A Statement from the Wookieepedia Administration:
Contents
A harsh review
We must acknowledge and keep in mind that Wookieepedia has a culture of discrimination against marginalized communities, such as women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. We are deeply sorry to everyone, including all editors and readers, past and present, who have been harmed by this. Too often a blind eye has been turned toward these problems, both by our administration and user base. Going back to the earliest days of the site, we have maintained an exclusionary attitude of elitism, with many former members of our administration promoting the idea that Wookieepedia was better than every other site, and that building and maintaining relationships with other communities, creators in the Star Wars community, or even new editors was unnecessary and useless.
While these behaviors have been challenged in the past few years, and the most egregious offenders have been banned or removed, this isn't something we can be complacent about. This mentality still exists to this day and it must be confronted and opposed. Although our IRC chatrooms have become defunct and are no longer in use, its elements simply became part of our public Discord server. Less blatant misogyny can still crop up, such as demanding reasons why a newcomer is specifically asking for responses from female editors to give her suggestions for cosplay ideas, effectively forcing users away. One cannot simply declare that they have no ill intentions or say, “I'm sorry if I've offended you but I have been hurt too,” when confronted with their own words or other actions that have hurt other people; this fails to address the consequences of harmful acts. The primary concern is how these acts are actively detrimental to people's well-being rather than simply offensive. We realize that we cannot let these slip by yet again.
In the past year, we have been working with people harmed by our community over the years to listen and learn how we can do better—something we are wholeheartedly committed to doing. We have worked to implement new rules and guidelines aimed at cutting that culture out and making this a more welcome place for everyone. We have also been revisiting existing policies to countermand hostile attitudes and language. Continuing dismissal of discrimination is unacceptable, and we must not excuse further harm from being done and must act to tackle discrimination as it happens, to fix policies, to give warnings, and, where necessary, to remove users. We want to promote a culture where everyone can feel comfortable to contribute to the site.
Long-standing culture of toxicity
An important part of this process is not only working to improve how we behave now, but also being transparent about our failings and publicly acknowledging them. For many years Wookieepedia was led by a small group of individuals who have since been banned from the entire Fandom platform. They worked to control what occurred in the community by compartmentalizing everything and selectively controlling what information was disseminated to others within the administration and community. By doing so, they effectively created a clique that controlled every aspect of the narrative on site. Those that either worked with them or chose not to confront them were rewarded with feedback and a place in the community, while those who confronted them were ostracized.
New users that try to contribute to the site have been and continue to be subjected to harassment, ranging from bullying to outright sexism, transphobia, and homophobia, and we are sorry for the pain this causes. In the earliest days of our old IRC chat room, there was an unspoken rule that harassing and bullying new users was “part of the process of joining the community” and one that people were not only expected to take part in, but encouraged to by administrators of the time; they made an official policy on the site that outright stated, “Personal attacks are unpreventable on IRC.” Official site meetings, such as those held by the review panels, were filled with sexual jokes, objectification of women, and harassment. Female, transgender, and non-binary users have faced discriminatory comments and harassment both on site and in chat servers, as well as further harassment in private messages, and have been held to a vastly higher standard than male users, something that has not been simply eliminated by the change in leadership.
Comments such as those directly quoted or paraphrased below were common and not openly challenged, but instead spoken by multiple previous administrators both privately and publicly to drive users off the site:
- “It's impressive how your work is actually half decent given that you're not a man.”
- “Women shouldn't edit on their period because the quality is shit.”
- “Female editors are only holding a place for male users, the real contributors.”
- “I'm not going to ask this female author to stop promoting her own work by writing up the Wookieepedia article on herself; I'm just going to revert her edits. Watch this woman bitch about us on Twitter now. I'd remove all the work that she had done on her own article on Wookieepedia, but I think I enjoy it more being there. It shows how petty she is.”
- “We can't be friends with or trust trans editors as they are deceitful about their gender.”
- “Wookieepedia should ban using they/them pronouns for characters whose gender we don't know because we don't care about being 'socially correct'.”
- “You're only speaking up for trans rights because it's trendy and politically correct.”
- “You're stupid and being intentionally disagreeable for supporting the removal of deadnames.”
- "If you remove this harmful language, you will be blocked from editing for vandalism and disruption."
- "If you point out people saying something discriminatory towards you or anyone else, you're making a personal attack against those users and will be banned if you don't apologize to them."
- "If you speak publicly about this problem, you are directly harming Wookieepedia and recruiting outsiders to disrupt the wiki."
Compiled together, these are evidently wrong, but steady exposure to individual incidents spread over time throughout Wookieepedia has sadly desensitized many people, becoming blinded by the bigotry around them and growing a tendency to ignore the concerns of those who are more acutely aware of the hostile behavior.
Policies were designed to silence minority voices and freely interpreted to levy sanctions against users disliked by the establishment, and those seen as “disruptive” were publicly lectured, blocked, and mocked. Thus, users who tried to speak out against this behavior have been shunned and bullied off Wookieepedia, as well. For many years it was openly pushed by certain members of the administration that only cisgender heterosexual men could run a wiki, and that no other people were capable of doing so. This has fostered a combative and insular culture of Wookieepedians acting out on others rather than acknowledging their own faults.
