
  • Is suspiciously in the same order, strongly implying it was copied from here
  • Is contradicted by their earlier report there are four founders (its pretty obvious they got that from Companies House)
  • Is contradicted by their initial social media acknowledgement that Malcolm Clark is not a founder
  • Has to be taken with the pinch of salt that they have a very strong editorial stance against LGB Alliance
So if we only look at the best recent sources that say, explicitly, these exact people founded LGBA, we're left with Pink News as a WP:BIASED and unregulated outlier vs The Times, Guardian, LGBA themselves and a book by a Guardian journalist.
Given that, I think my compromise of ditching the founders from the lede and sidebar and taking it all out of wikivoice in the history is more than appropriate. Void if removed (talk) 16:42, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
I think maybe there are a few styles and the difference is more one of emphasis rather than hard rule.
  1. A statement appears to definitively list the whole, complete and noteworthy founders. "LGB Alliance was founded in 2019 by two lesbians, Kate Harris and Bev Jackson"
  2. A statement describes one or more persons as founders, without suggesting this list is complete and definitive or even explicitly noting we aren't mentioning everyone: "was co-founded in 2019 by Allison Bailey", "LGB Alliance founder Malcolm Clark also", "Bev Jackson, co-founder of LGB Alliance"
  3. A statement that is probably misleading: "In 2019, Ms Bailey founded the LGB Alliance". (From that ever-reliable source, The Telegraph).
If we had three sources, each saying "An Apple iPhone is smartphone" and "A Google Pixel is a smartphone" and "A Samsung Galaxy is a smartphone" then we can use all three to say "The Apple iPhone, Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy are all smartphones". That's not SYNTH. But we can't say "The smartphones are Apple iPhone, Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy" as though there aren't any others. That would be SYNTH (there are no sources claiming all three are the only smartphones) as well as wrong.
Our current article text says "Its founders are ..." which I think is too close to "The smartphones are..." wording than "are smartphones". Void makes a case (which I haven't verified) that most sources listing all five names as though definitive post-date our Wikipedia article and follow the same ordering. While we can't be sure what source a journalist used it does weaken them as sources claiming to list a definitive five.
I note that the wording used to be weaker. Before this edit it said "..is a British advocacy group founded in 2019 by Bev Jackson, Kate Harris, Allison Bailey, Malcolm Clark and Ann Sinnott in opposition to.." This was chopped per this discussion simply because the sentence was a long snake, and not because anyone wanted to change the emphasis. What form of "founder" wording could we use to say "these are the people who were there in the beginning and helped set it up" definition of "founder" rather than the "these are the two founders who we worship as gods and nobody else, especially that one who embarrassed us on Twitter, are to be mentioned, upon pain of death" definition of "Founder". I don't think we can drop the word "founder/founded" (too many reliable sources use that word) but is there a way to weaken the claim to better match what we can draw from our sources. -- Colin°Talk 20:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
That sort of wording tweak would be fine. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:13, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
If we had three sources, each saying "An Apple iPhone is smartphone" and "A Google Pixel is a smartphone" and "A Samsung Galaxy is a smartphone" then we can use all three to say "The Apple iPhone, Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy are all smartphones".
The problem with this analogy is that "smartphone" is an inherent property of a thing, independent of group membership, and the fact at issue here is precisely group membership.
A different example would be:
  • We have a source saying the original line up of The Sugababes is Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhán Donaghy.
  • We have another source saying Heidi Range is part of the original lineup.
  • We have a third source that calls Amelle Berrabah an original member.
We don't then add these together to say "The original lineup of the Sugababes is Amelle Berrabah, Heidi Range, Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhán Donaghy."
