Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Corporation (university)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete.  Sandstein  20:15, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Corporation (university)

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Article is a complete disaster. What the article describes is basically Fraternities and sororities in various countries. I've never heard the term "corporation" used to describe them before and not finding sources to back that up. We also have an article that is more appropriately named Student society. Finally, this article cannot stand because the members of the list oddly link to foreign language versions of Wikipedia. I do not support a redirect to another article because the term makes no sense. Rusf10 (talk) 01:38, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. Rusf10 (talk) 01:38, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. Rusf10 (talk) 01:38, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. Rusf10 (talk) 01:38, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fraternities and sororities-related deletion discussions. Jax MN (talk) 17:02, 16 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete The article is clearly original research and as the nominator says, there's already articles that are not OR that cover the same exact thing in a non-miss leading way. Plus, a lot of the links being to foreign language articles is an issue. I'm not sure how you can remedy the issues and still have a usable, appropriate article either. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:14, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep/Move The criticism here is over-done. This is a useful list, and perhaps might be recategorized as a List-class article. To justify tossing it out because the author(s) gathered names of many such "corporations" into a single list would mean that ALL lists are original research.  The value of this article is in bridging awareness of non-US fraternal clubs to an English-centric audience. , you may not have heard use of the term "Corporation" in this sense. Me too: Before I began working on the Fraternities and Sororities Project I'd only been dimly aware of German university clubs and a few Puerto Rican or Philippine fraternities. The terms "Nations" or "Corporations" in this context was unknown to me, yet I've spent a couple of decades working with these groups here in the US and Canada. This article, and others like it, have helped me see the commonality between North American student groups versus those from other countries.  To 's point, it's understandable there is a lack of English press about these groups. A pointer to a global reference is allowable - again, Wikipedia articles are often the starting point for a broader search.  I vote to Keep this useful list.  Jax MN (talk) 16:49, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:USEFUL is not a reason to keep. We already have Student society which covers the topic internationally. I believe that's the proper term for this anyway. For Germany, we already have Studentenverbindung (which isn't exactly a great article either, although I wouldn't recommend deleting). If there is a particular group in another country that you believe is deserving of an article and can meet our WP:NORG guidelines then go ahead and create an article, but that doesn't justify keeping this disaster of a page.--Rusf10 (talk) 17:02, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I could care less about non-english references. I was pretty clear that I was talking about linking non-English Wikipedia articles. Which isn't something that is generally acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Ones that are list articles or otherwise. Especially if they are mainly (or only) the articles being linked to. The point in lists is to help someone find more information about the topic. Which, it should go without saying, they either can't do or if the articles send them to are not in their native language. Again, it has nothing to do with references. At least those would be cited in the article in English. Adamant1 (talk) 17:13, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * , in an article listing or introducing international fraternal groups and their lexicon ("Corporations", "Corps", and "Nations"), it's pretty obvious that links would be used that point to non-English Wikipedia articles. I don't see a problem with this. Many English speakers have an affinity for a second or third language. They're the ones who would be investigating fraternal groups in another language. N'est-ce pas?
 * , outside of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Germany, there may not be enough of these societies to justify maintaining separate articles. I've looked at this issue through the lens of the Fraternity and Sorority Project watchlist, where we keep an eye on some 1700 global fraternal groups. We've created subheaders for those three countries named plus the North American groups. We have a catch-all for student societies in other nations, which seems to work for us.  I've already responded to the concern that this is WP:NORG - I don't think that claim is supportable.  Nor do I think the page you are aiming to delete is a "disaster".  There are so many others that ought to be dumped before this one. Again, it is a list. I'm mulling over the options here; Perhaps we could merge this content into the Student society page, but it would then dismiss the useful linkage to this valid definition of how the word "Corporation" is used in this context, globally. To delete it, because you've never heard of it, shows a bias that I don't assume you mean to display. I say we just leave it, after cleaning up the formatting. Jax MN (talk) 17:33, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * That's all well and good, but I'm not the only that made the complaint. On your comment that bias is why we don't think corporations are a thing in this context, the first link in the "External links" section is called "Academic corporations" in the article but then on the webpage it says "Academic Societies." From what I can tell the other external links don't call them corporations either. Even if they did, they seem to all be blogs or personal websites. So they aren't at all authorities.


