Template talk:Infobox fraternity

Remove/Keep Mission and Vision?

Mean as custard has in the last 24 hours deleted either Mission or Vision or both from the infobox template of three Fraternities (Alpha Zeta (professional)‎, Sigma Xi, and Alpha Kappa Psi). IMO, there are really two choices,

1. Revert the changes and keep Mission and Vision in the templates
2. Remove Mission and Vision as parameters.

The *Essay* Wikipedia:Avoid mission statements is probably useful. It is an essay and as such not official, but it does represent a fairly well organized set of arguments. I'd like to keep the discussion here, but will mention it over at the Wikiproject, just in case someone there *doesn't* have the template in their watchlist. (I'm not intending to indicate that Mean as custard has done wrong, but merely that I'm fine with jumping to Discuss rather than throwing in the Revert step. :) ) Naraht (talk) 15:13, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Mission and vision statements are only valid if they are sufficiently unusual and encapsulate the organisation's function and aims in a way that cannot be better explained in any other form, or if they have been the subject of considerable third-party comment and so become notable in themselves. Virtually all of the time they are merely puffery and removing them improves the article. . . Mean as custard (talk) 15:57, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I strongly support removing these parameters. It may sometimes be appropriate in the prose of an article but this information has no place in an infobox, a table that is intended to present readers with a concise, high-level overview of the subject of an article. ElKevbo (talk) 21:27, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I sympathize somewhat. Dumb, wordy or ponderous mission or vision statements don't add much value for me, here nor in corporate management. Yet to label them such, these are all subjective opinions, except that one might quantify a number of words beyond which a statement ought to be considered 'wordy'. Sometimes groups appear to get excitable about formation steps, and go overboard, manufacturing a Mission, Vision statement, Pillars, Motto, yada-yada just because others have them. Perhaps it is easier to do this versus the hard work of recruitment and team-building.

Clearly, some mission and vision statements ARE instructive, pithy, and of significant importance to defining the nature of a group. Where then do we draw the line? Just having these parameters available will prompt many groups to fill them, sometimes extending an infobox for fifteen or twenty lines of text. To deny some is to allow a subjective judgement.

Maybe we set a Project standard to allow one such statement: Pick it, whether motto, pillars, mission statement or vision statement. Interested readers can always follow the link trail back to the GLO's own website, to read the detail. Jax MN (talk) 16:49, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Motto (and pillars) seems to fall into a different category to me from Mission/Vision Statements, whether or not they should. A 150 year old fraternity/sorority likely will have created a motto *at* the time of founding or soon after and changing that motto might require votes of multiple conventions due to a meaning explained in the ritual. A Mission Statement is likely to be something created by an employee of the National Office and simply need approval by the National Board.Naraht (talk) 17:07, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

This is a great discussion. I agree motto/pillars are different and do belong in the infobox, while mission statement should go. For one thing, the motto is usually short and can reasonably fit into an infobox slot, while a mission statement can take up an inch or more of vertical space. Some mission statements are several sentences or a short paragraph. They are just too long for the infobox. Another difference: mottos are often found in a secondary source such as Baird's, while mission statements almost exclusively come from the group's website or other publication. When included in the article, the mission statement rarely had a sourcee. We could remove them on that basis, without even getting into their generic/puffery nature. Rublamb (talk) 22:12, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

If the Mission/Vision Statements are the topic of news, then they belong in prose.Naraht (talk) 17:07, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you, on including these when they are a topic of news. I also agree with ElKevbo on the matter of making infoboxes tight and summarial. This leads back to it being a subjective matter, resistive of making a hard-and-fast policy. Some years ago I had an exchange with MeanAsCustard, where I pushed back on what I thought was too-aggressive removal of text from GLO articles. I don't want to wholesale delete *all* these mission and vision statements (etc.), but I am sympathetic to the removal of unnecessary, non-encyclopedic text. This is a useful discussion, as we mull this over. Jax MN (talk) 18:29, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Jax MN I would have no problem with doing this in a manner that would allow you to see all of the deleted fields and determining which ones would make sense to add as prose. Naraht (talk) 16:03, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Rublamb I understand a rule saying that Mission/Vision statements have to come from third party sources, but frankly that would almost always be equivalent to "if a third party has a reason to repeat it, it probably belongs in the text with the reason that they did so"

