Talk:Phi Gamma Delta

The article itself

For the record, I have no personal association with this organization. I think with all the attention being paid on the Greek letters, the quality of article itself has (understandably) suffered. The entire section on the 'Historical sketch of Jefferson College' seems completely pointless to me. It seems like info that should be in Washington & Jefferson College, and is mostly out of place here. Unless someone has a good objection, I would like to delete it, and move the see also line to the next section. That seems like the most obvious starting place, but there are many other problems with this article -mainly that it reads like a recruitment brochure. Any thoughts? Grayfell (talk) 05:49, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Agreed on that, and also the link for each of the original founders to the follow section on the Immortal six doesn't seem quite right.Naraht (talk) 13:40, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree. They were all redirects to the 'Immortal Six' section just below the one they were in. I changed the redirects to the 'Founding of Phi Gamma Delta' section, and removed the Immortal Six section, since it was completely redundant. Grayfell (talk) 22:42, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Proposal on change to description of the letters field.(Fiji exception)

On the talk page for the Infobox Fraternity (Template talk:Infobox fraternity#Proposal on change to description of the letters field.), I started a discussion on allowing for a more common name in place of greek letters if appropriate. Yes, this is done as the formal way to consider allowing for the use of Fiji rather than the greek letters in the Infobox at Phi Gamma Delta. Please comment at the Template talk page. I have also posted this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fraternities and Sororities.Naraht (talk) 17:55, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Naraht (talk) 17:55, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

The letters should be changed because the FIJI website does ask publication to use that instead of greek letters — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.170.129.96 (talk) 18:22, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

That has been discussed repeatedly, to put it mildly, and the result has always that the rules of the fraternity do not apply to Wikipedia. Favonian (talk) 18:25, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

No. Wikipedia members are not bound the fraternity rules. We don't pay dues.--GrapedApe (talk) 00:44, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm a brother of FIJI. I made a Chrome extension that removes the Greek letters from all web pages, including Wikipedia. I don't think I'm allowed to link to it here, but it's on the Chrome Web Store and you should find it yourself easily. Brothers, I hope it brings you some peace. Perge! 50.176.186.16 (talk) 22:41, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

FIJI vs. Fiji

Does anyone have any idea on when to use FIJI and when to use Fiji in the article? Since these are both forms of the nickname, I'm actually tempted to call Phi Gamma Delta Headquarters. Note, there are uses of both capitalizations on their home page, mostly FIJI, but "Famous Fijis"Naraht (talk) 13:52, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

