Category talk:Animal rights activists

Inclusion criteria

This category seems to me to be overpopulated. Perhaps some thought should be given to including only those persons who have made animal rights advocacy a major aspect of what they are notable for, as opposed to including every celebrity who has ever said something nice about animal rights. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:09, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

One start may be to rename this cat and the list as 'activists' - advocates is a much woolier concept, i'm sure there are lots of people who believe animals should be treated better, and even celebrities who have at times spoken out against this, but unless they follow up those statements with actions I'm not sure if this becomes DEFINING for them. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:30, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

FYI, interesting history on this category, which was originally called activists: Category:Animal rights activists history - there was a sort of slow-revert-war of pointing this to the movement, then back again. I guess people weren't used to using CFD in those days to resolve these issues... --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:33, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

"Advocates" is more appropriate than activists. Many academics, for example, want to be known as animal rights advocates, but are not activists; Martha Nussbaum is an example. It's also the term they often use for themselves. As for numbers in the category, it's not particularly large. If someone makes it known that they're an animal rights advocate, we can't ignore it just because we feel it's not central to them in some sense. I'd need examples of the kind of individual we're talking about. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:56, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Christina Applegate is one - her bio states: "Applegate is a vegetarian,[25] and in 2007, appeared in an anti-fur ad for PETA.[26]". I don't think people should be in this category just because they appeared in a PETA ad. If you want to have another category for "Animal rights scholars" for people who have written and studied this, that would be acceptable, but otherwise I think we should rename as activists and trim drastically to only those for whom this is defining and for people who have actually taken action or where this is more or less their day job. It doesn't matter whether Nussbaum "wants" to be called an animal rights advocate, the question is, when secondary sources talk about her, do *they* call her that? There are so many shades of advocacy around this issue, from just saying that you don't eat meat, to fighting against animal testing, etc, that I think the lumping here is unhelpful and this list has attracted a lot of cruft - and not WP:DEFINING. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:13, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I think that SlimVirgin makes a good point about the category name, although I wouldn't necessarily object to a category name based on "scholars". Someone like Nussbaum or Peter Singer is an advocate in a different way than someone like Alex Pacheco or Rod Coronado is; the latter are undeniably activists in a very literal sense of the word, whereas the former are very much different in their level of activism versus advocacy (and scholarship), and yet they clearly (to me, at least) do belong in a category like this. My concern isn't really about the category name, but about its overpopulation – containing, as it does, every celebrity who has ever gotten their photo taken at a PETA fundraiser or said something nice about vegetarianism. As I just said in another category discussion, it can end up being a subtle form of POV-pushing, where we seem to tell our readers: "oh, look, this person you looked up because you are interested in their hit song is also a member of the animal rights movement, along with so many other celebrities!" Let's consider a counter-example about whom Slim and I have had interesting discussions in the past: David Hubel. I've thought a number of times about putting his page, and the pages of quite a few other scientists, into a category of critics of animal rights. And let's face it, however credible or not-credible Hubel is about what Pacheco did or didn't do in Taub's lab, we have reliable sourcing that shows that Hubel has said critical things about the animal rights movement! I could add those categories, and maybe signal to readers: "oh, look, all these highly respected scientists think that animal rights is a pile of (expletive)". But I didn't. Because I really cannot justify to myself that someone like Hubel, who is spectacularly notable for how he added to our knowledge of how the nervous system sees things, is in any defining way defined by something he published once as President of the Society for Neuroscience. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

There are people who aren't scholars or activists, but who are advocates, so I'd oppose splitting up the cat. Also, I've never seen anyone call themselves an "animal rights scholar" (and I can only think of a handful or two it would properly apply to), whereas it's almost always clear whether an academic is also an AR advocate. The philosopher Colin McGinn, for example: not an AR activist, not really an AR scholar, but definitely an AR advocate.

I can't speak for others who add this cat, but I often email the subject to ask if they want it to be added (particularly in cases where it might be in dispute), and the answers are often an enthusiastic yes, with links to material the subject has written about it. So subjects tend to see it as an important part of themselves; I think supporting it might be important to a person in a way that opposing it might not. Again, I'd need to see examples of where it had been added frivolously. (Christina Applegate has often spoken out on behalf of animal rights, so that's perhaps not a good example of a frivolous addition. If people are being added after having said one thing in public about something only distantly related, that's something that can be dealt with at the article level.)

