Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fraternities and Sororities

Navigation tools

Scope of the Project, Notability Rules (clarification), and Syntax for the Watchlist are linked here: Watchlist Talk Page. A discussion on the types of chapter status is here: F&S Project talk page, Archive #7.

Cleanup project - October 2025 update

The main list of infobox issues can be found at Category:Fraternity articles with infobox fraternity issues and the Weekly Cleanup List

1. missing image size - Category:Pages using infobox fraternity with missing image size (95)
2. missing |colors= - Category:Pages using infobox fraternity with missing colors (236)
3. needs color boxes (Helpful link, has colors, flags, and addresses of Baltic, Scandinavian, German, and Polish fraternities)

• Cumnock Schools - Done Jax MN (talk) 23:23, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
• List of student corporations in Latvia - in process Jax MN (talk) 23:17, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

4. Notability or No Source Tags

• Kappa Delta Kappa (only sources are from the college; nothing found in newspapers.com)

Delete: is already included in List of social sororities and women's fraternities

• K.D.St.V. Teutonia (only source is its website)
• Zeta Phi Beta (fraternity) ( multi-location PR, the only source is its dead website)

Comment: Here's a source from El Mundo 1957 when it was founded: https://gpa.eastview.com/crl/elmundo/?a=d&d=mndo19571224-01.1.8&srpos=1&e=------195-en-25--1--img-txIN-%22Zeta+Phi+Beta%22----1957-----

Rublamb (talk) 00:56, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Report needed

Looking at the parameter report, there are more than 40 infoboxes that have a founding date but lack a birthplace. If we can get a report on Infobox fraternity missing a birthplace, I will work on finding the data. Rublamb (talk) 00:59, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

merge_date and defunct_date

Does it make sense for these to be wrapped with the template:end_date_and_age, just as founded is wrapped in start_date_and_age?Naraht (talk) 13:19, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I like the idea of merging the two into one. Another option is to look at the style of defunct colleges, which creates an entry like this: 1891–1921. That could still include the length of operations, such as: 1891–1921 (30 years). Rublamb (talk) 18:10, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I see what infobox University does, but I can't find any with the number of years active.Naraht (talk) 18:15, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Infobox univeristy does not include the number of years. That would be our introduction, if you can figure out the code. Rublamb (talk) 18:34, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Any thoughts on this? I still like merging the two fields to create a date range. Rublamb (talk) 17:40, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

Headquarters = house?

Let's say there are three Mu Mu Mu Fraternity houses that are NHRP, have articles and thus belong in Category:Mu Mu Mu houses.

• Mu Mu Mu purchases a NHRP building to use as a National HQ. While it does make sense to have the building in Category:Mu Mu Mu, does it belong in Category:Mu Mu Mu houses? (Shadowwood) Naraht (talk) 17:36, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
• Similarly, the building that Mu Mu Mu was founded in is a NHRP, into the Mu Mu Mu cat, but if nothing indicates it was for the housing (sleeping) of the members... (Delta Tau Delta Founders House) Naraht (talk) 17:48, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
• And what do we do with a house that was built as a meeting place for a literary and debating society (Eumenean Hall, Davidson College) Naraht (talk) 17:52, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

For these very rare circumstances, I'd include the HQ building if it is on the NRHP (assuming you mean NRHP, and not NHRP...). This would therefore cast a wide net, identifying all the historic buildings associated with that national, which I think is the natural search query that would lead researchers here. In the same way, I'd include the relatively few NRHP-listed buildings for literary societies (are there 20?), and which have articles (a subset of those ~20). It strikes me that if a researcher wants to find student organization built-or-owned registered historic buildings, they'd want to find these, too. Jax MN (talk) 20:32, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

I guess the real question is "does a chapter house have to include bedrooms?" Certainly, the building that houses the national chapter/grand chapter/headquarters could be considered a chapter house without bedrooms. But I do get your point.

The easiest solution is to change the general category from "Fraternity and Sorority Houses" to "Fraternity and Sorority Buildings". I say this because you have just hit the tip of the iceberg in terms of outliers or potential outliers. A lot of the Greek letter organizations, senior societies, literary societies, and secret societies at the Ivy League schools, especially Yale, do not include bedrooms in their chapter house/lodge/hall/tomb. For example, St. Anthony Hall at Yale sold its dormitory building to the university, but kept its separate chapter building. Saint Anthony Hall (Hartford, Connecticut) has never included housing, and the former St. Anthony Club in NYC was not connected to a chapter but did serve a temporary and residential hotel. At the same time, Delta Psi, Alpha Chapter building (Columbia) and St. Anthony Hall House (Pennsylvania), do include housing. A generic "St. Anthony Hall buildings" would cover everything, while "St. Anthony Hall houses" may or may not work depending on your definition. Rublamb (talk) 23:39, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

I suspect we will also find that these outliers are most common among historically significant, very old lodge halls. If there was an article about Delta Tau Delta's first building, I believe it was non-residential. The first Chi Psi building was a log cabin built by the founders in the woods, aiming to avoid detection... Jax MN (talk) 08:43, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Houses to Buildings

Changing the Houses to Buildings has some significant side effects both good and bad,

• All subcats like Category:Sigma Alpha Epsilon houses should probably change to Category:Sigma Alpha Epsilon houses
• Sororities are a subcat *because* that Cat is a subcat of both sororities and Buildings for Women. change to buildings and Category:Sorority houses may or may not make sense to be upmerged into Category:Fraternity and sorority buildings.

I'm not sure that these outliers mentioned above represent a significant grouping that we wish to have. I'd also like to restrict this to only collegiate groups, otherwise ended up with every Moose Lodge matching the NHRP will end up there as well. I'd prefer that "bedrooms" be the determining factor and that Shadowwood and Delta Tau Delta Founders House be only in cat representing their GLO (and I don't know where Eumenean Hall, Davidson College belongs) Naraht (talk)

The outliers I mentioned are an example of a collegiate fraternity (St. Anthony Hall = Fraternity of Delta Psi). You don't need to worry about general fraternal lodges ending up in this category. They already have their categories such as Elk buildings and Clubhouses on the National Register of Historic Places. (see for a complete list). Rublamb (talk) 03:40, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Beecher Hall is also a literary society building. So maybe we need to add Category:College literary society buildings. Rublamb (talk) 04:04, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

@Naraht: I know you are on other projects now, but I don't want this to slip through the tracks. Rublamb (talk) 17:12, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Parameter report

The updated parameter report is up. I went through and found one we missed moving from the free field. We have a few logos in the free field, that become significant numbers if we add in all of the logos that are currently hanging out in the crest fields. Do we want to create a logo option for the main image? Although I am not sure what happens if you have crest and a logo. Or a coat of arms and a crest for that matter. Rublamb (talk) 02:48, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Coat of Arms and Crest are the same thing. If you use both, it will use only one, CoA, I think. If Logo is set up as a separate field, it will display separately.Naraht (talk) 03:39, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Since there are only a handful with both logo and COA, the free field makes sense for those. However, we could add a third option for the main image, something to use for logos and badges. Once all infoboxes were updated, this change would help us identify the articles that lack a crest or coat of arms. I have already added everything lacking from the fraternal heraldry book, so finding the missing images would not be a quick or easy project. But at least the parameter report would keep it on our radar. Rublamb (talk) 08:40, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

