Talk:Movement to reform sex offender laws in the United States

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Cleanup of this and related articles

Following the no-consensus AfD vote at Movement to reform sex offender laws in the United States concerns were raised that there are four articles that deal with the subject of U.S. sex offender registries. They are:

• Sex offender registries in the United States
• Effectiveness of sex offender registration policies in the United States
• Constitutionality of sex offender registries in the United States
• Movement to reform sex offender laws in the United States

I think it's fair to say:

• Keep votes thought there was value to these articles but acknowledged that cleanup was required. Also the AfD nomination, and some recent blanking on these articles were done by apparent (now checkuser-blocked) sockpuppets, and this conduct should not stand. There was not consensus among the keep votes whether this was a "movement".
• Delete votes focused on coatracking arguments, and the idea that there is no "movement". One argument said the decision to split these articles some 7 years ago was a "POV fork". While there was no explicit undue/balance complaints that seemed to be a theme.

Clearly these articles all need cleanup. I think we should look for ways to reduce the article count to 2 or 3. I have made a substantial revision to the constitutionality article. Helping hands would be appreciated. It's time consuming, and not really my area of interest. Perhaps someone with expertise (any pro-registry advocates?) wants to help balance these out. Oblivy (talk) 07:08, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

For your interest and possible assistance @Piotrus, @A. B., @LaundryPizza03, @Denaar, @Vontheri, @Elttaruuu, @StarTrekker Oblivy (talk) 07:20, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I must say, I was not expecting the result of the AfD to be "no consensus", given that there were only two votes for "delete", but anyway...

I think the "movement" article should remain as its own article, and I do think there is something that is definable as a movement that exists. The following are my thoughts regarding calling it "Movement to reform sex offender laws in the United States". I'm copying/summarizing much of it from multiple of my postings from the AfD:

Does the word "movement" necessarily imply "organized movement"? A movement can be a movement without having central organization. Otherwise, the term "organized movement" would be redundant and unnecessary to exist as a term. The title "Movement to reform sex offender laws in the United States" only implies that there are people advocating for it, it doesn't necessarily imply organization.

Just how "organized" does something have to be before it becomes a "movement"? There are high-profile people (at least high-profile within relevant circles) who are calling for such reform, for example Patty Wetterling. There are also organizations advocating for reform, such as Women Against Registry, National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws, and Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws, among others. So even accounting for a "movement" not necessarily needing to be "organized" to be definable as a "movement", this one still is an "organized movement", as there are organizations advocating for such reform.

I can see where Trekker (in the "comment" below) is coming from regarding changing it from "movement" to "movements" (plural). That would be an acceptable name change in my opinion. It would also be acceptable to me to leave it as "movement" (singular).

As for merging one or more of the articles, I definitely think "movement" should stay as its own article, and obviously "Sex offender registries in the United States" should stay as an article. I could see possibly merging "Constitutionality of sex offender registries in the United States" into the "movement" article. But honestly, I'm kind of leaning towards keeping all three separate, as although it does seem a bit excessive to have four articles on such related topics, I keep thinking of incompatibilities between the articles that would preclude them being merged. If "movement" were to be renamed to something like "arguments to reform sex offender laws in the United States", then it would make more sense to merge "constitutionality" into the resulting article, but as I said earlier, I do think the word "movement" is applicable. I'm open to having my mind changed about merging, however. Vontheri (talk) 13:21, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I can agree that there is probably not a single unified movement, possibly a move to Movements to reform sex offender laws in the United States could be an option, or another title.★Trekker (talk) 08:18, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

  Personally I think movements is not as good as movement. Big or small, organized or not, movement is fine with me. As Vontheri says this does have a unifying org, and many suborgs, but it's not really multiple movements as far as I can tell.

  There are, in my opinion, two good reasons to merge some of these articles. First is duplication and inconsistency - these articles overlap, and that creates a risk of them going stale or getting out-of-sync. Someone might add something to one, which is already in the other. Second is the "POV forking" rationale; it has some basis in policy and is an attractive argument if people want to try AfD again.

  My eyes are on effectiveness as the article to merge and delete. Its way too deep in the details and needs a rewrite to be useful for someone who wants an introduction to the issue. It's a good fit for this (movement) article, conceptually, but I think the word movement gets in the way since effectiveness and activism are separate concepts. I'm not pushing hard for a name change - good reasons to say it's fine as it is - but the name kind of sets the tone for the article.

  I was also surprised this got a no consensus. There was a lot of chaos early in the AfD, with the sock nominator and people piling on, and also the stuff about Viperface and the forking. I voted merge but changed to keep after I realized what the socks had done and how much material there was in the articles once reverted. Anyway, Liz is an experienced admin and I value her input, and if she predicts this will be back at AfD if things don't improve we should probably listen to her. Oblivy (talk) 13:46, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

  As far as "movement" vs. "movements": It's basically semantics, but it seems to my perception that there are either two movements or, perhaps more accurately, two sub-movements. One is advocating for the abolition of sex offender registries completely, and the other is advocating to keep them in some form but to reform them, for example to either keep them but have them only accessible by police and not by the general public, or to keep them but only for the most extreme sex offenders.

  I certainly don't want to risk there being another AfD, so if merging two or more of the articles will prevent that, then I am in favor. "Effectiveness" could be merged into "movement", but the "effectiveness" article is longer than the "movement" article, so it would then seem like the sub-topic is given more weight than the primary topic of the article, which could potentially create an impetus for someone to blank much of the content that was originally from the "effectiveness" article. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. Changing the name to something that would encompass both concepts is a possibility, but I'm not sure what the best fit for a name would be.

  Responding to "Its way too deep in the details and needs a rewrite to be useful for someone who wants an introduction to the issue":

  Some of the information regarding studies could be shortened, (such as in the section "Studies employing a comparison group") only going in-depth with the most notable studies and then saying something to summarize the general findings of the other studies, for example, "x, y, and z studies found no change after implementation of registries, while a and b studies found a benefit, and c and d studies found a detrimental effect." We have to remember, however, that while many readers are just wanting an introduction to the issue, others will be wanting as many details as possible. I generally think this fact is best dealt with by having a section or two at the top of an article that is geared more towards the casual reader, then having sections further down in the article that go into more "advanced" detail. This is often how articles for medications are arranged, for example. Vontheri (talk) 16:22, 24 August 2023 (UTC)