Talk:Validation (gang membership)

Title and topic

@Noleander: As the original author of this article is there any reason you chose to disambiguate the title of this article from "Validation" by using parentheses? To me, it would seem a more precise and natural title would be "Validation of gang membership". When I first saw the title of this article I wondered if it would cover aspects of the Social validation, or even Emotional validation, conferred by gang membership. So I am quite surprised about the real topic of this article, and think a small name change is in order. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 21:24, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I think I went with the current title because "Validation" is a word, a noun, used within the criminal justice/ prison realm. So this article is defining the word. The page Validation lists several meanings of the word "validation" and several of those pages use parenthesis, such as Validation (drug manufacture)

Another example: the word "clutch" has several meanings, and the page Clutch_(disambiguation) lists them. Many of them use the parenthesis convention, such as Clutch (mascot) or Clutch (sports).

Maybe the WP Naming rules at Wikipedia:Article_titles have some guidance on this? Perhaps it is best to ask some Wikipedia experts in article naming. Not sure where to go for that ... maybe Wikipedia:Help desk or Wikipedia:Community_portal. Noleander (talk) 21:26, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

@Noleander: I suppose the quickest way to elicit the help of experts in Wikipedia article naming is to propose a name change and see what the community thinking on the name of this topic is. However, I think doing that is a bit premature, otherwise I would have already proposed it, or even boldly moved the article.

At this stage, I would prefer to explore why you gave the article the title you did, and perhaps what it probably should be, as there is no point renaming an article if it is given a wrong title. I suppose what I am trying to get my head around is what topic are you intending this article to be about? Because, once we all know that, we can then come up with a good title for the topic. Your title has the scope to be a far broader topic, and could cover the processes that are used by law enforcement agencies, generally, to determine if a person is a gang member and how this might be validated in a particular jurisdiction. It is even broad enough to cover the psychological benefits that a person might receive as a result of gang membership, or cover the explanations, research and theories for why people join gangs.

The article you have started probably also has global parallels, as the problem of identifying, confirming and validating gang membership is a vexing one for law enforcement agencies world-wide. Gangs are not inclined to share their membership details with law enforcement agencies, so those agencies will often dedicate considerable resources to identify those people who are gang members. However, your reply has also caused me to delve more deeply about what is the nature of the overall process actually going on in the U.S. Criminal Justice System and what is a good name for it. Several of the articles refer to a "gang" as being a "Security Risk Group (SRG)" or a "Security Threat Group (STG)" and the process seems connected to identifying and classifying prisoners based on the risk they might pose to other prisoners and prison staff, as well as the wider community, after being release. However, this is only a small aspect of the broader topic of how law enforcement determine which people are gang members - if that is what this article is about.

Wikipedia:Article titles does have guidance about the title of an article, and I did wiki-link to them in my comments above, so perhaps I need to explain my thinking more clearly. The disambiguation guideline WP:QUALIFIER list four different ways to disambiguate an article title. The guideline I am referring to is at WP:NATURAL, which explains that natural titles should be a preferred option. Also WP:CRITERIA and WP:UCRN both advise to use a natural and commonly recognizable title, while WP:PRECISE says titles should be unambiguous enough to be distinctly different from other titles so that disambiguation is not needed, although a balance needs to be struck to avoid WP:OVERPRECISION. But none of these are really applicable until the scope of the article is established. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 23:47, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I have no objection to renaming the article ... go ahead and do a RFM or whatever it is called these days. Thanks for paying attention to the article! Noleander (talk) 19:21, 21 February 2024 (UTC)