Talk:McMansion Hell

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Here is why experienced editors keep contesting your "homosexual perspective" edits

Wikipedia's guidelines specify that self-published sources, including tweets, should never be used in a biographical article on a living person. It does not matter that she tweeted the claim four times, those tweets cannot, alone, be used as a source to support the claim on Wikipedia.

To make more sense of this, it's worth looking more closely at the claim at hand, "McMansion Hell is written from a homosexual perspective." So far, edits to this article have been unclear about the meaning of this line: are we synthesizing secondary sources that claim that the blog demonstrates a "homosexual perspective"? Is this a biographical note only? Are we providing information about the conditions that produced McMansion Hell? As it stands, the sentence could be read as overly interpretive, bordering on original research. If the sentence is supposed to offer a critical interpretation of the project (or describe critical consensus), then it should be stated like that: "The blog has been described as having a 'homosexual perspective.'" However, Wagner's tweets could not qualify as independent sources and should not be used as sources for interpretations of the project.

A statement that can actually be supported by Wagner's tweets is that Wagner has described the project as coming from a "homosexual perspective." That's what quotes are for. While technically, by many Wikipedia guidelines, her tweets would still be insufficient sources, I personally think that the statement is relevant enough and should stay. But it should be represented as what it is, which is a subjective statement from the author about her own work. Let's try this: "Wagner has stated that the blog is written from "'a homosexual perspective.'" Given that the statement is about the scope and content of the body of work hosted at McMansion Hell, it belongs in the section that deals with the scope and content of the work.

Finally, not every ref cited here actually relates to the line itself: Wagner saying "I'm gay" does not prove that everything she has ever produced was "written from a homosexual perspective," for example. Heaping citations onto a claim does not strengthen the relationship between the claim and the evidence. Wikipedia's citational practices are specific and can be hard to learn, but, like all writing, it comes down to being clear, concise, and not intentionally deceptive about the relationship between your claims and your evidence. However, I'm going to leave all four refs for now, and maybe someone else can figure out which ones are useful, or expand others into her biographical note if relevant.

While McMansion Hell is not a biographical article, it contains biographical information and, in past edits, biographical sections, that's why I think we should defer to BLP guidelines as much as possible here.

A final note on language: I recommend reading WP:LGBT Studies' note on "homosexual" vs. "gay." It is important to make it clear in the text that Wagner made the choice to use the word "homosexual," as Wikipedia's best practices don't approach that word as ideologically neutral.

Hoping this clarifies things for a lot of you, especially since many people were directed to edit this page via Wagner's request on twitter, and may not be experienced at writing Wikipedia articles. I hope this inspires you to do more! However, now that you have some info, remember that edits that appear to be deliberately disruptive without regard for Wikipedia's editing standards might be regarded as vandalism.

To Kate: a better way to ask people to edit your project's Wikipedia page would be to follow procedures for an edit request, instead of tweeting the same request to your fans. This is a more transparent way to be involved without creating a potential conflict of interest! Plus, experienced Wikipedia editors may respond to you more helpfully. You can also add to this talk page. Decoratedshed (talk) 11:18, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, the tweet in question is deleted anyway. If someone has an archived version it can be kept, otherwise this whole discussion was moot! Decoratedshed (talk) 11:44, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I found the tweets, they're just of Wagner being silly and not taking this Wikipedia entry seriously. The content makes no sense, there's no actual relation between her blog and any LGBT issues, nor is there any mention of connection between the two in any reliable third-party sources. So please stop adding it to the article.

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(talk) 16:01, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]