Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fraternities and Sororities/Archive 1

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Chapter Naming Conventions

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)

I would suggest the form Delta (Alpha Phi Omega). Rmhermen 15:43, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

I suggest Delta of Alpha Phi Omega, or Delta Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega. It is important to standardize this. -Lommer | ^talk 19:42, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I like the second, it seems most clear.

Naraht 02:40, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I concur with Delta Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega. Very clear and formal. Pat 08:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Using the national name first followed by the local name makes the most since when it comes to a hierchy of information.

TomTomTomTomTommy 05:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Individual chapters of National Fraternities

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 disagree. Some chapters are over 100 years old and have thousands of graduated members to whom the chapter is very important. They are often a major force in campus politics, athletics, and local charity events, and are usually very well known to other members of the greek community at that college. Some chapters own a house that is among the oldest buildings on campus. When I look at some of the blogs and websites that have articles in wikipedia, I find it difficult to believe that someone can designate them as more deserving of a wiki article than an individual chapter. Now, I know I've come across fairly strongly here, and I don't mean to say that we shouldn't hold articles on chapters to the same standards of NPOV and content (i.e. meaningful history) that we hold other articles, but IMO deleting chapter-specific articles across the board by tarring them with the broad brush of "not notable" is going too far. Further, detailed histories of each chapter would overly clutter the national organization pages, so I think that small, well written and NPOV articles are totally appropriate. -Lommer | ^talk 22:36, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Pretty much all well known fraternities have 100+ yr old chapters with thousands of alumni. No one is denying their notability on campus or even local events. The point is who would be interested in reading about specific chapter articles except members of that specific fraternity? I agree, wiki does have many articles about some of the most miniscule subject matters such as blogs and websites. What I'm concerned about is which chapters of a fraternity are considered notable? Is there a certain criteria? The problem is in dealing with this issue, it's inherently subjective. What one person may consider a "notable" chapter another person may not. Refer to current Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Chi Delta. I'm still open to the possibility of having individual chapter articles but not entirely convinced. What's to say that a chapter of any club can have an article? Further detailed histories of chapters can be accomplished via link to that chapter website or maybe a seperate article listing notable chapters of that fraternity and their specific history and noteriety. I just don't see the point of having a "seperate" article. I'm especially concerned about articles such as Beta Rho chapter of Alpha Phi Omega and Mu Alpha chapter of Alpha Phi Omega which, I believe, borders on vanity and candidates for VfD. Just my two cents. --Dysepsion 04:50, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

The other problem with having complete chapter listings is the 32K limit. A complete listing of the Alpha Phi Omega chapters including chapter name and School is beyond that limit.

I think there is a broad audience for these articles including parents, friends, relatives of members, students rushing different fraternities at a given university, or anyone generally interested in the history of secret societies, college/academic culture, or the general history of a given college. Also, I would say that even this argument as a whole is something of a red herring, because (for example) who would be interested in reading about slashdot except the thousands (ok maybe millions) of people who read and post on that site? That doesn't mean it isn't worth writing about.

As for which chapters are notable, I would answer that the easy criterion is those chapters that have decent articles written about them. This also brings me to the articles you pointed out. I was actually kind of disappointed to see these, as you're right about their generally low quality. I would say that an extensive list of past and current executives is not appropriate, without which most of those articles would be stubs. IMO, a decent chapter article would be:

Chapter X of Y fraternity was founded in YYYY with help from chapter Z. It built its house at address A in YYYY, and moved to a different house at address B in YYYY. This chapter has been a dominant force in (athletics, academics, etc) at the university, winning the following championships/awards in these years (...). Chapter X is notable within the (inter)national fraternity because (won awards, was first chapter ever, first international chapter, etc). Chapter X has also had a tradional rivalry with chapter P of Q fraternity at the local campus.

Sure, some of these things might not be appropriate for all articles, but that just means that they have to be individually tailored as most good wikipedia articles are. I'm sure there are lots of chapters whose pages wouldn't have much beyond some names, and in that case I would agree that they are fancruft/vanity and should be deleted. -Lommer | ^talk 23:09, 20 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)

Ah, on those notes I would wholeheartedly agree with you. So is there consensus that bad chapter articles should be deleted, but good chapter articles (of which there are exceedingly few) can stay? -Lommer | ^talk 01:29, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

If they are done properly I don't see why not. --Dysepsion 02:05, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Can someone point to a *good* chapter article so that I can see an example? As the maintainer of Alpha Phi Omega, I was very aware of how good or bad the articles were. My feeling is that if the Mu Alpha chapter one had been viewed on its own rather than as a sweep with the others it would have survived. Naraht 15:03, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

• After seeing what Dartmouth has I'd like to see many schools with large and historical greek systems do the same. I know Cornell certainly has potential for this, do any other schools come to mind? --Edw28 08:52, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Fraternity articles

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)

NPC Sororities

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)

Please continue to do so. We also need to remain cognizant that this Project is for Fraternities *and* Sororities Naraht 12:25, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

A fresh start: What belongs and what doesn't belong

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:

• History
• Overview of Symbols (flag, crest, membership badge, pledge pin, other symbols)
• Active Chapter and Colony list

Active chapters only, some small fraternities can get away with including dormant chapters but big ones like Theta Chi, Tau Kappa Epsilon, Sigma Phi Epsilon, and sororities like Sigma Sigma Sigma will have overly long lists. Dormant chapters are usually not notable, but if they are they are usually mentioned in the history section.

• List of notable alumni

What doen't belong:

• Fraternity Creed
• Fraternity Mission Statement
• Or other ideals

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)

Here's my take on this.