Restatement

This is *only* a proposal to remove the vision and mission fields. *No* change to motto or pillar fields.Naraht (talk) 16:03, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

At this point, there are not many with a mission statement and very few with a vision statement. I have looked at all of them. I don't think there is any added value to this content being in the infobox. My vote is to remove this content from the Infobox fraternity. Rublamb (talk) 22:49, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, we now have a way to easily check the values in the fields we are deleting. Are we all agreed those fields should go?Naraht (talk) 01:50, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

@Naraht, the August report confirms the lack of data in the fields: Vision and Mission, so these can now be removed from the Infobox fraternity template. Because fields with the status of zero do not show up in the report, we will need to comfair July and August to see if there are any other that we successfully updated for deletion. Rublamb (talk) 19:07, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Rublamb I don't think there is a good way to bring back July and August's information. Now and in the future we may want to copy the wikitext at the bottom onto pages in order to be able to compare. We could probably just compare August to the template itself and look for those that don't show up other than the "duplicates" like homepage.Naraht (talk) 21:44, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Additional Affiliations

For European groups, I think

• Union of Catholic German Student Fraternities (Cartellverband)
• Wingolf
• Presidium Convent (P!K!)
• League of Estonian Corporations EKL

are possibilities to add as abbreviations.

Other current affiliations that aren't really umbrellas in the way that I think that we expect are bed the linked ones.

• Chi Alpha - Assemblies of God USA
• Yesharah Society - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Additional Affiliation

• I'm going to add National Interfraternity Music Council as appropriate. No page, so no link.Naraht (talk) 16:52, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Parameter Bot

List for August is up at https://bambots.brucemyers.com/TemplateParam.php?wiki=enwiki&template=Infobox+fraternity . working on doing somewhat uncontroversial linking on Flower, Jewel and Tree. Naraht (talk) 13:59, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Standardization of Type

This is not intended to be nearly as strict as Status. I just thought I'd take a few well known examples and see if we can standardize on what should be in the field, I'm presuming two things 1) that unless something is *really* different, all get *some* sort of wikilink and 2) In all cases only the first word of a description is capitalized:

• Phi Beta Kappa - Suggestion: [[Honor society]], other possibilities [[Honor society|Honor]], [[[[Honor society|Honorary]]
• Alpha Tau Omega - Suggestion: [[List of social fraternities and sororities|Social]] here it is less of a question of what is displayed than what is linked. There really isn't a page directly on the topic
• Alpha Kappa Psi - Suggestion: [[Professional fraternities and sororities|Professional]]
• Korporatsioon Vironia - Suggestion: [[Studentenverbindung]] (Studentenverbindungen is plural, and we use singular for everything else)
• Alpha Phi Omega - Suggestion:[[Service fraternities and sororities|Service]]
• Book and Snake - Suggestion:Senior [[secret society]]
• Order of Angell - Suggestion: Senior [[honor society]]
• Euphemian Literary Society - Suggestion: [[Literary society|Literary]]
• Order of Gimghoul - Suggestion:Not sure if it should be [[Secret society|Secret]] or [[Secret society]]

Naraht (talk) 13:59, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Standardization of website field

Presuming an apparently official domain, such as mumumu.org or trimu.org, the default unless other reasons should be similar to {{official website|http://www.sigmaphidelta.org}} and otherwise if not apparently official {{url|https://web.archive.org/web/20150506082109/http://uconntact.uconn.edu/organization/lambdalambdalambda|Tri Lambda website}}<nowiki>. I know that quite a few use the url to show only the domain such as <nowiki>{{URL|http://www.dke.org|dke.org}} , but that doesn't seem to fit what is appropriate.Naraht (talk) 13:59, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Only an official website should linked in the infobox. Unofficial sites can be included in External links, if included at all. I don't really care which template is used, but am fine with picking one. Assuming it is official website, it would be great to have the "official website template" show in VE when adding this field, giving all editors easy access to the prefered format. Rublamb (talk) 18:53, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