By the way, in case we aim to scan images from a hard copy of Baird's, I've found that in many (all?) cases, images from the 19th edition are much cleaner than those reproduced in the 20th edition. Given the timeframe, I suspect the problem had to do with rudimentary duplication methods, i.e.: the Manual was prepared for publication manually. Jax MN (talk) 16:34, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we can only use fair use on images from the 19th or 20th if the image does not exist in the 1930 or later editions. That will be fine for some groups, but not for all. That was why I added that last batch of missing badges from the older editions. I have not gone through the 1930 edition to see if anything was added or to see if it has cleaner images than the older editions. Do the 19th and 20th editions include COA or just the badges. Rublamb (talk) 23:03, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the image at the end of the article is a pledge pin during the editions from the 1930s. As a note, at least one of those editions of Baird's has a pin at the end of the Alpha Phi Omega article which is probably supposed to be the pledge pin and it is a shield divided vertically and no Alpha Phi Omega brothers that I know have seen such a thing in real life (including many heavily involved in its history).Naraht (talk) 16:53, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, I've always thought that that placement in older editions of Baird's was their plan. While the APO example raises questions, I've not seen a single other example where the trailing image in a society's profile is NOT the pledge pin. Jax MN (talk) 17:54, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Agreed and that is part of why it is so interesting. It may be correct, and there is are references in the fraternity magazine to a pledge button used before the current one (which started in the 1940s), but no photos.13:48, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

I think the sorority book has a couple of pages of badges and pledge pins. These are photos, rather than drawings. Rublamb (talk) 17:46, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Logo

Logos are more or less mutually exclusive with Zirkels, right?Naraht (talk) 13:49, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

In terms of placement within the table if there is already a COA, yes. In terms of general usage, I don't think so. Zirkels are typically part of the COA, are used on dress uniforms, and are also part of the member's signature. Groups that use zirkels do not have badges, so it became a individual's identifier. I guess the bigger question is the use of logos in the COA field if there is no COA or no available COA. I would use the logo at the top of the infobox 100%. We also have the issue of groups that have replaced there COA with a logo as their primary brand. Rublamb (talk) 15:20, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

That gets tricky. So Logo goes in once place in the list if there is a COA and a completely different place if it doesn't?Naraht (talk) 18:29, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

I would ignore the 3 or 4 logos that are in the free field (because there is also a COA). We can explain in the notes that the new Logo field is only to be used if there is not a crest or COA. Rublamb (talk) 18:35, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Chartering dates question

Group A merges into Group B in 1975. Group A has a chapter KK at a school Z chartered in 1930 where Group B has never had a chapter and becomes YY chapter of group B. Is the chartering date of chapter YY

1. when the chapter merged into group B (1975)
2. the original chartering date of chapter KK (1930)
3. Whatever Group B says it is. :)

I'm leaning toward 3 just because the groups we've got seem so inconsistent. (and yes, this relates to Phi Alpha Delta that I'll keep going on in the morning.Naraht (talk) 01:48, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Technically, it should be 2, the chartering date of the actual chapter of Group B. Hopefully Group A has an article with its own list of dates. I know there are some cases where Group B does not follow this pattern, and uses Group A's dates. When it is just the odd chapter or two, I follow 2 and add an efn to include Group A's date. Otherwise, using 1 or 3 can really mess with our system or ordering a list by charter date. Rublamb (talk) 03:06, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

It has been so long since we created that draft, that I had finally stopped cursing myself for finding that crazy list. I am pretty sure I would have gone with 2, if that helps. Rublamb (talk) 03:11, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Wait - in a merger, the implication is that both groups were ushered in to the combined organization more-or-less as equals. Of course, only one of the national names would be adopted (with the notable exception of Delta Sigma Rho-Tau Kappa Alpha), but whether out of diplomacy or legal wrangling, both groups contribute to the resulting larger organization, and have certain rights. This has been a common occurrence. In all cases I can think of, even where a huge national absorbs a small, 4-chapter group, the resulting merged chapters keeps the older date of formation, where two chapters are merged. Phi Sig, for example, named its merged chapters either with the name of the older of the two groups, or, with the name of the active chapter, where one had gone dormant. Where both had gone dormant, this matter was left up to local alumni. Most picked one or the other name. We also see one other situation, where an entirely new name is granted on a campus where the earlier group(s) had all gone dormant, and in our List Status field, we designate this as a "Reestablished" chapter -- that is, a Reestablished campus. Jax MN (talk) 06:25, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I agree that not all mergers are treated the same, administratively, which would lean into number 3 but many still not be the right answer in most cases. Although are those rare cases of the merger of equals, most are in reality a larger group absorbing a smaller group. I understand that a merging chapter sometimes retains its history and its original charter date within the organization. However, we have a zillion entries where we use the date of charter with the new fraternity, with the chapter's history being in the note. This is how we deal with local groups merging into nationals, for example. Just because the two fraternities agree that the merging chapters can use their original founding date, does not make that its charter date into the new fraternity or the date of the assignment of a new chapter name. And, since we try to order lists by charter date, it is unhelpful and confusing to place the merging chapters at the top of the list; I know of at least one case where the merging chapter of fraternity A was older than the Alpha of fraternity B, with B being the retained name.

I have always looked at Baird's for guidance, which has been pretty consistent at using the merger date, not the original dates. Baird's also orders the list by a chapter's entry into fraternity B, not it charter date with fraternity A. In this specific case, there is another article that lists the chapters of fraternity A, with the founding dates, etc. We don't need to repeat that history in exacting detail in the list for fraternity B, as we are linking between the articles. Rublamb (talk) 15:47, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I agree with your point about locals, as these are almost always absorbed without much fanfare. There are very occasional situations where they 'earn' a special name, out of sequence, to call out their origin under that name.

Here are a couple of examples to mull over.

Phi Sigma Kappa created its Phi Tetarton chapter at the University of the Pacific in 1960, when it absorbed a 102-year old local first called Rhizomia, and later called called Rho Lambda Phi (local). That local was established in 1858, fully fifteen years prior to establishment of Phi Sigma Kappa's Alpha chapter itself. Yet the University of the Pacific chapter didn't earn special naming, nor did it reflect the older year of establishment. I assume this is because PSK was, at the time, more rigid about not deviating from the standard naming structure until the latter and larger PSE merger in 1985. My point: local creation date doesn't typically get carried over in a merger, when it's just one chapter of a local being absorbed. In that situation, the fraternity followed Naraht's naming option 1.

But in the case of the Theta Chi and Beta Kappa merger, a larger merger, those groups still followed Naraht's option 1, where the absorbed Beta Kappa chapters took on the 1942 merger date as their date of creation. The chapter designations were mostly new, and in keeping with the standard Theta Chi naming system, with one exception: ΘΧ allowed the old Alpha chapter at Hamline to keep the chapter name, Beta Kappa chapter. Serendipitously, that insertion into the Theta Chi list order appears to have occurred at or near the time when "Beta Kappa" came around as the next available chapter name of the Beta series. (I do not know if any other list manipulation was done for that specific situation.)

