Talk:Mystical Seven (Wesleyan)/Archive 1

Archive 1

References

I just made a pass through the references on this article, doing a cleanup for formatting and completeness of information. The three references that are a little troublesome are the 19th century Wesleyan Argus and Olla Podrida refs. There's not really enough information there to permit anyone to look up the original context. Some page numbers or volume numbers would be helpful. Tjarrett (talk) 18:03, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

This one also falls desperately short of Wikipedia's reliable source criteria, as it is essentially a self-published zine.    Xeriphas1994 (talk) 17:25, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Your characterization of the website is incorrect, and your criticism is meaningless, since the list is substantially the same as other published lists, which are also cited; the point of this additional list is that it happens to be available online, which none of the others are. Thaïs Alexandrina (talk) 00:17, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

As anyone can see, I am a newbie here, and I welcome any and all assistance in interpreting Wikipedia's sourcing policies.  That said, what does the accessibility of the list have to do with how relevant its content is?  In any case, if the lists are "substantially the same", then they are redundant, and only one is needed.  According to WP:RS, "third-party" sources are required except in highly unusual cirumstances.  I would think that that excludes anything written by the society itself, and possibly anything written by Wesleyan University.    Xeriphas1994 (talk) 18:19, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Thaïs Alexandrina is new here as well, and has been admonished several times to remain civil. Xeriphas' view of the source seems quite correct to me. Please also see WP:SOURCE. Exploding Boy (talk) 18:26, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: The more closely I look at this, the more uncomfortable I get.  In tiny print at the bottom, it says, "produced under the auspices of the Kappa Sigma Theta, a literary society of Yale and Wesleyan Universities."  In other words, a self-published work.  Do the authors or their literary society have any special credibility on this subject?  We can't tell (and to try to find out might be original research, if said authors are not public figures).  In the past, even self-published works written by notable persons and distributed by prestigious organizations have been disputed as sources.  No offense to any member of the Kappa Sigma Theta or the Mystical Seven who may be reading, but this doesn't exactly say "scholarly and/or journalistic project" to me.

The discussions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fraternities and Sororities note that, even for a conventional fraternity or sorority, only the total number of members in each chapter is a matter of public record, so I'm not sure any list is "encyclopedic" to begin with unless its members are themselves notable (i.e. those already listed as "Notable alumni" in this article).  But I don't want to sidetrack this into a BLP controversy so I will leave that question for another day.

Also, to Tjarrett above: According to the Wesleyan University article, the Argus is one of the student newspapers and Olla Podrida is the yearbook.  I don't know what college yearbooks and college newspapers were like in the late 19th century, but in the early 21st century they are typically giant op-ed pieces with no editorial oversight at all.  The policy page mentioned by Exploding Boy (thank you) therefore suggests that such sources are probably primary sources at best, tabloids at worst, and certainly "self-published".    Xeriphas1994 (talk) 19:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I caught that as well. There are some real challenges with writing about any university groups--inevitably there will be much more information about them in student media than in independent sources. Does that mean we shouldn't reference student media at all? In some cases it makes sense to do so (establishing an earliest viable date for a secret society, for instance), in others the media is clearly an unreliable source, and in still other cases it's a gray area. I'm certainly not defending this particular student media as a reference in this case--offering a date for a hundred-year-old offline resource with no further page number or other location info doesn't meet the basic criteria for a reference, and even smells a little fishy. Tjarrett (talk) 20:45, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I've reported Exploding Boy again to the Administrator's Noticeboard for his continuing gratuitous personal attacks.Thaïs Alexandrina (talk) 00:06, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

19th century college yearbooks were publicly published documents. Although they were not official university productions, any statements made there would have been challenged publicly as well. Since they were used more then for promotional purposes of the university, great care was taken to make them accurate. And they since they are often the sole record of student life, they have been used regularly by university archivists as one of the main sources of information at virtuaally every university old enough to have them. Thaïs Alexandrina (talk) 00:10, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Probably true.  Those archivists, in turn, have been trained to distinguish the news from the editorials in such period texts, which is true of negligibly few Wikipedia editors, if any.  Ideally, then, we should locate *their* publications and take them far more seriously than we do the primary sources.  (For example, is Benjamin Wyatt-Greene a known expert on this topic?  All the google hits for his name are related to the same paper.  What about Carl Price?)