{{official}} should really only be used in the External links section, with {{URL}} used in an infobox (if only for formatting reasons). I don't necessarily think we need to mandate that it be used, though. Primefac (talk) 19:15, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Don't we need to use some form of a tempatel so that there is not a bare URL? Rublamb (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

shrugs

If we want to format it a specific way, we can take the parameter {{website}} and then pass internally (i.e. in the template) into {{URL}}, allowing us to give a standard title param; we would probably need to add in a check logic to make sure {{URL}} isn't already being used in that parameter. Primefac (talk) 19:49, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with Primefac's idea and trust his ability to implement it.Naraht (talk) 22:56, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

So preferred (for now) is {{URL|https://www.mumumu.org/}}? And then after some template magic from Primefac (because nobody else out of this group knows how) , the preferred will be https://www.mumumu.org (oddly enough there is a dummy website at that address. )

Move official website

So if the infobox has an official website, we should both remove it from the infobox (and change to url) *and* move the {{Official website... to external links, right?Naraht (talk) 12:37, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds right (I have not been moving {{Official website... to Extenal links but will start doing so. And again, only the organization's "offical" website should be in the infobox. Not its successor's webste, its Facebook page, a chapter's website, or other variations of this theme--I am fixing these as I come across them. I am still pondering if archived websites for defunct groups belong in the Infobox. Rublamb (talk) 14:09, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

My feeling on archived groups is that that it probably should be in external links. I also expect that in most cases, that an archived home page (or something on the site) is probably used *somewhere* as a reference.Naraht (talk) 15:17, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Rublamb (talk) 15:26, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Standardization of State

I think we are sort of leaning toward [[Oregon|OR]] over [[Oregon]], so I'd like to standardize that way for State.Naraht (talk) 14:12, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I finally checked MOS. MOS:STATEABBR says, with the exception of Washington, D.C., "abbreviations of place names—e.g., Calif. (California), TX (Texas), Yorks. (Yorkshire)—should not be used to stand for the full names in normal text.... They should not be used in infoboxes." So state names should always be spelled out in the body of the article and the infobox. However, MOS:STATEABBR does allow the use of linked state abbreviations where space is tight, such as in a table. Note that the abbreviations US or U.S. is allowed in the article text and Infobox as this is on the list of allowed acronyms found in MOS:ACRO. Rublamb (talk) 18:38, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, so we flip the other way, and remove the state abbreviations then.Naraht (talk) 18:53, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

All state abbreviations done. The following piped entries remain. Washington, Georgia and New York need pipes on the right with their state name as the state name leads to redirect. Tau Delta Phi has DC on the right as that is an exception in MOS:STATEABBR.Naraht (talk) 19:41, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Flower capitalization

White [[rose]] or White [[Rose]]? Naraht (talk) 21:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

In this case, I use the Wikilink's original spelling. Jax MN (talk) 18:02, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not honestly sure I understand your comment. Should it be Rose (with a capital R) or rose (with a lose case r) in the example?Naraht (talk) 01:02, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for being unclear. The word Rose, standing alone, is capitalized as a Wikilink article. However, following Wikipedia's rule on excessive capitalization, when called out as a particular sub-group of Rose, I think the preference around here is to omit capitalizing the trailing word "rose" in situations like White rose. But if you are going to nest a Wikilink around only that second word, the actual article you'd point to isn't "[[rose]]", but "[[Rose]]". I don't have a strong preference here, but given my preference to point to actual articles, with piped alternative spellings that reflect in the body text, I would likely frame it like this" "White [[Rose|rose]]". It's simply more work for us, and perhaps this is a clear example of why the lower case version of the word is automatically captured as a redirect to the upper case version. Jax MN (talk) 01:20, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