I've noticed that it was only where mergers occurred among the earliest fraternities that they added chapters without adhering to specific naming rules. Those early chapter lists look messy (See at Beta Theta Pi). Standardization followed the establishment of the NIC and NPC.

The sororities, notably those that participated in early, larger mergers like Phi Mu, have scattered names that do not appear to follow a rule or system. Were their chapters able to choose names, some denoting their original locals? It seems so.

But later, even in complex situations like Delta Zeta's several mergers, these nationals attempted consistent naming even as DZ was the product of (I think) six national mergers. Likewise, when BSO merged into Zeta Tau Alpha, new names were assigned.

So it appears that these organizations haven't always followed a hard-and-fast rule about dates OR names, but rather, determine this as a matter of the merger negotiation. Names are re-assigned and origination dates show the date of the merger, at least for those which occurred during the past century, but prior to that, it's a mixture. Occasionally locals are granted a specific name, or keep their own, original name, and sometimes the merged group is indicated by an off-series additional letter for all new chapters created from the prior fraternity (i.e.: they are given a series all to themselves). So the answer to the original question here is probably Naraht's option 3. Some nationals appear more committed to naming rules than others. And Option 1 has dominated the past century. Jax MN (talk) 19:35, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Good coverage of this topic. Sometimes, there is a mix of these systems within one organization, depending on the year and the internal policies at the time. There are also chapters that use their old date, but the national's chapter list uses the merger date. (Maybe indicating a difference between a chapter's history and a national chapter list?). Fortunately, we often have the option of seeing how Baird's and the Almanac document mergers and chapters dates. Whenever possible, I suggest following their lead, which will remove much of the guesswork from option 3. As secondary sources, these would be preferred by Wikipedia anyway. Generally, we find these older/original chapter dates in fraternity history books or internal documents, rather than on their website's current public listing of chapters. Rublamb (talk) 21:33, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I agree with these points also. For any readers who wonder, where the original chapter's date of formation or year is known, we then include this and its former name as an EFN in the reference area. But unless the new (receiving) national allows the older date, the standard for them and thus for us here is to reflect the merger date. Note that occasionally, chapters will go local at the point of a merger, but will merge later, with a later date on their new charter. These decisions also seem to depend on the relative health of the smaller, merging group. Jax MN (talk) 23:49, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Actual Case

Phi Alpha Delta (male group) merged with Phi Delta Delta (female group) keeping the name Phi Alpha Delta after title IX. (Pretty much a merger of equals, though) PAD names its groups after people (mostly famous lawyers) and PDD went with "standard naming" (Alpha -> Omega, Alpha Alpha, Alpha Beta, etc.) except for one merger of law schools. In at least two cases that I've reached so far, a school had a chapter of PDD that went inactive before the merger, and then after the merger, a PAD chapter was founded. In this case, the PDD chartering date is used by PAD and both the chartering group of PAD and the chartering group of the PDD are viewed as chapter charterers. (And some other wierd things with moving chapters that make this look normal). However, this is *well* explained in the reference, if I could find the person who put this together, I'd invite him to this Wikiproject in a *heartbeat*. Naraht (talk), 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Have you checked to see if Phi Alpha Delta in included any post-merger editions of Baird's? (I don't own one, so I did not have that info to include in the list). It is great to have clarification from the national or a chapter, but since we cannot use that original research/personal communication as a source, it should not be the deciding factor. A secondary source would be better. In the most generous of circumstances, these should be treated as chapters that went inactive and were rechartered (we have rejected similar founding date claims by other groups that appear to use the older date for legitimacy and marketing). However, I really feel like this is a case of confusing the chapter's history with its charter date into Phi Alpha Delta (the date called for by the column). Even the source is called "Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, International: Phi Delta Delta Law Chapter Charter Information". Since there is another article for information about Phi Delta Delta, it is not like we are excluding this history from Wikipedia. In fact, we would be following the format of the source, using this info to detail the Phi Delta Delta chapters. Rublamb (talk) 04:49, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Both groups are in the 19th edition. The surviving fraternity's history notes the merger, so this was written post-merger. Also, the dormant fraternities section lists ADD. In both sections, there is a decent chapter list. I didn't check the 20th edition. Jax MN (talk) 08:35, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Looks like Baird's was used for List of Phi Delta Delta chapters. Rublamb (talk) 01:48, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

I am willing to work on comparing Baird's 19th or 20th to List of Phi Alpha Delta chapters. However, that only makes sense if we are agreeing to follow Baird's date style for this group. Rublamb (talk) 18:18, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Template:Dartmouth College

A decent size chunk of the template is links to sections of the Fraternity and Sorority article. Is that useful? I'd prefer a link to the Fraternity article with some sort of included list of those that are actual articles.Naraht (talk) 00:23, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

There are many redirects to the Dartmouth articles. Some were originally articles, now deleted. Is it normal to have redirects within the template? Rublamb (talk) 21:58, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Phi Mu Gamma pt. 2

While I have it pulled up in Bairds and the Almanac, I want to go ahead and create an article for Phi Mu Gamma II. It was a "honorary professional oratory sorority" that operated from 1921 to 1931 and had at least six chapters. In this case, oratory equals drama. Looks like each chapter put on a play each year for charity. So what do I call the article, since there is already a Phi Mu Gamma? Professional, drama, or honrary? If this helps, it merged into Lambda Phi Delta, a professional fine arts fraternity (which also does not have an article). Rublamb (talk) 09:37, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

If it let the sisters in it join other sororities, honorary, if it didn't but did have housing for its sisters, professional.Naraht (talk) 13:07, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone have an edition of Baird's between between 1930 and 1963? I have trying to figure out more about the drama professional version of Phi Mu Gamma (professional). It merged with Lambda Phi Delta in October 1930, a merged of equals, but then kept the Phi Mu Gamma name. Its looks like some of the new chapters kept their old name, which would have duplicated names. Where the original chapters of those names already defunct at the time of the merger? I cannot tell because my 1963 Baird's does not include this group. I don't know when it went inactive yet. Rublamb (talk) 02:29, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Also, this group had a strong newspaper presence and suddenly disappears. Given the timing of its demise, I suspect it has to with Title IX. Did it fold in favor of coed groups or did it merge with a men's organization? Rublamb (talk) 14:45, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I've got everything in the 20th century except the 13th from 1935. I'll see what I can find for Phi Mu Gamma when I have a chance.Naraht (talk) 15:02, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

It is a mess. 1940 (14th) mentions the changeover between the two groups, but nothing after that does and there are inconsistencies in some of the chapters listed in each. 19th and 20th have it as having gone inactive and one of the ones in the middle (17th, I think) didn't have it at all. I'll do a boil down here as I have the chance.Naraht (talk) 00:29, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Of course, I have the 17th. From newspapers, it looked like some of the merged chapters took new names, while some continued to use their former names. So either there were two chapters with the same name at the same time or some of the chapters were already inactive in the main group at the merger. If so, there was some promotional puffery happening, as they were telling the press that they had 16 chapters post-merger. That style would be consistent as they quickly start saying they were the oldest such group (professional music sorority) in the nation, citing the establishment date from the social sorority. I get why Baird's was challenged to figure it out, especially if the informant was not reliable. Jax and I have found some chapters that were established post merger. If we could dates for those and any other additions from Baird's, that would be great. As a side note, wonder why it was dropped in the 17th? Rublamb (talk) 13:46, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Naming

