Talk:Honor society/Archive 1

Band of same name
There is a band of the same name, famous for the recent song "See U in the dark". Perhaps a disambiguation will be helpful. 60.234.240.43 (talk) 23:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)Geoff

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://archive.is/20140219170818/http://bigcat.fhsu.edu/agriculture/natdta/ to http://bigcat.fhsu.edu/agriculture/natdta/
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Inconsistency
I have a possible inconsistency alert- in this article, an honor society is defined as collegiate, but at least one of the list items (Mu Alpha Theta) is actually a high school honor society (I'm in it, and I'm in high school). Change the definition, or scrap Mu Alpha Theta? Philthecow 00:13, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * Change the definition (most definitely) and catagorize by level. Thanks for the notice. --BD2412 04:03, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Both you and the article are correct. Mu Alpha Theta recognizes high school and two-year college students, so it should be listed with each level.  Beginning 03:17, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Guidlines for comparative claims
Hello, all! There seems to be inconsistencies with what is considered acceptable on honor society pages regarding comparative claims. For example, the Phi Beta Kappa page has a claim that it "is the most prestigious" honor society (not that someone else claims that, but that it unquestionable is) and is cited questionably, while there is a dispute in the Phi Kappa Phi page about the cited-to-the-source statement that "Phi Kappa Phi claims that it is the most selective honor society". How do make sure that we keep things not only neutral and verifiable but also that the spirit of these is policies are consistently applied across the honor society pages? --Lhakthong (talk) 18:18, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Many fraternities and sororities are referred to by their membership or by non-members as honor societies, and vice-versa
I don't understand what the "vice versa" is referring to here. Please can somebody clarify this? 62.7.80.66 (talk) 14:17, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Vice versa is a Latin idiom for "and also the other way around," although frankly that statement is unclear. (Honor societies with Greek initials are in fact a special type of fraternity, by they are frats with academic missions rather than social missions.) Does that help? The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 04:30, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Generally invitation only
What honor societies allow unsolicited applications for membership? I was under the impression that all honor societies were, in fact, by invitation only, but that students were invited if and when they had sufficient grades and (in some cases) were in the correct major. Consider National Honor Society at the high school level, and Beta Beta Beta Biology Society (the latter also calls itself a "biological fraternity" on its Website ), as typical examples.

In short, I would like to see a citation for (or otherwise removal of) the statement "Some honor societies are invitation only while others allow unsolicited applications." The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 04:27, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * There are societies that allow invitations if the student feels they qualify but was not invited. This is also allows when a student qualifies but there is no active chapter on her campus.  See, for example, the Professional Application on Kappa Delta Pi's website  Nonetheless, membership still ultimately requires an invitation after the application.  That is, one does not gain membership simply by sending in an application.  So, I agree that we need to reword the sentence under question to reflect this, unless there is, in fact, more than one honor society that will offer membership to anyone who sends in an application, regardless for qualifications.--Lhakthong (talk) 13:08, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Epsilon Delta Pi and Upsilon Pi Epsilon
There are at least two computer information systems / computer science honor societies. One is Epsilon Delta Pi, ΕΔΠ and the other is Upsilon Pi Epsilon, ΥΠΕ. An editor, User:Funnyfarmofdoom, appears to be unaware of the former, and has twice made an edit to the first letter of the name of the fraternity ΕΔΠ, switching the Epsilon into an Upsilon, but leaving the Delta and the Pi alone. I assumed good faith, and that is still probably the case, but now after he/she reverted it a second time and didn't see the obvious mistake, it is also just sloppy editing. I am correcting the error again, and inserting a listing for the second fraternity, ΥΠΕ.


 * Epsilon Delta Pi does NOT have a Wikipedia page, but it nevertheless has multiple chapters, including |Baylor's Alpha Beta Chapter.
 * Upsilon Pi Epsilon has a Wikipedia page, and appears to be the larger group.

