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WP:Neutral policy and WP:Citation overkill

ViperFace, make sure that you are adhering to the WP:Neutral policy, including what its WP:Due weight section states, at this article and at other articles about sex offenders. As you know, editors who weighed in at Talk:Sex offender and at Talk:Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act have concerns about you giving criticism of the sex offender laws and registries too much weight, while never focusing on what positives sources cite about such matters. As you know, James Cantor doesn't seem to have had any problems with your edits on these topics while MONGO, ScrapIronIV and DHeyward especially have. There is obviously a place for criticism of the sex offender laws and registries, so I am not arguing against that.

Also be mindful of WP:Citation overkill; it's an essay, but it's followed, especially in cases such as this one. Flyer22 (talk) 02:07, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I was not aware of WP:Citation overkill. This is a controversial subject. People hold strong opinions which are some times unfounded. The reason why I over-killed with citations is the lesson learned from AWA case: there are editors who refuse the reality and substitute their own, even when faced with overwhelming evidence. The problem with positive sources is that there seems to be none, except general opinions of politicians and victim advocacy groups of public registries being "useful tool". Academic RS on current state of registries is unanimously critical, period. I'm going to re-write the effectiveness section where I'll cite few studies finding positive effect of registries. (There exist only 2 or 3 I'm aware of and they come from states applying risk-tools.) Also, I'm contemplating writing a section of perceptions of these laws by general public vs. academics. I'm happy to see you here Flyer22. You are one of those editors that make me trust Misplaced Pages, and who keep my kind of editors with strong POV on check. On the other end of spectrum are editors you mentioned above, and one you forgot, Tom Harrison. ViperFace (talk) 15:42, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, ViperFace. I'll go ahead and WP:Ping Tom harrison as well. Flyer22 (talk) 15:48, 13 September 2015 (UTC) (His username is lowercase; fixed WP:Ping with second try. Flyer22 (talk) 15:50, 13 September 2015 (UTC))

I didn't forget Tom harrison, by the way; I simply didn't know he was involved. Also, why did you think it a good thing to link to those wikipediareview.com threads? Flyer22 (talk) 06:36, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Tom got involved when AWA article was turning into edit war between Me and James pulling in one direction and MONGO and Dheyward in other. Prior to that Tom had shown little interest (only one revert in 2012) towards said article. Dheyward (aka Tbeatty] had shown zero interest, but jumped in when MONGO alone was in trouble due to me and James presenting a mountain of RS to support our position. To me it looks like what is described in Wikipediareview, pretty much went down on AWA talk page. I did follow these users for a while and saw Tom, Mongo and Dheyward tag teaming against individual users in other articles. Some times this seemed warranted as they were fighting with tin foil hats in 911 related articles, but some times, not so much. I don't now how much ScrapIV interacts with said editors, but together they all managed to get James, and eventually me tired enough to drop it, even though multiple un-involved editors coming in trough A/NI by James and my RfC were supporting my proposed edits. Scrap got involved trough so I'd be cool with him had he not lied in another A/NI claiming that my proposed edit "was practically single-sourced from an advocacy website", when in fact of 19 sources one was editorial, half from peer-reviewed journals and the rest from news. As I said, your kinds of editors make me trust WP, non-consensus seeking editors undermine my trust. PS. I have removed the links as potentially inappropriate as they allege wrong doing but might be just rumors started by someone who got as pissed as I did. ViperFace (talk) 09:21, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Merge discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Result: As nominator, I'm closing the merge discussion. There was no consensus to merge the other three articles into this one. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  15:47, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I am proposing that the articles regarding the three major US federal laws on sex offender registration (Megan's Law, Jacob Wetterling Act, and Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act) be merged into the existing sections of this article that are about those three laws respectively. The reasons for this merge include:

• most of the material from the source articles is already present in this article (redundancy),
• there is the strong possibility of POV forking over time because there is much academic criticism of the cumulative effect of the three laws: the repetition of this criticism into each of the three (short) source articles may give the appearance of giving the cricism undo weight, while not replicating it may appear to violate WP:NPOV.
• The three source articles are fairly short and there is little liklihood of expansion (except for the aforementioned criticism sections)
• Fully understanding the topic presented in each of the three source articles requires a broader approach to explaining the background, which background the destination article already offers.