Given the longer lifetime of the Professional than the Social, I'm not sure the first one (social) is primary. I think having a relatively complicated dab page at Phi Mu Gamma and move the first to Phi Mu Gamma (social) or (junior social).Naraht (talk) 19:38, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I am fine with that. I didn't really know about the professional group when I started this. Rublamb (talk) 19:42, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Certainly the longer existence of the professional group is a significant factor, but to be clear, when we first came to consensus regarding "name rights" I think we settled on this ranking order:

1. DAB pages
2. Oldest regional or larger, active organization
3. Oldest regional or larger, inactive organization
4. Differentiated younger organizations, "Differentiated" by a modifier, like (honor), (social) or (professional)
5. Where this is confusing, we alternatively use words that are part of a legal name, such as Kappa Alpha Order and Kappa Alpha Society. These are far more rare, as they necessarily go against MOS preferences on modifiers.
6. Local groups of long standing that are active or were active for a long time: Where they share a name, the local or smaller group is provided a modified name, such as Delta Psi (University of Vermont) versus Delta Psi, which nevertheless is a REDIRECT to St. Anthony Hall
7. Local groups with a relatively shorter existence, which theoretically may be notable enough for an article.

Note we also use HATNOTES for in-line differentiation, as Rublamb mentions below.

Naraht's suggestion of a "(junior social)" modifier is interesting, prompting a dozen other name changes. Your call.

Here, I think the DAB page, with first rights to that specific name is probably best. Jax MN (talk) 21:31, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

In light of JAX's info, I say leave as is. I am also remembering that MOS dislikes qualifiers within the name of an article. We currently have "This article is about the professional arts sorority. For the social sorority, see Phi Mu Gamma." and visa versa in place. A DAB is not needed at this time since there are only two possible known options. Rublamb (talk) 22:31, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I missed that guidance, regarding when a DAB page is required. You are right. Two articles, with cross-linked hatnotes. Jax MN (talk) 22:46, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

two group dab pages

Not sure how many of these should be completely removed in favor of determining a primary and moving it to without a dab.

• Alpha Delta Theta
• Alpha Gamma Sigma
• Alpha Phi Gamma

DAB not needed. The honor society is the primary (older and bigger). The sorority's full name is Alpha Phi Gamma National Sorority. Rublamb (talk) 20:45, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

• Alpha Theta (disambiguation) - Which has a primary, one with a dab term and as a nickname to two more]]

two of the four entries actually have different names and no article; this one is fine delete Rublamb (talk) 15:48, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

• Alpha Zeta

DAB not really need since there are just two. Both were formed in the 19th century--Latin Am. is several years older, but only operated for four years. The professional is still active and would seem to be the natural primary. However, its parenthetical is preferable. That is (professional) vs (Latin American. Rublamb (talk) 20:41, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

• Chi Psi Fraternity House

since one is no longer on the national register and no longer has an article, this DAB is not needed Rublamb (talk) 15:50, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

• Chi Tau (disambiguation) - two GLOs plus as an abbreviation for two things

this one is fine and has a primary identified Rublamb (talk) 20:35, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

• Delta Alpha Pi
• Delta Phi Epsilon
• Delta Phi Kappa
• Delta Sigma - One GLO, one Physics term and a reference to an unlinked High School Fraternity
• Delta Sigma Epsilon - One GLO, one Greek Army

The phase "Delta Sigma Epsilon" is never mentioned in the Greek Army Article; I guess someone thought the Democratic Army's abbreviated name in Greek letters is Delta Sigma Epsilon? Since this is English Wikipedia, that confusion is not going to happen. Fine to removed the DAB. Rublamb (talk) 15:55, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Specific Greek Army, the army of the Communists in the Greek Civil War. Links to Democratic Army of Greece which *does* abbreviate to DSE. See article.Naraht (talk) 16:33, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I see it now, the Greek letters ΔΣΕ--I was specifically looking for the spelled out phrase "Delta Sigma Epsilon" which is what the DAB is for. ΔΣΕ is Greek letter abbreviation for Δημοκρατικός Στρατός Ελλάδας or Democratic Army of Greece. Since this is English Wikipedia and the article uses the English version of the name, what are the odds of someone searching for it as "Delta Sigma Epsilon" spelled out. Yes, someone might search for the abbreviation ΔΣΕ, but even that is unlikely since those characters are hidden on English language keyboards. Not to diminish Greek history, but I think it is pretty clear that the sorority is the primary for English Wikipedia. We can always include a note linking to the army. Rublamb (talk) 17:38, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Maybe a note on the page and have ΔΣΕ as a dab?Naraht (talk) 23:35, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

• Delta Theta Psi - two locals, one with a page.
• Fraternity prank - two meanings, not a dab the way we are dealing with it
• Gamma Phi Beta Sorority House - No idea how to figure out which city should be Primary

This is a rare case where the National Register allowed two properties to have the same name. Since their formal name is identical, the location qualifiers seem to be the only solution. Rublamb (talk) 15:37, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree. They each have an equivalent claim to the name, so a DAB and location qualifiers is preferable. Jax MN (talk) 19:54, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

• Kappa Alpha Pi
• Lambda Delta Sigma
• Phi Beta Delta
• Phi Delta - three entries, only one of which has a page.
• Phi Delta Theta Fraternity House - No idea how to figure out which city should be Primary

Another case where both have the identical name on the NRHP, meaning neither is the primary. Rublamb (talk) 20:35, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

• Phi Omega Sigma - two groups with pages, 4 other with info.
• Phi Sigma Beta - One group, info on two others which were Phi Sigma Beta at some point in their history
• Phi Sigma Chi - One sorority with a page, 4 other groups with info.
• Sigma Alpha

the professional uses Sigma Alpha Sorority as its official name; the fraternity was also known as Black Badge but the sources use Sigma Alpha. Updating the sorority article's name solves the issue. Rublamb (talk) 16:17, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

• Sigma Lambda Alpha

formal group name is Sigma Lambda Alpha Sorority; the honor society appears to be Sigma Lambda Alpha Honor Society but I cannot verify this because it is almost defunct and lacks a national website. More research on the latter is needed. Rublamb (talk) 16:12, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

• Sigma Phi Beta

The fraterity's full name was Sigma Phi Beta Fraternity, so the article's name can be changed, allowing the sorority's article to be Sigma Phi Beta. Rublamb (talk) 16:02, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Naraht (talk) 13:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Great work! In cases where the DAB includes GLOs without an article, I suggest determining if the redlinked group qualifies for an article. If we have two sources, it is easy enough to add something. I will work on that approach, assuming that I will be skipping over locals. Rublamb (talk) 15:40, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

