This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
Looking for ideas on standardization for pages for individual chapters of National Fraternities. So far I've seen (haven't worked my way through everything) Alpha Epsilon Pi Gamma Deuteron (which is Gamma Deuteron of AEPi Fraternity). Mu Alpha (which is Mu Alpha chapter of Alpha Phi Omega) and Delta (Chapter) (which is Delta chapter of Alpha Phi Omega). My idea is for Mu chapter of Zeta Zeta Zeta Fraternity should be Zeta Zeta Zeta, Mu Chapter .
Naraht 14:44, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Naraht 02:40, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
TomTomTomTomTommy 05:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
It is generally not a good idea to have individual chapters of national fraternities to have their own articles. It's not necessary and not encylopedic. In fact individual chapters who managed to have an article on wiki are currently being voted for deletion or merge to the national fraternity article. An article of a national fraternity with a list of the chapters is enough. We don't need individual chapters that are not really notable except by the individuals of that chapter. -- Dysepsion 21:04, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
I think this will be an issue that won't be resolved any time soon. This is like the current controversy of having high schools with their own wiki pages and determining notability isn't an exact science. I agree that there are many articles on here that not many people would be interested in and so I guess "interest" is really a moot point.
Alpha Phi Omega is a good example of the 32K limit and the inability to have a full chapter listing, but I would like to point out Lambda Chi Alpha which has 200+ chapters in which people have linked chapter websites to the article. My main concern is that wiki turns into a community forum and a pseudo blog for individual chapters.
Perhaps I should not have been so hasty in calling for all individual chapter websites to be erased. Certainly there are others such as Beta-Psi Chapter of Kappa Sigma and Dartmouth College Greek organizations that I believe are informative even for non members. It's the articles that I mentioned before that concern me. -- Dysepsion 00:12, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
First, the people at categories for deletion refuse to rename Category:United States student societies to anything to do with fraternities because "fraternity means different things" even if the word student is there or sorority. Bunch of idiots, anyway. So I decided to remove the fraternities that have chapters in Canada as they are international. I am putting them in the equal-level, Category:International student societies.
Also of importance is your use of the fraternity template in the article. This is not proper proceedure. A wikiproject cannot do this. A wikiproject may, if it chooses, use a template on the talk page of the article in question. It is also quite strange for a wikiproject template to have a category attached too. I have removed the template in one instance because the category conflicted with the new International student societies.
-- metta, The Sunborn 8 July 2005 16:57 (UTC)
I have to add my own input regarding my own little 'section' after stumbling onto this wikiproject. The NPC articles seem to be moving along quite well, I fix what I can (besides Alpha Epsilon Phi and Delta Phi Epsilon) and the pages seem to have a nice flow. Most of the pages have the same look/feel (infobox) and I personally feel, for the most part, they are complete (excluding the ones previously mentioned). I have taken the whole section under my wing; adding missing info boxes, reverting vandalism, and adding information/pictures where I can. I know Dysepsion, Lanoitarus, and a few others regularly contribute (long before I came to that particular section) but I feel besides some of the missing info, and horribly long pages filled with chapter's links (which I abhore), they are pretty much taken care of. Not that they can't be improved upon, but just stating my opinion here, and starting to ramble as well. -- ImmortalGoddezz 04:38, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
We can use this page to brainstorm before we set stuff down in stone on the project page.
What belongs in a Fraternity/Sorority article on Wikipedia:
What doen't belong:
Why?
These things I feel are on the slippery slope down to NPOV and realistically most fraternities stand for the same things like; the brotherhood of man, value of chivalry and religion, gentlemanly conduct... The trash talking we did in our college days were just a big lie ;). Dspserpico 04:07, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't oppose the inclusion of creeds in articles. I don't think including them is NNPOV if they are clearly described as a fraternity's self-proclaimed ideals. Also, when quoted verbatim, they do serve to differentiate these groups, while if merely described, they would not (due to similarity). On the other hand, I've just had (literally, just now) a bit of a change of opinion. While a creed, written verbatim, is better than nothing, a paragraph, with an external link to that creed, would probably be better. I could say
or, I could say,
Or some such like the above. The latter provides a lot more information to the reader in a much more concise way. The external links provide all the other information in case someone really needs to know. The information would have to be verifiable and NPOV. I think this is better than quoting mission statements. Fraternities are corporations, after all, and corporations' articles don't present the mission statements. The mission statements, vision statements, and ideals of a group focus on what the group wants to be and not what the group is and has been. The articles need to focus on the latter. Fraternities and Sororities are slightly different, in that they are founded, in part, specifically to foster their ideals in their members. That's why I still believe that a paragraph or two ought to be devoted to describing what a fraternity's values are stated to be. However, I would find it more useful to state that Lambda Chi originally expanded its membership by having an open policy towards first generation college students than to say that Lambda Chi expects its members to "strive for the highest academic achievement possible and [to] practice academic integrity." — vijay ( Talk) 04:36, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps what we need to do is to merge the positive aspects of the HTML boxes into the infobox template. My biggest concern is still ease of editing. My HTML skills are limited and when I'm fixing and expanding the other fraternity articles I will use the infobox for ease of editing.
