Note: Portions of this article were copied from the corresponding article on Rainverse Wiki.

That wiki uses an incompatible license, but all contributors gave 1something express permission to copy it.

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Introduction

Deadnaming, both of real people and of fictional characters, should be avoided when possible. In the course of documenting Pandora's Tale, there are a few situations where using a fictional character's deadname may be necessary. There may be even rarer cases when using a real person's deadname is necessary, although no such situations have arisen as of November 2024. The purpose of this policy is to document when deadnaming is allowed.

Deadnaming on Nonbinary Wiki

Deadnaming fictional characters is less bad than deadnaming real people for several reasons, including

Safety: A real person's deadname can put them at risk of harassment or violence. Even including a deadname as a redirect can put someone at risk. Fictional characters, by contrast, do not have to worry about violence from real people reading the wiki.
Privacy: A real person may not want knowledge of their deadname to spread. Moreover, many readers may want to avoid learning anyone's deadname if they can avoid it. By contrast, how well-known a fictional character's deadname is is entirely controlled by the author. As of Chapter 11, no one knows Isabelle's deadname. By contrast, everyone who has read Pandora's Tale knows Pandora's designation number, because Xan tells us on page two. Hence, we do not need to worry about readers inadvertently learning Pandora's designation number.

Isabelle

Pandora

Spoilers: Sometimes, a character's real name could be a spoiler. No such concern exists for real people's names.

Due to these distinctions, deadnaming of real people requires a much stricter standard than deadnaming of fictional characters.

Deadnaming Fictional Characters

A fictional character's deadname may be used on the wiki in the following circumstances:

On a disambiguation page if necessary: For example, if a character's deadname is also a different character's real name, a disambiguation page may be needed.
Quotes from the author: Quotes from the author may contain some character deadnames and will not be altered.
Page history: If a character was first introduced using their deadname, their article might originally have been written with their deadname in it. When the character's real name is revealed in the story, their article should be rewritten to use their real name, but the page history does not need to be deleted.

Nothing in this policy shall be construed to mean that deadnaming is required. If the editors can work out a reasonable way to avoid using a particular character's deadname, even if technically allowed by this policy, then the editors should avoid using the character's deadname.

There may be other circumstances not listed here, which the authors of this policy hadn't thought of, in which deadnaming may be necessary. If such a circumstance arises, the editors should discuss it and carefully consider alternatives before adding a character's deadname to the wiki.

As of 2024 November 9, there has been no decision as to whether a Helper's designation number should be treated as a deadname.

../Main/Helper.gmi

Deadnaming Real People

Currently, no real people's deadnames are used anywhere on the wiki. Possible situations where deadnaming might be permissible are:

If the person in question specifically requests to have their deadname on the wiki.
Page history: If a real person was notable enough to have an article prior to coming out, their deadname may be included in their article's history. However, the Pandora's Tale Wiki editors should consider whether it is technically feasible to delete their deadname from history without losing too much valuable information. Again, this is unlikely to happen, since the only people involved in creating the comic were already out prior to the wiki's creation.

Nothing in this policy shall be construed to mean that deadnaming is required. If the editors can work out a reasonable way to avoid using a particular person's deadname, even if technically allowed by this policy, then the editors should avoid using the person's deadname.