Since they were used more then for promotional purposes of the university, great care was taken to make them accurate.   "Great care was taken to make them strong sales pitches" seems like a more realistic inference in that case, but I suppose I have no more firsthand knowledge than you do.  Again, the prevailing assumption is that professional historians would know how to account for the relevant narrative conventions, whatever they turn out to be, and we wouldn't.    Xeriphas1994 (talk) 20:49, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

There are a huge number of self-reported facts that are either directly used in wikipedia articles or that are linked to as background sources. Virtually every corporate article here relies somewhat on background information provided by that organization itself. It would be virtually impossible to write any articles here, whether it be on Wesleyan University itself, or Shell Oil, or the State of Connecticut, without resorting to self-reported information. Should we exclude all information about the history of the State of Connecticut because the information comes from the State Archives? There is no wikipedia policy limiting information to "scholarly and/or journalistic projects". There is no policy limiting information to third parties, either. Ideally, there would be an exercise of judgment. Thaïs Alexandrina (talk) 00:17, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

While the policy does not limit information to third parties, it definitely says that third parties should be the central sources of a given article.  As I understand it, when an article is forced to use self-published material for information otherwise unavailable (e.g. the number of employees in a company), Wikipedia's practice is to make the sourcing very clear in each corresponding sentence, as a newspaper does, and restrict the reporting to dry, uncontroversial "facts and figures".  To return to my previous example, this would seem to exclude claims that some number of non-notable private individuals have been members of a secret society between 1837 and now.

Currently 10 of the 11 sources in Shell Oil Company are independent, incidentally, so it may well be possible to write an article about a corporation within policy.

Ideally, there would be an exercise of judgment.   Okay, my judgment at this time: the onus is on the third-party sources to convince us that the college publications were *not* written by drunkards who couldn't create NPOV text if their lives depended on it.  I am therefore grateful that policies exist to protect the article content both from my extreme view and from yours.   :>     Xeriphas1994 (talk) 20:49, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

For the record, User:Thaïs Alexandrina has been indefinitely blocked from editing, for abusing multiple accounts. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 21:00, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Discussion pointer

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Secret Societies#Mystical 7. --Geniac (talk) 14:09, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Article name

I've removed this text from the intro: "(It is due to wikipedia convention alone that this article is mistitled.)". If the article is mistitled, it can be moved. --Geniac (talk) 13:29, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the following from the article: Properly written as "Mystical 7". . If the name is written Mystical 7, then get a reference and move the article that name. Exploding Boy (talk) 02:04, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Restored the line. You're pulling out challenged material that was only challenged this month. It would be a shame if you were taking out hostility on the article. Thaïs Alexandrina (talk) 03:52, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

What hostility? I know no-one who edits this article. I removed it for the very good reason that if the society's name is "properly" written as "Mystical 7," as the sentence claims, then the article should be located at "Mystical 7" as well. The problem being that that particular claim is tagged with a "fact" tag, which means it's unsubstantiated. This is a big problem, because a claim is being made that the article, which is currently located at "Mystical SEVEN" instead, is misnamed. Until this claim can be substantiated, it shouldn't be in the article. Exploding Boy (talk) 04:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

You're arguing that it is a big problem, therefore it should be supressed from the article. That makes no sense. And you're only editing here after being disproven at the Administrator's Notebook page. Thaïs Alexandrina (talk) 16:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

First of all, please stop reverting. Second, I was not "disproven"; every person who posted on AN disagreed with you; feel free to review that section here. Third, what I actually said was that if a claim that the article's title is incorrect is unsubstantiated, as with this claim, it should be removed from the article until such time as a reliable source can be found. Please check WP:SOURCE, in particular the quote by Jimbo Wales, which reads:

I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information.