• If they aren't clear on it in their website, then it's probably not a big deal.--GrapedApe (talk) 23:55, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
  • I got a call back from them. The rule that they use is that when dealing with the group as an organization (like referring to the National Fraternity or as a chapter), use FIJI, but when used to describe a person, use Fiji. So "notable Fiji alumni" vs. "Notable alumni of FIJI". I keeping finding google references to a "Style" guide on the phigam.org website, but I can't find it. :(Naraht (talk) 14:11, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
    • That is a very strange distinction to make. Works for me, though. Kudos for checking that out.--GrapedApe (talk) 18:02, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
      • The question is whether it is a distinction that the article should make, frankly, I'd be just fine if the only mentions of Fiji/FIJI were in the infobox and in the initial paragraph. Oddly enough Phi Gamma Delta agrees with this. From http://www.phigam.org/page.aspx?pid=930 "When our fraternity is named in campus or interfraternity publications, we prefer the full spelling of Phi Gamma Delta rather than use of the Greek letters or the nickname Fiji." Naraht (talk) 18:39, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
        • As a member, here's maybe some insight into the reason for the difference. First off, the Fraternity doesn't use Greek letters in places that aren't considered appropriate. FIJI is a substitute for the letters whenever Greek letters would normally be appropriate. Since the Greek letters are all uppercase, FIJI is all uppercase. Simple really. There are lots of instances where FIJI will be listed in-line with the Greek letters of other organizations, and using all caps to match the case of the other orgs keeps us from looking too out of place. Finally, "Fiji" might not be appropriate in places where it could be mistaken for the island nation (same reason it's "Fijis" and not "Fijians"). That said, use of "Fiji" to refer to the org isn't outright wrong. We've used it for logo designs and such when it fits (fancy typefaces that make capital "F," "I" and "J" look good next to each other can be hard to come by). The final reason why FIJI might refer to the org and Fiji might refer to a member is because you're no longer using the nickname as a replacement for the Greek letters themselves. One analog to this is that Delta Kappa Epsilon is often abbreviated to DKE, but members are referred to as "Dekes." The nickname "Fiji" originated at NYU as a riff on "Phee Gee," and was chosen as the official nickname because it's distinctive and appeals to the imagination. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.88.202.60 (talk) 01:13, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
          • The fraternity uses the Greek Letters in the places that it feels are most appropriate to it, and as such is the most appropriate way to refer to it. I'd be quite interested in any documentation from phigam.org (or elsewhere official) that had the difference between the usages FIJI and Fiji formally spelled out.
          • Also, Phi Gamma Delta's bylaws *only* control the actions of the members and Wikipedia as a collective (and 99.9% of editors) are not members of Phi Gamma Delta. Please review WP:CENSOR in regards to the article, and please see WP:TPO in regards to the inappropriateness of removal of the greek letters from other's comments on the talk page. Additionally note, that since Phi Gamma Delta did not trademark the combination of the three greek letters (It only trademarked the english spelling of the Greek Letters) it does not have even that level of control of the letters.Naraht (talk) 02:18, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
            • Jeez dude, you think we don't know that already? It's written everywhere on this page. No need to start typing up a long retort to some imagined affront to Wikipedia's values. As I've posted elsewhere on this talk page, I made a Chrome extension that removes the Greek letters from webpages my users visit automatically, and I'm personally pretty happy with ending the edit war there. So calm down. To answer you, Phi Gamma Delta probably won't publish a usage guide, since members know the correct usage and can direct others as to the proper usage without referring to a guide. Also it's a low priority. My brief explanation above is provided anonymously so it can't be confirmed but to those who know at least a little bit about Greek Life Organizations, it makes sense. Also I'll point out that I saw the style guide, referenced above, years ago before FIJI updated the site. It was barely a page long and provided nothing actually helpful.173.3.71.183 (talk) 01:41, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
              • OK, (assuming that the person at 72.88.202.60 and the person at 173.3.71.183 are the same). I appreciate your willingness to discuss this. Firstly, given the high number of efforts to remove the letters from the article page, I'd welcome anything that would allow someone who isn't a registered user to not see them. I'm *quite* willing to add information on the Chrome extensionto the FAQ solutions, having said that, I doubt that most people trying to remove them look at the FAQ. :( As for FIJI where Delta Kappa Epsilon would use DKE and Fiji where they would use Deke, that does make sense, and I would appreciate your opinion as to any location in the article where Fiji should be replaced with FIJI or vice versa.Naraht (talk) 04:01, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

References in regards to Matt Fritzie

The most recent hits I can find for Matt Fritzie in news.google.com are basically a whole grouping around the last week of 2010 and first week of 2011 indicating that he was suing the National Fraternity in Jackson County Circuit Court (example http://www.eldoradotimes.com/article/20110103/NEWS/301039945 )and then another couple around February 14th, about KU redefining its hazing policies which includes

The university put its chapter of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity on two years of probation after an investigation revealed hazing occurred at the fraternity's annual island party in September. Kansas freshman Matt Fritzie was left paralyzed after diving into a makeshift pool at that party.

. Should the fact that the school found hazing to have taken place be added or other changes to be made?Naraht (talk) 00:25, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

That seems like a reasonable addition to me. What's the source for that quote? Grayfell (talk) 02:25, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

http://www.kansas.com/2011/02/14/1719673/ku-alters-policies-on-hazing-after.html , sorry, I meant to include that after the blockquote.Naraht (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Done. Hopefully the wording is satisfactory. Grayfell (talk) 22:39, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

• Should this even be mentioned in the article? Fraternity articles typically only deal with events that are (inter)national in scale. Isolated hazing incidents wouldn't qualify; if it were found that national condoned this sort of behaviour, then it would warrant inclusion. —C.Fred (talk) 23:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

The national organization was involved in the lawsuit. I attempted to keep the phrasing as neutral as possible, and I don't think the current paragraph connects the incident to the national organization any more than is indicated by sources. This was discussed in the media, both on its own, and as an indicator of the larger problem of hazing. It's not necessarily a hugely important issue for the fraternity, but it does give context to the other mentioned incidents. It would be misleading to imply that the MIT incident, which was very significant for both Phi Gamma Delta, and fraternities at MIT, was the only noteworthy hazing incident involving Fiji. Grayfell (talk) 00:31, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

nobreak spaces...

