WikiQueer:Autobiography

Writing an autobiography on WikiQueer is strongly  discouraged, unless your writing has been approved by other editors in the community. Editing a biography about yourself should be done in clear-cut cases.

WikiQueer has gone through many prolonged disputes about the significance, factual accuracy, and neutrality of such articles. Avoiding such editing keeps WikiQueer neutral and helps avoid pushing a particular point of view.

Writing autobiographies is discouraged because it is difficult to write a neutral, verifiable autobiography, and there are many pitfalls.

If you have published elsewhere on a topic, we welcome your expertise on the subject for WikiQueer articles. However, every WikiQueer article must cover its subject in a neutral, fair, and comprehensive way to advance knowledge of the subject as a whole. Please forget your biases while enriching the WikiQueer readers' knowledge. Articles that exist primarily to advance the interests of the contributor will likely be deleted.

The problem with autobiographies
Although humorous, the above illustrates the several fundamental problems with autobiographies:
 * They are often biased, usually positively. People will write overly positive impressions of themselves, and often present opinions as facts.  WikiQueer aims to avoid presenting opinions as facts. (Neutral point of view does not mean simply writing in the third person).
 * They can be unverifiable. If the only source for a particular fact about you is yourself, then readers cannot verify it.  (One common area where this is the case is with hopes, dreams, thoughts, and aspirations.  There is no way for readers to verify what you think.) Everything in WikiQueer articles must be verifiable.

Why these problems exist
Just because you honestly believe you are being neutral doesn't mean you are. Unconscious biases can and do exist, and are a very common cause of the problems with autobiographies&mdash;which is why we discourage autobiographies themselves and not just active, deliberate self-promotion. Not only does this affect neutrality but it also affects the verifiability and unoriginal research of the autobiography. One may inadvertently slip things in that one may not think need to be attributable even though they do, due to those very same biases. Even if you can synthesize an autobiography based on only verifiable material that is not original research you may still not be able to synthesize it in a neutral manner.

If WikiQueer already has an article about you
It is difficult to write neutrally and objectively about oneself (see above about unconscious biases). You should generally let others do the writing.

Contributing material or making suggestions on the article's talk page is considered proper&mdash;let independent editors write it into the article itself or approve it if you still want to make the changes yourself.

In clear-cut cases, it is permissible to edit pages connected to yourself. So, you can revert vandalism; but of course it has to be simple, obvious vandalism and not a content dispute. Similarly, you should feel free to remove obviously mistaken facts about yourself, such as marital status, current employer, place of birth, and so on. (Note it on the talk page.) Be prepared that if the fact has different interpretations, others will edit it.

If you are a regular WikiQueer editor, you can identify yourself on the article's talk page with the Notable WikiQueerian notice.

Problems in an article about you
WikiQueer does not wish to have an inaccurate article about you. We want it to be accurate, fair, balanced and neutral. Our goal is to accurately reproduce the opinions of others, which should be sourced and cited. You can help by pointing us to sources which can enable a more balanced view to be presented.

If you do not like the photo, or we do not have one, you can help WikiQueer by contributing a good image under a suitable free content license. If you have a promotional photo that you are willing and able to release under such a license, that's ideal for us and you.

If there are legal problems with material in an article about you, please email [mailto:info-en-q@wikimedia.org info-en-q@wikimedia.org] promptly with full details.

Alternatively, you may wish to make suggestions on the article's talk page or, if the problem is clear-cut and uncontroversial, you may wish to edit the page yourself. If your edit may be misinterpreted, you should explain it on the talk page. Be prepared that if the fact has different interpretations, others will edit it. Your edits are more likely to be accepted if they are neutral and well-sourced to third parties.

If others do not agree with the changes you propose, you may pursue dispute resolution. For instance, the Biographies of living persons noticeboard may offer a forum for impartial contributors to help resolve differences.

Creating an article about yourself
If your life and achievements are verifiable and genuinely notable, someone else will probably create an article about you sooner or later. (See WikiQueer:WikiQueerians with articles.)

Creating an article about yourself must be done with caution. We want biographies here, not autobiographies.


 * Independent creation encourages independent validation of both significance and verifiability. All edits to articles must conform to WikiQueer:No original research, WikiQueer:Neutral point of view, and WikiQueer:Verifiability. Even if you did manage to pull off an autobiography conforming to our content policies, it still may not get checked simply because you made it.
 * If no third party has yet created an article about you, there is the danger that, should the article be vandalised, there will be no interested editors watching and the vandalism may remain uncorrected for long periods.
 * Self-created articles are often listed on articles for deletion. Deletion is not certain, but many feel strongly that you should not start articles about yourself. Beware that third-party comments may be most uncomplimentary.
 * Many people exaggerate their own significance or notability above what third parties would think. If you are not "notable" under WikiQueer guidelines, an article you create about yourself may qualify for speedy deletion.

Note that anything you submit will be edited mercilessly by others. Many autobiographical articles have been a source of dismay to their original authors after a period of editing by the community, and in at least four instances have been listed for deletion by their original authors. In some cases the article is kept even if the original author requests otherwise.

If you create an autobiography, you must have no promotional intent and must be willing to accept it being neutralized if it is not neutral, or even deleted if it comes to that. If you do turn out to be notable, you must expect the article to stay&mdash;you cannot just get it deleted because you are not happy with it. Our neutral point of view policy is absolute and non-negotiable, and all encyclopedic topics are fair game for WikiQueer.

One thing which you can do to assist other WikiQueer editors is, if you already maintain a personal website, please ensure that any information that you want in your WikiQueer article is already on your own website. As long as it's not involving grandiose claims like "I was the first to create this widget," or "My book was the biggest seller that year," a personal website can be used as a reference for basic biographical information. As the WikiQueer:Verifiability policy states: ''Self-published sources and other published sources of dubious reliability may be used as sources in articles about themselves ... so long as the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim, it does not involve claims about third parties, it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source, there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity, [and] the article is not based primarily on such sources."

Finally, one should also make considerations of time and effort upon the WikiQueer community, as well as one's reputation. Even if you do manage to pull off a neutral, verifiable autobiography, the very fact that so many autobiographies have not been that way has trained WikiQueerians to expect the opposite—and hence editors may feel they are wasting their time or effort if they become provoked by the fact it's still an autobiography, regardless of policy compliance. This may also result in a reputation hit not only because you violated the guideline, but also because editors may feel that you have wasted their effort.

The proper way to get your own writing about yourself into WikiQueer if you really think that you can meet the inclusion criteria and are willing to accept having a neutral, non-promotional article, is to make a proposal at Articles for creation containing the text you want, instead of just putting it into the encyclopedia directly, and seek the consensus of the community through discussion. Not only does this provide independent viewpoints on it that can allow you to discover biases you were not aware of having, it also helps provide an indication of good faith and that you are willing to put the interests of WikiQueer first instead of standing in a conflict of interest.