• The infoboxes are not standardized but I like how some fraternity and sorority articles have pics of the their pin, flag, pledge pin, etc. on the infobox. It prevents these images from being scattered all over the article. I did this with my fraternity (Phi Delta Theta) and began adding this type of arrangement with sororities. I haven't yet did this to fraternity articles and I'm reluctant to because members tend to get territorial. (I'll see what happens because I would like to see a somewhat uniformed look)
• I also abhore chapter lists because they really don't add anything to the article. They're really only there because members of that particular fraternity/sorority wants to see a mention of their chapter on wiki. Seriously, who finds a long list of schools and chapters interesting? If the list becomes too long, you might want to consider moving it to a seperate list/article. This has been done with Sigma Nu and Phi Delta Theta after some debate.
• As for the fraternity creed, mission statement, etc. this is a tough one. Stuff like that is what seperates fraternities/sororities from each other, but at the same time I definetly see how it could be misconstrued as POV. I've seen this many many times and you often see "tone" and "pov" tags a lot in fraternity articles. In fact, this is the main reason, why many non-Greeks try to have the article deleted in the first place. --† Ðy§ep§ion † ^{Speak your mind} 00:16, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that the similarities of all fraternities to each other ought to be reflected in the structure of the fraternity articles. Since they all have badges and mottos and founders and founding dates and cetera, that information should be presented in a similar way. Presumably, the average wiki-reader browsing through the fraternity pages would be interested in comparing that information, and so it should be as simple to compare as possible. Templates and infoboxes seem like the standard practice to achieve those results.

Fraternity creed etc, seem like they provide less useful information to a reader than, say, founding date and school. However, I feel that it would be more effort than it's worth to try and keep them off of all the greek pages. Again, it seems to me that having a common format for presenting these items in a NPOV way, perhaps towards the end of the articles, is the best way to go for that. I imagine language such as "The Alpha Beta Gamma fraternity adopted the following as a {creed/mission statement/etc} in 1920." I believe it should be at the end to let the fraternity's actions speak louder than its words (so to speak). Cleaning up the copy/paste from fraternity websites, and the associated NNPOV, I think will be far more beneficial to the pages than removing creeds.

In regards to chapter lists, I totally agree with Dysepsion. The number of chapters the organization operates, the geographic region the chapters exist in, and other general information about the chapters should be in the main article. The list itself is dangerously close to vanity. However, a separate chapter list should be maintained for each fraternity. The purpose there is twofold, while it removes the chapter list itself from the main article, it also keeps the information around for readers. I imagine the average wiki-reader saying "is there a chapter of this group at my/my kid's school?" — it would be useful to have that information. Secondarily, keeping the list somewhere means that people won't continually try to add the list to the main pages.

Also, an aside to Dspserpico: I assume you mean the "slippery slope to NNPOV." I agree that it's slippery; however, I don't think it's too bad. A lot of pages about an organization mention what the org. claims about itself. I think that makes sense. What's important is to provide neutral information about what the organization has done, and what other sources have said about them, so that readers aren't forced to use creeds or mottos as their only information. — vijay 04:27, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

For Alpha Phi Omega, I'm completely opposed to a chapter list or even an active chapter list being on Wikipedia. We have 350 or so active and 730 total charters. OTOH, a link to those chapters lists on a fraternity site is fine. Any feeling on how many is too many for an article? Naraht 15:06, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Not including the mission statement or ideals or other literature is a really bad idea. What is the rush to make all the fraternity articles "appear the same" or "discuss their similarities." Anyone in a fraternity knows they're not all similiar. Additionally, these pages serve to help educate the general public about a certain fraternity. Why then would we strive to make them all appear the same with no mention of the actual founding principles of the fraternity? In many cases, the mission statement, or creed, etc...IS the founding principle of the fraternity. Thus having these things on the pages is very important! Batman2005 15:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

When I say "appear the same" I mean a unified look. Every MLB team is different, all MLB team articles (say Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim share a smiliar structure, the content won't be the same but the look will be the same. We're creating our own way of wikifying here. As to creeds and all that we need to find a NPOV way of presenting a fraternity's ideals. I find a listing creeds and preambles to be very POV. Instead of listing the creeds verbatim we should transwiki them to wikisource and have "Fraternity Culture/Values" section like a good Corporation article does (like Google). Like fraternities and sororities corporations have mission statements and all the stuff that defines how the company is like but that stuff is not quoted verbatim in wikipedia because it seems vain. Dspserpico 18:53, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Explain how a creed or a mission statement is POV? Its not saying "all our members are this" its saying "this is what we strive to be." It's not POV if its true, the mission statements are true in that the fraternities and sororities are founded and operate on those priniciples, that's not POV that's reality. Batman2005 22:43, 5 June 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

==Creed==

We believe in Lambda Chi Alpha…etc.

==Vision==

The vision of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity is to prepare...etc.

==Mission==

The mission of Lambda Chi Alpha is to offer... etc.

==Basic Membership Expectations==

Lambda Chi maintains that its members should strive to maintain the following thirteen basic membership obligations:

• I will know and understand...
• ...

==Twelve Ideals==

The twelve ideals of lambda ...

etc etc etc etc. Even if these were subheadings under a larger heading of "values and ideals", it would be poor writing

or, I could say,

==Values and Ideals==

Lambda Chi expresses its ideals in several ways. ... All members recite the creed during the opening of each chapter meeting[cite source]. ... The fraternity also holds vision and mission statements, thirteen Membership Expectations, as well as a list of twelve ideals. The fraternity's main attempt to instill these values in its members centers on ...

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)

Template: Infobox Fraternity

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)

Joining?

Is joining a Wikiproject as simply as adding your name? Sign me up. — vijay 20:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I also would like to assist. I've worked extensively on both Alpha Phi Omega and

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)

Our plan of action

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.

• Alpha Sigma Phi It's a pretty good article
• Phi Delta Theta good article and I don't think Dyspepsion would mind if we tinker with it a bit
• Alpha Phi Omega
• Delta Sigma Phi
• Theta Xi (I know the alumni need cleanup -- Aaron charles)

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)

Boilerplate up

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)

D- I wish we could find a better icon than a plastic cup. Let's skip the paddles, too. I am curious to hear what ideas others come up with. I need to think about it. For now I have added to the Wiki Projects User Boxes, keep up the good work. -- Aaron charles 02:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Let's avoid symbols derived/associated with hazing and drinking. I'd even say that they're NNPOV. The typical symbol of fraternalism seems to be clasped hands: I'd pick something like that. Since this is for frats and sorors, stylized, ungendered hands might be better than a photo, if clasped hands were adopted. I'm sure there are other symbols of fraternity, but nothing comes straight to mind. I'd rather see a fez than a “red cup”. (This is mainly copy pasted from my comment below. Is that bad form? If so, sorry, in advance.) — vijay (Talk) 18:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I think a paddle with WP on it would be quite nice. Batman2005 15:35, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with that even though I've had many a red cup in my day. I'm ok either way with what you all decide.Pat 18:40, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

GRRRRRR!!!!