So in general the solution seems to be, if they are of different types, and they use the types themselves, put that as part of the article name? So Mu Mu Fraternity and Mu Mu Honor Society rather than Mu Mu (fraternity) and Mu Mu (honor society)?Naraht (talk) 16:33, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Right. A while back, an admin changed an article I had worked on from something like Moo Moo (sorority) to Moo Moo Sorority, based on the official name of the organization and a Wikipedia naming policy that I was previously unfamiliar with. Let's see if we can track down the policy to confirm, but it relates to parenthetical names being used only if no other option is available. It is easy to see this in with people, such as Mimi C. Cow and Mimi W. Cow vs. Mimi Cow (politician) and Mimi Cow (actor), but I had never really thought about it as an option for organizations until running across that other edit. However, before we start changing article names, I would like someone else in the WP to see this in MOS, to confirm my memory. In the meantime, I just created a new article Phi Sigma Chi Multicultural Fraternity because that is official name of the group, and we need a way to distinguish it from the other Phi Sigma Chi. I don't hate it, but it does look weird, since we are used to using the "short as possible" naming guideline. Rublamb (talk) 17:21, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

A named editor made a one-off change to the Phi Sigma Chi DAB page, removing several clear options with the result that only a single local chapter remains with that name. I think this result is LESS clear, LESS helpful, and am reverting it. Jax MN (talk) 19:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

LMAO. As you were writing this, I was adding content to that DAB. Rublamb (talk) 19:41, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Saw that. Thanks! I restored the other two. Were we required to make a choice, I think the multicultural fraternity has first rights to the basic name, and that the second local you added is fair to include because it was relatively recent in becoming a chapter of the larger fraternity; they may have 300-500 living alumni from the former group. The two I restored may be slightly more tenuous, but I stand by the point that their inclusion tends to increase clarity. My first assumption on his/her rationale was that the editor who deleted those items had a bias, or was a Grove alumnus. But they've made an enormous amount of other edits. So I assume good faith. Still wrong, but good faith. Jax MN (talk) 19:51, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Regarding the removed content, technically, that editor was correct. DABs are there to help people find content in Wikipedia. Meaning, items in the DAB should all have an article or a redirect. It looks like some of the DABs are more like a list of organizations with the same name, which would be fine for an article assuming NLIST can be met. However, items that would be redlinks should not be in a DAB. That is why I suggested creating articles where possible as part of this project. I added a redirect for Phi Sigma Chi (Texas State) which is why a readded it to the DAB, but don't want to create a bunch of redirect for locals unless we agree to that. Grove is an example of why we might not want to do that--a bunch of redirects to an article that doesn't even mention the subject of the redirect.

In the case of Phi Sigma Chi primary, the article I just created for Phi Sigma Chi Multicultural Fraternity should be the primary as it is the only fraternity with that name that actually has a article. However, I am assuming I can find sources for the high school fraternity which was first and larger. Rublamb (talk) 20:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

All items under Phi Sigma Chi now have redirects or an article. I have sources for the high school article. Will do that next. In the meantime, I created a redirect to High school fraternities and sororities. The Tri-State local actually formed a chapter with 3 different nationals, reverting back to a local in between. It might be worth looking for sources for it as well Rublamb (talk) 03:23, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

This is going to run into all of the redirects for the Grove City College locals whose related content has been removed. We talked about deleting those redirects at one point. This would be a good time to decide. Rublamb (talk) 20:49, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I think the Grove City College page was unnecessarily slimmed down, to delete a former paragraph that mentioned its many local chapters, and (if memory serves) offered a sentence or two to note that while these societies were not affiliated with national fraternities and sororities, nevertheless many were property owners and many or all had existed for decades, even over a century.

It would be reasonable (WEIGHT) to include that expanded paragraph. If that content is restored, I think redirects are also reasonable. Without that paragraph, the redirects are not needed. I believe that Grove City College's Greeks were early adopters, whose many chapter Wikipedia pages were created before our extensive style sheet and Project procedures were developed. Jax MN (talk) 20:57, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I would be in favor of making the Grove City redirects viable with content in college's article. Please go ahead and work on that, maybe adding something like you just stated, given context and a rationale for the list of GLOs. I will back you as a WP:UNI member if there are complaints. Rublamb (talk) 21:05, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

dts and Alpha Psi Omega

These days, I periodically do a search for https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=insource%3A%2Fsortable%2F+insource%3A%2F%5B%5Ea-zA-Z0-9+%5D+*%5C%7C+*%28January%7CFebruary%7CMarch%7CApril%7CMay%7CJune%7CJuly%7CAugust%7CSeptember%7COctober%7CNovember%7CDecember%29+%5B0-9%5D%2F+%22Charter+Date%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns7=1&ns8=1&ns9=1&ns10=1&ns11=1&ns12=1&ns13=1&ns14=1&ns15=1&ns100=1&ns101=1&ns710=1&ns711=1&ns828=1&ns829=1 which looks for the following. Something that is neither Alphanumeric or space (which most of the time is a new line), some number of spaces (0 or more), a | (pipe), some number of spaces (0 or more) and then a spelled out Month of the Calendar. I've used this as a guide to what needs dts. I don't touch List of Alpha Psi Omega chapters because I think the fundamental decision to take a "last time the chapter talked to national" as a date of inactivity is incorrect (giving only four active chapters) and IMO, we are going to have to *completely* tear it down and start over. Naraht (talk) 19:14, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

We discussed this back when working on the article. Someone (maybe Jax MN) was contacting the national to find out more about the dates. I recall that their response was along the lines of they were working on updating their chapters list and didn't have anything to share at that time. Even if those "closure" dates are meaningless, it is not a big deal to update the status and remove any questionable ending dates using its most recent chapter list (which is dated 2025). The weird thing is that the source of the opening and ending dates is not listed in the article. I am guessing the original source changed into the current list, which lacks dates. I am going to check Wayback to see what I can find. Rublamb (talk) 20:11, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

BTW, no response to two letters to Alpha Psi Omega. Jax MN (talk) 21:27, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Current plan. My current plan is to update List of Alpha Psi Omega chapters to being active/inactive based on https://www.alphapsiomega.org/chapter and *IF* a chapter is Active and the date of Inactivity is after 2015 (willing to discuss that date), I will also remove that date of inactivity. Does that work? Naraht (talk) 15:31, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Works for me. Thank you for the effort. Jax MN (talk) 21:27, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Actually, diving through https://www.alphapsiomega.org/chapter makes things *worse* not better. Our list has Gamma as Washington and Lee University, which we pulled from the 1991 edition *and* which matches both the 1929 edition and the published list in the 1960 Playbill (organization magazine) at https://greektrack-alphapsiomega-public.s3.amazonaws.com/files/1/Website%20Files/Playbills/Playbill_1960.pdf (p46-48). While A Psi O does mostly go in Greek letter, there are about a dozen that aren't. Either state name followed by a Greek letter or even weirder. (Scarlet Masque at Wabash). *There* Oklahoma City is Oklahoma Gamma (one of four state letter in between Eta Alpha and Eta Beta, did Alpha Psi Omega have a group that merged in?) However in the www.alphapsiomega.org chapter list, Oklahoma City is Gamma and Washington and Lee is Omega Gamma Omega. Note, there are a lot of Omega letter letter chapters which don't make sense order wise and both Gamma and Eta from the Baird's/1960 list went from single letter to Omega (old name) Omega. In short *either* Alpha Psi Omega went through one of the weirder chapter (yes, I know they call them casts) renaming we've seen or the list at https://www.alphapsiomega.org/chapter is useless. Ideas?Naraht (talk) 16:46, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

