User talk:PritongKandule/Archives/2023/March

Pritong, several recent PRODs

Hello Pritong. I note that you have offered PRODs for several articles about Philippine fraternities and sororities. I'm a member of the Fraternity and Sorority Project, and most of the articles we curate are for North American organizations. Many of our groups are "quiet performers", lacking in the broad media coverage that controversial organizations earn. Yet they exist, and are notable in their service of their schools, their communities, hundreds of members, or often many thousands of members. In the US, older groups are often profiled in a major reference we use, called Baird's Manual. Schools here routinely note their presence on portals not controlled by the societies, which show recognized student organizations. In Canada, school recognition is more scant, as the organizations are more typically ignored.

This brings us to the Philippine organizations. Are they fraternities? Are they gangs? Clearly, they exist, but some of us on this side of the ocean have difficulty finding sources for those in the Philippines. I for one would certainly appreciate any work you would do to find good references for these groups, rather than just PRODing them for deletion. Wikipedia is a work in progress. Many of us have worked on these (Philippine) organizational articles, clearing them of unsupported bloat and puffery, but I'd hate to lose them because of a too-aggressive approach regarding lack of references. Surely those sources exist, even if not written in English. Would you help improve them, instead of just deleting them? Jax MN (talk) 15:45, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Jax MN! If you check my recent edits on several Filipino fraternity pages such as Tau Gamma Phi, Alpha Phi Omega (Philippines), Sigma Rho, Lex Talionis Fraternitas and Upsilon Sigma Phi, I've been spending quite a lot of time improving those articles in the best way I can. I'm also in the process of drafting an article for Scintilla Juris, pending some print-only sources that I still need to acquire.

Meanwhile, what I've been busy with is reviewing each organization in this list of fraternities/sororities and prioritizing both the most prominent organizations and those most in dire need of revamping. It's only when I've completely failed to find any reliable sources online or in Filipino publications (I still have access to my university's online journal catalog and news archives) do I finally decide to put it up for PROD.

For example, in the case of the now deleted Delta Fraternity and Sorority International and Delta Sphinx Family, both of those articles contained nothing but unsourced promotional fluff which, when deleted, left barely enough content for a stub. Outside of some Blogspot and Angelfire websites made in the 2000s, there was nothing else I could find for them.

The main rationale I have for tagging fraternity articles for PROD is that recently over at the Wikipedia:Tambayan Philippines, several articles for Filipino schools/colleges were deleted for failing WP:ORG and the general notability guidelines. Using the same reasoning, it felt unfair that those pages were nixed while some fraternity pages are left up despite having the exact same issues under the same Wikipedia policy.

As a Filipino, I can attest that the way Greek-letter organizations work in the United States differ substantially from how the situation is in the Philippines. Unfortunately, there is some truth to the assertion that Filipino fraternities (regardless if they're community-based fraternities in urban poor settlements or chapters in expensive "elite" schools) tend to act more like street gangs with Greek names rather than collegiate service brotherhoods. If you're interested, you can take a look at this interesting study by Zarco and Shoemaker on Philippine fraternities and the emergence of gang-like behavior.

Other problems I've noted in trying to improve these articles:

• Many fraternities actually operate unrecognized by their host universities, as many Filipino institutions have outright banned Greek-letter organizations. Thus, a lot of collegiate fraternities never get mentioned by school publications or resources.
• Most of the smaller organizations use Facebook as their primary means of public communications, which are extremely difficult to cite and are prone to link rot as they can't be archived. This has been at times useful in determining notability, as it is far too unlikely that a fraternity with less than 1,000 likes on Facebook (in a country with 95% Facebook user penetration) is nationally notable or significant.
• Most fraternities are secretive and rarely, if ever, publicize their internal organization, their activities or their exact membership figures, all otherwise decent material for article content. Sometimes, the best I can get is trivial coverage on a fluff piece from a local newspaper or a city hall newsletter, which is actually more than enough for me to exclude them from PROD.