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)

There is a difference between HONOR fraternities and SOCIAL fraternities. I think this separate stub is fine. ACMe 01:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

In fact some of the groups with the Honor Society stub need to be changed over (If they are still stubs), Alpha Epsilon Phi was the first one I noticed. Naraht 10:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

So are we actually using the red cub stub template on the project page or not? Naraht 12:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I really hope we're not using a red cup. I'm not using a red cup. Fraternities have a hard enough time being taken seriously as useful beyond a party scene. Unless we start having sections discussing notable parties or notable drinking contests, I think it would be best to stick with something a bit more dignified. The most notable thing red cups are associated with are horrible incidents of alchohol poisoning. Even those tend to only be notable when someone dies.

The typical symbol of fraternalism seems to be clasped hands: I'd pick something like that. Since this is for frats and sorors, stylized, ungendered hands might be better than a photo, if clasped hands were adopted. I'm sure there are other symbols of fraternity, but nothing comes straight to mind. I'd rather see a fez than a “red cup”. (Sorry, I think I missed an earlier debate about this.) — vijay (Talk) 18:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm back

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.

Templates and the "red cup"

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?

that seems fine. I think the red cups are still pretty cool tho --Samwisep86 05:13, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

At times I feel like the wikipedia could use a dose of humor, but this is supposed to be a professional quality resource, so no fun allowed, in my opinion. Personally, I'm less inclined to use a userbox with a red cup, but I'm wiki-savvy enough to change it for myself if necessary. I've got no real problem with others using it. The templates are serious, as was said, and I think the laurel wreath is a good choice. Columns, might also be good, now that I think of it--but not particularly better. I think I'm happy the way things stand now. — vijay (Talk) 05:41, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

A descendant wikiproject?

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.

I disagree, and you can begin understand why if you look at the work I've done in this vein. However, I think it's an entirely preposterous assertion to put fraternity chapters on the same level as McDonalds locations (particularly in this forum), especially since chapters have very distinct histories into which hundreds and often thousands of people have put time into building upon and really caring about... in contrast, that sort of involvement is very distinct from some cappucino place in a mall. For background on my contention, please see here. You note indiscriminate information as a reason not to pursue the project, but which of the 9 points of consensus does this fall under? I would argue none of them. In fact, the page notes that there is no limit to what Wikipedia can encompass, so long as it is verifiable and neutral. Additionally as articles warrant, new articles are not only necessary, but encouraged by the community, to fully detail the subject matter at hand. Also note the section on self-promotion, where Wikipedia explicitly condones the creation and maintenance of articles for persons and small groups so long as they maintain their NPOVs and hold to encyclopedia guidelines.

I appreciate your concern, but I think this project is acceptable by Wikipedia standards. If you like, I'll provide multiple examples of how smaller groups are given articles separate from their main articles. Also, if there is a consensus, I'll gladly remove the Beta project as a descendent project of the fraternity project. I must wonder, however, that if the Beta project is not an acceptable extension of this project, if such a project even exists. Tell me how I can assuage your concerns. Pat 04:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

How can we verify such information from reliable sources(WP:V and chapter websites are usually less reliable than national websites)? How can we make sure such information is not original research (WP:OR)? How can we enforce NPOV and avoid vanity? Most of the notability criteria on wikipedia calls for notability on a national, not a local level. And local notability is usually reserved for something big, a local crime scandal for instance. I really have problems believing that a component chapter of a fraternity that has been chugging along without much incident has enought notability to be included wikipedia. Besides, when a fraternity story hits national press (and thus gains notability) it is usually somthing bad, like hazing, alcohol death or even racism. I would love to write an article on Delta Sigma Phi, Zeta Omicron Chapter but a Delta Sig Chapter that has been around since 1981 that hasn't amounted to much besides winning a few academic awards and greek week over ten times does not deserve mention in wikipedia. Dspserpico 04:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, I think the Starbucks/McDonalds comparison is apt. Chapters are branches and components (or even "franchises") of fraternities, there are special McDonalds (like the one that invented the Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Fremont, California or the one down the street from my house that looks like a California Mission) as is there are special chapters of fraternities. Dspserpico 04:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Your concerns are ones that people ask about Wikipedia as a project at the time. That said: On verification -- that is a continual process. Not permitting articles to be created doesn't prove them to be unverifiable, and there are always paper documents that can be cited if the truthfulness of an article comes into question. If citations are needed, those will be noted over time and provided. As you know, this is standard practice. On original research -- that's fixed through the citations, which will naturally come. Notability -- I'm not sure where you got this national v. local definition, but I guess I have to ask: who is Dave Eshelman? And honestly, I'm glad you answered that question by writing that article, regardless of his clear national and regional non-notability outside of northern California. And as far as NPOV is concerned -- that will be maintained by those interested in the articles. My record is a testament to my neutrality on these subjects, and I and others will be monitoring the new articles as they are created. I invite you to do the same. After all, that's how the rest of Wikipedia was formed.