Can I have anybody's opinion on this? Dspserpico 15:15, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Is joining a Wikiproject as simply as adding your name? Sign me up. — vijay 20:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Fraternities and sororities in the Philippines. Naraht 13:15, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Please join and also please give you input on some of the above discussions. Dspserpico 21:49, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Sign me up -- Edw28 08:47, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I would also like to join. I've done some work on local fraternities in New Orleans, esp. @ Loyola New Orleans -- Samwisep86
Count me in.- Robotam 19:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
To join: add your userid here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fraternities_and_Sororities#Participants ... hope that helps! ++ Lar: t/ c 20:45, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
For now, I think it is best for us to figure out a consensus of what we need to do by getting the best articles in the scope of our project and trying our best unify in look and content. I think the following articles can be our "prototypes" for what we want to do with this project.
The articles are are either already good, or has an active memeber of the project as a main contributor or both. This way we can experient with actual article without going into a revert war with a possessive editor. If you have any ideas of more articles to place on the list, plase add to it.
Also, I'll try to have a boilerplate of this project up by mid-afternoon tomorrow, California time. After that, I don't think I'll be able to get anything done because I will watch alot of baseball this weekend and I will boo Barry Bonds, alot. Dspserpico 04:21, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Let me know what you think and make edits if you feel like it. Is the "Red Plastic Cup of 'Soda Pop'" too much? Dspserpico 06:39, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
I think a paddle with WP on it would be quite nice. Batman2005 15:35, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
perhaps, if youd followed the instructions and contacted WP:WSS/P to propose your new stub type before just going ahead and making it, you would have been told that there was a perfectly good stub template and category already in existance for fraternities and sororaties. That way youd have saved us all a lot of work. Next time, please do things the proper way! Oh, and please use {{ Honor-stub}} and Category:Honor society stubs, the same as everyone else does! Grrr! BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 00:35, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay, I spent the last few weeks either in a drug induced stupor due to a convalescence from a wisdom teeth exteraction and finishing up school. I'm back so let's address a few things.
Thanks for your input about the red cup. I think the red cup should stay for the userbox template and as joke award among us ("The Wikipeida Red Cup of 'soda pop'" given for outstanding contributions to fraternity and sorority articles; it should be our own barnstar). I think poking fun at fraternity/sorority stereotypes is acceptable when it is only among us. I'm going to replace the red cup with laurels on the serious templates. Are laurels OK?
I don't think articles on inividual chapters are necessary and violates WP:NOT (Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information). Individual chapter are not notable, this is akin to writing an article on every single location of McDonalds or Starbucks.
Dspserpico raised some objections to the idea of including individual chapter articles (specific situations aside):
In answer to these questions, I look to WP:V. There I find, foremost, of course, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." More importantly, it continues: " This means that we only publish material that is verifiable with reference to reliable, published sources." Unfortunately, most of the articles in the scope of this project have trouble with reliable sources. Individual chapters will have even more trouble. To that regard:
Now, most of the national organizations' pages rely on the "official" website, primarilly, already. These national organizations have some standing, and, as such, this reliance isn't so bad. However, using lambdachi.org to write the entire article on Lambda Chi Alpha is coming dangerously close to POV, no? How much more so, then, would using a chapter's website to write about that chatper? The definative compilation for fraternity information is Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities — it is 3rd party and reliable, if not up to date. Since an edition can be found at most decently sized libraries (in my experience) it is actually useful as a tool for verifiability. National fraternities regularly make headlines in nationally reputable newspapers, as well.
I would argue that no such resources — commonly available and 3rd party — are available for any significant number of individual chapters. Wikipedia does not need a plethora of articles containing "only a founding date and a school".
While obscure content isn't harmful, we must remember that Non-notable topics do not belong (note WP:N is not a policy or guideline). From AfD Precedents we have that "School teachers, clubs, classrooms or lessons are not notable", and, while some chapters are more notable than clubs... I wouldn't bet there are a whole lot of them. Just because there's more to say about a chatper of a fraternity (this or that tradition, these awards, was this local, then joined this national, etc) doesn't actually make it more notable; it just gives it a longer, more detailed history. I also found the debate (which reached no consensus) on schools' notability to be worth reading in regards to this issue.
In fact, I find this last point, that local chapters are school clubs with a history, to be exceedingly to the point. Chapters, unless they've done something to get into The Washington Post, are just not notable. They don't belong.
Sorry for the long-ish post, but I was working on my thoughts as I went. I guess, in the end, if you don't subscribe to the idea that notability is a requirement, all of this is out the window though. : ) — vijay ( Talk) 07:51, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
This has turned into a great debate. Since it's late here, I'm going to keep this short for now, but I'll just shoot out my initial thoughts.
It's late. Hope this helps. And geez, you guys wrote a lot. See you on the flipside. Pat 09:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I am very wary of the "X and Y are in wikipedia therefore Z belongs too" arguemnt. And I have complicated opinion on the WP:Schools debate. I think almost High Schools, Colleges and Universities are notible for inclusion while I don't want every single educational institution to be included, especially at the lower levels like elementary and middle schools. The way I view things is that the big organizations and articles about fraternity movement in general are like the universities and colleges. The individual organizations are like high schools and individual chapters are like elementary schools. They lack notability and they lack an abundance of verifiable information. You are correct in saying that Jesuit high schools need their own separte articles. But do you think it is really necessary to do a full article on every single parish school even if the enrollment is really low. The are forty seven parishes in Diocese of Oakland that offers primary education. Then you add in all of the non-Catholic private schools and public schools in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties and that, is alot and not really necessary when you can do a write up of each school district. Creating thousands of two sentence stubs adds no value to Wikipedia.