The problem displayed to our readership
Not even the article content on Wookieepedia has been an exception to these practices. For years, individuals were referred to from the perspective of white cishet males with no regard for how these practices were harmful. This included assuming gender, sexualizing female characters, the utilization of outdated language and practices, deadnaming, dismissing the skin color of characters of color as a white character "standing in shadows", and more. This reached a boiling point in 2021, when a transgender Wookieepedian began a vote aimed at adding an addition to Wookieepedia policy that would ban the use of deadnames. This came at the heels of many instances of people removing deadnames at the request of transgender individuals and those edits being near-instantly reverted and labeled as “vandalism,” with those simply attempting to do the right thing facing warnings that they would be banned from editing if they continued.
Former Wookieepedian administrator Toprawa and Ralltiir outright rejected these editing efforts, deadnamed a specific individual in violation of their human rights, and instead doubled down with the deadname's usage despite repeated attempts from fellow users, staff members of our web host, Fandom, and the larger Star Wars community to change his approach. The safety concerns and rights of many individuals, particularly those in marginalized communities who have long been harassed, publicly name-called, and ostracized on Wookieepedia, were dismissed again. Throughout the course of this, multiple users were banned at his direction for what was dubbed “vote farming,” in hindsight a clear attempt to remove the individuals standing up for transgender rights. Other supporters of removing deadnames were shamed and harassed across both public and private messages. Many other users, including other administrators, stood by and tolerated these actions. Users had no other recourse but to press Fandom to in turn attempt to persuade administrators such as Toprawa and Ralltiir to stop their hostile and transphobic behavior.
The events (an independent report: [1]) led to the permanent banning of Toprawa and Ralltiir and fellow administrator Darth Culator from the platform by Fandom. It then fell to remaining Wookieepedians to reverse the toxic culture of the site and open up to new contributors. However, as the above report rightly pointed out, this came only after over a decade of hostility and bigotry—“after people had spent weeks, months, or years fighting to have their very identities taken seriously.” Notably, in 2014, taking advantage of April Fools Day, Wookieepedia promoted a degrading rendition of the Breast/Legends article on the front page, alienating female Star Wars fans. The subsequent defensive comments made by Wookieepedians contained rampant sexism and childishness, with the site's arrogant and alienating attitude epitomized by the nude picture of a female character that was featured at the top of the Breast/Legends article. In the aftermath, a large number of users, including administrators, argued time and time again in favor of preserving the picture that they themselves had made infamous, in the process mocking women who found the article offensive and irrevocably alienating fans. Further reading on the 2014 incident can be found here. The image was not removed until Wookieepedians, recognizing the irreversible damage done by it in the aftermath of the banning of the two aforementioned administrators, voted for its deletion in 2021, while the article itself was rewritten by a female editor to eliminate objectification. In 2022, when some Wookieepedians opposed that same female editor's bid to be elected administrator (thankfully, it was a success, but by a close vote), another female editor called out the sexism and misogyny that still existed on Wookieepedia (Forum:SH:Sexism and Misogyny on Wookieepedia), but many Wookieepedians refused or failed to address their misogynistic comments. The similarly sexist and alienating Mister and Miss Star Wars vote archives were not deleted until late that year after some debate, with female editors voting unanimously for deletion.
A long way to go
While progress has been made, we still have a long way to go and a lot to learn in this new era. Confronting our too-often neglected shortcomings is difficult, but it must be done—with the inclusion of more women and LGBTQIA+ users, but also newfound allies—if Wookieepedia is to become a welcoming place in which all contributors can find enjoyment, not only the established user base. In 2023, there still remains rampant discriminatory language and assumption of genders across articles and forum pages. This is a major site and a major voice in the Star Wars fandom. Projects are underway to fix dated language and remove harmful comments. With the realization that problematic actions can and do exist in both the past and indeed the present, and frequently stemming from insensitivity and ignorance, we also aim to educate users on how they can do better. We strive to promote a cultural shift where further harm is swiftly identified, opposed, and prevented, where everyone feels free to be themselves and contribute to Wookieepedia in any way they want. These efforts are prioritized because the protection of users, including more potential women and LGBTQIA+ contributors, is key to Wookieepedia's future; every person who finds a community member uninviting and the wiki contents discomforting is another valuable editor lost. We have failed to protect people, so here we are now. We are open to criticism in our long-delayed efforts to tackle discrimination.
Some of the efforts to move the wiki in the right direction include the removal of problematic users, revamping existing policies and articles, enacting new policies aimed at protecting users (including a page detailing the importance of Fandom's anti-discrimination policies with a glossary of terms, guidance, and further reading), and removing or redacting unacceptable content. We still have plenty of work to do, though. To that end, new projects have been launched by users who faced discrimination on Wookieepedia, such as WookieeProjects Pride and Women, with the goal of not only further improving content on the site, but helping to create safe places for women and LGBTQIA+ individuals to work together, and we are looking forward to more collaboration with them.
As a large voice in the Star Wars community, we have an opportunity to embrace intersectionality and challenge these problems. The vast majority of the community simply wants to enjoy and celebrate this franchise that we all love together. Hatred and bigotry have no place here. Users who have been fighting discrimination and frustrated by the many obstacles that perpetuated over many years deserve to be listened to and actively supported. It falls to us to become leaders in the effort to deal with the culture of discrimination that has isolated and hurt an untold number of users to an unknowable extent, and secure a safe and inviting place for everyone who would visit Wookieepedia in the future. We have the influence within our community and the wider fandom to make things better. Together we are stronger, and together we will continue making this community a better place for all.