–Jimmy Wales

I am therefore removing that claim and asking you to refrain from reverting it until a reliable source can be found. Your editing style is becoming quite disruptive. Please review our polices, including WP:CIVL and WP:RS. Thank you. Exploding Boy (talk) 16:50, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Just in case it's not clear where the consensus lies, I support the removal of the unsourced statement. As was pointed out on the administrators' noticeboard, scholarly references use the wordings interchangeably, which is further argument that it should not be included (i.e., beyond just the reason that its unsourced). justinfr (talk) 17:03, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Verifiability is quite clear on this: The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. If a reliable source is found for that statement, it can be added back in. Until then, Wikipedia will not be harmed by its absence. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 17:10, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

References

References: more detail

Currently this article has the following endnotes.

1. ^ Price, 25.

3. ^ Price, 16.

17. ^ Price, 54 ff.

The immense university library across the street from my office hasn't heard of this book.  Persons with interlibrary loan privileges are welcome to show me up.  :>   Also, it is probably self-published: [1] [2].  (Uh-oh!)  Incidentally, reading the Wyatt-Greene paper all the way through, I find many paragraphs devoted to the hypothesis that Price was writing a manifesto rather than a research document.

4. ^ Stevens, 356.

9. ^ Stevens, 364.

10. ^ Stevens, 179.

13. ^ Stevens, 178.

This one seems to be real: see for example here.

20. ^ Wade, John Donald (1924). Augustus Baldwin Longstreet: A Study of the Development of Culture in the South. New York: Macmillan, 254 - 264.

Also real [3].

2. ^ a b Judson, Robert (2002-04-19). "Secret societies: past & present", Wesleyan Argus.

6. ^ a b Sansing, David G. (1999). The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 63.

7. ^ Wyatt-Greene, Benjamin. "Mystical 7: A History". Wesleyan History Project. Retrieved on 2008-07-21.

8. ^ "James R. Thomas". Emory University Housing. Retrieved on 2008-07-21.

11. ^ (1885) Constitution of the Mystic Seven Fraternity. Charlottesville, Virginia: Blakey & Prout, Steam Book & Job Printers. , available at University of Illinois fraternity archives; see finding aid at http://www.library.uiuc.edu/archives/uasfa/4102055.pdf

12. ^ (1917) Catalogue of Beta Theta Pi, 9, vi.

14. ^ See the 1866 Olla Podrida.

15. ^ See the May 1868 Wesleyan Argus.

16. ^ See the 1889 Olla Podrida.

19. ^ Careers published in Nicolson, F. W., Orange Judd, eds. (1883). Alumni Record of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.. Middletown, Connecticut: Press of Avery Rand.

Most likely not independent of the organizations/schools to which this article relates (see thread above).

18. ^ "Members of the Mystical 7". The American Minerva (2003-07-01). Retrieved on 2008-07-21.

By all appearances self-published; arguably not independent of Wesleyan University; redundant with other member lists as noted above (assuming those are relevant in the first place); possible BLP concerns.

5. ^ (1844) Social Reform: An Address Before the Society of the Mystical Seven, August 7, 1844. Boston: Waite, Pearce, & Co., 42.

Exists but may or may not be independent [4] [5].

To summarize: the organization itself looks notable, but a fair fraction of the details in this article can be included only if corroborated by independent sources.    Xeriphas1994 (talk) 23:18, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: I went back and removed reference 18 for the reasons noted in both threads on this page.  It looks like two edits but it's really one — hit the save button by accident.

I don't yet know how to address the point about corroboration — except, as Tjarrett says, by somehow finding copies of these huge series of 19th-century documents (which might only exist in the basement of each school's library) and finding the one page that might point the way to an external publication.  Other ideas are welcome.    Xeriphas1994 (talk) 22:45, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

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