You also point to character lists as a justification for the inclusion of chapter articles but if you click through most of those links do not link to individual articles, those are linked to list articles where each minor sith lord or simpsons character has a short one paragraph blurb. One major characters can have their own articles like Darth Maul or Homer Simpson while minor characters like Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon and Kaox Krul are in lists. This follows the notability guidelines set in WP:FICT, minor character articles are merged into list articles. In the scope of our project we already have chapter lists.
By the way, it's 3:17 AM in California, I need to go to bed. Dspserpico 10:18, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I think we're close too, and thanks, Vijay, for your great thoughts. How about this as a starting point, based largely on his ideas: that we keep the project as a descendent project and limit chapter data to only that which is present in Baird's, whose information will primarily reside in an article entitled "List of Chapters of _________" (or some other standardized titling format), with separate articles about individual chapters only added when the source data for the article can be verified as the content is added. (I do ask for some time to document everything on the Zeta Tau chapter, given this new round of discussions.)
For my part, I pledge that I will not be creating stubs for all these Beta chapters and will recommend for deletion any articles that would be created that don't conform to the guidelines above. We will have to separately and fully define "notability" at some point, but in the meantime, I think that if someone comes along writes a chapter article that does not reflect encyclopedic, NPOV and well-conceived of content (basically, creating an unverifiable rush brochure), we need to delete the article, and I will be one of the first to press that button. Thoughts? Pat 08:17, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Although I'm a Delta Sig ( Michigan Tech '83) and have done a few minor edits to that artice, I'm not a member of this project. Dspserpico asked me to pop by and share my thoughts though. An opportunity to be longwinded while appearing terse (look above!) is too hard to pass up! I'm inclusionist which colors my biases of course.
But my thinking on individual chapters is that by default they are not notable enough to warrant inclusion as articles in their own right. The boilerplate given above (founded 19xx, rivals with ABT, etc) is typically all one could say, and could be boiled down to a row in a table if it was desired to have the information available in the main organisation article. Be wary of making exhaustive and hard to maintain lists though... off wiki links to chapters seem a better approach if you ask me.
If a particular chapter satisfies notability, by having had significant mention in national media, then sure, give it an article. But notability on campus does not strike me as enough in and of itself, no matter how many thousands of alums it had. Further the (very loose) notability guidelines that highschools have gotten away with do not, in general, have wide acceptance and using them to justify chapter notability may be cause for some concern among non involved editors. So I'd expect a lot of such boilerplate articles to be taken to AfD shortly after creation, and to lose. It would be a rare chapter that would be notable enough for an article here.
That said, my read on all this, though, is that you all seem to be working through to the right answer. I hope this perspective has been of some assistance and best of luck with the project. + + Lar: t/ c 12:40, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Look at Alpha Phi Alpha it's actually a featured article. Dspserpico 02:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I was just wondering how we're progressing on the project. I went thru all of the NIC frats a couple of days ago and added templates where necessary. Are going to continue doing the same and adding and find frats or concentarte on something else within the project? -- Samwisep86 06:16, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
My local library has a copy of the 1991 edition of Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities, which I plan on taking a look at some time soon. If anyone wants any info from that book, I'd be happy to grab it.
Also, wikisource has the 1897 edition — it's in the public domain. Of course, many groups didn't exist in 1897 and none are the same as they were then. — vijay ( Talk) 05:35, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Just wanted to tell everyone on the project to keep up the good work! It's nice to see people getting together to tidy up greek organizations in general and not just the ones they belong to. A year ago I would've participated in the project but life got in the way and don't edit as much anymore =P -- † Ðy§ep§ion † Speak your mind 17:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I keep an eye on this project even though I do not consider myself a member of it. Over all I do not really have any advice, besides as stated previously by others keep off the typical frat/sorority stereotypes. What I do have for you though is a suggestion. Iota Nu Delta has recently undergone a ton of updates, of which are all copyrighted. I've contacted the fraternity because the updater says that he has permission from the president to use the material as per Wikipedia:Confirmation of permission but I have yet to hear back from the fraternity. Unfortunately the article needs some heavy revision in spite that. For one it sounds like a rush brochure, and for the other the infobox has been revised so it's not the projects standard infobox. Over all it's highly biased, uses weasel words, etc. I would work on this article myself but I just don't have the time that this would require. Which is why I throw it to you as a suggestion. -- ImmortalGoddezz 14:19, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Hey all, I've been informally dealing with this area for a while, mostly cleaning up vandalism and the like, but I was wondering what everyone else thought about the current practice of including lists of "notable" alumni in Fraternity pages. It is my own thinking that including this information is
I think we can all agree that nearly every sizable fraternity and sorrority has had its fair share of politicians, revolutionaries, celebrities, and more- Do we really need to waste absurd amounts of space listing them? The whole think reeks of unencyclopediac self-promotion to me. For just one example my own fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon, has so many "notable" alumni listed that they dont even fit on one screen. This seems absurd to me.