I hope I've cleared some things up! I should note that I used to work in journalism, which might explain my tendency towards deletionism, however justified. If there's any other concerns, I'm always happy to discuss more. Thanks! PritongKandule-✉️📝 17:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

This is a very fair, nuanced response. Yes, I too look at my work in the frame of inclusionist versus deletionist debate. I favor inclusion, because we have the space, and if we can prove an organization exists I don't mind leaving a placeholder for future writing, if it impacts more than a handful of people. I imagine a day when Wikipedia is 100x larger, where the aim is to provide clarity that captures all these groups. Where they are active, the articles are bigger. Where they are dormant, we place bookends around them, but for researchers there would be value to know they exist, to confirm that the name is whatever it is, and ensure it is not confused with a similarly-named group.

I set aside the gang issue as I don't want to paint the Philippine groups with my US-centric lens. I've personally deleted all manner of puffery from these articles, where 10,000 chapters are noted. --But the group barely has a Facebook page and no trace of a website. Riiiigghht. I've delete lots of sections with flags of many countries, noting that just because a member may have moved to that country doesn't mean a chapter exists there. We struggle, here, when media only picks up notice of the bad boys, and ignores the many quietly performing small fraternities.

Your explanation helps clarify that you've been looking for sources, and I thank you for that effort. Jax MN (talk) 18:34, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Points well noted, @Jax MN! After 10 years of "when in doubt, cut it out" as an editorial mantra, it can be difficult to shake off being a stickler for arbitrary lines in the sand. I'll re-review some of my current PRODs with a less stringent lens (also moving forward) and retract them if I feel there's still some of hope for a merit.

Another thing I forgot to point out was that there's already a list of fraternities and sororities in the Philippines, where the deleted fraternities are still catalogued with their essential information. My thought was that deleting the pages (another user on the talk page also pointed out the need to delete some) while still retaining them in the list was a fair compromise between observing notability guidelines and keeping records for posterity. I'll try and open up a discussion with the Filipino editors for further input.

Finally, if you or anyone else in the fraternities/sororities Wikiproject need help or assistance for the local cultural context on Greek-letter organizations in the Philippines, just ping me anytime. I used to research and write about fraternities back in my news writing days which is why I've been interested in contributing in the subject. Again, thanks! PritongKandule-✉️📝 06:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I will alert two of our quite active editors to this conversation. Naraht and Rublamb are both excellent researchers and who work on the Fraternities Project, and may appreciate our discussion of the Philippine groups. Naraht has done more work than I have in cleaning up this subgroup of pages.

Gamma Omicron Delta Sigma

WP:ORGSIG - the organization does not meet the criteria for significant coverage in published secondary sources. Even its self-published primary sources are already deprecated and no new sources can be found on web searches.

- We would like to advise that Gamma Omicron Delta Sigma does not share publicly the articles and information to anyone who does not belong to our organization. We do not post any information related to our roots and what is written to our Bylaws. We will consolidated all updated information and edit wikipedia page.

WP:CLUB - no indication that the organization has activities that are national in scope, or has attracted significant widespread attention.

- Gamma Omicron Detla Sigma members are actively conributing to improve each members' morale and are always active in ensuring the success of our brothers/sisters. We as a national service fraternity/sorority silently working on helping our community and school in which offenly mislooked by Main stream media. We do not seek fame but we are tirelessly working in any community or school activities for a bright tomorrow.

WP:COIEDIT - article author and substantial contributors appear to be directly connected to the organization

- As we do not share our organization's sensitive information and only the members contribute to update the page, please tell us more how we can improve it. 49.147.138.13 (talk) 07:19, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@49.147.138.13 Regarding your concerns:

• Please read Wikipedia:Notability_(organizations_and_companies). Wikipedia's policy is that notability must be established by reliable, independent, secondary sources only. What you are suggesting violates the policy on original research and primary sources.
• People who are directly connected to the article subject are strongly discouraged from editing as this violates our policy on conflict of interest. If your organization is truly notable and worthy of a Wikpedia article, then other people will create and edit the article for you. There is no such thing as ownership of an article, even if you are the author or the article's subject.
• Without a reliable source, your claims cannot be independently verified. Wikipedia is not a indiscriminate source of information. The fact that your organization has not attracted the attention of independent news, government sources, academic publications, or even an indication of wider public notice, means that your claims are not verifiable. The burden of proof lies with the contributor, not the encyclopedia.
• The rules are simple and clear: if no reliable, independent sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article. Your organization will still remain catalogued in the List of fraternities and sororities in the Philippines, but if your concern is "sensitive information" then perhaps consider that Wikipedia is not the place for your organization.

PritongKandule-✉️📝 07:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC)