Talk:Collegiate secret societies in North America

Errors in this Article

1. The Elizabethan Club, whose logo serves as the intro to this article, is not a secret society. Membership is known, and guests are permitted inside of the club (particuarly for its afternoon tea). It is an undergraduate, graduate, and faculty literary club. You have to be nominated and apply to get in, but its by no means a secret society. The photo should be removed.

Image removed. Thx. Soundsgood2me (talk) 00:29, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

2. The Ivy Club, mentioned in the bottom table, is not a secret society, but an eating club. The eating club system is unique to Princeton, and serves as a mechanism that allows a large number of students to dine, hang out, and socialize in like minded groups. It is not a secret society in the vein of Skull and Bones, Wolf's Head, etc. Members apply and selected at the end of their freshman years, and they serve as true "clubs" as opposed societies, which typically meet a two or three times a week.

3. The Porcellian Club should be reviewed. While it meets a lot of the secret criteria, it's not viewed as a "secret society" on its own Harvard Campus, rather part of the "final club" system that is unique to that school and is more comparable to fraternities at other schools than to secret societies at UVA, Dartmouth, or Yale (the three schools which seem to have the most developed secret society system).

- societyalum

I would oppose GA status for this article in its current state

IMHO, there are simply too many unsupported statements and observations, in addition to serious organizational and encyclopedic tone issues. This article is not (and perhaps can not ever be) one of WP's best articles. The nature of the subject is that it will inherently contain sketchy and thinly-referenced information. An excellent example is the alleged Skull and Crescent society, which does not have sufficient independent back-up. While several editors have put in quite a bit of solid, good faith work on this article, I regret that I would not support this article's being given GA status in its current state. Soundsgood2me (talk) 00:37, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree (mostly) with these points. I think that, generally, it's worth taking a look at a few things about the article:

1. How we define "secret society"
2. How each society on the list meets those criteria
3. How we reconcile #s 1 and 2 with WP:NOTE
4. The quality of references that are provided for each society.

I also think our quick rebuild of the article has really been too quick for more than a handful of editors to provide feedback of the sort that "societyalum" has provided. More time is needed for a lot of eyeballs to flush these issues out of the article. And a few of the editors, possibly including myself, are possibly too close to the subject to be objective about it. So let's take some more time.

I'd recommend a pass through the entire reference list as a first step. Let's see what we can do to clean it up from a quality perspective.

I disagree that the article can never reach GA, however. I think Skull and Crescent is an aberration rather than a representative case, and it's one where other editors have already indicated concern. Tjarrett (talk) 02:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

A Perspective

1st) I have been following these secret society pages for awhile now, and let me say a few things. First off, I don't believe that Purdue's group is a hoax- hoax accusations about that began with Theta Nu Epsilon last year, they have a thing out for Purdue, because Purdue does/did have a chapter of TNE that may have also been an "Alpha" chapter- and that current Wesleyan group is an upstart that has legitimacy issues. Check their talk page, which I have also contributed to-U of I also recognized that there was some group of Skull and Crescent attached to a TNE group, and it was Wesleyan TNE that was behind the whole hoax accusations about Purdue in the first place last year, that got the S&C articel removed quickly without even fullly looking into things. I think Skull and Crescent was always legit, and got removed for nothing, alot of people from Purdue and others talk about the group and are passionate about the group- too many people for it to have ever been a prank.

2nd) Societyfinalclubs knew a whole lot about this topic, and I found everybit of his writing sourced and as good as anyone can expect- so I don't see why Friendlifer, who has been blocked now, went on some rampage to remove everything- I think Wikipedia has big probs with all of this hoax accustions stuff. Societyfinalclubs rebuilt these pages- he deserves a round of applause not a block.

3rd) Lets talk about the controversial Purdue society and lets also talk about nationmaster. Nationmaster is in accordance with the CIA world Factbook, and is fact checked by the CIA- you can't get more solid than that- they also don't post with out fact checking- so even if there was some article about Purdue's S&C on wikipedia, and nationmaster wanted to add it to there own body of knowledge, they would take what was written, fact-check it and then post it. It is a very solid source to use.

My proposal, is unblock societyfinalclubs, and let the sourced S&C article be included. It is not Wikipedia's responsibility to go fact check everything in it the way nationmaster does, it is just Wiki's responsibility that information in it is coming from an established source, and when it comes to secret societies, there has to be some flexibility, who knows what really goes on in Skull and Bones etc. It way be a lot more or even a lot less than what we all think. I think a sourced articel about Purdue's Crescent is a welcome addition to the secretsociety groups- that not having it at all, nationmaster is still sticking to their guns about it and wiki should too, but if it is decided to let Societyfinalclubs crete an article- let it be known that it has been approved and not always end up at this same point all over again- we go and build it up, and go and break it down- it is very foolish.Jonesbig (talk) 04:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)