I again vehemently disagree with your assertions about chapters being equal McDonalds franchises and whose differences amount to the shape and color of their buildings, but I'm not going to keep trying to budge you there. Also, that you would not write an article about your chapter really holds no bearing on whether someone else can write something about another chapter. With that said, there is plenty of content on chapters to be drawn upon to justify the existence of articles about them, and there is no reason to curtail such endeavors, particularly given Wikipedia's guidelines rather than despite them. Pat 05:15, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Dave Eshelman passes WP:MUSIC because he has composed music that has been performed by notable musicians who have passed WP:MUSIC notability guidelines. Also, he is well regarded in the Jazz and music education circles. The question of "Who is Dave Eshelman" is not unlike the question of "Who is Jeff Tedford?" for those not from Northern Calfornia or familiar with College Football. Dspserpico 05:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

And chapters pass the muster of WP:NOT, which is the guideline under which you first presented the subject and have not really returned to. That you merely say that chapters are not notable is not enough, and you still have not answered my first questions to you, including:

• Of the nine points of consensus for what Wikipedia is not, where do chapter articles fail?
• How do chapter pages qualify as indiscriminate collections of information, given the definition of indiscriminate information?
• If national prominence -- as you initially said -- is not necessary and local prominence (NPOV etc maintained) is all that is required -- which I've maintained and which you do obviously ascribe to for your articles -- under what Wikipedia guidelines are local chapters barred from having articles written about them?
• And ultimately, are your reservations not philosphical in nature, rather than rules-based?

I do not mean to sound overly terse, but your direct questions require a direct response, as do mine. I think we just have different philosophies here, and I am just trying to meet your standards and Wikipedia's standards simultaneously, which I believe, in view of your own work and the work of Wikipedians in general, I have done.Pat 06:00, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Notability (or WP:N) is an outgrowth of of WP:NOT. Largely it is not a policy set in stone, but there are some that have such a wide consensus that they citing a violation or lack of violation of the guidelines is a valid argument on whether or not to delete an article. You can read all about at the WP:N page.

At this moment, there are no set guidelines for Fraternities and Sororities but there has been wide preceedent that chapter articles have been deleted. I have strongly agreed with the preceedent and have voted to delete on several because every single chapter article I have seen up until the article you have written has been outright vanity written by some member of said chapter.

I brought up the Starbucks/McDonalds reference because I believe that individual chapters should be treated like individual stores a la WP:CORP. Let me just quote the section in question:

Many companies have chains of local stores or franchises that are individually pretty much interchangeable—for instance, your local McDonald's. Since there is generally very little to say about individual stores or franchises that isn't true for the chain in general, we should not have articles on such individual stores. However, a "List of Wal-Marts in Germany" would be informative. Also, an exception can be made if some major event took place at a local store (however this would most likely be created under an article name which describes the event, not the location. See McDonald's massacre for an example). Taken from "Chains and franchises" section.

I think that snippet of the WP:CORP guidelines is perfectly suited for Fraternities and Sororities. I mean yes, each and every individual chapter is different because of location, campus climate and the people in it. But when you really boil everything down isn't every chapter of the a certain fraternity the same? Aren't all members initiatied through the same ritual? Don't they do the same kinds of activities, just with varying degrees of success? Let me quote you for instance:

I again vehemently disagree with your assertions about chapters being equal McDonalds franchises and whose differences amount to the shape and color of their buildings...

Like fraternity chapters, McDonalds franchises are different people in different locations and environments. Some McDonalds are big, some are small, most wear different variations of the uniform. But in the end when you boil everything down (repetition is intentional), isn't everything the same? Aren't they held to the same cleanliness standards? Aren't their receipeis the same? Don't they all do the same kinds of activities? They sell burgers, we provide brotherhood.

At the same time, I am not opposed to articles about a specific chapters involvement in something notably good or bad. This notability has to be newsworthy in a sense that is not a press release but is covered in the news media. That is a notability standard that applied to people and companies and I think the same should be for individual chapters. Unfortunately for me, all the widely publicicized incidents I can think of right now are those that are bad like racism and hazing.

To answer one of your questions I think under the nine points of WP:NOT I think articles on every single fraternity chapter violates Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information outright and has great potential to violate Wikipedia is not a soapbox, Wikipedia is not a dictionary and Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. In the end we'll have thousands of stubs that say "BLANK chapter of BLANK fraternity/sorority is chapter located at BLANK university in BLANK City and was chartered in BLANK year" because that is probably the only information we can easily verify through reliable sources. And that is a dictionary definition and violated WP:NOT.

I think this is a healthy discussion and I hope we can come up with a consensus that can lead to a good policy for us to live by. Dspserpico 07:55, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Dspserpico raised some objections to the idea of including individual chapter articles (specific situations aside):

• How can we verify such information from reliable sources?
• How can we make sure such information is not original research?
• How can we enforce NPOV and avoid vanity?

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:

A personal website (either operated by one individual or a group of individuals) or blog may be used only as a primary source, i.e., when we are writing about the owner of the website or the website itself. But even then we should proceed with great caution and should avoid relying on information from the website as a sole source. This is particularly true when the subject is controversial, and the self-publisher has no professional or academic standing. [emphasis mine]

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)

My post is longer than yours, and I spent almost two hours figuring out a way to express my concerns. :) Dspserpico 07:58, 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.

• First, the notability question is not really going to be resolved by this project, as has been made clear by the "schools' notability" debate and the debate we're currently having. I would say that works in the favor of the Beta project, and as an "inclusionist" Wikipedian, I'd rather have the content while it's not prohibited and deleted only after it is prohibited, if it ever is. Wikipedia loses nothing that way.
• With that said, that schools are continuing to be the topics of articles further lends support to my assertion that fraternities ought to be treated like private high schools (for instance, Jesuit high schools) since they, though ultimately derivative of a common curriculum and heritage, manifest a distinct personality independent of its national body as a result of its inherited background, which (ritual aside) is often very much different from the national fraternity's dictum. You may see these chapters more like "clubs", but there's reason to think differently since members of fraternities are more likely to give back to their chapters (financially or otherwise) like they would to their University than would alumni of the chess team (no offense intended) similarly do so for their respective organization. (Hope that makes sense, and part of that's presumption, but I don't think it's far off.) Long story short, though, calling a fraternity a "club" is like calling the New York Yankees an "organization" -- it's technically correct, but it really says nothing about the relative magnitude of the particular case to the the other constituent parts of the category.
• If we treated Jesuit high schools as we might do for chapters, we would be doing a great injustice to those institutions individually and as a group. Same with Jesuit Universities. And Dark Lords of the Sith. And the Simpsons. Note how many articles about closely related topics there are! And it's really a good thing, because each high school/college/Sith Lord/Simpsons character is different and deserving of detail, if such detail exists. It's the diversity that makes the totality of these articles stronger and, in turn, Wikipedia stronger -- not their blanket streamlining, because something is inevitably lost by such unnecessary syncopations.

