Template talk:Infobox fraternity

Standardization of Type

Pulling back out of archives since no one replied....

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)

Standardizing makes sense to me. I think we are all over the place with regards to linking. I have a couple of suggestions.

• List of social fraternities and sororities is a redirect. Should we instead use List of social fraternities and List of social sororities and women's fraternities. However, we might want to consider Fraternities and sororities.
• Secret society goes to the generic article. A better fit would be Collegiate secret societies in North America for college groups.
• Literary society is a generic article. A better fit would be College literary societies.
• As far as Gimghoul, I guess "secret society" if that is what you are going to use for Book and Snake and Order of Angell. As a UNC grad, I can tell you it is akin to the groups at Yale and Harvard.

Rublamb (talk) 19:19, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

• RublambI'm fine with these choices. I don't know if we need to split out the groups where identities aren't revealed to after graduation versus those that are. And Collegiate secret societies in North America is probably a good choice for parallelism.Naraht (talk) 19:45, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

  FYI @Rublamb [1] - since secret fraternities exist beyond the United States... @BennBluee brought up the issue at Cambridge Apostles Drew Stanley (talk) 06:17, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

  We have generally address exceptions on a case by case basis. At this point, we only have a handful of groups that don't fit the existing types. Rublamb (talk) 07:05, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

  The "secret" type works for Cambridge Apostles. The problem is the infobox link redirect to "Collegiate secret societies in North America" Drew Stanley (talk) 07:11, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Just noting that we could (if desired) hard-code specific results for Type similar to how we do it for Affiliation. It would require going through and replacing all extant uses with a new "code" but it would standardise things. I know you said we don't necessarily need to be as strict as Status with this but I thought I'd throw it out there. Primefac (talk) 13:29, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. I am willing to help if we want to go that way. Rublamb (talk) 13:31, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Proposal

Overall

• No limits here, we allow for groups that don't fit the hard coded choices.
• Do we allow for multiples? I'd *really* (six more level of bolding here) like to *not* allow the NPHCs to be both Social and Service, that seems to knock out the entire discussion of Emphasis.
• "or" below indicates different choices, not one long string to be transformed.
• I know there are going to be some that don't fit (mostly non-collegiate or European)
• How do we handle the Philippines, Do professional or social need to be pointed in a different direction? And General (in some ways) might be better as a description for both Alpha Phi Omega (Philippines) and Tau Gamma Sigma, but I'm just fine leaving the Philippine groups alone for now.

Specific

• Social fraternity -> [[List of social fraternities|Social]]
• Social sorority or Social women's fraternity-> [[List of social sororities and women's fraternities|Social]]
• Service -> [[Service fraternities and sororities|Service]]
• Professional -> [[Professional fraternities and sororities|Professional]]
• Studentenverbindung -> [[Studentenverbindung]]
• Honor or Honor society -> [[Honor Society|Honor]] (that these are groups whose membership is known while students)
• Secret or Secret society -> [[Collegiate secret societies in North America|Secret]] (reveled at graduation or after)
• Literary or Literary society -> [[College literary societies|Literary]]
• Fraternal Order -> [[Fraternal order]] (used for groups primarily non-collegiate in operation, like Orange Order)

I'm not sure Senior as a descriptor in the information box. Naraht (talk) 15:37, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful to specify how to address final societies and senior societies. Do these fall under honor society (if they are not a secret society)? That seems right to me, although we have not listed this in our honor society list article. I have put "senior" in the emphasis field before. I am not sure if that makes sense but it is where we put other membership foci, such as race, culture, and religion.

Since most of the links above are to articles that included a list of groups, would it be better to link fraternal orders to List of general fraternities? This list also includes non-collegiate service societies such as B'nai B'rith, so it picks up another oddball group type. I would also like to explore whether we should use "fraternal order" or "general fraternity" in the Infobox. I am conflicted: we use general within the WP and our watchlist. However, fraternal order might be more common externally.

