After some plaudits for quickly updating Manning’s Wikipedia article to reflect her name, it seems that some Wikipedia editors aren’t so progressive after all, and the page was moved back to her old name recently. Reasoning appears to be legalistic in nature, citing that Wikipedia policy doesn’t require the article to be under “Chelsea”, so they put it back, as well as stating that because Chelsea has announced her transition so soon, this means that overall, the body of secondary sources are still referring to her old name. Pronouns within the article remain correct – Wikipedians would have to argue a manual of style change in order to revert that change. Furthermore, an attempt to add a tag “Women in the United States Army” to Manning’s article was thwarted recently as well, resulting in an edit war.
Wikipedia’s page on Manning is currently move-protected and protected from edits by new users. Discussion on the topic is locked down and will re-open in a month. Wikipedia’s software permits the redirecting from one article to another; prior to this move, looking up Manning’s old name would resolve automatically to her new one.
