A favourite pastime of mine is checking in on the Wikipedia page for Twitter and seeing what lead line they are currently running with. At time of writing it is “X, formerly known as Twitter”; but I’ve also seen, “Twitter, known since July 2023 as X”; or, “X, known colloquially as Twitter”. Ever since the rebrand, there’s been an edit war going on over this lead line, at it’s all playing out in the article’s Talk section. I love Wikipedia Talk sections. Aside from the occasional vandalism, Wikipedia is an incredibly polished product; but if you want to see how the sausage is made, visit the Talk section. Right now the lead line contains text that only editors can see: “Please do not alter this wording.” That text was apparently added because of, “drive-by editors” that would “arbitrarily change the wording every few days.”

Despite the debate, Wikipedians are mostly civil creatures and their disputes are usually hashed out pretty quickly. Part of this process is the constant references back to the Wikipedia Policy pages, usually referenced by their shortcutted entry: ie. WP:CRYSTALBALL. These pages are not passed down from on high; just like regular Wikipedia, they are the result of community feedback and editing. As pages not made for consumption of the general public, they are afforded a little more leeway in their tone and editing. They often come with pictures on the side, and are generally a little more pithy than a standard Wikipedia entry where dryness is enforced (see MOS:PUFFERY).

The Twitter page title might seem like a cut and dry case. X is the official name of the platform that used to be called Twitter so Wikipedia should reflect that. But the official name of a product has very little bearing on the article title, instead it is the WP:COMMONNAME that is the most important. Kanye West changed his legal name to just “Ye”, but the Wikipedia remains as Kanye West. But deciding the “common name” of X has not been an easy task.

One popular proposal has been to sidestep the issue all together. Create two articles, one for Twitter, and the other for X. People have drawn analogies to Viacom (2005–2019) and Viacom (1952–2005), two articles for one company over two difference lengths of time with changes in upper management. But there is one obvious riposte, Twitter and X ar the same platform. Every tweet and every retweet from Twitter still exist on X, they just been renamed to posts and reposts. All the while there does exist two separate articles for Twitter Inc. and X Corp. It is still surreal, by the way, to read “Twitter, Inc. was an American social media company based in San Francisco, California” in the passed tense. I was never a big Twitter user and Twitter was never a bastion of hope but that reads so dystopian to me.

Using analogy is a popular argument in Wikipedia Talk sections. In the case of Twitter, people have tried to use the article for The Netherlands: “The Netherlands, informally Holland.” But just like the Viacom example, this analogy felt imperfect. That’s probably because the change from Twitter to X is unprecedented. No other company has willingly thrown away almost two decades of brand recognition.

This point has been made many times before, but I feel the need to say it again. X is a terrible name. Talking about this topic is so difficult because X has so many meanings already ascribed to it. Wikipedians have run into this issue themselves as they try and justify WP:COMMONNAME with Google Trends data, only to find that the data for “X” is next to useless. The related queries for X are “iphone x”, “xbox series x”, and “lil nas x”. X, the platform, does get a mention – although only as, “x twitter”.

There has been some major ground gained for team X, however. Finally, twitter.com is no more as it now always redirects to x.com. The only remaining mention of Twitter on X is in the developer section, and I imagine that’s going to stay that way forever for technical reasons. Most major news organisations have also switched to X. In an unscientific scan of a few websites, I was only able to find the blue bird icon on the Boston Globe’s website. The AP style guide has also started recommending the use X, which is probably the biggest win for Musk’s ego. Although they do ask that you remind the reader that X was Twitter at first mention and only after should you say X.

None of those wins takes away from the fact that I am yet to hear a human being in real life call the platform X. Even Elon Musk still introduces the platform as “X, formerly Twitter”. He says it with such deftness that I imagine he has been forced to say “X, formerly Twitter” several times a day.

But there is another unfortunate fact that me and other Wikipedia users are not quick to acknowledge. X the name is impossible to separate from Elon Musk the person. He is sole reason that the name was changed. This has meant keeping the name as Twitter has served as a bit of self righteous justice against a man who me and many others find personally detestable. When you google “X”, X is the first result, but the little side bar is pulled from Wikipedia and still shows Twitter – complete with the little blue bird. I hope this fact drives Elon Musk up the wall.

And I know there are lots of Wikipedia editors also wishing the worst for Elon Musk. The page for Twitter under Elon Musk is almost certainly in violation of Wikipedia’s policy of excessive criticism and undue weight (see WP:UNDUE). The Talk section for Twitter is full of people discussing things like SEO which Wikipedia is not meant to care about.

There are some other valid reasons to keep calling the article Twitter which complicates things further. Wikipedia has a policy of “Natural Disambiguation” (see WP:NATDIS), where two articles that could clash should be disambiguated by natural means. For example, it is preferable to have the article be called “Hand fan” rather than “Fan (Implement)” despite hand fan being a much less common term. As X clashes with an amazingly large number of articles (See X (Disambiguation)), it is potentially preferable to go with with the parentheses-less “Twitter” rather than “X (Social Media)”.

Like many people, I thought this whole X thing couldn’t last. It reminded me too much of the gag in Bojack Horseman, where the D of the Hollywood sign goes missing in season one and for the rest of the show, everyone calls it Hollywoo. But it hasn’t changed back, and probably won’t change back thanks to Elon Musk’s divorced dad stubbornness. When I first started reading through some of Wikipedia’s policies, I was surprised by the way Wikipedia intentionally lags behind. They do not use primary sources (see WP:NOR), and they self describe themselves as not being a newspaper (see WP:NOTNP). They also have policies against editorialising and predicting the future (see WP:CRYSTALBALL). Of course, they have entries for current events, but attempt to stay some distance away from them. Wikipedia now seems to be lagging behind, as they have blanketly refused any change to the article’s title, when most news media is taking a softer touch. I’m not sure if this is stubbornness or nostalgia or a hatred of Musk or a good faith desire for consistency, but it is starting to feel less and less correct, which seems to go against at least one of Wikipedia 5 Pillars (see WP:PILLARS).