Elton John was notable as Reginald Kenneth Dwight?

His career started in 1962 as RD and he legally changed his name to EJ in 1972. I think 10 years of being a reasonably famous musician under a name is notable, no?

By that logic, this is a rather impressive and notable CV, the majority of which was pre-transition:

https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/rachel-levine.html

ADM Levine was a Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine. Her previous posts included: Vice-Chair for Clinical Affairs for the Department of Pediatrics, and Chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center.

The notability requirement is specifically for transgender and non-binary individuals.

This is not true either. The "Presumption in favor of privacy" section, especially the "Privacy of names" part might interest you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin...

There's two separate concerns:

1. Privacy of names in general

2. Treatment of people who have changed their names.

For #2 there is a specific rule dealing with deadnaming:

> If a living transgender or non-binary person was not notable under a former name (a deadname), it should not be included in any page (including lists, redirects, disambiguation pages, category names, templates, etc.), even in quotations, even if reliable sourcing exists. Treat the pre-notability name as a privacy interest separate from (and often greater than) the person's current name.

Ah yes, I think I misunderstood what you meant by the notability requirement. AFAIK there are no cis people with pre-notability name changes covered under the privacy interest guidelines.

Isn't that, itself, bias? Why wouldn't Muhammad Ali receive the same consideration, given that he considered his birth name representative of racial oppression?

1. Ali specifically is moot since he won an Olympic Gold Medal (and his first professional world championship) under his birth name.

2. If calling black Muslims by their birth names were currently used as a way of signalling racism, then I suspect WP would adopt a policy for that as well.

As has been noted, Admiral Levine had significant accomplishments under her birth name. The point is, Ali isn't even granted the possiblity of having his birth name unexposed, because ONLY transgender and non-binary individuals are eligible for non-exposure.

> For some reason, these Wikipedia editorial decisions are extra controversial

Because there is a significant group of people who will insist on using a trans person's birth name even if it's no longer correct, being deliberately hostile but trying to hide behind a thin veil of plausible deniability.