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)

Hey, I'm finally awake. Thanks for asking Lar to offer his thoughts. Here's what I'm thinking.

• Agreed, some of the links on the Simpsons pages go to lists, though not all of the links on those pages I noted do (looking through the minor Sith of the Old Sith Empire that link somewhere, three of the four have their own articles (and these are minor, 98%-of-all-Star-Warriors-have-never-even-heard-of-them-before characters like Shar Dakhan, Dor-Gal-Ram, and Tritos Nal. That's pretty consistent throughout the article.)
  • Also, I would point to the list of X-Men as another great example of how a list may exist for a given subject, but it is supplemented by individual articles about its individual members.
    • However, my contention on fraterntities is only minimally-based on these character assertions, so I think we can depart from that topic and just say that sometimes characters have their own articles, and sometimes they don't.
• Yet further and more importantly, I think the XYZ connections I'm trying to make here are very relevent because in an area where firm standards do not exist, it is absolutely necessary to look outside to other similar categories to see what the groups have in common and follow that lead until a superceding Wikipedia rule is put into place. I too have a similar hesitency to include grade schools on Wikipedia, but that topic is ultimately a red herring that is mentioned for its slippery slope connotations (with all due respect). Universities are a relevant startng point as you have said, but grade schools are an outlier not worth mentioning if we're going to look at this topic as part of a hierarchy.
• D, an important thing to note is that you're skipping a whole category in your article hierarchy comparison for universities and fraternities. A university really is not logically on the same level as the fraternity/sorority movement, though movements toward universities would be. For example,

• Your take:

A fraternity movement results in national fraternities which leads to chapters

• Logical extension of that for Universities:

A University movement results in University associations and philosophies which leads to the Universities themselves

I see your framework, modified so that it remains consistent, as a great framework for chapter articles to 1.) be justified and 2.) be created. Have I taken too many liberties with your statements?

• Doesn't Baird's actually touch on every chapter in the country? And if so, wouldn't it make sense to include that information in Wikipedia, properly cited? This is, after all, not a paper encyclopedia.
• Finally, one of my biggies. Perhaps my biggest concern with the "national prominence" requirement is that it actively would keep chapter articles out while only really being relevant when chapters do something bad; given the presumed definition of "national prominence" (which, btw, hasn't been defined), is there a single chapter that has accomplished a single feat of national significance that has been positive? Are there any examples of this? This national definition pigeon holes chapters into a "do something bad and you'll be written about, do something good and it will never see the light of day" conundrum, which is partially derivative of the media's culture but also does not reflect a NPOV. Not that chapters would care, but if we are indeed going to maintain the NPOV of fraternity/sorority articles, it will be impossible to do so with the "national" requirement because it disproportionately lends weight to the negative aspects of Greek life (because the media won't report good news nationally, or even locally) while actively ignoring its positives, which are often greater but on a sub-national scale. The rule is, in short, un-encyclopedic and, subjectively speaking, unfair.

I think fraternity chapters are very much justified under your framework, and I think the national prominence requisite is a recipe for disaster. Am I being dissonant at any point? Pat 20:08, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, this is how view the "heirarchy of topics": University movement results in University associations and philosophies which leads to the Universities themselves which leads to a fraternity movement results in national fraternities which leads to chapters. Fraternites and sororities would not have existed (at least the ones were talking about) were it not for universities we are much lower on the totem pole than you thing. I am not against having chapter information on wikipeida, but I am against chapters having individual articles on wikipedia. I wouldn't mind much if you were to have writtien a humongous article called List of Beta Theta Pi chapters and included mention of every single chapter active and dormant with founding dates, list of notable alumni and stuff of the sort.

I have always interpreted the notability requirement as a "major" regional as opposed to "national" for my chapter of Delta Sig to have its own stand alone article on wikipedia I think it should be mentioned in major regional newspaper. Here's a sample "media heirarchy" I use, I'm sorry for being San Francisco Bay Area-centric, but it's all I know:

• Not The Pioneer (student newpaper at CSU East Bay)
• Not the Hayward Daily Review (local newspaper)
• But major regional media outlets like the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury or local TV stations and news radio.

Also such media coverage has to have relavance to just the chapter. For instance, a year or so ago there were many stories in the Bay Area media on the UC Berkeley Alcohol Moratorium for Fraternities and Sororities and many fraternity/sorority/IFC/panhel people were interviewed and the coverage was balanced and not "anti-greek" but the exposure can only lead to an article about the Moratorium and Cal Greek System and not say, the UC Berkeley chapter of Beta Theta Pi, Tri-Delt or FIJI.

I've been interviewed by a number of TV news stations when baseball season started mainly becuase I was one of the first people at Oakland Coliseum parking lot, does that make me pass WP:BIO? No, because the context of the media coverage was about the A's and A's fandom as opposed to me. I guess Kenneth Louis and Kenny's marinated flank steak will have to wait for another day. Dspserpico 22:47, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Baird's does not touch on every chapter, except to provide a chapter list for each national fraternity including founding year, chapter designation, and school name. Baird's does include the coat of arms, "active" and "pledge" pin (I don't know why it doesn't say badge and "associate member" where appropriate), and a history (I'm guessing supplied by the organizations themselves... but that could (hopefully) be wrong.) of each group listed. Baird's also includes now defunct organizations. Baird's criterion for inclusion of local fraternities (at least in the very old edition I last read) was that they have been in continuous existence for 50+ years at one school.

Regarding Pat's next point though: I entirely sympathize. It is much easier to get bad press than good press. However, this is exacerbated by the fact that single chapters of national fraternities don't have much, if any, 3rd party NPOV resources for us to use in writing articles. This is because single chapters of national fraternities are essentially as notable as the campus Peace and Justice group--except that the members are in it for life, and they tend to write down and talk about their organization's history more.