Per WP:MERGEREASON, merging should be avoided if:

• "The resulting article is too long or clunky" (the merge would add very little to this article -- most content already in place and sections for the topics already exist, avoiding the "clunky" criteria)
• "The separate topics could be expanded into longer standalone articles" (the source articles are unlikely to expand except by the addition of material that is likely to also be added to this article anyway)
• (and) "The topics are discrete subjects warranting their own articles, even though they might be short" (In this case, the article topics are a continuation of the same topic, and that topic itself is a major part of the destination article)

Your comments are welcome! Etamni | ✉ | ✓  18:15, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose at least at this point. I was planning to move what is in Adam Walsh Act section (section 7) out of the way into AWA main article and get rid of the repetition to make this article more readable. I planned to remove "effectiveness and consequences" soon as consequences are already pretty much covered and I have effectiveness section almost ready. I think, the Adam Walsh Act article alone would make this article too long IMHO. I'd personally want to see how this article looks like when all the pieces of information that was fragmented all over the place in Sex offender registry find its own section here. I'm currently working on it, so please could we wait a little. I might support merging at some point later, but I think Adam Walsh Act deserves its own article, and merging it would be problematic due to its length. ViperFace (talk) 19:36, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

• There is no explicit time limit on merge discussions, so I'm fine with delaying the actual merge (if consensus determines that one should happen) pending the completion of the work you are doing here. Is there specific material about the Adam Walsh Act that you feel does not belong in this article, or is your concern more to do with overwhelming the article with information about this one particular bill, possibly obfuscating the remaining info behind too much detail? Etamni | ✉ | ✓  22:52, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

• At this point more with overwhelming the article witjh AWA. I already imported the Tiers of offender section under Adam Walsh Act into the main article and removed the the rest of the section. I'd like this and other articles to be tidy if/when merge happens, so that there would not be much repetition coming from other articles. I'm also pro-WP:Preserve kind of guy and I don't want to accidentally lose valuable information when preparing these articles for merging. To me this seems a big move but it sounds very logical. I'd like to hear what more experienced editors have to say ViperFace (talk) 02:53, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

• Support (while Valuing ViperFace's comment), the articles do provide a lot of similar information and readers would have a more consolidated starting off point, to dig deeper into the sub-topics using the references provided. On the one hand there is an unlimited storage space on WP so everything could have it's own article, on the other hand these topics are closely related and could be covered well by merging. I assume links would exist to point reader from the existing article names (i.e., someone types "Megan's Law" and gets redirected to this article). It makes some sense from a readership perspective. I'm behind the curve with the history/development of this article and the Sex offender registry article too, seems like they could be linked in some greater way, or the other article renamed "Sex offender registry-international" or something like that, with a link in the US section to this article. --Cityside (let's talk! - contribs) 22:24, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, there would be redirects for people searching for the articles under their individual names. Also, any current link or other redirect to the existing articles would be corrected to point to this article instead. (There are tools for that which make it fairly simple to accomplish). As for the history of this article, it was recently created as a split from Sex offender registries because, I believe, the US-centric info was starting to overwhelm the article, leading to a lack of international balance.Etamni | ✉ | ✓  22:52, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

• I stroked over my vote as I'm not categorically against this idea. Now that I have seen your comments merging sound logical. I'm just worried how large this article will become and if it brings any issues per WP:SIZE. AWA article is quite large already. What do you think of splitting the "list" of court decisions into separate page? ViperFace (talk) 02:35, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose merging the Megan's Law and Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act articles; those topics are WP:Notable enough for their own Misplaced Pages articles, and not close to being WP:Stubs. Any redundancy at this article regarding those topics should be handled via good old-fashioned cutting at this article, including WP:Summary style. The Sex offender registries in the United States article is big enough as it is. Flyer22 (talk) 04:03, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Navigation bar

Should we place Template:Sidebar or something similar to this article and other related articles? It would help readers to navigate between articles that are closely related. I support the idea behind the merge proposal (to tie these articles together more closely) but it's probably not the best way to proceed. Navigation sidebar would put it forth for readers that there are other articles covering different but closely related information. For what I have read, it seem that some times Megan's Law and Adam Walsh Act are used almost interchangeably to refer to sex offender registration in general, some times Adam Walsh Act is referred as a "New Megan's Law", "Megan's Law II" or "Revised Megan's Law". Likely many of those who search for Megan's Law are actually looking for AWA (they just don't know it) or vice versa, or they just want information on sex offender registration in general, which would mean this article. Navigation bar would help readers not so familiar with these topics to draw difference between individual major laws and guide them to what ever article they may be interested to explore. ViperFace (talk) 15:06, 22 September 2015 (UTC) WP:SERIES seems to be exactly what I proposed above. ViperFace (talk) 15:21, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

