Wikipedia:Peer review/Kappa Kappa Psi/archive1

Kappa Kappa Psi

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I have made a series of major edits to the page and would like to see this as a featured article (if that is at all possible for a fraternity with so few third-party sources; I'm hoping that it at least can pass its current Good Article nomination) and I would love to get suggestions for improvement in as many areas as I can.

Thanks, LazySofa (talk) 06:02, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Review by User:GrapedApe

1. The lead is pretty good. One caution though: nothing should appear in the lead that is not discussed and cited elsewhere in the article. Hence, there shouldn't be a need for any references in the lead.
2. Consider turning "National Presidents of Kappa Kappa Psi" into prose--it would be stronger as prose.
3. References. Try to avoid having references in the middle of the sentence, unless there's a particular clause of the sentence that absolutely must be referenced separately.
4. "Notable members" could use a re-write to be more prose-y
5. This has some pretty good sources, but I think those sources can be better used. At
6. It would be helpful to reformat the references to match one of the Wikipedia:Citation templates. A number of the references are not in template form, which is not wrong, but it makes things more standardized if they are. Also, refs 5, 6, and 7 have multiple sources, which probably should be broken out into separate refs.
7. I think that the biggest weakness of the article is how it flows. The language can gets choppy at times--names and titles are used without context. Sometime facts are dropped into the middle of paragraphs. I reworked the first two paragraphs of the "Founding and expansion" section. Feel free to disagree, but I think that it flows better. Sometime detail must be sacraficed for clarity and flow. I also put inlinr questions in the paragraph that should probably be clarified.

Review by User:Cmadler

(A few thoughts, with a double disclaimer that I've edited this article in the past but not for a while and that I'm an alumnus of KKPsi.)

1. According to WP:SCHOLARSHIP, "Masters dissertations and theses are only considered reliable if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence." I think it's unlikely for that to be the case with Joe Jameson Jr's 1971 master's thesis (cited here 7 times), which also appears to be unpublished (at least, the citation lacks any publication information). Those citations should be replaced with a better source.
2. A lot of this article is based on Kappa Kappa Psi publications and closely related publications (joint Kappa Kappa Psi/Tau Beta Sigma publications, Tau Beta Sigma publications). All such citations need to be closely evaluated against the five criteria in WP:ABOUTSELF. Points 1 ("the material is not unduly self-serving") and 5 ("the article is not based primarily on such sources") are the two I'm particularly concerned about here.
3. Stillwater Station should probably get a full sub-section under "National Programs". (For that matter, as an NRHP site, it could get its own article, but, with or without its own article, I think it merits more coverage here.)

1. What determines "significant scholarly influence" for the sake of SCHOLARSHIP? I would think that the only major research effort into the history of Kappa Kappa Psi is fairly significant, at least to the fraternity and therefore its article. Jameson's thesis is unpublished, as you surmised. I suppose I could find Podium/Baton/other fraternity publications for each citation of Jameson's thesis, but that goes right into ABOUTSELF.
2. Point 1 is one I have kept in mind in my revisions, by trying to present things matter-of-factly and not just fluff to make the fraternity sound good. If there's any NPOV, please point it out so I can fix it! Point 5 is hard to get around when there is so little third-party writing available for your topic. Most of the third-party writing I've found about Kappa Kappa Psi is either press releases describing local chapters' activities or about allegations of hazing. Except for Jameson Jr.'s thesis (which itself relies on the Podium, Baton, and other fraternity publications), there's not really a lot of considerable writing about the national organization.
3. Fair point—I'll see what sources I can pull together to make that happen. LazySofa (talk) 19:41, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