Just like these characters Shar Dakhan, Dor-Gal-Ram, and Tritos Nal, local chapters of national fraternities would have about two sentences and a catagory stub in their articles. Rather than creating a lot of really useless stub articles with little hope for future development, why not add chapters when and if they become notable. I just read and learned about the whole "inclusionist" v. "deletionist" thing, and I'm not exactly sure where I stand. I agree that wikipedia's not made of pulp, but I feel like adding many very short and uninformative articles would dilute the quality of the wikipedia. On the other hand, I do want chapter information included in the wikipedia. I think that national fraternities should have List of chapters of Alpha Beta Gamma articles, that would provide the basic information and links to chapter websites. Let the chapters themselves tell us all about themselves--they have a 40 year old drinking goblet, they throw a killer party, they were founded as a secret club devoted to the eradication of classes without extra credit--most of that wouldn't be citable anyway, unless the chapter has a published history.

Ah well, at this point I'm in danger of repeating myself, and I'd rather not turn this into a shouting match. Pat, I really appriciate your "inclusionist" view. More so, I am glad you wrote Zeta Tau Chapter of Beta Theta Pi to show us what a good chapter article can actually be. If you can add citations to the rest of that article, and get some good work done on the rest of the project, you might see me change my tune in the end. The citations will be the hardest part.

Until then, I offer my final conclusion (for now ;-) ):

Individual chapters of national fraternities should not have articles unless they warrent them under their own, independent merit. They must be notable enough to have significant material published about them by 3rd party NPOV sources. These articles must be very closely monitored for POV writing, as they will be more succeptable than even the Fraternity and Sorority articles we already have.

Meanwhile, general individual chapter information should be available on wikipedia. However, this information should be kept brief. A link to an individual chapter's website is appropriate and encouraged. Lists of chapters and links should be well maintained, as difficult as that may be, for this wikiproject to be successful.

I think that covers it for now.

Looking forward to my next change of oppinion,

 — vijay (Talk) 05:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I heartily agree with many of your points and I think the notability standards in Bairds are also good for locals, possibly because Baird's is the only real reliable source we have. Do we have a consensus? I feel that were close to a policy, at least for this project. Dspserpico 07:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Bairds Manual is a reliable source, but the editors do request and receive most of their information from the organizations themselves. The address of the Baird's Manual Foundation is the same as the North-American Interfraternity Conference. However, since the manual is not used as a "rush tool" but as a historical reference, it represents the "official" history of the organizations contained therein, and has been subjected to some editorial standards. Though dated, it is the most reliable resource out there.--g-law 01:09, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Policy

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)

I think you guys are awesome. The beauty of your debate represents the kind of intellectual curiousity rooted in the origins of fraternities. Perhaps you should present a session at NIC, NPC and NPHC conferences about this Wiki project. Also, before the value gets buried in discussion pages, please write up a brief policy to house perhaps on the project page...maybe there is also another place to file such a policy in Wiki? ACMe

I think we have a consensus, however I think the scope of the Beta project is too small to be a viable wikiproject. In the end the scope is only a handful of articles. Also, I think this project is too small to have sub projects at this time. If this project gets bigger I would like to see subprojects in such areas like NIC Fraternities, NPC Sororities, Historically African American Fraternities and Sororities, Other Ethnic Fraternities and Sororities, Service Fraternities, Professional Fraternities... you get the picture right?

I guess our course of action is to figure out a way to write list articles for chapter lists. I'm thinking the naming convention should be "List of (insert org name) chapters" that name would be in line with other wikipedia list articles like "List of (name of TV show) episodes." The intro paragraph should contain information on chapter naming conventions and how active chapters are categorized (by province? region? state?). The intro paragraph should then be copied into the main article of the fraternity or sorority replacing an extant chapter list with the Main artile link at the top of the section. Once work is started on a Beta Theta Pi list, the stubs should be speedydeleted and the one article should be linked. The Beta Theta Pi chapters template, while nice, should also be deleted.

In the end I think an article should look like this:

• Intro blurb
• Active Chapters organized in the manner they are the fraternity (founding order, region, etc)
• Dormant Chapters organized by founding order

Links should be integrated with the blurb of each chapter to avoid the unwikiness of a long "External links" section.

I'm also working on writing notability guidelines for fraternities and sororities, or maybe even social organizations since fraternities and sororities seem to have a limited scope. I'm also going ahead with making the "red cup" into a wikiproject award (I'm going to have to talk to the awards folks), after a debate like this, we deserve one. Dspserpico 19:35, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

What would a project on the NIC et al actually set out to accomplish? Before we cut one project out now in favor of another project to be named later, I do want to know what purpose a hypothetical NIC project would serve that is not covered in this project already or written about in the NIC's article itself. If standards, is that not what this page is for? I am concerned that under the auspices of getting rid of "narrow" projects, we're just replacing one "narrow" project with another one with another name.

I also would like to set some guidelines for chapter articles before we consider deleting the Beta project, since we all agree chapters can have articles under the right circumstances. I'd like to see those circumstances outlined (which we started to do above) before we start making decisions on the topics of project removal and chapter notability, all topics in which we've already sunk in a good deal of time on this discussion page but from which we have yet to see a clear policy outlined. Terminating anything at this point would be premature. I am in agreement on the listing page format. That said, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Pat 21:31, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

To your first question a hypothetical NIC subproject would pretty much be what we have now, most of the participants are memebers of NIC fraterntities. That being said, I find very little value in subprojects at this stage of the project. But, in the chance that this project grows and becomes unwieldly, it makes perfect sense to spin off the different aspects of the fraternity movement into identical subprojects with a smaller scope. A hypothetical NIC project would work as a POV and wikify patrol for all articles about the NIC, its component fraternities and its chapters (provided they pass notability standards). Also the project can strive get articles to featured status and add new articles as events occur. I think subprojects are useful when a wikiproject get so big you you really need to cut through a bureaucracy so you can have a better way of achieving consensus. At this time, I really don't think subprojects are necessary.