I wonder if any sort of insertion among the three letters of something like non-break spaces or directional markers would reduce the amount of vandalism or for that matter putting the greek letters themselves in uuencode so that isn't obvious what they are. The last is against Wikipedia principles, I think but tempting.Naraht (talk) 20:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The question is, how are the IPs getting here to change the article? Are they searching on the Greek character sequence online, or are they checking out the fraternity's Wikipedia page because of other reasons? My guess is it's the latter, and if they're blowing by the note, the coding of the letters won't stop them. —C.Fred (talk) 22:24, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Probably wouldn't work, but it's an entertaining idea. How about one normal letter, one uuencode, and one .svg file scaled way down? Okay, maybe not. I think any technical tricks like that would just lead to indiscriminate section-blanking. Otherwise the way to do it might be to switch the infobox to a stand-alone template similar to a navbox. That way it's not even obvious where the letter actually are. Definitely against the spirit of Wikipedia, though. Grayfell (talk) 23:20, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

• I think it's a great idea! Here's a test with the unicode letters (I reverted myself, awaiting the discussion here to progress): TEST. I don't think it's against the spirit of Wikipedia, I see it as simple anti-vandalism strategy, which is good for the project. I propose that we try it and see if the vandalism declines, or if it encourages section blanking.--GrapedApe (talk) 23:40, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Huh. Well, I think it's supposed to be ΦΓΔ ( #x3a6; #x393; #x394;). That looks correct to me. If it's rendering differently in different browsers, that might be a problem. Grayfell (talk) 00:34, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, looking for the greek letters in google (just copy them from the article and drop into the search field., this article is number 1. OTOH, the greek system page for Mississippi state is #6. And I see no difference between the unicoded letters (as provided by Grayfell) and the actual letters in my chrome browser. The question is whether that will still be picked up by google...

As an additional comment, if we include a small .svg image scaled down, we might as well go with a *small* flag of the fraternity and eliminate the entire problem (from their standpoint)Naraht (talk) 02:12, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I hadn't even thought of that. In addition to Google search results, could this introduce WP:accessibility problems? Grayfell (talk) 02:40, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I think that for an image, a text string can be given that will be "read" when viewed by an auditory user. And that would probably be more clear with the letters spelled out in English than the greek letters. (So I don't think that is a problem. And since the fraternity web page simply says

The Official Flag is of royal purple background, with the fraternity's Greek initials in the center, and a star in the upper right-hand corner. Both the initials and the star are white. Each chapter may place in the upper left-hand corner the Greek letter or letters which designate it in the Fraternity.

one of the users who specializes in graphics could probably create one in a couple of minutes.Naraht (talk) 17:25, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I think that an image filename would be similarly targeted for vandalism, especially with a filename like File:Phi Gamma Delta letters.svg.--GrapedApe (talk) 00:24, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Why? The spelled out english is just fine and the Flag is one of the 7 places.Naraht (talk) 14:34, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

So Now

Do we want to consider using ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs) 16:02, 29 January 2014‎ (UTC)

Won't the alt= tag just bring us right back to the same place? That said, the underlying issue hasn't changed: Wikipedia is not censored. There are images of Mohammad here, the word God is written out, and the Greek letters of FIJI are in its article. I don't see any compelling reason for this article to be less complete than similar articles. —C.Fred (talk) 16:44, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

If we were considering getting rid of the letters, then the flag might be an option. But so far no one has given a reason to take down the letters that isn't debunked in the FAQ at the top of this talk page. --—Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:13, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Yup. I don't think we want to go down that road. I think we should strive for clarity and consistency, and this seems like a little less of both. White symbols on a colored background are not always easy to read, and there's still the issue of search-engine results. It's a neat idea, (and well executed, too), but I don't think this is a good solution to the vandalism problem. If we do end up using it, I think the color is supposed to be closer to  , but it's probably a moot point. Grayfell (talk) 21:49, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

• No, I am against using the flag. I am for using #x3a6; #x393; #x394. This is supposed to be an anti-vandalism move, rather than a "Wikipedia complies with the frat's rules." No other frats have a flag in place of their letters.--GrapedApe (talk) 00:51, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I realize this is several months old, but since it appears to be a continuing discussion, I'll put in my two cents. I don't think we should use the flag in the same place where most organizations use greek letters, however, I also don't think there is a great reason to put the letters there as opposed to putting "FIJI". I was an enthusiastic member of the greek system for four years before I found out that Fiji was short for Phi Gamma Delta as opposed to FIJI being the official name of the fraternity.

