Talk:Key Club

The Origin of Key Club's Name
It has been asserted that Key Club's name is derived from the original "Kiwanis." I added that Olney made a statement that Key Club was so named because it was the 'key' to getting into college. He was, of course, speaking facetiously, and accentuating the relatively high number of Kiwani members who became more valuable to college admissions officials because of their volunteer activities in the Key Club. My edit was not an act of vandalism, or the addition of 'nonsense' to Wikipedia. Though information on Olney is notoriously sparse on the internet and elsewhere, I stand by my recollection. Please follow the Wikipedia consensus policy of assuming goodwill--the fact that I am not a registered user does not render my contributions 'nonsense.' 71.232.162.100 03:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That, however, is not the meaning. It is an acronym for "Kiwanis Educates Youth".  Who exactly is Olney? Michael 05:06, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Olney taught volk at Sacramento High School and helped found the movement. I am not saying that Olney stated that that was the origin of the term, only that he meant it as a compliment to the organization he helped create.  To reiterate, he did not state that the organizations success in providing youth with service opportunities was the cause of naming it 'Key Club'.  He punned the word 'key' in such a way that reflected positively on his organization.  I am willing to drop the issue, though--it is a relatively unimportant fact.  71.232.162.100 04:19, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Indeed...Without citation, we cannot include it. Further, most do not know who Olney is. Michael 04:25, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

It does stand for "Kiwanis Educates Youth" it does have a dual meaning in that it was originally envisioned to be composed of the "key" members of the student body.Isaac Crumm 06:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Note to anyone interested: Key Club does not come from Kiwanis Educating Youth. It just was named the Key Club, because at the time Kiwanis was a business leaders club who started a boys-only club in the local high school for the "key" students with the most potential of becoming the next generation of business and world leaders. Obviously Key Club and Kiwanis has changed their objectives and purpose- but the reason behind the name remains the same. If you have questions on Key Club names and such call 1-800-KIWANIS. They can help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.134.174.249 (talk) 02:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I confirm this. It does not stand for "Kiwanis Endorsed Youth" or "Kiwanis Educates Youth" or anything like that. It was just the "key" boys at the school. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.219.56.85 (talk) 03:22, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Redundancy of "Official Site"
All the district/school Key Club links end with "Official Site." This seems rather redundant to me. Any ideas? --Bsdlogical 02:03, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * No. It is needed.  As they are the "official" sites, it's important to know they're not just random. Michael 02:08, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Could we perhaps rename the subheadings to say "Official Individual High School sites?" This would still convey that message, but we wouldn't have to repeat ourselves. I can't argue a case for a Key Club site that is not official in its own respect. --Bsdlogical 01:18, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Club sites are official. Michael 01:22, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with you entirely. Since they are all official, we can classify them as such in the headings. In the "Key Club International partner sites," the UNICEF Official Site is listed, but the Children of Peace International site doesn't have the official sticker. Does that mean it is not, indeed, official? By your logic, the following articles should be changed to include the word official in every link: National_Beta_Club, Circle K (Kiwanis), and United_States_Junior_Chamber. There are surely more examples of the same thing.
 * In articles like Rotary International, the list of external links is small; the use of "official" is this justified to distinguish between sites. However, we should take the opportunity to group associated categories of links together when this is possible. If I counted correctly, the word "official" appears 52 times within one section on Key Club. I believe that such repetition makes Wikipedia look unprofessional. Perhaps your experience dictates otherwise.--Bsdlogical 00:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Many people create extra sites just to advertise or further promote something, so it is important to say it's official. For example, for fan sites, we can list one prominent or "official" site, so we do need to specify.  How would you recommend changing this? Michael 00:03, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That's true. In that case, we might be able to make a Fan Sites section with a list of links. The prominent, official sites could be labelled as such; all the others would just lack the title. If we put "unofficial" next to them, we would revert to the original problem in a different form. I haven't been able to find another article such as this one, where a huge quantity of external links are all official (i.e. there are no unofficial Key Club sites listed; all are official in their own respect). This article may be an exception - I'm not sure. For this article, I think grouping the links with Official in the section title is the best option. For other articles where there are few official sites, we could label the official ones as such, and omit any label for the rest. --Bsdlogical 00:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The sites are often referred to as the "Official Website of...", so I don't know how much of this we should really change. Michael 01:07, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Article structure
A suggestion for how organizations should be described is given in WikiProject Organizations/Format for organization articles. I think we should try to follow it. This will help readers through the article which has too many sections right now. Student7 (talk) 21:34, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * This article just needs to be rewritten, The article feels like a website and not an encyclopedia article. I agree, too many sections. - Jahnx ( talk ) 03:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I tried to reduce sections after drastically rearranging info. I only edited out some history which didn't seem that crucial. Still needs a lot of rewriting, but maybe easier to see with new sectioning. I hope. Student7 (talk) 22:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Dead links
References 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 are broken links. The documents don't exist.--82.155.42.60 (talk) 23:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)


 * True. Replaced most. Could not replace notable membership with reliable source. Magazine site is long gone. A substitute will have to be found. Student7 (talk) 21:16, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

copyright violation removed
I have nuked almost the entire history section, which was a cut-and-paste from the Key Club website's history page (http://www.keyclub.org/discover/historytimeline/ourhistory.aspx). That text is copyrighted, and cannot be copied over to Wikipedia wholesale. As noted by an earlier editor, the section was way too long as well, containing far more detail than needed for an article on the organization. If someone wants to rewrite the history section, have at it, but don't add content which violates a copyright.  Horologium  (talk) 14:03, 14 January 2012 (UTC)