Glad you mentioned that non-collegiate GLOs don't fit well because I thought about them when looking at the above list. Not done yet because there is an existing redirect that needs to be deleted, but we agreed to change Fraternities and sororities to College fraternities and sororities a while back. That would make it clear that Fraternity is the article that covers non-collegiate groups and also pave the way for a new (list) article on Non-collegiate fraternities and sororities. Currently, our list articles for professional, social, and service GLOs (along with African American, Asian, and Latino) are not limited to collegiate but could be. If everyone likes the idea of a new list article for non-collegiate GLOs, organized by type (social, service, professional, etc.), I will gladly work on it. That would give us the option we need for this Infobox type project. Rublamb (talk) 18:36, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm a little bit lost on the difference between final societies and senior societies. Does one of them cover (picking 15 as an example) "has 15 seniors at any given time and at graduation, the pick 15 juniors to replace them?"

Some of this can be covered by Emphasis, but B'nai B'rith and Alpha Epsilon Pi should *not* be viewed as the same type, even if both emphasize Judaism. This does bring back the concept of a "level" parameter: Middle School, High School, two-year colleges, four-year colleges, graduate and non-educational.

And I'm *just* fine if there are pieces left to solve later. this will handle about 80%, I think. Naraht (talk) 19:38, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

For our purposes, final and senior societies are the same--and would be either honor or secret societies. Technically, senior societies only include seniors who are selected at the end of their junior year, whereas final societies might include juniors and seniors. But functionally, these are the same type of organization. Rublamb (talk) 19:42, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I am fine with starting with this and fixing outliers later. Rublamb (talk) 19:50, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Implemented in Sandbox

I've implemented the following for type in the Template:Infobox fraternity/sandbox (you can test by changing the use to {{Infobox fraternity/sandbox}} instead of {{Infobox fraternity}}

• social fraternity = Social
• social sorority | social women's fraternity = Social
• service | service fraternity |service sorority = Service
• professional | professional fraternity | professional sorority = Professional
• studentenverbindung = Studentenverbindung
• honor | honor society | honorary = Honor
• secret | secret society = Secret
• literary | literary society = Literary
• fraternal order = Fraternal order
• #default =

• The variable is lower cased for the test so the variable doesn't matter. I went with a few extra options beyond what we discussed. We certainly can pull back. Preferred, I guess is the first in the list.
• Not sure what we do with Social co-ed groups (there are a few). And for some of the neologism names (Frarority, Diurnity(?), we can just do by hand.).
• If this is OK, I'll copy from the sandbox and start standardizing.Naraht (talk) 05:02, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Primefac does the code look good?Naraht (talk) 17:59, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Code looks fine. Primefac (talk) 18:09, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I am not worried about coed groups as these all seem to fall under fraternity. Rublamb (talk) 19:23, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Implemented

I'll update the doc when I have a chance.

Preferred for Service and Professional

What is the preferred text for these. Simply Service and Professional respectively or should we indicate fraternity or sorority if that applies?Naraht (talk) 15:56, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

German Student Corps

Some of the Studentenverbindung are of an older type: German Student Corps. As far as I can tell from the article, all German Student Corps are Studentenverbindung, but not the other way around. Do we want to separate them and have another entry for German Student Corps?

Umbrella

I'd like to add

• Umbrella -> [[List of Greek umbrella organizations]]

Proposal - Missing chapters don't include Umbrella

Change "If no chapter value put group into Missing chapters category" to "If no chapter value and type is not Umbrella put group into Missing chapters category".Naraht (talk) 09:46, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Implemented. Not sure if I got it right, did check that infoboxes still work, but may take a while to purge causing them to fall out of the category.Naraht (talk) 21:56, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I will let you know if I find any issues with the list I am using for the cleanup project. Rublamb (talk) 00:24, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Primefac Could you please check the code? I don't see an effect of changing the code in Professional Fraternity Association and I have both waited 12 hours and made a small edit. :(Naraht (talk) 13:51, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Seems to be working properly to me. Tracking cats can sometimes be a bit recalcitrant to actually update, so that might have been the issue. Primefac (talk) 00:39, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

PrimefacBeen a week and I did make a change to the Professional Fraternity Association article, should I make another edit removing the space that I added?Naraht (talk) 12:07, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

