Talk:Washington Hall (Seattle)

development
This article was discussed at some length at Talk:List of Masonic buildings. --doncram (talk) 12:39, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

assumption vs verifiability
I think it is an absolutely logical assumption that the Sons of Haiti used the first floor as a meeting place (ie a lodge room)... however... we can not say so in our article unless we can come up with a source to verify it (per WP:V and WP:NOR).

The reason why I question this is because the picture of the "lodge room" that is contained in the Seattle Preservation Board documents show that the room does not conform to the standard configuration for a Masonic Lodge meeting room in the US... no altar in the center of the room... no raised dais with three steps for the Master (and no dais for either of the two Wardens)... no G suspended in the East etc.

Now, while these things are standard in the US, they are not required in Masonry... so their absence remains a question rather than a definitive argument for saying that the room wasn't a meeting place. There are any number of logical reasons why the room does not fit the standard configuration... It may be that the brand of Masonry practiced by the Sons of Haiti (a splinter group that grew out of Prince Hall) does not use the standard lodge configuration, or it may be that this particular lodge never had the funds to pay for renovating the room to the standard when they purchased the building from the Danish Brotherhood. The point being that we don't know why this room don't fit the standard... but because it doesn't fit the standard we need more than just assumption to say that the Sons of Haiti used it as a meeting hall. For all we know the Sons used as a basketball court. Blueboar (talk) 14:00, 5 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the fact that the Sons of Haiti list the building as their business address (see here, would verify the statement: "It later served as the headquarters for the Sons of Haiti (an African-American Masonic group)." Multiple sources can verify that they maintained offices in the building... the only thing we can not yet verify is whether they actually held lodge meetings in the building.  Would this change be acceptable? Blueboar (talk) 15:21, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You're focussing a bunch of tendentious-seeming edits in the article, and making commentary here, which seems to relate to your personal issues with a different article, the List of Masonic buildings article, where you have written more than 500,000 bytes of Talk page comments. Driving every sane person away.  Don't do that here, please.  I don't give 2 whits about documenting anything Masonic here.  There's no need to establish, here, to some ridiculous standard that you are making up, what is the exact degree of Masonic association of this building.  This is a notable building.  Feel free to add sourced information about the building here, but please don't tag and please stop asserting any false need here for this article to serve your agenda elsewhere.  Argue, elsewhere, as you have been doing already, about whatever you wish.  I have reverted one or more of your tendentious edits in this article, and will continue to remove unnecessary, tendentious comments and tags in the article.  I may not reply further here, as I simply do not wish to discuss anything here with you. --doncram (talk) 16:45, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Please assume good faith... comment on the edits and not the editor... I have raised a concern, in good faith, and have proposed a very simple way to resolve it. You claim I am making up some "ridiculous standard" ... not so... my standards are WP:V and WP:NOR, two of Wikipedia's core policies... if you think these are "ridiculous" you should not be editing Wikipedia. Blueboar (talk) 17:14, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't be ridiculous. It's a Masonic lodge;  they have meetings, that is what Masonites do.  They owned a meeting hall.  They met there.  Duh.  We may not know what else they did there, but surely you do not want to assert they rented other space for their meetings or met outside.  I reverted / revised article. --doncram (talk) 18:40, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Again, that is an assumption. Yes, it is a logical assumption... Indeed it may even be true... but, as WP:V says clearly... "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is Verifiability, not Truth.. Ggiven that the room where they logically would have held their meetings is not configured the way other Masonic lodge rooms are configured, there is logical grounds for questioning this logical assumption. What we know for sure (ie through sources) is that the organization had offices in the building... what we don't know for sure (without sources) is whether they held lodge meetings in the building.  We assume so, but we don't know so. Blueboar (talk) 19:44, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That is just obtuse argument. We don't need to find specific statements supporting every obviously true aspect of every article.  I think this is only focussed upon by you because it plays into your battling on inclusion criteria for the List of Masonic buildings article.  Update: Blueboar opened an ANI edit warring report, and nonetheless edited further in the article to force his way, and is currently blocked for 24 hours. --doncram (talk) 23:49, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Useful ref?
Just found http://www.seattlepi.com/local/319439_washingtonhall12.html, which seems to have some pretty good info in it. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:46, 5 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks very helpful, thanks! Forming a reference, that would be something like:.
 * I won't edit in the article myself right now, but would welcome anyone else adding. Thanks! --doncram (talk) 23:49, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Sons of Haiti

 * Reading that it looks less and less like SoH are Masonic, I'd prefer some corroboration that it's anything much more than a mutual society like the Oddfellows. don't expect that we'll see anything, but it would still be useful.
 * ALR (talk) 08:44, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Bessel thinks they're "Masonic". http://www.bessel.org/glsusa.htm --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:23, 6 October 2010 (UTC)


 * There is no detail on Bessel, I noted that on the other article the other day. He also lists some GLs that are no more than an office and a couple of people with an axe to grind.
 * I guess the crux of the matter is what makes a body Masonic and for me it boils down to whether they confer the three degrees of Freemasonry, and adhere to key Landmarks. Given that the Landmarks aren't agreed the one that really matters to me is Belief in a Supreme Being.  So what we have is a couple of newspapers repeating the same line, some business registration results and a mention in Bessel.  It's hardly conclusive.
 * They might be as simple as a degree factory, as discussed by Nelson King, although the circumstantial stuff makes them look more like a benevolent society.
 * ALR (talk) 15:48, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Since many refs indicate they're a Masonic organization, and it has very little to do with the reasons the hall is notable, I don't think we need to make a big deal here -- we can just report what the sources said. Sons of Haiti would be a better place for the discussion, if it existed... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:52, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Most of the sources are piss poor and while it's not applicable to the notability of the building it is applicable to any potential association of the building with the craft.
 * That said there are already many buildings in Wikipedia identified as related when they have nothing to do with the craft. what harm can one more do?
 * ALR (talk) 16:01, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * "Sons of Haiti is a fraternal organization", at least, right? And Talk:Sons of Haiti now exists. --doncram (talk) 17:56, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I suspect you'll struggle to demonstrate notability, but I'm not going to leave myself open to being the victim of a witch-hunt so I'll leave it at that.
 * ALR (talk) 18:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Are they a fraternal organization? They certainly claim to be such.  But as Ed King's website on Fake Masonry correctly notes, there are scam groups out there calling themselves "Freemasonry" just to take money from the gullible... and this is especially true in the fractured world of African-American Freemasonry.  So, caution is advised.  Given the scanty sources we have so far, I don't think the Sons of Haiti fall into the scam category, but I note that the Phylaxis Society (the Prince Hall lodge or research, equivalent of the Philalethes Society in mainstream US Masonry, or Quatuor Coronati Lodge in the UK) labels the Sons of Haiti as "Bogus Masonry" (see here).  I think we should find out more about them before we definitively say what they are. Blueboar (talk) 23:34, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't find anything nice to say about this commentary. It seems snide, rude, and slanderous.  To suggest that a fraternal organization is not a fraternal organization, but rather is somehow a scam for the gullible, is nonsense and irresponsible, besides being unnecessary here at an article about the building.  I am embarrassed for sake of future readers here, including the Sons of Haiti members who will occasionally come across this.  Statements above do not represent any general Wikipedia position, and in fact it is Wikipedia Talk page policy that Talk pages should be about improving articles (in this case an article about the building), not witchhunts and not innuendo about real organizations and people. --doncram (talk) 05:27, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not the one calling them "bogus"... I am just reporting what other people say and urging some caution. Blueboar (talk) 13:08, 7 October 2010 (UTC)