# Talk:American Civil Liberties Union

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, .... <citation>
* Criminal Justice - Blah, Blah, .... <citation>
* Abortion - Blah, Blah, .... <citation>
Thoughts on using bullets for Position section (vs the prose that is in the article currently)? Noleander (talk) 18:12, 8 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)

Ditto, several months later. Same IP. Noleander (talk) 02:27, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

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

IP: the state affiliates are important.  There are several good links, and many wikidata links.  Also, the table is a "red link" style reminder to create articles for the affiliates. 
Also:  See Talk page section  above about tagging the "Support & Opposse" as a "controversy" section, which it is not. Noleander (talk) 03:24, 2 August 2025 (UTC)