They certainly can.
No, mere assertions don’t cut the mustard on Wikipedia, as I already said. Information has to be cited from a reliable source, else it can be removed.
Wikipedia’s sole goal is not truth; no, it is verifiability. You can put a wild falsehood on Wikipedia as long as it is verifiable.
Show me a wild falsehood from a source that Wikipedia editors have agreed is a “reliable source” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources.
I’ll concede these points to you because the Wikipedia discussion (which, I’ll admit, I partially instigated) is stupid.
There’s the societal issues that I’ve mentioned before (and that you have ignored)
Say what? That assertion has nothing to do with anything I said, nor with anything else I said. Once again, what do Wikipedia editors have to do with those sources? Do you think they control those cited websites?
Where does that assertion come from? I never said that they controlled those sources; I’m just saying that there’s inherent sexism in our society. Is that that hard to understand? I guess so.
but this Wikipedia talk is really a distraction. Like Frink said, if your words offend a large cross-section people, find different words.
The only people who are offended are people who don’t know what the term “Mary Sue” means. Logically, that’s their fault, not mine.
This is the “your being offended is your fault” attitude that is extremely toxic to the underprivileged. We don’t define words by what somebody in a white paper said once, we define them by how they’re used, and now, “Mary Sue” is being used in a sexist fashion. It is 100% reasonable to be offended by the use of the term Mary Sue. Try asking a woman about it sometime.