It's a single space, not worth the effort of making another edit just to remove it. Primefac (talk) 21:04, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Primefac. Not to fix the article, but as another attempt to force the update, as you say, recalcitrant...Naraht (talk) 01:40, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I guess I'm confused, what needs updating? Primefac (talk) 12:47, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Just as an idea. The change to the template still doesn't appear to be working. May be better to copy one of the umbrella ones to user or draft and see it gets added or not (it shouldn't)

Colony name

Should we have a parameter called colony_name, so the fraternities/sororities that use something like "Associate Chapter" can show that? Naraht (talk) 17:58, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

If we do, it would need 1 and 2 options as there are some fraternities that have two name variations. However, since we have somewhat decided to use "colony" in the chapter table regardless of internal names, I am not sure this is needed. Rublamb (talk) 15:54, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Location_name

Shall we have a parameter allowing Headquarters to be changed to something else for the situation where the group has a national mailing address, but that isn't a headquarters?Naraht (talk) Naraht (talk) 17:59, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Scope with shrinkage

Sigma Delta Tau has more than 100 chapters all of the actives are in the US but among the inactives is one in Canada. So what for scope?

• North America
• North America (formerly National (US))
• National (US)
• Something else?

(Chi Omega is in similar situation) Naraht (talk) 15:25, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

I prefer to label these as either North America or International. Once they have established a chapter outside the US, they often will retain alumni in that country for many years, and because the organization went through the exercise of forming a non-US unit, they retain that knowledge base and a named external chapter, regardless of active or inactive status. Kind of like, once an entity is notable, it remains notable; time does not erode its notability, for Wikipedia purposes. A curious rule, but one I endorse. Jax MN (talk) 18:49, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. At the country level, I think staying "North America" should be fine. A follow up question. If a GLO had 50 chapters around the US and is now down to one, should it remain as National (US) in scope as opposed to "Local (formerly National (US))" if that last chapter died, we'd have scope "National (US)"...Naraht (talk) 14:13, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

I think scope should be based on the location of active chapters, just like the chapter and colony numbers reflect active chapters, rather than chartered chapters. It is inaccurate to call a fraternity "international" that had one chapter in another country 75 years ago. (There are examples of this). We already have confusion with groups calling themselves "international" because they have alumni who "live around the world". Rublamb (talk) 15:52, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Additional fields

There are two entries used in Free_label *much* more than any others:

• Zirkel. Right now, between Zirkel and [[Zirkel (Studentenverbindung)|Zirkel]], we have 28 entries. Presuming we add it, any feelings on where? I completely feel that "Zirkel" should be linked as above.
• Former Name. Between Former Name, Former Names, and Formerly, we have 35 entries. Presuming we add it, any feelings on where?Naraht (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

I would go with Former_name as that goes with Former_affiliation. Should we use Zirkel or the translation Monogram? I know I started the tradition of using Zirkel but have always felt it might be confusing since we are not defining Zirkel in each article. However, I guess have a link could solve that. Rublamb (talk) 15:46, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good. Zirkel at the end or farther up?Naraht (talk) 15:42, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

I would put it under the badge field Rublamb (talk) 15:43, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Right now the order goes: ...Member badge, pledge pin, colony badge, colony pin, colors, symbol, flag. It seems logical to be after colony pin and before colors. Does that work?Naraht (talk) 17:38, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

I was originally thinking it would replace Badge, since most German fraternities do not have pins. The only other consideration is that colors are more important to German fraternities than their Zirkel. So, it could hang out down with Flag. I'm good either way. If you can also add it to the VE code set, I will be happy to move all of the images. Rublamb (talk) 18:47, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

OK. Immediately before flag. And let's face it, I'd be surprised if we had 3 articles that included the word zirkel anywhere in the source that won't have this done. I'll add Zirkel in the next day at most.18:50, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Rublamb Done. Corps Hubertia Freiburg used as test. Have fun. :) Naraht (talk) 20:42, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

I had to add it to TemplateData, which is how you change what shows in VE and a few other places. No big deal. I also updated in the description list. However, that reminded me, I am still cannot remove Kaleidoscope from TemplateData without breaking the list. It was added differently from the other fields I have removed previously. Can you take a look and see if you can figure out the issue. The way it is, Kaleidoscope is still an option in VE which is annoying. Thanks. Rublamb (talk) 01:46, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