To answer your second question, I believe we've reached a consensus on notability standards:

• All national organizations are notable
• Local organizations are notable only if verifible information from reliable sources can be found. Since Baird's is one of our best sources, 50 years of existance on campus is good rule of thumb, though younger locals can establish their notability through other ways (see below).
• Most individual chapters are not notable enough to have a separate article in wikipedia. However, chapter information does deserve inclusion into wikipedia in chapter list articles. A chapter can establish notability through repeated media coverage in a "major regional" media outlet (no student or small town papers). The nature of the media coverage should not be trivial should deal specifically with the chapter, as opposed to the greek system on that particular campus.

How was that? I think we can work with these guidelines within this project (since we've already come to a consensus), while I'm going to try to get these recognized as a more general and binding for the rest of wikipedia (WP:FRAT, anybody?). Lar has helped me with telling me the process of getting this done. I'm also going to find a better way of writing this. Dspserpico 22:47, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

All makes sense to this outsider. A few quick points. First, WP:MILHIST uses "task forces" rather than descendant projects. That has the advantage of dividing the work up nicely but with less overhead than full sub projects. Second, consider doing the guideline at the WP:ORG level rather than just Fraternity/Sorority. This guideline could equally well apply to things like chapters of the Nature Conservancy for example. ++Lar: t/c 04:36, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I think WP:FRAT, WP:SOROR and WP:FAS can be shortcuts to this project. Dspserpico 06:50, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure. What I am saying though is that a guideline similar to WP:CORP should be done at the organization level, and include all sorts of organizations, charitable, professional, cultural, etc as well as Fraternities... doing a guideline at the fraternity level is too narrow in my view. I gave the NC as an example but consider say, the Red Cross. Is the overall org notable? sure. Country level? sure, most countries... US state level? Probably not. The guideline would give that sort of guidance and also apply to fraternities. That's what I was driving at. Guidelines get better acceptance, in my view, when they are broader. ++Lar: t/c 10:21, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi again. I looked at Zeta_Tau_Chapter_of_Beta_Theta_Pi and I found it an entirely fascinating article given my own interest in the topic. It's well written, laid out very nicely, uses the wikimarkup effectively and so forth, it is a very well done article. It only lacks sources. But at the end of it I wasn't clear why this chapter was notable enough to merit an article. There are no external references to demonstrate notability. I suspect if it were put up for AfD it would not survive as being of general interest. I am very sympathetic to the problem that bad news is easier to come by than good news. So I don't know what to say as to how to secure proof of notability. The problem is that I suspect a fraternity/sorority wiki would not have enough critical mass to get people working on it, (although with panhellenic backing and a lot of undergrad activity??) but that WP is too broad for this level of detail. Consider my own chapter, Beta Pi... it was founded by GIs after WW II, it was the first national fraternity at Michigan Tech, it had an award at the Delta Sigma Phi national level named after the first chapter advisor, it is big in March of Dimes and makes the local paper regularly, dominated Winter Carnival for many years, etc. etc. etc... but none of that is sufficient, none of that makes it more notable than some random porn star with 3 movies under her belt and a page or so in IMDB. It really pains me to say it, believe me, but that seems to be the case. So I dunno. ++Lar: t/c 21:43, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

As far as ZT is concerned, I've added more citations for the information presented. Please compare it to the general fraternity pages on Wikipedia and tell me what you think needs to be improved. Also, are we counting General Fraternities/fraternity websites as reliable sources? What about national fraternity publications? I think the latter would meet the repeated national/regional recognition requirement for notability being formulated here. Pat 06:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think anything needs to be improved. It's truly a wonderful article in appearance, structure and writing style. The only thing I'd say negative about it as an article is that the big navbox at the bottom with all the chapters is a bit distracting, there are a lot of redlinks and is there really a prospect that all of them would get filled in? Based on the above, I'd say likely not, most chapters are presumably less notable than this one... Moreover, I don't see, even with the new footnotes, that this chapter is notable. All the sources are internal documents... to your second question, in my view we do not, in general, consider information from an organization to be reliable if it is about that organization. To draw an analogy with WP:CORP, an annual report is proof that maybe a company existed but we don't consider it proof of notability in and of itself. That stuff can be faked, and has been. Most of the time it isn't but that's my interpretation of what policy is. Further, we don't consider press releases about products or new divisions to be reliable sources either. Sorry to be a stick in the mud, I expect it's not the answer you wanted to hear. And I would never personally nom this article myself, but someone else, not a fraternity man, not as involved with this WikiProject, might well do so, and I predict it would not survive. I think this project has an advantage of being a backwater. If it got wide publicity people less sympathetic might turn up. If it were nommed there is always userification or transwiking to somewhere (although I don't know where) ++Lar: t/c 10:21, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to have to side with Lar on this one. While the article is cited and not presented in a POV manner, but the Chapter has yet to establish its notability. We need third party information to assert notability, like news coverage. I'm not going to nominate the article for AfD, but if it does and the consensus seems like delete is possible (and it probably will) ask that the article to be userfied to you. Despite its lack of notability, the article is good for this project and can serve as an example of what we should strive for. Again, I'm not going to nominate the article for deletion, but as it stand I'm not going to defend it either. Dspserpico 18:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts by a non project member

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)

I'm not a project member and I have been away for a while so I didn't know about this until yesterday. A couple of points.

1.) You can't take high school articles and correlate them with fraternity chapter articles. The creation of high school articles only happened after a long debate with only a vocal minority opposing their creation. I'm sure if you compare high school and chapter articles in the same breath in other forums such as "delete debates" in AfD you will get an earful.

2.) In the long run, it doesn't matter what people in fraternities and sororities who edit Wikipedia think. I'm sure there is a part in all of us who would like to see our respective chapters have an article. The question is what will other editors think. I have yet to see a chapter article survive AfD. They are labeled as "fratcruft" and many vote to delete with prejudice.

3.) The creation of fraternity/sorority chapter lists on wikipedia are also in contention of debate. Creating a project of individual chapters just avoids this as of yet debated topic.