That is textbook WP:SYNTH, and exactly the sort of thing we don't do because sources can be wrong, and superceded by better, later sources, and if we treated them as additive like that we could never correct with better sources which gave a complete, exclusive list. Void if removed (talk) 20:48, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
The problem with your "example" is it doesn't exist. We have sources saying Range and Berrabah were not original members and replaced other original members. We don't have any sources claiming they were original members. I think we have to agree to disagree on the concept of "founders" being a tightly bounded one in all people's uses of the term. I don't think all sources are using it to describe group membership rather than as an attribute of a person. Some are and some are not. The term "original members" is tightly bounded around some point in time (e.g. first recording). All five of these people played a role in founding LGBA. All five have been named as founding or co-founding LGBA by reliable sources. It isn't so much a "when sources are wrong" but that, well, people do disagree about things because they disagree somewhat about what words mean or what context the words are used in and people can be inconsistent about how they use words. Colin°Talk 22:04, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
Sure it does. People argue about who is their "OG" lineup, and that the Sugababes wasn't "really" the Sugababes till Heidi joined. You can't take different people's subjective interpretations of what "original" means and add them together.
https://www.digitalspy.com/music/a186687/ewen-heidi-is-an-original-sugababe/ Void if removed (talk) 22:23, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
But in any case, my point wasn't about whether this is actually in dispute, it's an analogy to demonstrate why it would be SYNTH in a way the smartphone example isn't because the fact pertains to the composition of a group.
And when it comes to judging whether this was WP:SYNTH I think you really need to read the original talk page that constructed this list rather than getting derailed by different interpretations of words and subsequent sources. When you do that you can see that - based initially on a WP:PRIMARY source (Companies House filing of directors in November 2019) a discussion dominated by one editor starts by saying there are four founders, moves up to six, and settles on five, by combining multiple independent sources (some which should never have been used in the first place, one of which has since been corrected, and one which was directly refuted by the person named), none of which say "these five people founded LGBA". I would very much like to get agreement on this one single point. I don't want to get derailed by whether people think "founder" is a meaningful title or whether smartphones or terrible pop bands are a good analogy: what happened on this talk page in August-September 2021 was WP:SYNTH, because it improperly combined material from multiple sources to construct a fact about LGB Alliance (who founded it) not explicitly supported by any single source. Void if removed (talk) 22:47, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
Footnote is fine with me. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:14, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
So I count 4 in favour of my compromise, 3 in favour of Colin's, and some "I don't really care about this" type comments.
There is clearly a consensus for something.
Can someone propose exactly what this "footnote" change would be? And would it still involve removing the wikivoice claim from the lede and sidebar? Void if removed (talk) 10:59, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
How about Colin's suggested "LGB Alliance state their founders are Kate Harris and Bev Jackson; other sources include more"? This would be a footnote attached to the status quo language. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:36, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
Could you comment on whether or not you think the original process here was WP:SYNTH?
Namely, the taking of multiple independent sources to produce a claim not actually stated in any of them?
Ie: are "who founded LGB Alliance" and "how many people founded LGB Alliance" singular facts about LGB Alliance that require a single source.
I think before considering a compromise there needs to be clarity on whether that original act was improper WP:SYNTH without getting distracted by other matters, because that I believe impacts what we do. Void if removed (talk) 09:14, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
I think there's some confusion here as I apparently want as clear as I intended to be. I only brought up the Red Cross as one of I'm sure many examples to demonstrate that the idea co-founder means one of two is not supported by common usage of the term both on Wikipedia and out of Wikipedia I only used because our very own article on founder used co-founder when it was referring to 5 people and also made clear in the text that this was his the term is used. Therefore any argument that a source referring to someone as a co-founder means they only think there are two, is flawed. The source would need to make it clear in some other way that they believe there are only two co-founders. Anything else about the Red Cross is beside my point. I expect it also does show how the term founder can have different meanings. Still it's far weaker than the Reddit case and I'm sure plenty of other ones so I didn't bring it up regarding that earlier either. Nil Einne (talk) 07:46, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
Right, and there is some misunderstanding that I am attaching any significance at all to "co-founder" meaning two, which I am not.
I care only about which names are included in which sources, together, and in what context.
When a source says "LGB Alliance was founded by two lesbians, Kate Harris and Bev Jackson", that is unequivocal.
When you take a source that says quite explicitly "there are exactly two founders, A and B" and find another source that says "C is a co-founder", you can't then combine them to infer there are three, because that is WP:SYNTH.
You need a source that says "there are three, A, B and C". How many people founded an organisation and who they were is a fact about that organisation, and that is a fact we cannot derive ourselves from WP:SYNTH, and no amount of "well founder means different things to different people" gets around that. Void if removed (talk) 11:51, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:LGB_Alliance/Archive_22&oldid=1256417621"