I am also correcting the misstatement on the Upsilon Pi Epsilon Wikipedia page which incorrectly claims it is the only one of its kind. Jax MN (talk) 01:10, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Reason
What are the reasons for honor societies to exist? --Abdull 16:17, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, why the "2 or 3 greek letters" naming convention? Communisthamster 17:43, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * After some reading around, I think that honour societies originally often had mottoes in Greek, and the names of the society would be the first initials of the motto. The Wednesday Island 16:02, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Professional fraternity and honor society
Can anyone fine information outside of wikipedia about how to distinguish between a professional fraternity and an honor society? As far as I can find, it's totally a matter of preference in teh organization, and even then some chapters will use a name of their own designation; eg. a friend of mine refers to her "fraternity" AED, even though they cite themselves as an honor society. &mdash;ScouterSig 22:54, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the WP:LEAD of professional fraternity now adequately addresses this confusion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lhakthong (talk • contribs) 18:22, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Remove all red entries?
Wikipedia generally advises that all entries on lists should have passed Wikipedia's notability test. This means they should already have their own article, such as Order of the Arrow, which you will observe is a blue link.

Currently, the page has many entries that are red links, such as National Italian Honor Society. Such entries surely should be removed, as per the Wikipedia guideline Write the article first - and surely honor deserves no less.

Removing all red entries would leave just the sound ones and unclutter the article. Moreover, many entries are just black, and some lack even a citation (aka reference).

I may one day follow the Just do it standard, and remove all non-notables ... unless somebody would like to do so first?

Views welcomed of course. Thanks, Trafford09 (talk) 10:30, 8 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I think the list in its current state has many non-notable organizations and removing them makes sense. Ninedotnine (talk) 07:50, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Non-notable societies
I am removing the following from the main article until the society has a Wikipedia article or notability can be documented. Note that having a website or simply existing does not equal notability. Rublamb (talk) 01:55, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Activities Honorary Society at University of Illinois at Chicago
 * Alpha Mu,, (Agricultural Systems Management)
 * American Sign Language Honor Society (American Sign Language)
 * Bisonhead at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
 * Chi Beta Lambda, ΧΒΛ (competency-based learning), colors: Navy blue,  Pink, and  White
 * Gamma Nu Eta, (information technology)
 * Lion's Paw at the Pennsylvania State University
 * National Adult Education Honor Society (adult high school) anyone can join, so may not really be an honor society
 * National Business Honor Society (business)
 * National Chinese Honor Society (Chinese)
 * National Society of High School Scholars
 * Order of The Key Honor Society (leadership)
 * Phi Kappa Alpha (Syracuse), ΦΚΑ (leadership) Dormant, as of 1961
 * Plumb Bob at the University of Minnesota
 * Tiger Brotherhood at the Clemson University
 * White Key Society at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is this even an honor society?; says service and leadership.

Processional Colors
One of the key identifiers of a student's achievement of membership in an honor society is their ability to wear the colors of that society as an accessory over their academic robes or on a mortarboard tassel. Hence, I added several dozen examples of these colors to various societies, creating a format convention that I think will be helpful. The director of the ACHS informed me that such usage is not only popular, but growing.

Future editors: Use this coding if you wish to follow the same format and add colors to another society. (Or to correct my mistakes.)

After the name of the society and the area of profession in parenthesis, add a comma, and insert the following language, updated of course with Wikilinks to your specific colors and correct swatches: colors:  Red and  Violet
 * would result in this:

Colors: Red and  Violet

The HEX code after the pipe identifies the color of the colorblock, and the following Wikilink connects to a page for the specific color or color family.

Frankly, some honor societies are more organized than others, and some are pickier than others about their exact colors. For example, while one that I worked on listed "blue" as one of their colors, I had to do some digging to find which version of blue was appropriate. The most definitive statement may often be found in the society's bylaws or constitution if you can find those documents, or by matching to a swatch from actual regalia, or from a crest. You will find that some honor society websites have tried to match to the actual society's colors, but with greater or lesser success depending on the skills of the webmaster or the limits of the website authoring tool; the color pallets they chose from may have been limited. Some of my additions were, in the end, best guesses as to EXACT color.

I found these Wikipedia pages particularly helpful in finding good Hex color numbers (# followed by six letters or numbers) that called up a specific color.
 * List of colors: A–F
 * List of colors: G–M
 * List of colors: N–Z

Failing those many hundreds of colors, this website appears to provide an exhaustive list.

The ACHS Wikipedia page lists the colors of many of their member organizations. Jax MN (talk) 17:07, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Organization of lists
The lists were divided into non-scholastic and scholastic, with the latter having secondary sections for college, high schools, local (college), and vocational. However, many of the college societies are not scholastic, meaning members are not selected based on academic performance. Rather than untangle that, it makes more sense to change the main section to college, vocational, high school, and community/other. Rublamb (talk) 23:41, 12 May 2024 (UTC)