I think to ask "do secondary sources call Martha Nussbaum an animal rights advocate?" is to misunderstand. She writes about legal and philosophical issues that impact on animal rights. Other academics respond to her work. It is obvious from those discussions that she is an AR advocate, so if you're familiar with the animal rights academic literature (or moral philosophy in general), it's likely that you'll be familiar with that aspect of her work. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I think I now agree about not splitting off a "scholar" category, and I still agree that it should remain about "advocates", not "activists". I suppose that basing a categorization on an e-mail from the subject, while impeccable form with respect to WP:BLP, might be a little dicey with respect to WP:NOR, if for no other reason that the person probably doesn't know much about Wikipedia's editing guidelines. Furthermore, the problem isn't that the categorization isn't verifiable, it's whether it's sufficiently defining. If there are plenty of independent secondary sources that focus on the person's advocacy (whether or not they explicitly use that phrase), enough to make it a due-weight section of the person's bio page, then fine. And I fully accept that the issue, at least as I raised it, probably comes from other editors adding the category to pages as they drive-by. That's really what prompted my opening remark: that I'd like to find a way to dial back some of the indiscriminate use of the category on people just because they are celebrities. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. WP:DEFINING is the guidance we should follow, not "ask the subject if they like this label" - we should follow reliable secondary sources. I think for many of the people on this list, animal rights advocacy is not defining. Let's take another example - abortion rights. There are many people who are pro-choice advocates, and will write on their blogs about pro-choice or go to rallies, etc. But there are also activists, and it is the activists for whom this is defining. See the header of Category:American_pro-choice_activists for an example. I dont' see why splitting is a bad idea - as you noted yourself, there is a real different between Nussbaum and Pacheco, so there's no issue with categorizing them differently. what I don't agree with, in this particular case, is a woolly "advocate" category that doesn't seem to limit participation or presence at all. Yes, Christina Applegate has spoken out on behalf of animal rights, but many celebrities have spoken out on behalf of many things, but that doesn't make them "activists" - which is why I think renaming and rescoping this category (and splitting out the scholars) would do a fair amount of good, as the remaining contents would really be just those for whom reliable sources regularly discuss either their scholarship or activism in the animal rights space. It's possible Applegate will pass the bar, but most celebrities, even those who have stripped for PETA, would not. Again, the example of pro-choice is informative - there are only around 60 people in that category, even though I'm quite sure there are many more celebrities than that who have spoken/supported/marched/etc for pro-choice - but they still haven't passed the bar of being activists. WP:OCAT exists for a reason, and read Wikipedia:OC#OPINION, which says "Avoid categorizing people by their personal opinions, even if a reliable source can be found for the opinions. This includes supporters or critics of an issue, personal preferences". I think we should start by moving all of the activists, that are really such, to Category:Animal rights activists, and purge this one of anyone who isn't a scholar or other serious researcher/writer/speaker, and see what we're left with - and then consider renaming this category to something with "scholar" or "researcher" or something similar in the title - advocate for this particular category doesn't work IMO. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:55, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Just as a not-very-serious aside, I remember I once saw a documentary about PETA, in which a couple of celebrities who were at a fundraiser were interviewed, and one of them was Ron Jeremy. I just looked at his page, and was pleased to see that he is not in this category, but if he were, it would be a perfect example of what I'm concerned about. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:02, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Ok, here's a real example: Brandy_Kuentzel - minor celebrity, really only notable because of being on a reality show. She sounds nice, she's a vegetarian and volunteers at animal shelters, and given that she was interviewed due to her celebrity, she had a chance to promote animal rights. All fine and good - but that should not land her in a category along side someone like Muriel_Dowding,_Baroness_Dowding, who founded a society for animal rights. "Advocate", especially for this issue, is way too broad a word, and WP categorization guidelines specifically call out these sorts of examples of not classifying people by their opinions. Volunteering at an animal shelter doesn't make you an activist - founding PETA, yup, that qualifies. As another example, imagine if we had Category:Womens' rights advocates - how many famous women would *not* claim to be strong supporters for womens' rights? But that's not enough... Note: even the header of this cat says "for academics, writers, and activists" - so the header itself excludes regular old advocates! --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:09, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, those two examples (Kuentzel versus Dowding) are exactly what I'm talking about. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:17, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The current name of the category will continue to attract that sort of cruft unfortunately...

I'm interested that you changed your mind on the scholars/academics category. For example, we have Category:Scholars of antisemitism and Category:Historians of fascism, etc. There may even be people who would be both activists and scholars, but I think it's useful to call out people who have mostly argued for animal rights through research/scholarship/publication, vs those who have gone out and tried to rally the masses - and splitting the category is a good way to get around the issue of people like Nussbaum who don't see themselves as activists, but could nonetheless be considered to be DEFINED by their position and scholarship on animal rights itself.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:27, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I said that, about the possible scholars category, because I was trying to find a middle ground, and because I'm really just concerned with the over-use of the category, not what it's called. I'm going to let you and Slim work out the category name issues. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:43, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Ok, well that said, why don't you take a shot at drafting inclusion criteria for the category as it stands today. My position is, it should be split and renamed as activists + scholars/academics, but in any case, I think the contents of "animal rights advocates" today should be the same as the contents of "animal rights activists" + "animal rights academics", so we can sort the inclusion criteria separately from potential category renames. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:02, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I put a first stab at it on the category page. Please feel free to revise etc. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:16, 13 June 2013 (UTC)