> There's a tricky ethical question here: if someone changed their name and ask for not being called their former name ever again, you can either ignore their will, which is rude, or chose to follow it but then you are doing a disservice to the public's understanding.

Calling somebody with his former name and mentioning his former name in a Wikipedia page are two completely different things. Using the fact that the former is seen as rude by some to avoid the second is in my opinion just an example of the level of extremism of the pro-trans activists.

But if in fact it made sense, shouldn't we completely remove any reference of the previous name also from the pages of people like Yusuf Islam [1] or Muhammad Ali [2] ?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali

"if someone changed their name and ask for not being called their former name ever again"

Writing someone was called XYZ, is not calling the person by that name again. It is just stating a historic fact.

Its omitting information which seems antithetical to the whole point of Wikipedia. It makes it harder to find other sources of information on someone. it makes it harder to make connections between things you know.

Its really not very different from a Wikipedia article using an author's pseudonym mentioning their real name.

Should all Wikipedia articles on people omit information that the subject of the article does not want mentioned? Even if they find it distressing?

> The secind option used to be the norm on wikipedia even 15 years ago, but Anti-trans activists using dead-naming as a slur against trans people triggered the shift from the second option to the first.

Just to clarify, I think you mistook the order of the first option and the second option? I was confused by this statement

I don't think what should be neutral account of factual events should take into account if it would be rude to an individual.

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