Talk:American Civil Liberties Union#New Link

Two out of three of the introducing sentence sources are directly from the ACLU describing themselves. Is this not some Wikipedia:Verifiability AboutSelf conflict? Citing the organization as what the organization is, is problematic. I read the Institute for Justice that confidently labels them as libertarian without sourcing. Burden of proof seems incredibly low for that article.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210607011010/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

New York Times labels them as progressive as recently as 2021. HoadRog (talk) 14:26, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

: Re the ACLU sourcing itself, I've added "states that it", in order to place the quotation in context. Other characterizations can of course be added, per normal editing. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:35, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

::AboutSelf is "Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselves." Since the ACLU is a reliable source, it does not apply. Furthermore, even if it did, it relates to material that is self-serving or makes exceptional claims.

::Since the information was already in quotes, adding your qualification probably violates MOS:DOUBT.

::TFD (talk) 18:02, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

::: If the textual qualification were "claims that it...", then MOS:DOUBT might be applicable. But "states that it..." is neutral, and does not violate MOS:DOUBT. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:37, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

::: I've updated sourcing to be archived FAQ pages, as the three previous sources didn't have the exact quotation. Today's ACLU website doesn't seem to have such a concise overall mission statement, so I used older (archived) versions of the FAQ page. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:01, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

The Positions section is in pretty sad shape: it only has a couple of random sentences. Conversely, the second paragraph in the lede is better: contains info that many readers consider important, even vital. Recently, User:Marquardtika removed quite a bit of text from the Positions section, reasoning that the sources were links to ACLU web site ... that was a valid decision. Perhaps the Position section could be defined as follows:

• Independent Source: Source must an independent RS (news sources, etc), not an ACLU document
• Current positions only: any source from, say, before 2000 is probably not acceptable for defining a current position of ACLU, unless position is a long-standing core position
• Relatively important positions: no need to clutter the section with obscure positions
• Terse summaries preferred: Additional detail can be lower in the body of the article, in appropriate section
• National vs State: Should only include positions of the national ACLU; state chapter positions should be included only if very noteworthy

Thoughts? Noleander (talk) 14:40, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

:Since there appear to be no objections, I'll begin working on this task. Noleander (talk) 15:22, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

::I'm making good progress on the Position section. Currently it is prose style. But it seems much more useful to readers to present it as bullet style (one bullet per position). For example:

::::* Voting Rights - Blah, Blah, ....

::::* Criminal Justice - Blah, Blah, ....

::::* Abortion - Blah, Blah, ....

::Thoughts on using bullets for Position section (vs the prose that is in the article currently)? Noleander (talk) 18:12, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

This article has always been huge. So it made sense when the entire History section was cloned and put into a new article History of the American Civil Liberties Union in April 2024. But what is the plan for the remaining History section left in this article? It is still huge.

Also, the History section used to have subsections like "1980s", "1990s", "21st Century" and so on. Those subsections are gone now ... was that deliberated in the Talk page? I see that those subsections are still used in the History of the American Civil Liberties Union article.

Should the History section in this article be pared down to be a brief synopsis of the History of the American Civil Liberties Union article? That may help with editing going forward; specifically, it looks like this main ACLU article gets heavily edited, but the History of the American Civil Liberties Union is being ignored. If this article's History section were to be condensed, that may prod more editors to go to the new History article.

Thoughts? Noleander (talk) 15:57, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

:Would agree with condensing the section here to be a summary of the subarticle, per WP:DETAIL. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:06, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

::Alright, since there seems to be no objections, I'll begin doing some condensing work in the History section. I'll try to strike a good balance between (a) minimizing duplication between the two articles; and (b) keeping this article's History section useful & comprehensive.

::My plan is not remove any citations from this article's History section, even if the associated sentence is removed - provided that the citation is directly relevant to the topic of the (remaining) paragraph/section. Noleander (talk) 15:22, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

An IP editor has removed some sentences from the section American_Civil_Liberties_Union#Support_and_opposition ... not sure why, the sentences are all valid and sourced. The topic of the section is very noteworthy and of great interest to readers.

The purpose of the section is to present to readers: (a) some of the organizations/groups/people/factions that either support or oppose the ACLU; (b) some specific, noteworthy actions/policies of the ACLU that have drawn significant/noteworthy support or opposition; (c) To shed light on the perennial question of whether ACLU is liberal or conservative or both or neither.

Bear in mind that this article had some edit-warring many years ago in the Lead, debating if the ACLU should be labelled as "partisan" or "non-partisan", and one of the purposes of the "Support and Opposition" section is to forestall those kinds of wars, by providing readers with an informative, neutral summary of the "liberal vs conservative" question.

Note that the "History" section is huge, and is in the process of being moved into another article History of the American Civil Liberties Union (see Talk:American_Civil_Liberties_Union#"History"_section_vs_History_of_the_American_Civil_Liberties_Union_.._too_much_overlap? ) Therefore, moving content from any of the upper introductory sections (including "Support and Opposition" section ) into the History section, will probably cause the information to disappear from this main article in the future. Therefore, any important "overview" type info should stay in the upper sections (and not be put solely into the History section).

If someone wants to change the purpose and nature of the section, please discuss here first, before changing. Noleander (talk) 15:47, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

{{yo| Cbls1911 }} why are you removing the sentence "The ACLU works to support the right to vote."? Noleander (talk) 23:08, 25 June 2025 (UTC)