Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-06-29 Infobox Fraternity

Who are the involved parties?
(Requesting user),, ,

What's going on?
The "type" field in the infobox should define if a group is Honorary, Professional, Service or Social. The type field has not formally be defined, however; several editors have developed a consensus that type classfication on certain articles when using this box should be based on their legal status in regards to Title IX, but they have objected to updating the infobox to bind this consensus for all articles that use this template.

What would you like to change about that?
This wikipedia policy suggests that the current state of the article remain until final resolution. If the editors are not satisfied that a general agreement has been reached regarding the type field, then all articles should stay in their current state. It's duplicitious to say something like "we're not in agreement or don't know what the official definition of "type" will finally be, but we do know that this article is social, honorary, etc., so we are going to change certain articles use of "type" based on our consensus right now.

Initial analysis Sat 30th June
Dear all participants: Hello there! I'm Nicholas Turnbull, your mediator from the Mediation Cabal, and I'll do my best to help you. I will outline what my initial thoughts are on this issue here; and I personally believe this shouldn't be too hard to bring to a resolution. Remember, if at any point in the mediation you have any questions or would like any advice, please let me know on my talk page or via the "E-mail this user" function.

This issue regarding what fields to have in an infobox is something I have seen quite regularly around Wikipedia. Usually the primary issue is as to whether a particular field is universally-applicable to all articles of a given userbox class and, if so, whether all articles within that group should have that field filled out. I think that basically we have the following questions to find out the answer to, in starting off with this mediation:-
 * The positive side: What extra information would be provided if the "type" field was added to this userbox, as compared to the fraternity's type simply mentioned "in-line" in the article? It is worth noting the general purpose of userboxes is to provide salient points of statistical and classification data so as to be useful at a glance. In other words, how is this extra field useful to the reader? I must confess that I don't know enough about fraternities to determine this myself, so, it would be really helpful if participants could give me an indication.
 * The negative side: Assuming this field is added to the infobox, will it cause any kind of problem by being there? (This is aimed mainly at those people who are not in favour of the addition.) What I am trying to get at here is basically that in order to come to some sort of mutual agreement on future action, we need to know what the case is for not including it in the infobox - as in, what people's objections are to it being there.

A possible compromise: It should be noted that this field could be wrapped in a "switch" statement in it so as to be optional, meaning that the field will simply not show up if it is not filled out. That way, for articles where it is not deemed appropriate, the "type" can simply be left out; and for those others where it is considered important, it can be entered. This would also mean it wouldn't be necessary to undertake a mass effort in changing all articles showing this infobox to contain a type in its transclusion.

I would be most grateful for your opinions on the above, if you would be so kind as to furnish them below. Once I have this information, we can then set about working towards some kind of mutually-acceptable solution. I hope this is going in the sort of direction you would like; let me know if I'm totally missing the point, please! Thanks a lot for your participation. Yours, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 19:43, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Administrative notes

 * Link to subject - Template:Infobox Fraternity --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 19:19, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Party response
Title IX represents United States law that uses types previously understood and standardized in Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities. Baird's Manual has been the standard reference work for American College Fraternities for over 130 years. While Title IX may be relevant for a legal definition, I think Type should simply represent the types used in Baird's: these are 1) General (also called social) 2) Professional 3) Honor Society 4) Recognition Society (of which Service Fraternities and Sororities are a recognized group.

To quote Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities (1993), page I-9&10:

The Kinds of Fraternities and Sororities

...The following definitions will help differential the kinds of fraternities in existence: Men's general college fraternities are mutually exclusive, self-perpetuating groups which provide and organized social life for their members in college and universities as a contributing aspect of their educational experience. They draw their members primarily from the undergraduate student body. Women's general college fraternities are primarily groups of women at colleges at universities which, in addition to their individual purposes, are committed to cooperation with college administrators to maintain high social and scholastic standards and which do not limit membership to any one academic field. Professional fraternities are specialized organizations which limit membership to a students in a specific field of study; which maintain mutually exclusive membership in that field, but may initiate members of the general fraternities; and which organizes its group life specifically to promote professional competency and achievement within its field. Professional fraternities are typically open to male and female students, have minimum scholastic requirements for membership, and sponsor professional development programs that are of interest to student and/or alumni members of the fraternities. An honor society is an association of pimarily collegiate members and chapters whose purposes are to encourage and recognize superior scholarship and/or leadership achievement either in broad fields of education or in departmental fields at either the undergraduate or graduate levels. A recognition society is an organization which confers members in recognition of a student's interest and participation in some field of collegate studey or activity with more liberal membership requirements than are presecrived for general and departmental honor societies.

As for the way in which Baird's places this into practice: Men's Fraternities include as subgroups the NIC Member Fraternities, the NPHC Member Fraternities and three other Fraternities. Women's Fraternities include as subgroups the NPC member Fraternities, the NPHC Member Sororities and three other Sororities. The Professional Fraternities include as subgroups the PFA Member Fraternities, Osteopathic Organizations and about two dozen other Professional Fraternities. The Honor Societies include as subgroups the ACHS Member Societies and about a dozen other Societies. The Recognition Societies include as subgroups: Service Fraternities and Societies and Recognition Societies. Naraht 01:23, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Nicholas, the current dispute regarding this mediation is not whether the "type" field should be added to the box, "type" is currently a required field. The dispute is ALSO not about how "type" should and will eventually be defined.


 * The dispute is that the opposing party came to a consensus that Title IX (not Bairds" policy) should be used to define how the field was sourced. Based on their consensus regarding Title IX and after Justnm1979 changed the Alpha Phi Alpha article accordingly, user Robotam and myself attempted 3 times to added a comment to the infobox that "type" was based on Title IX.  User Justinm1978 summarily reverted the changes indicating It's not my interpretation alone, but that of multiple editors that this needs to be worked on, but he insists that Alpha Phi Alpha be held to his interpretation.  If the opposing editors are not satisfied that thier consensus will be accepted by the wikipedia community, then no article which uses the template should be forced to accept their interpretation.


 * Naraht's contribution above presents a good case on how to eventually define "type", but it's not how their prior consensus was obtained, not something they're ready to update on the template, and again, not the reason I requested this mediation.


 * How else can I say this? "Get a consensus on the controlling template, then require all articles which make use of the template to comply. That shows good faith, a NPOV, and excellent lateral thinking.--Ccson 14:14, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

For the record, my username is justinm1978, not justinm1979.

Consensus was achieved on the "type" issue on the Alpha Phi Alpha talk page regarding how to interpret type for that article based on Title IX, and the change was made. However, in the discussion to make that change. Immediately afterward, it became apparent that this discussion needed to be expanded to clarify the type issue because Ccson was very adamantly against this classification change, and has been since the beginning. Mentions of Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities came in discussion and the template talk shows that this is the direction we were starting to go, but then this went to mediation instead after accusations of bias against Alpha Phi Alpha were made by Ccson against myself.

It should be noted for the record that Ccson has a direct conflict of interest with the Alpha Phi Alpha article, as he is a member of the orgainization and the article's primary contributor. The vast majority of his edits relate to Alpha Phi Alpha only. This conflict of interest has started to become disruptive as the editor marks changes not made by him as vandalism, issues capricious warnings and is adamantly against the achieved consensus. The article's edit history reflects that. Robotam also has a conflict of interest as a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. This COI is noted as they have both openly declared on their user pages that they have formal affiliation with Alpha Phi Alpha. While this is not directly the issue, it does deserve to be noted because this discussion is happening because of their unwillingness to accept community consensus on the originating discussion and subverting the template to reflect their desire to have the Alpha Phi Alpha article reflect their POV rather than advance all greek-life articles.

