Talk:Tau Epsilon Phi

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	Tau Epsilon Phi is part of the Fraternities and Sororities WikiProject, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Greek Life on the Wikipedia. This includes but is not limited to International social societies, local organizations, honor societies, and their members. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, visit the project page, where you can join the project, and/or contribute to the discussion.
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1 Chapters
2 Links to chapters
3 ΤΕΦ Userbox

[edit] Chapters

This needs expanding to all chapters. Found a link at [1] which has a larger list and needs to be integrated into the table I added - this was restored when the external links to chapters were removed Timmccloud 23:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Links to chapters

(Metros232) I completely disagree with your removal of chapter links from the Tau Epsilon Phi page.

You quote [WP:EL] as a reason, and I disagree - a national fraternity is the sum of its chapters, so there is a 'direct' and 'symmetrical' link between the two.

You quote [WP:NOT] as a reason, and whereas I might agree they do not belong as a list of links, they do have a place in the article..

Because of this, I am restoring the chapter list. However, my restoration will not be in an "external link" form, which I hope addresses your WP:NOT issues. Timmccloud 23:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I see you restored the chapter information. Would you concede, at least, to removing all the external links in the left hand column? This is the big concern that we have about these chapter lists is that they often just become a directory for the links of each chapter. Would you consider adding one external link in the external link section to the chapter page on the national website which has such a directory of links? Everything else is fine, it's just the directory of links that is believed to violate WP:NOT and WP:EL. Thanks, Metros232 23:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback! Metros, were it any other fraternity, I might consider your suggestion of a single link to a chapter list. However, the link you referred to was not the national fraternity list of chapters (it belongs to one chapter who found a need for it), and our national fraternity isn't very "web savy" so there is no working list of chapters on the national website I can refer to from the article (there is a spot on the site, and it's been broken for 4 years). Also, if the chapter name is going to be listed, why can't it be a link? The link establishes the veracity of the information provided in the chapter list, there is no "extra" space being wasted on the rendered page, and any information that is chapter specific can be left out of the main page because the link allows external reference (I did put the "notes" area for minor information). I have read the articles you refer to in the WP:EL and WP:NOT and also other references you have placed above discussing the links to chapters, and I still disagree with them. A fraternity cannot exist without it's chapters. Also encyclopedic content must be supported with valid references - and a chapter's website should be considered a valid reference for it's own existence. I would go even further to disagree with removing the links because they are used as a list - wiki's by their very nature require public interest in keeping them updated, and apparently people want to list their own chapters. What better way to keep the list of fraternity chapters up to date than to allow people to post their own chapter's link, in order that it may be used as a reference for someone trying to find specific chapter information? As I stated above, I will agree with WP:NOT as far as having chapter websites defined as external links being incorrect. Chapters have a much more direct and symmetric relationship to the national fraternity than just being cited as an external link, they are the purpose the organization exists in the first place. Timmccloud 00:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Moved discussion about links from our talk pages to this page. Timmccloud 00:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
- But where does it stop? Suppose that someone felt that the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks should do the same thing and include the link for each of their chapters...there's over 2100 of 'em. We did the same thing at FBLA-PBL, a student organization that has chartered 15000+ chapters in secondary and post-secondary schools. We had a link for almost every state's chapter (and a few local chapters) at one point and reduced it to the 2 links of chapter directories we have now. I think that the link I provided would be an alright addition to the external links. I don't think that creating our own little directory is appropriate, however. Yes, we can mention where the chapters are, yes we can mention what "number" chapter they are, yes we can mention when they were founded, but I think links to individual chapters' websites is inappropriate per our guidelines. I invite you to add your 2 cents to our discussion at WP:AN#Fraternities and sororities. Thanks, Metros232 00:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  - I will, thanks. Not tonight though, the wife just called and requested my presence at home - she wants me to feed her dinner. Thanks for your suggestions and help. I will at the very least sleep on it, as you have raised some good points. I don't agree with the replacement link though - that is not an exhaustive list. Question - If I hosted my own list on my own private website and linked to that - would that be acceptable?Timmccloud 00:39, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
    - It could be and it could not be. There are gray areas when it comes to linking to websites that you own. However, generally editors are comfortable with a user posting the link that they own to the article's talk page and then the editors deciding whether or not it is appropriate. In this case, I'd imagine it would be appropriate for the article and would be added with little debate. Metros232 02:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
    - OK, I'll work on a private page this weekend, and post it here for review before altering the article. I've been thinking of your points about large organizations (elks, etc.) and I think when it comes to scale like that, different rules need to apply. TEP isn't a rich or huge fraternity; the national director only does it part time from a small store front, and when a new director is elected, the NHQ changes to the new directors home town. That's just one of many reasons we only have a handful of chapters, and the national website hasn't been updated substantially in years. I'm sure that large organizations, like the ones you quoted (Elks again), have the wherewithal for national directories; in the absence of a national list for small organizations, I don't see why Wikipedia can't be the reference point. Also, you had mentioned that we can mention the name, location, and even founding date - in your large scale example, there would still be 15000+ lines to the table of "acceptable" information. So although I have really chewed on your point about large orgs, I don't believe that a "one size fits all" rule of thumb is fair to the smaller groups, where all the chapters can be listed (and linked) without causing the article size to become unwieldy, and especially cases where there isn't a alternative source to link to (such as TEP). Still, I am working through reading the fraternities and sororities discussion page, and I do thank you for taking the time to discuss it with me Metros :) Timmccloud 23:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
    - Well, I've completed my research and there is no one single website that contains an exhaustive list of TEP chapters. I've linked to 4 of them in the article, but they are voulenteer maintained, and each one has discrepancies. IMHO this would make it incumbent on us as wikipedia editors to pull the entire list into one place (here) and allow it to be used until another solution comes along. This is not original research - others have compiled the data, we are just brining it in to one centralized place. Once there is a site with a) staying power beyond someones 4 year degree and b) an authoriatative reference, we can change the article to that, but for now this is it. And it's not that long, so the "elks" rule of thumb just doesn't apply here.