The most senior group of editors on the online encyclopaedia has been criticised for censuring both transphobic volunteers and those making accusations of transphobia

A long-running argument over whether the Wikileaks source should be called Bradley or Chelsea Manning in Wikipedia has caused a split among some of its most senior editors.

The arbitration committee – in effect the site’s supreme court – has banned a number of editors from working on articles related to transgender topics or individuals. But while some of those editors were banned for making transphobic comments about Manning, others were given the same punishment for pointing out the bigotry in the first place. As a result, the site been criticised by Trans Media Watch for implying that accusations of transphobia are as bad as actual incidents of transphobia. The online encyclopedia ultimately chose to use the name Chelsea.

The committee’s statements were sparked by a heated argument between editors on the site over whether the article for Chelsea Manning, the Wikileaks source, should exist under her preferred name or under “Bradley Manning”, the name she was using before she came out as transgender in August 2013.

The arbitration committee, a group of senior editors elected by and from Wikipedia’s pool of volunteers which acts as the community’s court of last resort, was called in to make the final decision on which name should be at the top of Manning’s page. It also ruled on the behaviour of several editors who had taken part in the debate.

Two were indefinitely banned from editing “all pages relating to any transgender topic or individual” over discriminatory speech. One, Hitmonchan, had written that “only when his testicles are ripped out of his scrotum … will I call Manning a 'she'”, and the second, IFreedom1212, wrote, among other comments, that “he is clearly mentally unstable and his … desire to be called Chelsea should not be regarded with any merit".

But other editors were also banned from editing trans-related articles after making accusations of transphobia. One of the banned editors, Josh Gorand, argued that Wikipedia’s requirement for consensus isn’t the only one on the site, and that the rules governing biographies of living persons, one of which is to use their preferred name, should also be taken into account. “Especially not a ‘consensus’ of virulently transphobic people who completely ignore Wikipedia policy. We don't move articles because some people hate transgendered people – it's that simple.”

That statement was one of four cited by the committee to demonstrate that Gorand was exhibiting a “battleground approach to the discussion” and to justify banning Gorand indefinitely from editing articles about any transgender topic or individual.

“We feel that Wikipedia's banning of certain editors for calling people transphobic reflects a wider cultural problem whereby identifying someone is prejudiced is seen as worse than being prejudiced,” said Trans Media Watch in response to the bans. “If the arbitration committee thinks that 'transphobe' is a slur, it might want to reflect on why that is.”

“We would like to see Wikipedia demonstrate more self-awareness in its approach to social issues and more consistency in its treatment of cases like this. There are hundreds of pages on Wikipedia about notable people known by names other than their first names, yet we don't see this kind of fuss made in relation to those about, say, George Osborne or Jodie Foster, or even other trans people like Chaz Bono, who was also well known to the public under a different name.”

Following Manning’s announcement, a heated argument broke out on the talk page of her article, where editors discuss potential changes. Wikipedia’s administrators, who are all elected from the general pool of editors on the site, decided that there wasn’t enough consensus for the page to be moved, and locked it under the name “Bradley Manning” pending a decision from the arbitration committee.

But the editor who initially moved the page to Chelsea Manning, Morwen, argues that Wikipedia needs editors to make quick unilateral changes if it is to effectively cover living people. “The ruling has weakened our 'biographies of living people' policy,” she says. “It will make editors more reluctant to take definitive action to remove libel, for example. This can't be a good thing. Personally, I don't think I'm going to be editing about trans stuff in the future.”

Author and Wikipedia editor Philip Sandifer, who was also involved in the argument, criticised the site’s rules for being “a techno-libertarian fantasy”. “The arbitration committee … looked at both sides of this debate and made the unequivocal decision that, in a debate between people trying to think seriously about the ethical considerations involved in being one of the largest websites in the world and a bunch of techno-libertarians playing WikiRules, the real problem was all the uppity trans activists,” Sandifer argued in an angry blog post.

Wikipedia has long been criticised for having an overwhelmingly homogeneous group of editors. In 2011, co-founder Jimmy Wales described the typical Wikipedia editor as a 26-year-old geeky male with a PhD; the site’s own research found that 90% of editors are male. A survey from 2011 found that fewer than 1% of editors self-identified as trans. The survey did not, however, offer editors the abilty to describe themselves as “trans” and “male” or “female” at the same time, which may have skewed the results.