The real issue at hand here, I believe, is to prevent this debate from occuring on other articles and to advance the project by settling this once and for all in the template. There is no disagreement that type needs to be changed to be universal as best as possible. The change, however, was still being discussed on the talk page when Robotam and Ccson went through and changed the template to reflect an incorrect interpretation of my statements made in the discussion. This editor agrees that Baird's is a very suitable choice to apply universally to those articles which use this template. This editor also agrees with Ccson's above statement of "Get a consensus on the controlling template, then require all articles which make use of the template to comply", however this discussion was taking place parallel to the classification discussion on Alpha Phi Alpha, but did not really go anywhere until after consensus was achieved on the Alpha Phi Alpha article. This change is necessary, and I agree with it being moved to Baird's as that is a much better reference, however the need for it originated as an attempt to modify the template to reflect the POV of the primary author of the Alpha Phi Alpha article and another member of the organization. Justinm1978 18:36, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The discussion was began on the NPHC page by Justinm1978 because he felt that the decision would affect all Greek-letter groups which used the template. I thought the discussion and consensus was defining "type" and I changed the template to reflect their consensus, which Justinm1978 has constantly reverted.  Justinm1978 directly address the "type" field when he said The type listed in the Wikipedia infobox must be in-line with the legal definition of the organization, otherwise the information is incorrect.  He was referring to Title IX.  A review of the discussion will show that I constantly asked Where is it written as you stated The type listed in the Wikipedia infobox must be in-line with the legal definition of the organization, otherwise the information is incorrect? I never got an answer because it was original research on his part.  To hold any article to a standard you're not ready to impose of other groups using the same template is a double standard.  I might also add that wikipedia does not require articles to employ this template such as Kappa Delta Phi which has no box, and Alpha Epsilon Pi] which creates it's own infobox.  They agreed on Title IX, then someone later did mention Bairds's, but there's no guarantee that other editors will agree with Title IX or Barid's as the appropiate vehicle for determing the definition of TYPE, and apparently they don't either.  Any attempt to force an article's use of the template in the interim gives the appearance that these editors have already decided the any consensus they agree must be inline with what they have determined for for certain groups.  I do feel that's not a NPOV for any ensuing discussion.--Ccson 01:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Nicholas, thank you for your well thought-out analysis. Although I concur with Naraht and Ccson's summation of the "debate," I may differ in that I believe your point of compromise is still relevant, even if "type" is currently a required field. My entry into this discussion was solely to make a similar observation: the category "type" is inadequate as a standalone userbox field, especially if the argument to keep/use the description attempts to shoehorn the legal status of Title IX into the word "type." Putting aside the fact that Title IX only gives legal status to one class of fraternity (Social), there are clearly fraternities and Sororities that do not fall under Title IX (non-US, etc.); this is also implied in your proposed compromise. Additionally, there are some organizations that have a civil rights or human rights focus, but for the purposes of Title IX, are legally classified as "Social" organizations, because they are not co-ed. My suggestion was to modify the fraternity/sorority infobox to reflect one box for "type" or the more general "focus," and one additional box for "Title IX legal status" (or "Baird's Classification).  An opposing view has been offered that this would be pointless clutter, yet on the same talk page, another editor gives an example of similar sounding fields already being offered in the case of Maxim and Motto.

Note: I would implore others to be wary of throwing around the accusation of "conflict of interest," as much as the accusation of "vandal," especially since, as stated, the perceived interest has been openly declared. I welcome close review of my edits by the wiki community for evidence of subtle bias. Indeed, if you look at the editing history of Featured Article Alpha Phi Alpha and its talk page, where Ccson and I are clearly listed as actively contributing editors, it is clear that great caution has been exercised in avoiding COI edits, both real and perceived.-Robotam 05:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Justinm1978 and Naraht discussed the option of dropping TYPE and adding 2 fields, which is similar to Robotam's idea. They also indicated that although APA would be classified as Social, that readers would glean from the article all the service aspects of the group.  The purpose of the infobox is to give readers who don't want to read an entire article an accurate glimpse of the group.  I think to not come up with a way to show this with a simple field is doing injustice to those groups which don't fit certain molds, just as the Motto was not sufficient  for one group, Theta Chi.  I like Robotam's compromise (which is inline with Justin and Naraht) of adding a separate field that provides a field for other groups that also don't fit the cookie cutter style of the infobox, namely all NPHC groups.  So, I would agree to Robotam's compromise to adding a second field (with the necessary comments to show future editors the purpose of the field). Now that Justinm1978, Naraht's and colleagues understand the original debate should have been about the field and not a single group, they can continue to discuss the type field and what they really want it to be, Title IX, Baird's, etc.--Ccson 11:35, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

