Talk:Tau Epsilon Phi/Archives/2012/November

Cornell Hazing

Dear concerned parents of a Cornell University student, I understand your concern, However, this is an encyclopedia, and "allegations" and "investigations" are rarely encyclopedic content. I will grant you that this article might be worth a one line entry in the article, but having an entire section and subsection just for a single alleged incident isn't something that belongs here. This isn't a blog, or a newspaper. However, there is Wikinews, which *is* an online newspaper, and this content would fit perfectly there.

Hazing

Cornell Investigates Hazing Allegations Against TEP Fraternity

Approximately November 1, 2012 two pledges of TEP were hospitalized due to possible alcohol-related hazing. The students were sophmores who despite being potentially hazed, have still been initiated into TEP. Cornell explained that the Fraternity was placed on interim suspension while the charges are investigated.

The TEP national organization, recently under a new administration, citing Lane Koplon as International Consul, declined to comment on the suspension or accusations made against the fraternity.

Cornell is concerned whether TEP took action to educate and inform its members of proper techniques to prevent such hazing from occuring. The investigation is still under scrutiny and further updates will follow.

Content of disputed text appears above. Discuss. Timmccloud (talk) 04:02, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

History section

While I did make an initial mistake in my revert, I did intend to remove that new paragraph in the history section. Details about the "pin" are completely trivial, and are not important enough to be included in teh article. More importantly, much of the rest of the paragraph was non-neutral; phrases like "So inspired were these ten" and "The ideals of the founders proved to be too strong," are puffery, much more suited to an advertisement for the fraternity than an encyclopedia article. If someone wants to mock up some factual statements, that could be considered, but remember the style of writing we do here. Qwyrxian (talk) 14:01, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, we are apparently online at the same time - your edit to start this new section interrupted my edit to explain. The post made by IP 86 re: the first year and pledge has been sourced in multiple publications, and I believe is concise and factual, and from a very strong source - the official history published by Syndey Sontag; the only online reference happens to be that website, which is why 86 used it. The puffery can be edited out without reversion, please free to work on that. I was mostly trying to separate this from the legal issues discussion. Timmccloud (talk) 14:12, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Annnd... before I can make any changes you reverted the entire thing again. Please stop doing that, and please PUT IT BACK as I do not want to edit war with you, I want to have a discussion and consensus. If you have problems with the bit about the pin, edit it out. I think it's somewhat appropriate that in the first year of the fraternities history it almost never made it to a second; don't you think that rates inclusion? And Wikipedia is a consensus based system - don't you think you should have edited the content instead of just reverting it, since there are apparently editors who disagree with you and want to include it? Timmccloud (talk) 14:17, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

The entire pin paragraph was a 100% copy and paste straight from this TEP webpage, which of course is a huge editing and copyright violation. --76.189.101.221 (talk) 14:22, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and the problem is actually with THAT page. It doesn't properly attribute the text to Syd's book where THEY took it from, which is a copyright violation of SYD's work. Before I even had a chance to rewrite the prose - as it was very factual too - it was revered out from under me so I couldn't save the page, and then as I was trying to explain, I was commented over again so I lost that too. Kudos for being quick at the helm guys; frustrating as all get out to have to start over three times due to your speed, and now that I've wasted the hour I planned to be productive I have to go to work and it won't get done for hours. Really appreciate it. Instead of reverting, why don't YOU TWO try rewriting it without the "Puffery"? Timmccloud (talk) 14:34, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

In terms of the pin content, I fully agree with Qwyrxian, who said: "Details about the "pin" are completely trivial, and are not important enough to be included in teh article." Therefore, I support his revert of all the pin content. --76.189.101.221 (talk) 14:49, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Timmcloud, I don't have access to the book used as a source, nor do I think that almost any of that was important enough to be included; but, I won't object strongly if something somewhat relevant turns up. As for the copyvio, Wikipedia requires that you make such alterations prior to bringing them on to Wikipedia; you can't even host copyrighted stuff here on the talk page before bringing it to the main page. Truth be told, though, I strongly recommend against starting with an original text and trying to alter it step by step. The end result of that is almost always a too close paraphrase, which can be almost or exactly as bad a copyvio. It also tends to lend undue weight; by definition, our work here should be significantly summarized from sources. Qwyrxian (talk) 14:58, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, I appreciate your pointing out the close paraphrase notes; I would like to note there gets to be a certain point when you have 3 sentences of condensed facts that it's hard to re-work it without sounding very much like the original no matter what you do. One of the issues is there aren't a lot of published sources for comparison either. Syd Sontag's work is considered the preeminent work on the subject of TEP, yet it's very close to being considered original source material as Syd was the chancellor of the national fraternity at the time he wrote it. It also happens to be why it's such a seminal work on TEP history, he was using the original source materials in the TEP archives to write it! But I will try. Timmccloud (talk) 21:21, 30 November 2012 (UTC)