 * I also picked a few random inter-Wiki links from the various lists. Either they didn't use the word "corporation" or when they did there wasn't a reference attached to it's usage. Except for ones that were primary and even then it was only a few times. Primary sources do not qualify as valid when it comes deciding if a term is actually thing though. So, there just isn't anything to back up your assertions. Except I guess that we are just suppose to take your word on it...Because experience or something. I'd also add it's extremely miss-leading to list things in an article about so called "corporations" that don't even refer themselves as such. Even more so if your going to claim other people are just being biased about it when they bring up the discrepancy. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:42, 16 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Responding to your specific points, here, one must wrestle with translation and transliteration issues, and abbreviation. The use of "Nation(s)" appears to be prevalent in the Baltics and in Scandinavia, while "Corporation(s)" appear/s within the German groups, abbreviated as Korps.  Substituting these words there now appears to be a host of fraternal groups throughout Europe, some quite old. Thus a useful aspect of this article, for North American readers, is to clarify that fraternities in Europe use these terms. Secondly, would you be less inclined to be a Deletionist on this matter, if we were to simply rename the article to be a list?  After seeing the way the deletion vs. inclusion debate has ripped through Wikipedia for the past decade, I am convinced that keeping this content helps to encourage more writers, eventually better writing, and that the best policy when faced with an article we don't like is outlined here: Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe  needs improvement, please feel free to change it.  We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, since wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse.  . This stance makes me an Inclusionist.  We're not lacking for space, nor is there risk of confusion over this article. It just needs cleanup, and more sources.  The rules regarding Deletion require competence and familiarity when judging a subject, and elaborate on this, saying that "This means articles, categories or templates should not be nominated in a routine fashion, nor because one feels too lazy to check for sources, or if the content is still being built or improved."  To support this point, I will add comments for those closer to these groups who may be able to provide better references.  I'll insert this on the Talk page.  Let me know if you'd like the page to be moved into a List.  Reasonable? Jax MN (talk) 22:28, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * No, because despite your wall of test that only involved your personal opinion and a history of Wikipedia articles being deleted, you didn't provide a reliable source that contains and (or) explains this usage of the term corporation like I asked you to. Nor did you address my point about the references in the article and the blue links not even using the term. Sure, you can go on and on about how the term is used more in Germany Etc. Etc., but you still need to provide reliable sources saying so and the articles your linking to also have to use the word. Just changing the article into a list does not solve those things.


 * This isn't a thing of everyone here being a deletionist either. No more then it has anything to do with bias on our parts. It's odd that you keep deflecting to such things though instead of just providing the references that would prove this is an actual thing. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:17, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with all that. You must have sources to back up your claims. And just because Germany has a different name doesn't mean we create two articles for the same thing. This is especially true because this article is not exclusively about Germany. The logical thing to do would to be use an English term because this is English wikipedia. And while we're on the topic of language, let me just add one thing. Setting aside the fact that WP:USEFUL is not a valid reason to keep, he notion that inline links to a foreign language version of wikipeida is somehow useful is incomprehensible. People who use this wikipedia speak English, so when they click on a link they expect to be taken to another page that is also in English. How is it of any use to them to be surprisingly taken to a page that they cannot read?--Rusf10 (talk) 23:46, 16 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete. The whole article is misconceived.  There might be material for articles about individual countries there. Rathfelder (talk) 22:47, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. - This article is messy. Agree with talk might be good for different countries. DoctorTexan (talk) 04:35, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete - multiple reasons. First, it seems to me that if we have an article at this title, it should be about the legal structure of a university (or possibly about training programs like Hamburger University). The title violates WP:CONCISE. Since the title is so unclear, it's impossible to locate sources; and as the article is unsourced, it's a clear failure of pillar policy WP:V. Again, since the subject is unclear, I can't see how a reasonable argument for notability could possibly be made. TNT is the only solution. 174.212.211.253 (talk) 20:51, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree with this anonymous editor on the point that the title is unclear. Again, it should be moved into a name such as List of European Student Fraternities, with the word "Corporation" defined there as the European fraternal groups tend to use it (along with "Nations", "Societies", etc.), and I agree with everyone that the article needs citations, but these are easy to find. So I favor fixing it, instead of blowing it up. I've switched my vote (above) to Keep/Move. Jax MN (talk) 22:42, 18 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete the term is not used in American English. Most of the article is unsourced, I am not certain what the term is supposed to mean exactly.  The article seems to suggest that it refers to Nation (university), which is already a different article.  There is also synthesis in suggesting that "Nations" are the same as American-style fraternities. User:力 (power~enwiki,  π,  ν ) 18:14, 22 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.