Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fraternities and Sororities/Notability

WikiProject Fraternities and Sororities/Notability is part of the Fraternities and Sororities WikiProject, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Greek Life on the Wikipedia. This includes but is not limited to International social societies, local organizations, honor societies, and their members. If you would like to participate, you can edit the page attached to this page, visit the project page, where you can join the project, and/or contribute to the discussion.Fraternities and SororitiesWikipedia:WikiProject Fraternities and SororitiesTemplate:WikiProject Fraternities and SororitiesFraternities and Sororities

Non-US cases

Things like National Greek Umbrella don't really exist in the Philippines. Should we make the article more general, have different sections for the USA and for the Philippines or different essays? (or none of the above.)Naraht (talk) 15:42, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. Changed. Thoughts?--GrapedApe (talk) 22:23, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good, though I'm unaware of any GLO with more than 10 chapters based anywhere else other than the US and the Philippines. The question is to we want to make that explicit in this essay...Naraht (talk) 18:13, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Music?

Why the shortcuts to WP:BAND?Naraht (talk) 18:13, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That was erronously copied by me. If/when this goes live, we'll create new shortcuts.--GrapedApe (talk) 21:59, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No problem.Naraht (talk) 21:11, 17 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities

Would more than a simple note of existence in more than one edition of Baird's be good enough?Naraht (talk) 18:13, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would think not, but I'm open to being convinced.--GrapedApe (talk) 21:59, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Though since Baird's is so central to the concept of a Fraternity being notable, a comment about Baird's might be useful. In fact, Links to the copies of Bairds found at books.google.com might be appropriate. Editions 1,5,6,7,8 and 9 are there, however the 10th edition in 1923 is still under copyright and will be so for a while. Also, we may want to consider under what conditions it makes sense for a closed Fraternity (whether or not it merged into an extant fraternity) are appropriate.Naraht (talk) 21:16, 17 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Student media

I think a guideline like this is useful, though I would make the point that fraternities and sororities are a very "American" institution. The same sorts of organisations do not necessarily exist in other countries; even other "Western" countries.

It's worth remembering that we already have WP:UNIGUIDE and this guideline should not vary significantly from it. It is, however, important to distinguish between organisations for many students on a few campuses (of the one college or university) and and organisations for a few students on many campuses. I believe they are sufficiently different to warrant an additional guideline.

There have been a number of recent AfDs involving sub-organisations of universities (esp. Georgetown - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Georgetown Emergency Response Medical Service and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Georgetown University Lecture Fund are good examples). The reliance on student-run-media by articles relating to various student organisations has been tested and continues to be tested and seems to be falling on the side of those who contend that student-run-media is not sufficiently independent to be relied upon to establish notability. This is generally reflected in WP:UNIGUIDE ("Reliable Sources") but it is not clear whether the consensus has been tested in a while.

Now that it is being tested, the general consensus seems to still be that student newspapers should not be considered independent sources for the purposes of WP:N but can be considered reliable sources (as long as they "tick" the other "boxes") for verifying information / claims made in articles themselves. Bear in mind; the US is one of the only countries where this would likely be considered the case. In many other countries, student media might not even be considered "reliable" enough for use as a source for even the most basic of claims. Like WP:UNIGUIDE, this guideline needs to be drafted with an understanding that many such organisations might only have ever received coverage in student newspapers and would thus not be considered "notable" to the outside world. Given many of these organisations exist on multiple campuses across several universities / colleges, recognition must be given to the fact that there might be multiple student papers from different campuses that have provided coverage of the organisation. But where none of these can be considered independent of their "home town" student body, their coverage really couldn't be considered independent for the purposes of WP:GNG. By that, I mean that if a frat is based in Texas but an Arizona chapter receives coverage from a student newspaper in Arizona, we should be cautious about whether or not that should be considered independent coverage of the parent organisation in Texas for the purpose of WP:GNG.

We're never going to cover all eventualities and possibilities but I think we do need to be conscious of the more likely scenarios and try to head some of these arguments off before they begin. Stalwart111 (talk) 04:56, 17 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I've been on a AFD for Phi Rho Eta which essentially turned on whether the student newspapers at the various schools counted that way. In regards to that, I've been an inclusionist.

Also, in regards to my original concern about having some rules for the USA and some for the Philippines (which is the major other country where Greek Letter Organizations were started). Student Newspapers in many American Universities are available as easy references, Student Newspapers in the Philippines outside of some of the major Universities really aren't. We could end up with two Social Fraternities, both founded in 1995, both of which have expanded to 20 Universities mostly in one region of their countries and both with the same number of brothers where the US one stays on Wikipedia and the Philippine one doesn't. I don't know if there is anything that should be done about that in the Notability document though. :(Naraht (talk) 21:22, 17 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Guidelines

I've been a volunteer on the Fraternity and Sorority Project for about a decade; the creation of this Notability essay had previously escaped me. Thank you, to the original writers.

Following a parallel course, I wrote a smaller, but similar essay to serve as a guideline for the Project, and linked from the Project's Talk page, here. Project participants follow these guidelines, as a way of applying more general Wikipedia guidelines, as of this writing. (30 Nov 2024)

These two efforts are similar in direction. However, in mine, I opted to continue the standard used by the editors of Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities during its 150-year publication run, and continued in its online Archive'. For regional or national groups, Baird's accepted an organization as notable if it had established three or more chapters, and these did not necessarily have to continue in existence for publication in later editions. This follows the standard Wikipedia rule that notability doesn't taper over time. That is, if a topic was once notable, it retains such notability.

As for local groups, I opted for a set of questions that, taken together, would indicate notability. If a local chapter owns property, it would be reasonably judged notable. Certainly that single chapter should exist more than ten years for it to claim notability; this would serve to brush off more transient efforts that didn't survive the loss of their original founders. See the linked essay for a full treatment of these rules. Another editor may wish to combine these two, or revive the discussion to look for further consensus, in case we've missed something. Jax MN (talk) 21:31, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see a merger of the two articles into this space. Then, we can update the WP mainpage to link to this article. However, since two other active WP editors wrote this and the other guideline, I am probably not the best person to work on the merger. Rublamb (talk) 22:47, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]