I've thought of a few possible solutions, and im curious what everyone thinks:
At the moment i personally favor removing "notable alumni" entirely, except where they are directly relevant to some aspect of the group (for instance, if any group was founded by a congressman or something along those lines), but im curious what everyone else here things... any thoughts? - Lanoitarus (talk) .:. 20:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Nova's idea seems reasonable although it still does not solve the problem of the long lists on a site. In the case of SigEp removing the red links would take out 12 out of around 60 and their is no reason i couldn't make those red links blue by typing up a quick stub which i'm sure some of the blue links are just stubs. So you would still have a long ugly list. I strongly think that their should be a notable alum list for every group. We are quite proud of our alumni and even those groups who don't have that many really famous ones. And many alum are proud of being in their greek organazation. Besides thats one of the primary reasons for going greek to become a Alum and have those networking connections. In any case i'm a fan of having a link to a list page for alums and perhaps a short blurb about the most famous alums such (as agian in SigEp's case) a short blurb about Dr. Suess and perhaps Orel Hershiser our two most famous, or in organazations that have them very famous people like Presidents. The rest could be linked out to a list page. Just my quick thoughts. -- Trey 00:22, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
To weigh in, I agree that having long lists of "notable members" in each article is distracting and not the point of the article. I also think that each group should have their own "notable members of XYZ" page. (Can articles have subpages? This would be perfect for that, but I don't think it's proper wiki practice. And it's finals week, so I'm not gonna find out right now. (: ) The main article could mention the most famous top ten, or something similar. Further, I think that chapter lists also belong on a separate page. (rational: A non-affiliated person is liable to want to know how big a fraternity is, i.e., "national, concentrated in the south" or "with 150 chapters mainly in the northeast." Students can usually find out what groups are on their campus through their campus's greek life page(s), and members can find out on what campuses their organization has chapters by looking at their organization's site. Therefore, to increase maintainability and readability of the main article I propose moving both of these "lists of" to their own pages for each organization with greater than 10 items in a list. But... I digress....) About requiring that notability == blue link, well, I think that would only increase the number of stubs we have. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes the "bar" for being "notable" significantly lower. And, though I had never considered it before, I agree that these lists violate non-neutrality, given that their sources are generally the central organization, and rarely (never?) mention criminals, derelicts, or good ol' fashion bums! :) Anyhow, I don't think these lists are bad, and I do see them as valuable assets to the encyclopedic body of knowledge here. But I see separating them as necessary for the main articles to reach high standards. lordy, I blather on. Sorry! — vijay is now gogobera 03:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I think most people in this project are alums of Fraternities and Sororities so perhaps some could understand my surprise when I’m browsing my Fraternity’s Wikipage Sigma Phi Epsilon and find our supposedly secret motto has been added to the site. Now I know some Frats guard their secrets more closely than others but in Sigma Phi Epsilons case the meaning of the letters in a very closely guarded secret or at least we as individual chapters try to keep it so. I do believe that most can agree that these rituals and secrets closely guarded or open secret are an important part of Greek culture. Personally I was mortified so see this on Wikipedia and I would hope that as you project members go about improving the articles that you discourage the publishing of private material. Just ask any Chi Omega member how it feels to have all of those secret passwords saying and rituals that you held dear or at the very least thought was kind of cool when you were in college put on display for everyone to see. Perhaps someone could share some further thoughts on this subject?-- Trey 23:41, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
yes that presents a problem. I do wish their was someway we could ensure that this would not happen but i understand the issues involved. Angry alum and depleged brothers are always problems for any chapter and really its just a matter of time before every greek group's secrets are out on the internet i just hate to see that happen through Wikipedia.-- Trey 00:21, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
This problem has come up with a lot of other sorts of secrets too. Plot endings in movies, the secrets to magic tricks, formulas for secret cookie recipes, etc. I admit bias, my fraternity's secret rituals are special to me and I'd prefer they not be revealed either, just as most of us, I suspect, do. Wheel warring or revert warring is not good but I think perhaps a template ASKING that secrets not be revealed be placed on the talk page after the secret is removed. If the secret can be shown to be copyrighted material that might be an angle to remove it under as well. I'm in general not sure what to suggest. Perhaps a posting to Village Pump policy section? ++ Lar: t/ c 02:11, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I like that thought. Perhaps it could be proposed and we could see where it leads. there is of course the issue of what is a seceret and what should be protected. It would be hard to limit it to just Greeks. Masons and other groups would also have to be included i would think. Although that i said i see nothing wrong with giving it a shot-- Trey 06:28, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm new to Wikipedia but a big fan, so please excuse any errors in my posting. As a volunteer officer and chief legal counsel to a national fraternity, I thought I would add my 2¢ worth. Much of what I do for my fraternity is manage its intellectual property. The ritual of a fraternity - if secret - cannot be copyrighted as that would require a deposit of the ritual in the Library of Congress, and thus defeat the purpose. It may carry a common law copyright, but is probably more charactarized as a trade secret, and entitled to protection as such. One who discloses the ritual of a secret society is violating any oath they took to be admitted to the organization. They are also violating any membership application they signed, and a breach of that agreement is enforceable. I think that modifying the existing WP:ORG would be a good way to go. Ironically, the secrets of an organization are usually the values they are supposed to be promoting, so it is curious that these are the things we keep secret. -- g-law 00:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
Looking for ideas on standardization for pages for individual chapters of National Fraternities. So far I've seen (haven't worked my way through everything) Alpha Epsilon Pi Gamma Deuteron (which is Gamma Deuteron of AEPi Fraternity). Mu Alpha (which is Mu Alpha chapter of Alpha Phi Omega) and Delta (Chapter) (which is Delta chapter of Alpha Phi Omega). My idea is for Mu chapter of Zeta Zeta Zeta Fraternity should be Zeta Zeta Zeta, Mu Chapter .
Naraht 14:44, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Naraht 02:40, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
TomTomTomTomTommy 05:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
It is generally not a good idea to have individual chapters of national fraternities to have their own articles. It's not necessary and not encylopedic. In fact individual chapters who managed to have an article on wiki are currently being voted for deletion or merge to the national fraternity article. An article of a national fraternity with a list of the chapters is enough. We don't need individual chapters that are not really notable except by the individuals of that chapter. -- Dysepsion 21:04, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
I think this will be an issue that won't be resolved any time soon. This is like the current controversy of having high schools with their own wiki pages and determining notability isn't an exact science. I agree that there are many articles on here that not many people would be interested in and so I guess "interest" is really a moot point.
Alpha Phi Omega is a good example of the 32K limit and the inability to have a full chapter listing, but I would like to point out Lambda Chi Alpha which has 200+ chapters in which people have linked chapter websites to the article. My main concern is that wiki turns into a community forum and a pseudo blog for individual chapters.
Perhaps I should not have been so hasty in calling for all individual chapter websites to be erased. Certainly there are others such as Beta-Psi Chapter of Kappa Sigma and Dartmouth College Greek organizations that I believe are informative even for non members. It's the articles that I mentioned before that concern me. -- Dysepsion 00:12, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
First, the people at categories for deletion refuse to rename Category:United States student societies to anything to do with fraternities because "fraternity means different things" even if the word student is there or sorority. Bunch of idiots, anyway. So I decided to remove the fraternities that have chapters in Canada as they are international. I am putting them in the equal-level, Category:International student societies.
Also of importance is your use of the fraternity template in the article. This is not proper proceedure. A wikiproject cannot do this. A wikiproject may, if it chooses, use a template on the talk page of the article in question. It is also quite strange for a wikiproject template to have a category attached too. I have removed the template in one instance because the category conflicted with the new International student societies.
-- metta, The Sunborn 8 July 2005 16:57 (UTC)
I have to add my own input regarding my own little 'section' after stumbling onto this wikiproject. The NPC articles seem to be moving along quite well, I fix what I can (besides Alpha Epsilon Phi and Delta Phi Epsilon) and the pages seem to have a nice flow. Most of the pages have the same look/feel (infobox) and I personally feel, for the most part, they are complete (excluding the ones previously mentioned). I have taken the whole section under my wing; adding missing info boxes, reverting vandalism, and adding information/pictures where I can. I know Dysepsion, Lanoitarus, and a few others regularly contribute (long before I came to that particular section) but I feel besides some of the missing info, and horribly long pages filled with chapter's links (which I abhore), they are pretty much taken care of. Not that they can't be improved upon, but just stating my opinion here, and starting to ramble as well. -- ImmortalGoddezz 04:38, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
We can use this page to brainstorm before we set stuff down in stone on the project page.
What belongs in a Fraternity/Sorority article on Wikipedia:
What doen't belong:
Why?
These things I feel are on the slippery slope down to NPOV and realistically most fraternities stand for the same things like; the brotherhood of man, value of chivalry and religion, gentlemanly conduct... The trash talking we did in our college days were just a big lie ;). Dspserpico 04:07, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't oppose the inclusion of creeds in articles. I don't think including them is NNPOV if they are clearly described as a fraternity's self-proclaimed ideals. Also, when quoted verbatim, they do serve to differentiate these groups, while if merely described, they would not (due to similarity). On the other hand, I've just had (literally, just now) a bit of a change of opinion. While a creed, written verbatim, is better than nothing, a paragraph, with an external link to that creed, would probably be better. I could say
or, I could say,
Or some such like the above. The latter provides a lot more information to the reader in a much more concise way. The external links provide all the other information in case someone really needs to know. The information would have to be verifiable and NPOV. I think this is better than quoting mission statements. Fraternities are corporations, after all, and corporations' articles don't present the mission statements. The mission statements, vision statements, and ideals of a group focus on what the group wants to be and not what the group is and has been. The articles need to focus on the latter. Fraternities and Sororities are slightly different, in that they are founded, in part, specifically to foster their ideals in their members. That's why I still believe that a paragraph or two ought to be devoted to describing what a fraternity's values are stated to be. However, I would find it more useful to state that Lambda Chi originally expanded its membership by having an open policy towards first generation college students than to say that Lambda Chi expects its members to "strive for the highest academic achievement possible and [to] practice academic integrity." — vijay ( Talk) 04:36, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps what we need to do is to merge the positive aspects of the HTML boxes into the infobox template. My biggest concern is still ease of editing. My HTML skills are limited and when I'm fixing and expanding the other fraternity articles I will use the infobox for ease of editing.
Can I have anybody's opinion on this? Dspserpico 15:15, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Is joining a Wikiproject as simply as adding your name? Sign me up. — vijay 20:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Fraternities and sororities in the Philippines. Naraht 13:15, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Please join and also please give you input on some of the above discussions. Dspserpico 21:49, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Sign me up -- Edw28 08:47, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I would also like to join. I've done some work on local fraternities in New Orleans, esp. @ Loyola New Orleans -- Samwisep86
Count me in.- Robotam 19:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
To join: add your userid here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fraternities_and_Sororities#Participants ... hope that helps! ++ Lar: t/ c 20:45, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
For now, I think it is best for us to figure out a consensus of what we need to do by getting the best articles in the scope of our project and trying our best unify in look and content. I think the following articles can be our "prototypes" for what we want to do with this project.
The articles are are either already good, or has an active memeber of the project as a main contributor or both. This way we can experient with actual article without going into a revert war with a possessive editor. If you have any ideas of more articles to place on the list, plase add to it.
Also, I'll try to have a boilerplate of this project up by mid-afternoon tomorrow, California time. After that, I don't think I'll be able to get anything done because I will watch alot of baseball this weekend and I will boo Barry Bonds, alot. Dspserpico 04:21, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Let me know what you think and make edits if you feel like it. Is the "Red Plastic Cup of 'Soda Pop'" too much? Dspserpico 06:39, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
I think a paddle with WP on it would be quite nice. Batman2005 15:35, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
perhaps, if youd followed the instructions and contacted WP:WSS/P to propose your new stub type before just going ahead and making it, you would have been told that there was a perfectly good stub template and category already in existance for fraternities and sororaties. That way youd have saved us all a lot of work. Next time, please do things the proper way! Oh, and please use {{ Honor-stub}} and Category:Honor society stubs, the same as everyone else does! Grrr! BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 00:35, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay, I spent the last few weeks either in a drug induced stupor due to a convalescence from a wisdom teeth exteraction and finishing up school. I'm back so let's address a few things.
Thanks for your input about the red cup. I think the red cup should stay for the userbox template and as joke award among us ("The Wikipeida Red Cup of 'soda pop'" given for outstanding contributions to fraternity and sorority articles; it should be our own barnstar). I think poking fun at fraternity/sorority stereotypes is acceptable when it is only among us. I'm going to replace the red cup with laurels on the serious templates. Are laurels OK?
I don't think articles on inividual chapters are necessary and violates WP:NOT (Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information). Individual chapter are not notable, this is akin to writing an article on every single location of McDonalds or Starbucks.
Dspserpico raised some objections to the idea of including individual chapter articles (specific situations aside):
In answer to these questions, I look to WP:V. There I find, foremost, of course, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." More importantly, it continues: " This means that we only publish material that is verifiable with reference to reliable, published sources." Unfortunately, most of the articles in the scope of this project have trouble with reliable sources. Individual chapters will have even more trouble. To that regard:
Now, most of the national organizations' pages rely on the "official" website, primarilly, already. These national organizations have some standing, and, as such, this reliance isn't so bad. However, using lambdachi.org to write the entire article on Lambda Chi Alpha is coming dangerously close to POV, no? How much more so, then, would using a chapter's website to write about that chatper? The definative compilation for fraternity information is Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities — it is 3rd party and reliable, if not up to date. Since an edition can be found at most decently sized libraries (in my experience) it is actually useful as a tool for verifiability. National fraternities regularly make headlines in nationally reputable newspapers, as well.
I would argue that no such resources — commonly available and 3rd party — are available for any significant number of individual chapters. Wikipedia does not need a plethora of articles containing "only a founding date and a school".
While obscure content isn't harmful, we must remember that Non-notable topics do not belong (note WP:N is not a policy or guideline). From AfD Precedents we have that "School teachers, clubs, classrooms or lessons are not notable", and, while some chapters are more notable than clubs... I wouldn't bet there are a whole lot of them. Just because there's more to say about a chatper of a fraternity (this or that tradition, these awards, was this local, then joined this national, etc) doesn't actually make it more notable; it just gives it a longer, more detailed history. I also found the debate (which reached no consensus) on schools' notability to be worth reading in regards to this issue.
In fact, I find this last point, that local chapters are school clubs with a history, to be exceedingly to the point. Chapters, unless they've done something to get into The Washington Post, are just not notable. They don't belong.
Sorry for the long-ish post, but I was working on my thoughts as I went. I guess, in the end, if you don't subscribe to the idea that notability is a requirement, all of this is out the window though. : ) — vijay ( Talk) 07:51, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
This has turned into a great debate. Since it's late here, I'm going to keep this short for now, but I'll just shoot out my initial thoughts.
It's late. Hope this helps. And geez, you guys wrote a lot. See you on the flipside. Pat 09:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I am very wary of the "X and Y are in wikipedia therefore Z belongs too" arguemnt. And I have complicated opinion on the WP:Schools debate. I think almost High Schools, Colleges and Universities are notible for inclusion while I don't want every single educational institution to be included, especially at the lower levels like elementary and middle schools. The way I view things is that the big organizations and articles about fraternity movement in general are like the universities and colleges. The individual organizations are like high schools and individual chapters are like elementary schools. They lack notability and they lack an abundance of verifiable information. You are correct in saying that Jesuit high schools need their own separte articles. But do you think it is really necessary to do a full article on every single parish school even if the enrollment is really low. The are forty seven parishes in Diocese of Oakland that offers primary education. Then you add in all of the non-Catholic private schools and public schools in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties and that, is alot and not really necessary when you can do a write up of each school district. Creating thousands of two sentence stubs adds no value to Wikipedia.