It is going to the same location, and so , no pipe needed, I was more interested in how it should be for the person to see. So, White [[rose]] it is.Naraht (talk) 15:04, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah... Rose and rose point to the same place, by design. Per the MOS the parameter (as displayed) would be "White rose" so we would link it as [rose]. Primefac (talk) 13:05, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

data for Flower

For Phi Kappa Psi, the value for flower is | flower = [[File:Rosa 'General Jacqueminot'.jpg|left|50px|[[Jacqueminot Rose]]]] . Should we allow images here?Naraht (talk) 18:24, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, my suggestion would be to allow it only if there is a specific official representation of the flower that is designated as the organization's flower. The purpose of an infobox is to provide a quick overview of basic information, and employing an image simply adds to clutter, especially as the fraternity flower has probably never been one of its primary identifying marks. It would be like placing an image of a plaque with the fraternity motto inscribed on it, rather than just the text of the motto itself,-- choster (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't see value of generic flower images, especially in the Infobox. Rublamb (talk) 19:23, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Choster and Rublamb. FWIW. Jax MN (talk) 19:34, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Third'ed, links in the infobox, images in the body text. Primefac (talk) 13:06, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Motto format

What is the proper format for the Motto? I sort of like the way that infobox University does it where the motto, the language of the motto and its english version are all separate data fields, but if we don't have that, we should probably come to an agreement on what standard examples are.Naraht (talk) 12:56, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something, but we have separate data fields for all of our parameters as well; I'm not seeing anything different (or unusual) about the formatting at {{Infobox university}}. Primefac (talk) 13:57, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

PrimefacFor {{Infobox university}}:motto, motto_lang, mottoeng are separate parameters with the mottolang added to the template surrounding the motto.

| label4 = Motto | data4 = {{#if:{{both|{{{motto|}}}|{{{motto_lang|}}}}}|<div lang="{{{motto_lang}}}">{{{motto}}}</div>|{{{motto|}}}}}Naraht (talk) 16:46, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

no use of lang|grc

As of now, there are a few pages where the page is named with Greek Letters that doesn't have the infobox with lang = {{lang|grc|...}}

• Phi Gamma Delta - Comment text telling editors *not* to remove the letters in between
• Kappa Delta Pi - I found *one* occurance of the Greek Letters on kdp.org (a person's profile) and a *few* otherwise, can probably stay with the latin.
• Tri Kappa - They seem to actively discourage the use of three Kappas in a row, so I don't think changing to that makes sense.

I think those are OK. the rest I've changed... Naraht (talk) 20:44, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Alt name

I prefer Alternate Name to Alternative Name for the free_label, but it appears that right now things are tipped the other way (about 5 to 2). Feelings one way or the other?Naraht (talk) 21:31, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

"Other name" is shorter and doesn't have the spelling ambiguity. Primefac (talk) 12:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Other name is fine with me. Rublamb (talk) 12:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

All changed to Other name (or names). This time around (when september gets generated), I think I'll start actually look at the free_label entries. Naraht (talk) 13:57, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

status = Merged and website/homepage

Sort of related to the website standardization, but making into its own topic Looking at Gamma Pi Epsilon sorority. It merged into Alpha Sigma Nu fraternity in 1973 (Both Jesuit specific). True merger, but to the ASN name. Based on that, I think that there should be no website in the infobox, and probably nothing in the external links. However, for Phi Alpha (fraternity), because there is a specific page about them at the Zeta Beta Tau website, external links can contain https://zbt.org/about-zbt/our-antecedent-groups/phi-alpha/ . Sound good?Naraht (talk) 10:55, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Primefac (talk) 12:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

An external link makes sense, assuming it is not already a source for the article. Rublamb (talk) 13:34, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

That's something that I'm sort of hesitant about. Let's say that for Phi Alpha that we have a decent amount of information from Baird's and that the ZBT website page is used for the information (making something up here) that ties the date of inactivity for one chapter to December 1942 where Baird's only has 1942. Doesn't seem right to avoid having it in the external links... (or conversely realizing that the month is there causing it to be removed from External Links, especially if it is the only one.)Naraht (talk) 16:10, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Website vs. Homepage

A few questions

1. Is website preferred as a parameter value for a newly created page? Homepage seems to be alternate.
2. Does it make a difference if the URL has additional directories to it? So use website if it is https://www.mumumu.net/ but use homepage if it is https://www.mumumu.net/index.shmtl or if it isn't even owned by the organization like https://www.ibex.edu/popcorn/mumumu/index.html?
3. Should we avoid using official website if the site isn't owned by the organization like the ibex.edu above?