In theory, such a navigation aid sounds good, but be advised that small nav-boxes routinely get deleted at TfD. It might work out better to simply put a hatnote in place to let readers know that there is more to wikipedia's coverage of the subject, with a link to a broader article (presumably this one). Meanwhile, the law-specific sections of this article still link back to individual articles, so those looking for more info about a particular law can still find that info too. (Do not consider this comment to mean I am opposed to the idea -- it means only that there are practical considerations we need to be aware of and discuss.) Etamni | ✉ | ✓  16:18, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I support the ideas.... anything that would add clarification and cross referencing would be really good for readers to better understand the topics, similarities/differences. I have to confess I don't know what all the terms would look like (I don't have a visual picture of them) but like the idea of easy-to-click buttons, boxes, or links. --Cityside189 (let's talk! - contribs) 22:54, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I have added hat notes to Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act and Megan's Law to draw distinction between those two, and Template:Broader to guide interested readers from those to this article. ViperFace (talk) 21:04, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@Etamni (and everyone else): what from your experience might be considered too small nav-box? I have attempted to identify potentially relevant articles. On top of those already mentioned I'm aware of following:

• Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act
• International Megan's Law to Prevent Demand for Child Sex Trafficking
• Jessica's Law
• California Proposition 83 (2006)
• United States National Sex Offenders Public Registry (overlaps heavily with this article)
• Connecticut Dept. of Public Safety v. Doe
• Smith v. Doe
• Julia Tuttle Causeway sex offender colony

I personally think the section listing court decisions (at least those on state level) should be on separate article, so that would do one more. If the article series would be named "Sex offender laws in the United States" there could be couple of relevant articles more e.g.:

• PROTECT Act of 2003
• Sexually violent predator laws

Would these be enough for nav-box? Is it necessary to have an article on exact name of article series as Sex offender laws in the United States does not exist yet?ViperFace (talk) 13:26, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

It appears there is enough info to meet the "rule of five" -- make sure you read everything you can find about templates before you create it, including the essay Not everything needs a navbox and A navbox on every page. I strongly suggest not changing the color from the default; this seems to be frowned upon at WP:TfD sometimes, usually on the basis that other colors are not accessible for some users. Speaking of TfD, you should read multiple comments and nominations there to understand the most common reasons templates get nominated for deletion. (Apologies if you have already done so, of course.) Other than that, just be bold and do it. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  00:43, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Neutrality disputed

This article has been posted to the NPOV noticeboard here in hopes of soliciting neutral contributions for balance. Right now this entire article reads as a soapbox against sex offender registries.--MONGO 11:39, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I have removed the NPOV template as I do not believe Mongo has given sufficient justification. See my statements on the Noticeboard page linked in previous paragraph. deisenbe (talk) 15:08, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I have restored it. This article is garbage and one of the worst POV laden things I have ever read on this website. Until the noticeboard declares the dispute is settled the tag must be displayed. My next step since you seem to think other voices are not needed is to send this hopeless mess to Afd.--MONGO 16:09, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm fine with hearing what other editors think. I also agree that NPOV templates should not be reverted when the issue has been posted to NPOV noticeboard. ViperFace (talk) 17:43, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I'd like to hear other editors too. But to call the article "garbage" is neither polite nor helpful. deisenbe (talk) 18:34, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree.ViperFace (talk) 21:48, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Request for comments

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following list: Politics, government, and law When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

I'm requesting outside opinions on the recent addition of NPOV template on this article to find out if community thinks it is warranted. If it is, what should be done to achieve neutrality? Note that this issue is also being discussed here The article cites 44 peer reviewed studies, one book compiled by scholars, multiple studies by government organizations, two reports by The Human Rights Watch and long list of news articles supporting the content. Some of the references might be not so good, since I have not checked them yet (This article originates from Sex offender registry per WP:SPLIT). From past experience with editor responsible for adding the template I'm certain that this dispute will not have a fruitful outcome without large community involvement. ViperFace (talk) 21:20, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

• Leave the Template - Let the NPOV Notice board discussion play out. It's clear multiple editors have NPOV concerns here. NickCT (talk) 13:08, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
• Remove Template I don’t normally edit US law or politics articles but am familiar with UK equivalents. Whilst paedophiles are universally unpopular, I would expect views to reflect cultural differences between US and European editors. The UK has had similar complaints of registration for fairly minor infringements but UK authorities refuse to publish it because of a known risk of extra-judicial punishment –sometimes based on mistaken identity or sheer ignorance. Whilst I wouldn’t like to live next to a paedophile, this article fairly highlights the cruelty of registering trivial cases and what I and many UK editors would regard as unintended but significant violation of human rights. JRPG (talk) 17:52, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
• Template stays. ViperFace is precisely the kind of editor this website doesn't need....a single purpose account with an agenda who is working in a controversial area and has turned this article into a POV pushing advocacy piece against legislation that has not only continued to be enacted, but in most cases strengthened to protect the innocent from sex offenders.--MONGO 18:23, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

It's not your normal style MONGO but it does look like a personal attack on ViperFace. WP:AGF applies JRPG (talk) 19:17, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

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