You might also place your own {cn} template next to the unfinished or contradictory references, and let another interested future editor look into this. It's a vector for getting new editors to collaborate. Use an EFN or editors note to summarize the conflict in sources. Oh, I do think your guess about a small absorption between Eta Alpha and Eta Beta is most likely correct. I assume good faith on the part of the editors of fraternity magazines in past decades, rather than sloppiness. This naturally leads us to wonder what their plan or tactic was. This is assumptive, perhaps, but certainly directionally correct. Jax MN (talk) 22:40, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Welp, we waved as worse as it went by and headed straight for "I'd like some of whatever they are smoking". I'm looking at the 1938 Playbill https://greektrack-alphapsiomega-public.s3.amazonaws.com/files/1/Website%20Files/Playbills/Playbill_1938.pdf and the 1960 Playbill https://greektrack-alphapsiomega-public.s3.amazonaws.com/files/1/Website%20Files/Playbills/Playbill_1960.pdf , both of which have chapters lists. Just in the first two alphabets (single letter and Alpha ---), the following chapters have changed.

• Iota - 1938 University of Maryland (College Park) vs. 1960 Johns Hopkins
• Lambda - 1938 Kentucky Wesleyan vs. 1960 Washington and Jefferson College
• Nu - 1938 Western Union College (IA) vs. 1960 University of Houston
• Pi - 1938 Wofford College (SC) vs. 1960 West Virginia University
• Alpha Alpha - 1938 Concordia College (MN) vs. 1960 University of Mississippi
• Alpha Tau - 1938 University of Richmond (VA) vs. 1960 Mt. Union College (OH)

Everything else is the same (ignoring reasonable name changes in the same city). I *don't* believe that this counts as contradictory sources, apparently Alpha Psi Omega went with a deliberate effort not to have any inactive chapter names. (I don't have any other ideas) I understand for some of the Social Fraternities in the 19th century where a chapter letter might have existed for a few years at at school that didn't last for much longer, but to pick an example near me, I'd be surprised if University of Maryland, College Park has ever dropped its drama program and certainly hasn't been in danger of closing. Doesn't surprise me that Alpha Psi Omega didn't write back, we may have better historical lists than they do.Naraht (talk) 14:48, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

This is not the first time I have come across this type situation. Sometimes a chapter expands to included two colleges for a while and then shifts it base OR there is outright makes a local move, without any specific mention of charter date change within fraternity chapter lists. That is where the Iota (First) with a status of "moved" and Iota (Second) as "active really is helpful for the Wikipedia list, even if that is not used by the fraternity. I tend to create the list in Greek letter name order for my own clarity and, then, later move it to charter order once finished.Of course, I use an efn explains the move. Rublamb (talk) 16:27, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree it happens elsewhere, but *this* is extreme. My fraternity moved two charters (out of over 700), one from Central YMCA College to Roosevelt University in Chicago, the other from Shurtleff College to Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville, both of which are moves to schools which are *sort of* successors. *NOT* what Alpha Psi Omega has done. I just stopped at the first two "alphabets" above as an example, it certainly wasn't all of them. Naraht (talk) 15:32, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Finally had time to go through the discussions at Talk:Alpha Psi Omega. It is pretty clear that I took a deep dive into this at the time. As far as chapter closure dates, I have used Wayback to recover the website page that was the source. For quick reference, it is here. The data in question is under the column header of "date last active". Unless I am missing something, there is nothing there to suggest that this is the date of the last report or anything other than what it is called. Note that this webpage also clicks through to chapter pages with founding dates. As I mentioned previously on the article's talkpage, the "active" chapter list found here is flawed in that it includes active chapters at institutions that don't include the GLO on their website or at institutional names that have not been used for decades. Given the wording of the source for closure dates and the time I invested in determining the chapters and their dates previously, I am not persuaded that we should undo this work or remove these closure dates. The lack of communication from the national organization, as well as its limited social media presence, lends support to the theory that the majority of chapters are closed. Reviewing old magazines again might yield a missed date or two, but it appears most of these were already reviewed to create the existing list. Rublamb (talk) 22:03, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Consistency: Category:Fraternity and sorority individual templates

We've got 12 templates in Category:Fraternity and sorority individual templates. All are for a particular GLO. 7 of them are simply Template:Pi Mu Pi, 3 are Template: Pi Mu Pi articles and two are Template:Pi Mu Pi fraternity. Should we change the template names to be consistent? Also, all five of the entries in Category:Fraternity and sorority sidebar templates are of the form Template:Pi Mu Pi articles.

(Yes, Category:Fraternity and sorority user templates is a mess, but since half of those are in Userspace, I'm not sure working on that is worth it). Naraht (talk) 15:21, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Combining these may be useful for us, but would be a benefit for future editors, too. Editing those in Userspace (~cleanup) may prompt additional work in support of the F&S Project on the part of various editors that have left drafts unpublished. Jax MN (talk) 21:26, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm always a fan of consistency. Primefac (talk) 20:49, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Me too! Rublamb (talk) 22:26, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

Something new for our template

What do you think? RSStockdale added a sticky header for the column heads on List of Kappa Alpha Order chapters. I hadn't known this was available here, though I regularly use a similar command on Excel. This may be a useful addition to all our lists. Jax MN (talk) 19:57, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

On a scale from 0-10, I give this a 23, WOW! While we have some tables whose width may approach the width of the screen, I don't think we have enough to use the sticky rows. I'd be perfectly willing to try to set up AWB to do this everywhere on pages that are the List of Mu Pi Mu chapters, I'm not sure it is generally worth it on the notable members lists, though there may be a few. I'd like to propose 25 rows in the table to make sticky header worthwhile. I'm not sure we've got any tables with two rows in the header to be kept, but something to keep an eye out.Naraht (talk) 20:30, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Though I haven't used it, you can make a left-most column sticky as well. "Template:Sticky table start" describes how to do this. Don't know if any of the Frat or Sorority pages could use that or not. RSStockdale (talk) 20:49, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

In general, no, we've generally avoided tables that go that large, may be one or two.Naraht (talk) 20:52, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

If the row is set up with header cells, they automatically stay at the top (sticky header) when using the sort arrows. I removed the sticky header code from List of Kappa Alpha Order chapters as a test, and found no difference. Are you seeing something that I am missing? Rublamb (talk) 20:36, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

If you remove the *two* changes, then no sticky header row. Once change is the additional header, the other to the class.Naraht (talk) 20:49, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Sorting isn't part of this, this is the row that has "Charter Date and Range" staying at the top of the screen no matter how much you scroll down..Naraht (talk) 20:51, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Got it. Rublamb (talk) 21:00, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Note, RSStockdale does not appear to have changed it in the ideal way. there should be three changes as far as I can tell, (Sticky table end) should be placed at the end as well.Naraht (talk) 21:06, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Apologies to RSStockdale it appears that the use of Sticky table begin and Sticky table end are used if what is desired is more complicated than just the one header line being sticky. Looking at AWB...Naraht (talk) 09:17, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Implementation