You also point to character lists as a justification for the inclusion of chapter articles but if you click through most of those links do not link to individual articles, those are linked to list articles where each minor sith lord or simpsons character has a short one paragraph blurb. One major characters can have their own articles like Darth Maul or Homer Simpson while minor characters like Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon and Kaox Krul are in lists. This follows the notability guidelines set in WP:FICT, minor character articles are merged into list articles. In the scope of our project we already have chapter lists.
By the way, it's 3:17 AM in California, I need to go to bed. Dspserpico 10:18, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I think we're close too, and thanks, Vijay, for your great thoughts. How about this as a starting point, based largely on his ideas: that we keep the project as a descendent project and limit chapter data to only that which is present in Baird's, whose information will primarily reside in an article entitled "List of Chapters of _________" (or some other standardized titling format), with separate articles about individual chapters only added when the source data for the article can be verified as the content is added. (I do ask for some time to document everything on the Zeta Tau chapter, given this new round of discussions.)
For my part, I pledge that I will not be creating stubs for all these Beta chapters and will recommend for deletion any articles that would be created that don't conform to the guidelines above. We will have to separately and fully define "notability" at some point, but in the meantime, I think that if someone comes along writes a chapter article that does not reflect encyclopedic, NPOV and well-conceived of content (basically, creating an unverifiable rush brochure), we need to delete the article, and I will be one of the first to press that button. Thoughts? Pat 08:17, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Although I'm a Delta Sig ( Michigan Tech '83) and have done a few minor edits to that artice, I'm not a member of this project. Dspserpico asked me to pop by and share my thoughts though. An opportunity to be longwinded while appearing terse (look above!) is too hard to pass up! I'm inclusionist which colors my biases of course.
But my thinking on individual chapters is that by default they are not notable enough to warrant inclusion as articles in their own right. The boilerplate given above (founded 19xx, rivals with ABT, etc) is typically all one could say, and could be boiled down to a row in a table if it was desired to have the information available in the main organisation article. Be wary of making exhaustive and hard to maintain lists though... off wiki links to chapters seem a better approach if you ask me.
If a particular chapter satisfies notability, by having had significant mention in national media, then sure, give it an article. But notability on campus does not strike me as enough in and of itself, no matter how many thousands of alums it had. Further the (very loose) notability guidelines that highschools have gotten away with do not, in general, have wide acceptance and using them to justify chapter notability may be cause for some concern among non involved editors. So I'd expect a lot of such boilerplate articles to be taken to AfD shortly after creation, and to lose. It would be a rare chapter that would be notable enough for an article here.
That said, my read on all this, though, is that you all seem to be working through to the right answer. I hope this perspective has been of some assistance and best of luck with the project. + + Lar: t/ c 12:40, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Look at Alpha Phi Alpha it's actually a featured article. Dspserpico 02:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I was just wondering how we're progressing on the project. I went thru all of the NIC frats a couple of days ago and added templates where necessary. Are going to continue doing the same and adding and find frats or concentarte on something else within the project? -- Samwisep86 06:16, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
My local library has a copy of the 1991 edition of Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities, which I plan on taking a look at some time soon. If anyone wants any info from that book, I'd be happy to grab it.
Also, wikisource has the 1897 edition — it's in the public domain. Of course, many groups didn't exist in 1897 and none are the same as they were then. — vijay ( Talk) 05:35, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Just wanted to tell everyone on the project to keep up the good work! It's nice to see people getting together to tidy up greek organizations in general and not just the ones they belong to. A year ago I would've participated in the project but life got in the way and don't edit as much anymore =P -- † Ðy§ep§ion † Speak your mind 17:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I keep an eye on this project even though I do not consider myself a member of it. Over all I do not really have any advice, besides as stated previously by others keep off the typical frat/sorority stereotypes. What I do have for you though is a suggestion. Iota Nu Delta has recently undergone a ton of updates, of which are all copyrighted. I've contacted the fraternity because the updater says that he has permission from the president to use the material as per Wikipedia:Confirmation of permission but I have yet to hear back from the fraternity. Unfortunately the article needs some heavy revision in spite that. For one it sounds like a rush brochure, and for the other the infobox has been revised so it's not the projects standard infobox. Over all it's highly biased, uses weasel words, etc. I would work on this article myself but I just don't have the time that this would require. Which is why I throw it to you as a suggestion. -- ImmortalGoddezz 14:19, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Hey all, I've been informally dealing with this area for a while, mostly cleaning up vandalism and the like, but I was wondering what everyone else thought about the current practice of including lists of "notable" alumni in Fraternity pages. It is my own thinking that including this information is
I think we can all agree that nearly every sizable fraternity and sorrority has had its fair share of politicians, revolutionaries, celebrities, and more- Do we really need to waste absurd amounts of space listing them? The whole think reeks of unencyclopediac self-promotion to me. For just one example my own fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon, has so many "notable" alumni listed that they dont even fit on one screen. This seems absurd to me.
