Talk:List of social fraternities and sororities

Beta Sigma Phi
What ought we do about this organization? Beta Sigma Phi is clearly notable, and has over a million initiates. However, they are not a collegiate society but rather a social group of ladies who've formed an adult-phase society which happened to pick a Greek name. It's rather traditional, certainly. But not in the sense that we mean here, where "Traditional" is defined as the collegiate-based academic/social fraternities and sororities that are most often part of the NIC or NPC.

It's a fluke, really, that this organization is Greek named. They could just as well be called the Debutante Club, or the Magnolia Society. And thus, perhaps not correct for this page. Though I wish them well. Jax MN (talk) 13:42, 28 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I have moved them the List of general fraternitiesl Rublamb (talk) 18:33, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Consistent order?
I *think* the co-ed is mostly in Greek Letter Order, while the others are in latin alphabet spelling of the greek letter order, they should be consistent.Naraht (talk) 17:05, 13 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Should all be alphabetical now, rather than Greek letter order. Rublamb (talk) 00:40, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Crest Writing
I find this section odd. Although I do not think it is needed here, I could at least understand if this was the motto. But the text from the crest is not only a-typical in our WP Fraternity & Sororities tables, but is also too long for this format, making the table clutter. I want to delete this info, but also wanted to give others a chance to discuss since someone put a lot of work into this. Rublamb (talk) 09:53, 28 December 2022 (UTC)


 * @24.20.69.38 made some edits today that again call attention to this section, indicating that the translations were wrong. I won't say the translations were wrong, but perhaps there are different opinions as to what content should be in this section. Many groups have a motto of words that begin with their Greek letters. Some groups have mottos but no crest writing. My guess is that mottos have been inserted in this section along with crest writing, but I have not gone back to check. Rublamb (talk) 22:22, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Dec 2022 edits
I'd done a quick review of this page to note GLOs that didn't have a coordinating "List of Chapters" page, or at least a standardized table of chapters on their main articles. You can find that surprisingly long list on the Talk page for the F&S Project, a place where we corral similar "to do" items that improve GLO articles generally. Regularly updated lists of chapters are a very helpful aspect of GLO pages.

This page, listing all the social fraternities and sororities, had been stable for some time. In the course of my reviewing for these missing List pages I provided links to the missing chapter lists that had been created, following the established style. The metatext looked like this: Acacia (Chapters), which results in both a link to the main article AND to a one-click link to either a List page, or a list on the main GLO article.

mentioned (on the Project Talk page) that, where a List page hadn't yet been created, we should create a REDIRECT to a list, where existing, on the affected GLO articles themselves, which I fully support. He offered to do this. But for the purposes of my reviewing all the GLO pages for missing List pages I was moving fast, and continued my churn through the list, and bare cleanup, following the established style. Good, so far.

Since then, an editor deleted the direct links for the Chapter Lists without, I think, recognizing the value they provide or opening a discussion on the matter. This page is a meta list, and I observe it is used by many as a launch page for getting to all the GLO articles. I personally find that when I am researching, this page is highly valuable for reminding me of GLO names, and often use the shortcut links to the chapter lists. The GLO articles themselves do not yet have a consistent stylesheet, where one can always find the chapter list or link to it in the same spot in the TOC, but on THIS meta list, it was easy to get to. I much prefer that these chapter list links be restored. '''Does any reader have a compelling reason not to include the "Chapter list" links, which is not addressed here? I want to understand.'''

I support the removal of indentations for the local chapters, replacing that syntax/style with a column, showing affiliation.

I support the adjustment of many of the line-item notes into EFNs.

I support the insertion of inactive groups into the main three lists of fraternities, sororities and co-ed groups, adding a column for status.

I support the removal of a couple of non-social groups. Note that some groups have a hard time defining themselves, calling themselves "Social/service honor societies", or some such, and this will require regular cleanup.

I note 's request for a discussion on including Greek text found on crests as a field. --I will let this play out; I can surmise that someone researching the nature of an inherited pin, or photo of a crest would find this column useful. As an Inclusionist around here, I'd keep it on that basis, even though, yes, it widens the table. Jax MN (talk) 19:34, 28 December 2022 (UTC)


 * My mention of WP Fraternities and Sororities style referred not to a standard for this type of article, but rather our overall efforts to 1) merge lists of active and inactive chapters and 2) the preference of a table's column sequence that begins with the organizational name, followed by chartered/range...ending with status and reference. In addition, recent projects have including moving extra information to efn. In short, I was working within the standards and preference we do have. As noted above, you do not have an issue with these changes.
 * Links to chapters: Originally, the organizational name was followed by the word "local" or "chapters". This data was in the same cell as the organization's name. At first, I did not realize that the word chapters had a link to either the chapter section of the organizational article or to the separate "list of chapters" article. It was not very intuitive in the way it was presented. I started by moving the data related to chapters or local to a new column for clarity. However, I noted that the infobox used in fraternity/sorority articles indicates local, regional, national or international--and felt like this was better terminology than "chapters" vs "local". This change had the added benefit of providing pertinent information for this overview.
 * I did make the bold decision that the link to the chapters was nice, not essential. My thought process was along the lines of NOS excessive linking because 1) all of these links either went to a section of the organization's article and the table already included a link to that article OR 2) the link went to a separate article that was also linked through the organization's article as a Main Article link. In other words, the table already provided access to the chapter information in a logical way.
 * I am still working on this article and will be adding sources and other missing details. I have not given up of finding a logical way of including a links to the chapters and would love to have suggestions in this regard. I am not against this being part of the table, just made the temporary decision that it was not working for my particular data set. I have also noted that the "see also" articles listed at the endo of this article present similar (but not the same) information in a wide variety of formats. I would also like to apply a generally accepted format to those articles, but would prefer agreement here first. Rublamb (talk) 22:09, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Perhaps too focused as an idea. could be create a template that is something like becomes Mu Mu Mu (List of Mu Mu Mu chapters)?Naraht (talk) 10:02, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Such a template would require very consistent naming styles for the Chapter List pages. This would be helpful for the meta pages, with groups of nationals. Jax MN (talk) 16:22, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I think this could be handled by redirects and anchors.Naraht (talk) 21:34, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The other common subordinate pages would include lists of notable members, and links to founders. I don't know if that could be included in the proposed template, but it certainly would highlight the groups for which these pages are missing. Jax MN (talk) 22:47, 31 December 2022 (UTC)