I've also included my thoughts on the Beta Theta Project if anyone cares to see. I strongly suggest that you take this up to Requests for comments so outside editors can have their voice. I'm glad though that a lengthy discussion on chapter articles is finally being debated and whatever solution you come up with can be applied in the future situations. --† Ðy§ep§ion † ^{Speak your mind} 21:11, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Other things

Look at Alpha Phi Alpha it's actually a featured article. Dspserpico 02:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

No, it's not. The page actually needs some work. Alphachimp ^talk 00:28, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow. I guess I was wrong. A vandal removed the majority of the page and it's featured article flag. Keep watching the page, he's likely to come back.Alphachimp ^talk 00:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Progress

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)

We also need to add templates to the talk pages of greek system pages, sororities, and ethnic fraternities and sororities. Dspserpico 22:54, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Baird's Manual

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)

I own the 1991 version and I think I've got 1976 around somewhere. Any idea how far back we have to go before we get to the public domain? Also before we copy everything out of Baird's we should check to see if the fraternity has changed its mind on level of privacy. I know of at least one thing in an old Baird's that the GLO does not want particularly want highly publicized. Naraht 12:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

85 years after the death of the last author for US published things I think but I could be misremembering. ++Lar: t/c 20:27, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, there's always Public_domain#Expiration. According to the article, all editions of Baird's written and published before 1923 are in the public domain. Indeed, wikisource agrees. Unfortunately, only the first edition has been made electronic. I'm not complaining, though. Much credit to Choster for typing it up! (There's still more work to be done... if anyone has access to an 1897 ed. of Baird's!) — vijay (Talk) 21:03, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Keep up the Good Work!

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)

Suggestion

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)

Notable members

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

• Unnecessarily long (especially in the case of the larger groups)
• Not particularly relevant to the organization in question itself
• Very unavoidably subjective (what constitutes "notable". anyway? Are those standards the same between groups?)
• Rather rush-brochure-ish, self-promotional, and somewhat non neutral

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:

1. Eliminate notable members entirely, allowing article to be more focused on the the organizations themselves.
2. Develop more regid guidlines for who qualifies as "notable" for listing in articles. This would be very subjective but at least this way it could be consistant.
3. Institute a fixed number of notable alumni allowed per article, and decide within each group which are the X number worth listing.
4. Relegate the notable members to a seperate list article in a standardized way, such as "list of notable Example Fraternity members"
5. Include simply a link in the external links section to the groups own page listing notable members (in my experiance nearly every group has such a page). This solution also has the benefit of avoiding citation problems and theoretically remaining more up-to-date.

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)

I disagree, Lanoitarus. I think listing Notable Alumni is relatively important as far as putting a fraternity into context in the world at large. I know that's one of the first things a lot of people look for when they want to learn more about a fraternity. I would have no problem, though, with moving longer lists to separate articles, as some have done with Chapters.

My question, though, is how notable must a member be? As you say, that's a subjective issue. My proposal, which I just made over at Talk:Sigma Nu, is that notable members should either already have, or possibly could have, a WP article about them. Granted, that too is subjective, but I think if every "famous" member at least has a blue link, that's a decent-enough baseline to qualify. I'm curious what the Project members and the rest of the community think about this. --SuperNova |T|C| 20:34, 23 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)

• As i said, im not opposed to the list in concept, I just think they are far to inconsistant and unwieldly to be in the main articles unless they are trimmed down, so we should either limit the size, make a seperate list article, or link to the list at the organizations page (this method would save us having to make arbitrary decisions and updates, as well, which is kindof nice). At the very least, we need to find a way to get the excessively long lists out of the main articles and create SOME kind of criteria for inclusion, at the very least i think we should abide by WP:NN in this regard. -Lanoitarus _^(talk) .:. 01:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

• In many university articles, there is a complementary "List of xxxx People" article ... perhaps we could move in that direction? Firedancer414 02:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• I am really pushing for the seperate page of notable alumni. University of Pittsburgh has a list of their notable alumni which is linked through the main page. Acidskater 03:08, 15 December 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)

Thoughts about Secrets

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)

I find it very offensive, but I'm not really sure what we can do about it. Wikipedia provides for the removal of personal information (e.g. names, phone numbers) from page history, but not necessarily the removal of a closely guarded group secret. Any depledged and angry individual could post any information they want. Us trying to remove it would just result in a revert or wheel war, which would get everyone blocked. Alphachimp ^talk 23:59, 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)

Sadly, I do think that that is the nature of Wikipedia. Our secrets really don't have any protection other than the trust of our brothers and sisters. In a large organization, such as the federal government or a large corporation, there are repurcusions for sharing secrets. We don't have that. Wikipedia is an extremely easy way for anyone angry at our organizations to "get even". As much as I hate to say this, the best way to stop the spread of this information is to fight them on their own level, by introducing false information our into frat/sorority articles. I'm not willing to do it, but it does seem like the best remedy. Alphachimp ^talk 00:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

The best course of action we have is removal of the information. Personally, I always remove such information WITHOUT leaving a detailed edit summary, to try to make it harder to spot the information in the page history. It is correct to remove such information under WP policy, since secret information is inherently unverifiable, and is therefore in violation of WP:CITE. Of course, the day someone adds a secret with a valid citation will be interesting... -Lanoitarus _^(talk) .:. 01:25, 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)

We could make a policy proposal. I'm pretty sure that everyone in this project would strongly agree. I'm just a little bit worried about all of the people who *hate* greeks. Alphachimp ^talk 04:18, 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)

Even though it's primarily a notability guideline, I think modification and expansion of the existing WP:ORG (created in no small part thanks ot the efforts of project member DSPSerpico and others) to discuss organizational secrets might be a good way to go rather than a new policy. I see no reason to limit to Greeks. Members of other orgs that have organizational secrets should be welcomed to comment, as I'd anticipate support after all, it's a common problem. Reading the discussion about the magic trick secrets might be instructive. One thought I had since last commenting is that these secrets, fundamentally, are often not encyclopedic. That is, there is no general interest reason that they be known... unless they are somehow noteworthy themselves (or featured in some major news story about the org) they are (and no offense intended here!) "trivia" at the WP level of knowledge if you see what I mean.

Note that removal of a secret by reversion does not mean it's gone completely and cannot be found. For that you need to delete the history entry itself, which is not something to be done lightly. ++Lar: t/c 13:06, 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)