I've thought of a few possible solutions, and im curious what everyone thinks:
At the moment i personally favor removing "notable alumni" entirely, except where they are directly relevant to some aspect of the group (for instance, if any group was founded by a congressman or something along those lines), but im curious what everyone else here things... any thoughts? - Lanoitarus (talk) .:. 20:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Nova's idea seems reasonable although it still does not solve the problem of the long lists on a site. In the case of SigEp removing the red links would take out 12 out of around 60 and their is no reason i couldn't make those red links blue by typing up a quick stub which i'm sure some of the blue links are just stubs. So you would still have a long ugly list. I strongly think that their should be a notable alum list for every group. We are quite proud of our alumni and even those groups who don't have that many really famous ones. And many alum are proud of being in their greek organazation. Besides thats one of the primary reasons for going greek to become a Alum and have those networking connections. In any case i'm a fan of having a link to a list page for alums and perhaps a short blurb about the most famous alums such (as agian in SigEp's case) a short blurb about Dr. Suess and perhaps Orel Hershiser our two most famous, or in organazations that have them very famous people like Presidents. The rest could be linked out to a list page. Just my quick thoughts. -- Trey 00:22, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
To weigh in, I agree that having long lists of "notable members" in each article is distracting and not the point of the article. I also think that each group should have their own "notable members of XYZ" page. (Can articles have subpages? This would be perfect for that, but I don't think it's proper wiki practice. And it's finals week, so I'm not gonna find out right now. (: ) The main article could mention the most famous top ten, or something similar. Further, I think that chapter lists also belong on a separate page. (rational: A non-affiliated person is liable to want to know how big a fraternity is, i.e., "national, concentrated in the south" or "with 150 chapters mainly in the northeast." Students can usually find out what groups are on their campus through their campus's greek life page(s), and members can find out on what campuses their organization has chapters by looking at their organization's site. Therefore, to increase maintainability and readability of the main article I propose moving both of these "lists of" to their own pages for each organization with greater than 10 items in a list. But... I digress....) About requiring that notability == blue link, well, I think that would only increase the number of stubs we have. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes the "bar" for being "notable" significantly lower. And, though I had never considered it before, I agree that these lists violate non-neutrality, given that their sources are generally the central organization, and rarely (never?) mention criminals, derelicts, or good ol' fashion bums! :) Anyhow, I don't think these lists are bad, and I do see them as valuable assets to the encyclopedic body of knowledge here. But I see separating them as necessary for the main articles to reach high standards. lordy, I blather on. Sorry! — vijay is now gogobera 03:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I think most people in this project are alums of Fraternities and Sororities so perhaps some could understand my surprise when I’m browsing my Fraternity’s Wikipage Sigma Phi Epsilon and find our supposedly secret motto has been added to the site. Now I know some Frats guard their secrets more closely than others but in Sigma Phi Epsilons case the meaning of the letters in a very closely guarded secret or at least we as individual chapters try to keep it so. I do believe that most can agree that these rituals and secrets closely guarded or open secret are an important part of Greek culture. Personally I was mortified so see this on Wikipedia and I would hope that as you project members go about improving the articles that you discourage the publishing of private material. Just ask any Chi Omega member how it feels to have all of those secret passwords saying and rituals that you held dear or at the very least thought was kind of cool when you were in college put on display for everyone to see. Perhaps someone could share some further thoughts on this subject?-- Trey 23:41, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
yes that presents a problem. I do wish their was someway we could ensure that this would not happen but i understand the issues involved. Angry alum and depleged brothers are always problems for any chapter and really its just a matter of time before every greek group's secrets are out on the internet i just hate to see that happen through Wikipedia.-- Trey 00:21, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
This problem has come up with a lot of other sorts of secrets too. Plot endings in movies, the secrets to magic tricks, formulas for secret cookie recipes, etc. I admit bias, my fraternity's secret rituals are special to me and I'd prefer they not be revealed either, just as most of us, I suspect, do. Wheel warring or revert warring is not good but I think perhaps a template ASKING that secrets not be revealed be placed on the talk page after the secret is removed. If the secret can be shown to be copyrighted material that might be an angle to remove it under as well. I'm in general not sure what to suggest. Perhaps a posting to Village Pump policy section? ++ Lar: t/ c 02:11, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I like that thought. Perhaps it could be proposed and we could see where it leads. there is of course the issue of what is a seceret and what should be protected. It would be hard to limit it to just Greeks. Masons and other groups would also have to be included i would think. Although that i said i see nothing wrong with giving it a shot-- Trey 06:28, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm new to Wikipedia but a big fan, so please excuse any errors in my posting. As a volunteer officer and chief legal counsel to a national fraternity, I thought I would add my 2¢ worth. Much of what I do for my fraternity is manage its intellectual property. The ritual of a fraternity - if secret - cannot be copyrighted as that would require a deposit of the ritual in the Library of Congress, and thus defeat the purpose. It may carry a common law copyright, but is probably more charactarized as a trade secret, and entitled to protection as such. One who discloses the ritual of a secret society is violating any oath they took to be admitted to the organization. They are also violating any membership application they signed, and a breach of that agreement is enforceable. I think that modifying the existing WP:ORG would be a good way to go. Ironically, the secrets of an organization are usually the values they are supposed to be promoting, so it is curious that these are the things we keep secret. -- g-law 00:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)