Naraht (talk) 21:08, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're asking; we don't need to splitting hairs between what is the "website" and what is the "homepage". If the URL where 99% of people will land when looking up/at the GLO is where they end up, put it under the website parameter. Primefac (talk) 21:37, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Coat of Arms values

In general, which is preferred

1. ) Starts with File:, Starts with Image:, Starts with nothing (these are interchangable?)
2. ) is of type png, jpg, svg. (I know these aren't interchangable, at best we can figure out which to download from the fraternity website.

Naraht (talk) 17:29, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

PNG would be the perferred image type for the Internet. IDK if it matters regarding File or Image; although, WikiCommons uses File when you copy the photo code. Rublamb (talk) 19:20, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

SVG will be preferable if available, being a vector format that will render accurately at any size or resolution. If SVG is unavailable, PNG is the better fallback for something like a logo, which has a limited number of colors. JPG is a lossy format and really only suitable for photographs. - choster (talk) 21:57, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Choster: You are correct about vector files but it really depends on the image type (photo, digital logo, chart) and its size and source (scan, web grab, digital photo). Commons:File types has a good discussion on file types, concluding that there is no one best format for all image types. It indicates that SVG is only better for tables and flags and notes " SVG images on Wikipedia are not served to browsers. Instead, MediaWiki converts the SVG image to a PNG image and serves the PNG image." If I were creating a logo, SVG would be the ideal format. But, if I grab an image of a logo from the Internet, I would go with PNG because of color stability. For our usage, scalability is not a huge factor as most images we find are similar in size to our Infobox needs. And, I have always figured that I might as well use PNG so that what I see is what most people will get. Regardless, it makes sense to use Commons:File types to direct file type decisions on a case-by-case basis. Rublamb (talk) 00:12, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Proposal Motto Format

We have quite a few mottos here. As far as I can tell, they are either in Greek, Latin or English. I'd like to propose that the format used in the infobox be the same as the US Coast Guard. (US Marine Corps there is an article for their motto, so that's done oddly). US Coast Guard is {{unbulleted list|{{lang|la|Semper Paratus}}|Always ready}}. That puts the latin on one line, the english on the other and *NO* quote marks. Similarly if it is in greek then grc|greek words here in greek instead of the la|semper. English would simply be with no quotes.Naraht (talk) 20:40, 12 September 2024 (UTC),mlpo0l

Does tis also puts foreign language n quotes and English without quotes? Rublamb (talk) 21:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

(think you are missing a few characters here). United States Coast Guard Latin is italics (no quotes), English is no italics no quotes.Naraht (talk) 23:17, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

That format (italics for foreign language and no italics for English) matches MOS. Thus, I agree that should be our style. I am unsure about dropping quotation marks for mottos in English, as this is technically a quote. However, I agree it looks cleaner without quotation marks. Infobox University uses quotation marks for the English version. Of course, it has fields for Motto and Motto in English. That might be a good option for Infobox Fraternity because editors using VE would more easily be able to match the layout. Since we have a lot of overlap with UNI, it makes sense to follow their lead. I doubt we have much overlap with Infobox Military Units. As a side note, I wonder if we should order our colors to match Infobox UNI as well. Rublamb (talk) 00:07, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Membership

Given the number of non-collegiate groups (high school and community-based) and groups that have a mixture of collegiate and graduate chapters, I think we need to remove the automatic insertion of the word "collegiate" in the membership field. Rublamb (talk) 15:37, 13 October 2024 (UTC)