• Probably the most common way to measure "scholarly influence" is to look at the number of times a paper has been cited in other scholarly works. Secondary steps are to consider the significance or triviality of each mention/citation and to consider the scholarly influence of the works in which the citations appear. A work that has NEVER been cited probably has very little or no scholarly influence. Further, that citation needs to include publication information (according to WP:SOURCES, "unpublished materials are not considered reliable"). The problem you're running into on points 1 & 2 -- that there's not been much written about Kappa Kappa Psi by independent third parties -- suggest that maybe the article needs to be trimmed down. WP:NOTABILITY only applies to the subject as a whole, not the content within the article, but the lack of reliable independent sources is problematic as the article continues to grow. I'm going to play with it in my sandbox a little, to try to get a handle on just how much is really cited to non-independent sources. cmadler (talk) 14:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • After thinking it over a bit, here's my suggestion. In a sandbox, rip out all the non-independent citations except where they support quotations. (I've done this here -- ignore the name of that sandbox!) Then, for each uncited section or statement, consider 1) whether it might be possible to find an independent citation for that (for example, I'll guess that some independent citations might be found for NIB, NIMB, notable members, and HazingPrevention.org), 2) whether the information really needs to be in the article (statements that I might remove include the number of new chapters in the 21st century, some of the details about jewelry and symbols, and the list of all national presidents), and only then add the non-independent citations back in.

Also, in going through the citations in more detail, I see that the non-independent sources vary in quality, from materials published by the national HQ (Guide to Membership, Podium, Baton, etc.) to items on chapter websites and listserv comments. I think we need to be extremely careful in evaluating these, and while there is room for nationally published materials (subject to the above-linked criteria), we should be very skeptical of citing chapter websites and listserv comments, unless they're given as a quote attributed directly to the writer. cmadler (talk) 15:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

• • • Only two listserv posts are cited, one of which was from Alan Bonner and can also be cited from NewsNotes if necessary; the Word document I was citing was only attached to the listserv distribution of that issue, however. As for the chapter websites, all of the citations of the Alpha chapter website are citations of Baton/Podium documents that are included with some commentary from Steve Nelson. Those should be treated as Baton/Podium in terms of reliability. Should I just cite the Baton/Podium issue from which the material was taken? I was taught to cite what I have, not cite through to an original unless I found it there first. LazySofa (talk) 17:44, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
      • The listserv item from Col. Bonner is only used to support some itinerary information for the NIMB ("The thirty-five member band performed at Le Suquet in Cannes, in Nice, and in front of the Prince's Palace of Monaco."), and I suggest that this information is not so critical that we should ignore Wikipedia's sourcing standard. I would just remove that statement from the article. That would leave, "In June and July 2002, Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma sponsored the first National Intercollegiate Marching Band, which traveled to the French Riviera, including the cities of Nice, Grasse, Aix-en-Provence, Cannes, Antibes, and the Principality of Monaco. After the inaugural trip, the program was dissolved by the joint national councils due to its high cost and low attendance, which was believed to be caused by a fear of traveling abroad after the September 11 attacks."

The other listserv item ("John Siirola to KKYTBS listserv, April 27, 1999") appears to support several statements about Neil Armstrong. ("Neil Armstrong was a member of the ROTC band at Purdue University in his sophomore year. Armstrong graduated in 1955 and was made an honorary member of the Gamma Pi chapter in spring 1956, shortly after the chapter's creation...") Most of that should be citable to better sources. In fact, the very next citation also covers all those points, though it says his honorary membership wasn't until 1965. So I think both listserv citations could be removed without really harming the article (and in fact, strengthening it by removing unsuitable sources).

For the history snippets, the better thing would be to get at copies of those old publications. It looks like someone here has some older publications, because there's a direct citation to a 1953 Podium, and the 1922 Baton is listed in the bibliography. (If the National HQ has copies, perhaps a Wikipedian in the Stillwater area could get over there to take a quick look and verify the content. In fact, since the 1922 Baton is in the public domain by virtue of its age, if someone can do a high-quality scan, I'll volunteer to get the whole thing added onto Wikisource.) The item about Raymond Shannon appears on the Alpha Chapter website with no sources indicated, and also doesn't quite say what the article says (our article says he "went on to join Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia after starting Kappa Kappa Psi", while the source says he was "also a member"; and since KKPsi wasn't founded until his junior year, it's entirely possible he was a Sinfonian first). cmadler (talk) 15:37, 22 December 2011 (UTC)