I've started with using AWB to make the change. I've changed and would appreciate a second (or third or..) set of eyes on before I continue

• List of Aleph Zadik Aleph chapters
• List of Acacia chapters
• List of Alpha Alpha Alpha chapters
• List of Alpha Chi Omega chapters
• List of Alpha Chi Rho chapters
• List of Alpha Chi Sigma chapters
• List of Alpha Chi chapters

two issues found

1. ) Adding sticky and then scrolling down and back up causes the thin darker line between the header and the first row of data to disappear. Not that much of an issue with us since our headers are a slightly darker background than our data lines. Global, and I've dropped a note on the talk page for the sticky-header template. If there is a better place to bring the issue, let me know. However, even if never fixed, still worth it, IMO. (update, asked on the talk page, apparently a known issue, but fixing it caused other issues, so looks like long term will stay. Naraht (talk) 15:11, 1 December 2025 (UTC))
2. ) On pages such as List of Alpha Chi Omega chapters, there is both a large table that should have stick and a smaller one that doesn't need it. It is easier in the AWB if it just gets added to all of them, but I can keep a lookout as I go to remove that before it gets added. Is it ok if it just gets added to all? Naraht (talk) 09:56, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Jax MN, Rublamb Let me know if I should move forward. Naraht (talk) 15:13, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

@Naraht: Looking at it from the end users perspective, it look fine to me. Rublamb (talk) 20:26, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Will go full on this. If we end up with problems with the smaller tables, I'll go back and undo. Naraht (talk) 21:00, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Naraht, these look great. I agree that we can deal with the small lists on a one-off basis. Thank you! I also think it helpful that the page name remains sticky at the top, along with the top right navigation icons. Jax MN (talk) 21:17, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

FratChapterStart

When I get done with the ones that we build our headers on, I'll take a look at adding this to Template:FratChapterStart, we have a few that use that template set and we'll have to alter the template to fix those lists.Naraht (talk) 14:48, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Ok, done with all of the tables from articles that are either in/subcats of Category:Lists of chapters of United States student societies by society (and if they were redirect, AWB did it to the page that it redirected to. This leaves twofour groups:

1. Non-US groups, I'll try to go over to the Philippines category and do that,  Done and then I'm not quite sure the easiest way to get the European groups. (started and then realized only umbrella.
2. Groups that used the templates Template:FratChapterStart and related. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=Template%3AFratChapterStart&namespace=0&limit=50 for that list (32 in there). Changing Template:FratChapterStart template appears to be the right way, but that's a slightly different effort.Naraht (talk) 19:51, 2 December 2025 (UTC)  Done
3. Based on doing the german groups, I realized the only ones getting hit were the ones that we've counted as umbrella groups, so I stopped doing European and just did the Umbrella groups, which are done.
4. I've also done the fraternity conventions which are their own articles

I'm sure there will be more, but unless another largish group can be found, I think I'm done doing it automated for now.Naraht (talk) 16:59, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

https://www.stichtingargus.nl/

For Omicron Delta Gamma (Order of Artus), we use the description of Order of Artus at a certain point in the ODG article. However, I'd like to see if we can come to some policy on the use of that particular site since I could see things like non-open mottos for groups being referenced from the rituals there.Naraht (talk) 14:11, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Although I am the one who used it, I am still not 100% on its use. Since they are also publishing books, the issue goes beyond this website. It comes down to credibility. If a credible source includes encyclopedic info, we shouldn't be worried about the GLOs thoughts of the matter when writing for Wikipedia. For example, we regularly cover misconduct. In reality, many of these rituals and details were published by the organizations in their books, can be found within their websites, or are available in university archives.

Although I did not use Stitching Argus as a source regarding rituals, the Omicron Delta Gamma ritual that it provides is also published in part in the successor's magazine. That info came from somewhere; Stitching Argus is simply providing it as a secondary source. Whether Stitching Argus is TBD. If any WP members belong to an organization that included in this website, can you take a look and see what you think of its coverage? Rublamb (talk) 16:22, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Honestly, for most of the GLOs, what they show on the internet is the ritual. (https://www.stichti ngargus.nl/vrijmetselarij/frame_en.html) For my fraternity, the ritual is listed as being from 1997, this is the *only* place I've ever seen a brotherhood ritual for my fraternity on the internet (and it has been on that site for at least 15 years) and I guarantee it hasn't been in the fraternity magazine of my fraternity. (for various other things I've done, I've actually been through every issue of my fraternity magazine since the 1940s (most recent missing issue from the online repository) looking for notable alumni.

Where did you see ODGs in the ODE magazine? (American Economist, I believe) Also, in general Honor Societies tend to be less private about their rituals, the French language honor society that my wife became a member of allowed parents to watch.Naraht (talk) 17:42, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Yes, American Economist. ODG was a "honor" fraternity, rather than an honor society. However, it was defunct at the time that its was described in American Economist, so maybe being defunct makes a difference. I guess the question to consider is: is the information about your fraternity accurate? You don't have to answer to me, but use your answer to consider whether or not the source is reliable. Rublamb (talk) 18:06, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

I'd say the equivalent is the Latter Day Saint endowment ceremony. Although there are those who have published it, it doesn't appear that the endowment ceremony contents are used as a reference by anyone. Not sure in terms of the Masons. I don't know what the rule is on using private things like that.Naraht (talk) 14:46, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

So, do we want to remove this as a possible source or not? I don't have strong feelings either way. @Jax MN, can you take a look? Rublamb (talk) 17:12, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Categories

Do we need categories for "Defunct honor societies" and "Merged honor societies"? Or should we just use "Defunct fraternities and sororities" ? Rublamb (talk) 21:58, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Well "merged fraternities and sororities" is its own cat already and a subcat of defunction. the question with this one is whether honor societies should by a subcat of fraternities and sororities in this or whether we should come up with a supercat for both ("Greek Letter Organizations") which is sort of an issue we've discussed before with no result. I'm basically fine either way, but will happily move cats as appropriate. :)Naraht (talk) 16:46, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

I trust your thoughts on this. Rublamb (talk) 17:50, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Will think about it. Jax MN? (and yes an answer of "It's a cat, Randy will figure it out" isn't an insult. :) )Naraht (talk) 18:49, 5 December 2025 (UTC) Just went back and checked. I give my legal name on my user page, so I didn't just out myselNaraht (talk) 17:51, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

I like splitting these (Dormant vs. Merged) except that I cannot presently think of a reason for research that would require a listing of one of these without the other. We are laying groundwork for future readers, so perhaps a split is reasonable. I trust your judgement on this, Naraht. Jax MN (talk) 22:01, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

Defunct vs. Merged is already split, the question is whether to split Honor Societies are merged/defunct from Fraternities/Sororities that are merged/defunct. For now, I'll start splitting the honor societies into a cat in the fraternity cat.Naraht (talk) 17:37, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Created

Created Category:Merged honor societies and Category:Defunct honor societies Pulled into the categories based on the infobox value of type and status in the meeting box. Merged has 16 pages, defunct has 7 (and the merged as a subcat). I don't think this is a diffusing category, so Aleph Samach gets left in Category:Honor societies, but I am removing them from Category:Defunct fraternities and sororities. Asymmetric I know, but I think the best. I don't *think* splitting out the professional groups makes sense, but we can take a look later.Naraht (talk) 18:49, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Added both to the watchlist Rublamb (talk) 01:37, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

Founder = Notability?