I removed two occurances of Kaleidoscopes (plural) from the structure of the doc, see if that helps.Naraht (talk) 13:28, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

You fixed it! I have tried removing it several times, just like I did with other successful removals. It had to be a stray bracket. Rublamb (talk) 21:59, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

Former_name

Where do you think for this, doesn't seem right to have it just after name.Naraht (talk) 13:28, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

I am thinking after founding date and birthplace. Otherwise it seems really random. Infobox university does place former names at the very top, but those tend to be more significant than local GLO names. Rublamb (talk) 21:57, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good. Jax MN opinion?Naraht (talk) 02:49, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

I think the discussion turns on an assessment of what information is most often needed, and that often, the final state would be to deal with this as a historical paragraph, eventually omitting the merged or former name. As these older names move further and further back in the rear view mirror, items like symbols, (current) pin, publication and current chapter count seem more important. FIJI remains a notable exception to this rule, and thus commands a reasonable one-off resolution. For the others, let's put the older name toward the bottom, just above the address. I like the current format where address, city, state, ZIP are followed by website, which is the last field. (A separate field trailing this for footnotes is incorrect, as I understand infobox rules.)

The test cases I've been considering -- I.C. Sorosis or some of the fully absorbed nationals like Beta Kappa, or the two fraternities that more recently formed Phi Kappa Theta -- all these have slightly different treatment, based on how recently these name changes were made. I.C. Sorosis is, now, simply a redirect to Pi Beta Phi. Beta Kappa, merged during WWII is back far enough so that it no longer needs to be listed in the infobox, but still has a separate, linked article. Phi Kappa Theta addresses their more recent merger-of-equals as more of a formative and core part of their history, so the two predecessor names have a more prominent placement in the infobox. As to the bulk of the others, I think placing the merged or prior name toward the bottom, just above the address field, is best, until such time as that item is omitted entirely. Jax MN (talk) 19:48, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

If we were dealing only former names as a local, I would agree. However, it is not that simple. We are looking at groups such as National Speech and Debate Association which was called the National Forensic League from 1925 to 2013. Or the North American Interfraternity Conference, formerly the National Interfraternity Conference. Of course, we could specify what is or is not worthy of inclusion based on scope and longevity. There are also the now locals that were previously a chapter of a national; although that info can easily go in former affiliation. But if we are going to exclude former names from the infobox, we might also want to exclude most former affiliations, under the same principle. Rublamb (talk) 03:59, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes. It's just that listing many former names within the infobox gets tedious. I therefore don't mind a bit of subjectivity here, per your comment. Jax MN (talk) 21:23, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Additional fields

Something else to consider adding as a field for Alumni_chapters. This seems to get inserted into Chapters as: 3 college, 4 alumni. Creating the field would be consistent with having the field for colonies. Rublamb (talk) 15:57, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, but I'm wondering whether the NPHC groups still have mixed.Naraht (talk) 20:27, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

I know that one does, but they have different name for it (neither college/undergrad or alumni. Rublamb (talk) 20:51, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Any oddballs could be placed in a free field. Rublamb (talk) 05:50, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

Greek and Roman divinity

Shouldn't this be "deity" rather than "divinity"? Rublamb (talk) 06:45, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes, if one cares about proper English. Good catch. Jax MN (talk) 21:21, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Updated. One other thought. If we merge Patron Greek Deity and Patron Roman Deity into Patron Deity, this field could also be used the group that has an Egyptian deity, etc. Since there will be a link to the article about the god or goddess, its origin will be accessible. Rublamb (talk) 05:49, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this change, too. But you got me thinking about something Naraht brought up a couple of years ago. What about non-divine patrons, like Ben Franklin, Churchill or others? There are a few of those rattling around. Ought these simply be "patron"?" Do we need to distinguish between a divine or secular patron? Jax MN (talk) 21:48, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

I remember that conversation. I was and still am in favor of a generic Patron category, given how few there are in each category. I can't remember why we didn't merge them at the time. Patron, meaning "person chosen, named, or honored as a special guardian, protector, or supporter" should work for all types, whether deities, saints, or random people. Rublamb (talk) 22:05, 15 July 2025 (UTC)