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Society Five

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2024
Entity authorityQ7552018
Source-derived summary

Society Five was a gay rights and social support organisation formed in Melbourne, Australia, in January 1971. Initially known as Campaign Against Moral Persecution, after the Sydney-based organisation that inspired it, the group was soon renamed Society Five. For a decade it campaigned on behalf of Melbourne's gay community, as well as offering a telephone counselling service. By 1977 it was matched in strength by the Homosexual Law Reform Coalition. By 1981 it had disbanded, following internal conflicts.

Editorial summary

“Society Five” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Society, Five and Open-knowledge can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1971, 1977, 1981—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1971. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Society, Five and Open-knowledge.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Society Five” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Society, Five and Open-knowledge provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7552018. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1977 and 1981.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Society Five”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Society Five primary sources, Society Five archive and Society research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Society Five”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Society Five” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.