Draft:Thomas_Isaac_Franklin is probably about as close as we are going to get to a perfect example of "Is being a founder of a notable fraternity make one notable." Sourced only to the fraternity website with information that not much is known before they got to the founding school and that they died a few years after being one of the founders. (and if that isn't the perfect example, one of the other DKE founders that this same user made a page for will serve). At least when Delta Sigma Theta or one of the other NPHC groups do this, they appear to get much deeper even if the question of notability is open.Naraht (talk) 18:45, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

I've been mulling this over. My perspective is that, considering Grokpedia's looming advance, it will be vital for the sake of capturing good, but specialized and obscure knowledge, that Wikipedia remains inclusionist. A narrow, deletionist-friendly Wikipedia is a dead end, and will fairly quickly be rendered limited, then very-limited, then non-useful. If we accept that premise, then well-written articles with obscure sources and proper styling (photos, good categorization, a solid infobox, a deep dive into finding multiple sources), then these articles would stand up to verification. Founders who are not otherwise notable should therefore be allowed an article, and future editors should also be extolled (encouraged) to provide deeper research in order to find all available citations. There are a lot of articles I would trim or delete, before deleting these. There is even some value in completing the set, so we show pages for all founders, and thus declare what is known about the minor ones. This would avoid errors in future research. Jax MN (talk) 21:59, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

Clearly, that draft does not meet WP:GNG It is up there with the one I found (now removed) who joined the new fraternity and left school the next semester; only to immediately die the Civil War as a private. I have worked on many/most of the existing founders articles, taking them as far as possible with sources. If there is significant coverage in secondary sources, notability can be met. It is pretty easy for groups founded by faculty or professional organizations. However, many of the social GLOs were founder by regular people with no other notable aspect. Most of the founders of the historically Black GLOs have significant coverage in books; many of these Wikipedia articles are not significantly different from the draft above in terms on content; the difference is sourcing. My suggestion from our last conversation on this topic stands: most of these are best suited to a founders section or the history section within the organization's main article. It is not worth our time to work on such article or their related templates. Rublamb (talk) 16:08, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Here is an example of an article that includes short founder bios in the main article: Delta Tau Delta Rublamb (talk) 11:14, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

The very short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is that if a person is only notable/noted/recorded for doing a single thing, they (almost always) do not meet our inclusion criteria. Primefac (talk) 11:09, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

Discussion about WikiProject banner templates

For WikiProjects that participate in rating articles, the banners for talk pages usually say something like:

• "This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale."

There is a proposal to change the default wording on the banners to say "priority" instead of "importance". This could affect the template for your group. Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Proposal to update wording on WikiProject banners. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 19:43, 6 December 2025 (UTC) (on behalf of the WikiProject Council)

Would this help?

It's that time of year where member's start updating chapter lists for charters, recharters, colonies, and de-activations that took place during the fall semester. Since most of these editors appear to be new or not regular, many of these edits do not follow table formatting. Thus, we need to check and correct these changes. However, the biggest issue I have is that most of these edits are made without sourcing. I try to find a source, either a refreshed organizational website or a newer version of the Almanac. Sometimes there are college newspaper articles, GLO's blog posts, or traditional media reports for misconduct related closures. But at some point, WP members cleaning up after member edits is not sustainable. Do you think it would be useful to create a generic hidden message that reminds editors of the need for a source for all changes? It could even suggest possible options. This would only be used for those larger organization's (mostly social fraternities) that tend to have a lot of member edits. Rublamb (talk) 17:11, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Besides improving anonymous edits, this may spark more Project participation. I like the idea. Jax MN (talk) 23:14, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Sigma Theta Tau

I have finished creating List of Sigma Theta Tau chapters. I think it wins the award for having the most schools in a single chapter. Remaining tasks:

• We might pick up the details of around 12 inactive chapters from the last print edition of Baird's.
• Needs date templates.

Rublamb (talk) 01:07, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

That was a heck of a list. I suppose this prompts one of us to add the redlinked institutions to that list. Jax MN (talk) 01:42, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Except for the first 20 or so, looking up each chapter individually... There are a couple of for-profit nursing schools that might be article worthy, but I suspect sources would be challenging. I wouldn't worry about the redlinked hospitals. Rublamb (talk) 02:07, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

I created two article and found reasonable links for two others. Rublamb (talk) 04:46, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Missed two single letters from the count, that's odd... Continuing to check that the double letters are two less than multiples of 25...Huh, that's odd, one off now... NO chapters starting with SIGMA?... I'll try to look up the chapters in the 20th when I have the chance.Naraht (talk) 05:19, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

It it also possible that I made a mistake, but I went through the numbers previously and didn't find any duplicates. My guess is that they recycled chapter names or used some odd chapter names. If those chapters are now inactive, they would not be in the society's database. Sigma--IDK. Rublamb (talk) 13:32, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Beta and Sigma got skipped in the numbering.Naraht (talk) 14:52, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Correct. They went inactive before numbers were assigned. Rublamb (talk) 16:38, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

the group in the 1991 Baird's only had though 1976, Gamma Zeta chapter. And the question is whether if the chapter is at (Fake) Empire State University Nursing school and Empire State University has a page, do we add it to the list of schools to be done?Naraht (talk) 20:44, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Not sure what you are asking with Empire State. The chapter list indicates SUNY Empire State University at Saratoga Springs. Rublamb (talk) 21:01, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Here the "Empire" example is made up for the purpose of discussion only. It's a coincidence that he happened to pick a name that had already been used, elsewhere in that long list. ;) Jax MN (talk) 02:10, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Got it. No. Not every school of a university needs its own article. Rublamb (talk) 02:20, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, to me Empire State University is where Peter Parker (Spiderman) attended in one of the incarnations where he was a college student. (Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends)Naraht (talk) 04:16, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Address

In general, I've seen that the infobox should summarize what is in the article. However I've noticed that while we have the address for the national HQ in the infobox, but not often in the article (see Lambda Sigma Upsilon for an exception to this).Naraht (talk) 15:01, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

I've always thought that a few items, like addresses, website and the details of current chapter and colony count only need to be noted once, that is, in the infobox. To duplicate this information seems overkill - pedantic - and here, the standard rule can be ignored so that the article is more readable.

I think the guidance here is that because infobox points do not typically provide an adjacent citation, they tend to summarize a deeper dive in the body text, which IS cited, and thus supported by reference. Readers that want to check further can go to the citations in the body text. But, infoboxes aren't always a summary, and may indeed provide the detail that is covered more briefly in the body text. Like, for example, a website is not shown in the body text. At least that is how I understand standard practice around here. And I think consistency is important too, within the articles we support. Jax MN (talk) 21:23, 15 December 2025 (UTC)