Talk:List of animal rights groups

2004
This page is intended to replace the animal rights list of List of animal welfare and animal rights groups. There seems to be a consensus on the talk page of that article that merging the two pages was a mistake, and I agree. The two kinds of groups are different, disagree (often publicly) on major issues of animal protection, and for the most part are easily classified. So, I will try to do this classification.

On another note, I would argue that classifying these groups by whether or not they support or use violence against people is rather shamelessly POV, especially given the fact that of the groups listed as such on the other page, only two could reasonably be argued to even condone violence against humans (SHAC and JD, although SHAC is quite a stretch and the JD has probably ceased to exist), while the others (ALF, BoM, HSA, and PETA) are officially and unequivocally against violence. To say otherwise is, in my humble opinion, ludicrous. Therefore, I intend not to employ the classification on this page. I welcome discussion, though.

A more reasonable classification in my mind is "Above ground" and "Below ground", since it not really open to interpretation (except for SHAC, which I'm sure we can all agree is hard to classify in many ways), and is actually a useful, informative distinction, rather than one made solely to discredit the groups listed in the mind of the reader.

---SpaceMoose 11:32, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's correct to classify SHAC, SPEAK, and the HSA as leaderless resistance movements. They very clearly have a centralised structure: addresses, phone numbers, spokespersons, newsletters, etc. It's true that sometimes people will independently do things towards the same goal as their campaigns, but this could be true of any organisation. Maybe you could say, for example, the overall campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences follows a leaderless resistance model, but not SHAC itself. Arfan2006 17:15, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Shac is leaderless, as it doesn't have a leader or membership. There is a campaign office with a selection of volunteers who help to keep the site running, be a press office and relay information from meetings of people who decide what to do under the 'shac' banner. This is the same for the other 2 also. Take a look at their articles and you will see a better explanation I believe.-Localzuk (talk) 18:42, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * HSA is leaderless, in that it is a network of autonomous local groups. The central functions of press officer, merchandise, tactics, groups liaison etc are guided by the individual groups and members at annual meetings. Applicants for membership are pointed in the direction of their local groups. SPEAK and SHAC may be different, in that there are people that could be identified as working 'full on' (all-be-it as unpaid volunteers) for the camapigns, However as they are not 'employed' or even elected, 'leaders' might not be an appropriate term, especially as there are plenty of other active supporters ready to pick up the baton whenever these guiding hands are 'detained' elsewhere. Paddedrock 06:17, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I would like to help with this list, but please advise: Paddedrock 06:17, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Is it mainly intended as a listing of groups included on Wikipedia, or as a listing of 'all' groups - in which case the list would be huge (for example the World Animal Net Directory claims to list 17,000 organizations with 10,000 links to web sites and the Animal Contacts Directory lists over 500 'national' groups in the UK alone).
 * I agree that the distinction between animal welfare and animal rights is reasonably clear, or at least debatable on a case by case basis, but how would you define groups as suitable (ie notable enough) for inclusion?
 * The internal & external links are mixed together - this could be due to many people adding individual groups, which may be a good thing. The List_of_animal_welfare_groups seems more clearly defined, with separate sections for internal & external links.

Inclusion criteria?
This list desperately needs some inclusion criteria for redlinks, otherwise I am going to remove them.--ukexpat (talk) 15:11, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * All red links removed. Other lists like this have a "prior page" requirement.  If it isn't notable enough to have a page, it isn't notable enough to be here.  If someone wants to add a new organization, it needs to have its own page.  Else it is just blatant promotion. --Stabila711 (talk) 15:30, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I see that five years later, still no one has made any inclusion criteria. I just removed all the redlinks that have crept into this list-article. This page is a mess: no lede paragraphs, no citations. It's full of duplicates and a lot of defunct "campaigns". I think I will put all the defunct items in one section at the bottom (rather than just deleting them at this point). Some campaigns do not belong on a list about "groups" and some are linked to a group's page as if it was one momentary campaign they were responsible for. Such groups don't rate a second entry in the list. I'll work on it further. Normal Op (talk) 03:54, 10 July 2020 (UTC)


 * ✅ I have created a lede for the page and added a statement of the inclusion criteria. I have removed some duplicates, and moved some of the defunct groups into their own section at the bottom (and gave it its own lede and inclusion criteria). However I have NOT checked ALL the entries to see who still is operating and who is no more, and to evaluate if they are in the correct section. (Not yet, anyway. Jump in if you want to double-check all the entries, too.) I have switched the labeling from "movement" to "network" because this list is about GROUPS & ORGANIZATIONS, not some "ideology" held by an amorphous non-specific mass of people saying they support these ideologies. Even the leaderless-resistance groups have leaders and a core of people, even if they're operating "underground". If the list-article was titled "List of animal rights ideologies", that would be different; but that's not the title. Normal Op (talk) 05:58, 11 July 2020 (UTC)