I think the best solution would be to "FIJI" in that spot in the infobox where the greek symbol typically goes and then put a logo of their flag lower down in the infobox so readers can see both symbols and their usage. The fact that the fraternity frowns on it being on the site isn't a great reason to remove it (wikipedia is not a member of the frat), but I think the very limited usage of the greek symbols is a good reason to give preference to FIJI in that spot. The "FIJI" is what our readers are going to see on guys t-shirts, on FB, on Greek oriented websites, etc. I don't know official they consider it, but they rarely use the greek letters and for all intents and purposes, FIJI is their most commonly used symbol. Putting the greek letters there instead of FIJI is somewhat misleading to readers. Replacing them with FIJI and then putting the flag in the infobox with the greek letters expresses much more clearly to the reader the place that these symbols hold within this fraternity and how they are commonly used. Bali88 (talk) 02:41, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

It seems artificial not to display ΦΓΔ in the infobox considering that the official name of the the fraternity is wholly derived from those letters. It might be different if the name were different and the letters were only of ritual significance or something, but the connection to the name of the fraternity is obvious and unambiguous. It may not be as commonly used as other greek letters, but to my way of thinking, that's all the more reason to make it clear in the article. What about displaying both ΦΓΔ and FIJI in the infobox? Like this: "ΦΓΔ (official), FIJI (common)" or similar. Might mess-up the censorship div, but I'm sure we can figure something out. Grayfell (talk) 04:07, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

That's a reasonable solution too. To me, the "FIJI" part is pretty darn important and doesn't seem to be...what's the word? Prominent enough? Emphasized enough? It should be given more emphasis if you ask me, and I feel like the infobox should clarify how widely used the FIJI part is. Bali88 (talk) 04:26, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

A few comments. FIJI is in the first sentence of the article, pretty prominent. secondly, Using the flag rather than the letters can have no reason other than Phi Gamma Delta's bylaws which are irrelevant for this concept. Thirdly, I wrote the censorship div, so we can figure out something. What I would support is begin censorship divΦΓΔ<small>(official)</small><br>end censorshipdivFIJI<small>common</small> if we can get that to look good.Naraht (talk) 18:54, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Can you explain the censorship thing? I'm not sure what all that is Bali88 (talk) 19:18, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Based on the method used in some of the articles with images of Mohammed, there is the ability for a user *with an account* to set a variable so that they will not see the greek letters when the view the article. Information on how to do so is in the FAQ at the top of the talk page.Naraht (talk) 19:21, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Cool thanks. Bali88 (talk) 19:24, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I tried it. I'm not knowledgeable about infobox formatting, so that's as much as I can do, but it looks okay on my browser. If we don't like it, we can always revert. Grayfell (talk) 07:20, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

After some research, I figured out that the infobox fraternity sets the letters as the subheading they are set at 125% & bold by default, so the small works from *that*. So I overloaded it (I think) by setting the style for the official/common to 60%. I think it belongs somewhere between 50% and 75%, so let me know if you think it should be tweeked larger or smaller.Naraht (talk) 15:45, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Nicely done, that looks better. Grayfell (talk) 20:54, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Looks great, thanks. Bali88 (talk) 02:18, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Edit notice?

How do people feel about adding an WP:Editnotice to the page, or would that not do any better than the current commented text?Naraht (talk) 21:21, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Who knows. It may seem more offical to have an edit notice and make people less likely to do it. Bali88 (talk) 21:25, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it could help. It's worth a try, at least. Grayfell (talk) 21:39, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Content

Does anyone know of any edit notices for similar situations? At worst, we can use a similar one to the one from Mohammed, (without the (pbuh) of course) given that's where I got the info on how to hide things if a person has an account.Naraht (talk) 21:54, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Proposal

I sort of dropped the ball on this one. How about this one altered from Template:Editnotices/Page/Muhammad ? (Note, creation of editnotices is restricted, but we can submit an edit request)

(Note because this is on the talk page that the link to the talk page has been turned into normal text, that won't occur when used.Naraht (talk) 11:54, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

I did not notice this until now. This looks pretty slick, well done. Grayfell (talk) 05:27, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 June 2015

Please remove the Greek letters from the top of the page. Crt180 (talk) 14:53, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Not done: Please read the FAQ at the top of this talk page. Favonian (talk) 16:20, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 21 March 2017

76.79.50.114 (talk) 17:14, 21 March 2017 (UTC)