ONE MORE THING. I want to state for the record that this mediation is not about the definition of the TYPE field. I want an undertanding that the field in the template must be defined and updated with comments before imposing personal interpretations on its intended use. We may be able to solve other problems here, but pls re-read the prior sentence on why I requested mediation. I like the "2 separate fields" idea proposded by Robotam, Justinm1978 and Naraht, but again, the template should be updated before imposing required conformity.--Ccson 15:22, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Let me just say that Title IX types (social vs. other) are simply a subset of the Baird's types. All the US government essentially did was put some legal bite into the split. What I think the Infobox should have two entries: 1) Type and 2) Emphasis. Type indicates what entry the group has in the last Baird's or the closest for a similar group. Emphasis indicates what the group emphasizes. If possible the code should be set up to show Emphasis only if Type is defined. Example Possible Combinations:  Sigma Alpha Epsilon: Type: Social -(Emphasis empty) Farmhouse: Type: Social - Emphasis: Agriculture Alpha Phi Alpha: Type: Social - Emphasis: Service Sigma Alpha Iota: Type: Professional - Emphasis: Music Tau Beta Pi: Type: Honorary - Emphasis: Engineering Phi Beta Kappa: Type: Honorary - (emphasis empty) Gamma Sigma Sigma: Type: Service - (emphasis empty) 

Other possibilities for words instead of Emphasis are Focus or Field.Naraht 18:23, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds great, with the template page updated with explanations as discussed supra by Ccson.-Robotam 12:47, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't like "Field", and I probably like "Emphasis" over "Focus", but either of the latter two will suffice. BUT, this mediation is not about the definition or adding of field.  I think you should post that on the Infobox fratenrity talk page so other editors can give consensus.  Naraht, if you review the prior discussions, you'll see that I always asked that a reputable and verifiable source be provided.  Title IX, Baird's and some unbelievable ideas were thrown around in our somtimes heated debate, but you really never said to use Baird's, so I said it for you so we could move on.--Ccson 16:23, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * This was largely because I couldn't imagine a book produced by the NIC overriding your beliefs about what Alpha Phi Alpha is, when Title IX, which is US law, wouldn't.Naraht 12:39, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Solution (from party, rather than mediator)
The Infobox shall contain both a Type Field and a Emphasis Field.

Type Field Definition: For groups represented in the most recent version of Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities (as of this writing 1993), the Type represents the section of the Manual where the group is listed, with the following clarifications. 1) Groups in the Social Fraternities section and Social Sorority section shall both be listed as Social. 2) Subsections of sections in Baird's such as the Service and Osteopathy subsections of Recognition groups may be used. For groups not listed, the guidelines contained in Baird's (as of the 1993 version on page I-9) and existance of similar groups shall be used to determine Type.

Emphasis Field Definition: This field, for Professional Fraternity and Honor Societies shall represent the specific field of study, if it exists, which the group limits its members to. For other types of groups, this field shall be optional and open in meaning.

Note: It is probably appropriate later to have an Infobox field to designate whether the group is all-male, all-female or co-ed, but that probably should be a separate discussion. However if it's existance or non-existance is critical to one of the other parties accepting what is above, I'm willing to go either way.


 * Sooo, where do we stand here? I've been avoiding the debate because I'm tired of cyclical arguing.  Emphasis doesn't strike me as the best word, but I'm at a loss for anything better so I'm fine with the proposed solution, as it is pretty much the same thing I thought we agreed upon before this went to mediation. Justinm1978 16:38, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Dropped a note on the Mediator's page asking for this to be approved and closed.Naraht 18:17, 16 July 2007 (UTC)