Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Project editing conventions

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How to structure BSA rank articles[edit]

Rank articles...the rank articles should be separate (and renamed, see Language section). This means List_of_BSA_rank_requirements should be deleted. Each rank having its own article allows more flexible, specificity, and shorter articles. Rlevse 17:43, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts:

--Ed 18:10, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this.Rlevse 18:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Me too, good ideas. --Naha|(talk) 19:18, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A quick template: User:Gadget850/Sandbox

Looks nice! --Naha|(talk) 19:18, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like this, added Eagle Palm, but what about the non-advancement related articles? Rlevse 19:38, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Such as? --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Such as the articles dealing with councils, districts, Scout reservations, handbooks, etc. Rlevse 22:10, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Aww it changed, I liked it better with the light blue at the top hehe :) --Naha|(talk) 19:57, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was fiddling with it. I do like the blue, but the FdL has a white box around it. May need a SVG version with a transparent background to clean that up. Play with it as you like. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Separate articles[edit]

I know it's attractive to have a series of articles with a spiffy series box, but why do we really need separate articles for every rank? I think they might do better as sections of a main article. --Smack (talk) 21:00, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Only if it's laid out well. History of Brazil pattern is possible. I'll have to mull this over. Rlevse 22:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whetever we do should conform across the board. The Cub Scout ranks are set up as separate articles. See Webelos rank (Cub Scouts of America), as someone is addressing the same issues. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 23:26, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the pattern used in the "History of ..." articles works pretty well for history, because the subject of history is broad and deep, and easily allows for a summary article linking out to narrower articles on specific periods. However, I don't think that any part of Scouting rank advancement has the necessary depth to make this structure work. --Smack (talk) 19:23, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another option is to have separate articles for Cubs, Scouts, Venturers for recognition; as I think one article containing all three could be huge. Rlevse 19:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. That would be good. Sorry if I implied that I wanted a single article for all branches of the BSA. --Smack (talk) 02:33, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is what I get out of this:

If no one objects, this is what we can go with. Rlevse 11:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll run with this one. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 22:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC) Updated --Gadget850 ( Ed) 00:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for the belated objection. I consider the rank structure an organic whole, which won't do well if divided into pieces. For instance, if we had them all together, we wouldn't have to duplicate the paragraph about the Star/Life switcheroo. Right now, First Class Scout rank (Boy Scouts of America) is the most complete one besides Eagle, and it looks torn out of context - a bit like getting one chapter of a book without the ones before and after it. That said, I'm willing to sit tight for a while and see how this division works out. --Smack (talk) 05:49, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Let's see how Gadget's current effort goes, with a parent article and one each for pack/troop/crew. I think this is quite workable and it turns out to kind of be a compromise.Rlevse 11:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Council, District, Troop articles[edit]

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Would Scouting Wikipedians entertain the idea of having the Councils-by-state sections recategorized to "Scouting in Arizona", "Scouting in Washington", and so on, rather than a list of every council and district? The reason I would like this considered is

1) no other country's Scouting articles are divided into such minute details (except for The Scout Association of Hong Kong, and really, is that much minutiae important or interesting to the reader?)

2) many councils that a reader may choose to look up, like the Fitchburg Area Council of Massachusetts or the Vigilante Area Council of Montana, went extinct 30+ years ago, yet may be of interest in a more state-based article

3) many states like Alaska share a communal Scout history, only fairly recently being broken into smaller councils, others like North Dakota had several merged into one, and some Scouting histories are better told encompassing an entire state. The fact that Scouts in California prior to the charter of the BSA were the youth arm of the California Highway Patrol, or the fact that Connecticut, while having only eight counties, has had 22 councils over the course of its history, would be well-included in a statewide article Chris 22:57, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea.Rlevse 23:03, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need to codify agreement about the creation of any Scout article for an entity smaller than Council-level. In my opinion, no District or Troop is worthy of an article by itself unless they are the first troop to scuba the Marianas Trench or camp on the moon. When such articles are created, I support their merger into local Council articles. However, what about OA Lodge articles where no Council article exists? Your thoughts? Chris 18:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that many of these facts and whatnot might be better suited to a standalone "History of the BSA" article. When certain topics/regions/whatever there grow big enough, those can also be broken out into articles dealing with regional histories and whatnot. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 19:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that we should be careful about how many councils/districts get articles, the ones perceived to be non-notable will wind up on VfD. Regions probably won't be that big a deal, there's only a few of them (local region office is in my hometown). How much coverage do we want to give these? The Council I "came up" in no longer exists - DuPage Area Council merged with Two Rivers Council in the early 1990s and is now known as the Three Fires Council. The old DAC offices in Wheaton, Illinois were closed, and TFC is in Saint Charles, Illinois. --JohnDBuell 01:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I favor the idea of having articles for states, regions, or some other large grouping, rather than for individual councils. However, I'm not sure how to accomplish this. The obvious solution is to redirect from the councils to the regions that contain them, but I wouldn't be very happy with that. --Smack (talk) 17:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The large grouping I would favor would be by state, reason being, most folks are inclined to look for that in specific, and Councils so frequently merge and split, and often when they do, it is along state lines. Therefore, the Rhode Island article would include Narragansett Council, but the Moby Dick Council that merged into it would be first part of the Massachusetts article. My 237 lira. Chris 02:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm getting the feeling that to do this would be by state. But I'm not sure how to tie into Councils and Lodges (I see no reason to have articles smaller than that). Rlevse 11:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

call for immediate consensus let's get this agreed upon, in light of recent Afds, and I will begin to add merge tags to sub-state articles and start on renames and opening paragraphs. Chris 20:52, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chris has been doing a bang-up job setting up the US scouting by state pages. I have two things I want to bring up about it, though. First, it seemed the consensus of this group that Districts were inherently non-notable, so I'm not sure why every district in each state is listed. Also, many councils reside in one state and have a camp or camps in another state (Both Three Fires Council's Camp Freeland-Leslie and Chicago Area Council's Owasippe Scout Reservation come to mind, and I'm sure there are others). It makes sense to me to include at least a mention of these out-of-state camps on the pages for the states in which the camps lie, but I'd like to get a better consensus for this. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 05:37, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The reason they are lists now is because they were lists to begin with in when created in 2002, and I am converting as best I can, but don't know what to do without losing that information. Chris 05:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I would not be sad to see the lists of districts go. I would like to see under each council's section: a blurb about the council itself (including history and any mergers), at least a mention of the camp(s) owned by the council, and a mention or subsection on the council's OA lodge. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 10:25, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to point out that whenever you make a page, such as Scouting in Alabama, that you need to also make redirects using possible searc terms. I went ahead and did it for the Alabama article using Alabama scouting, scouting in alabama.Will 23:10, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OA Lodges, Lists, and Notability[edit]

So everyone knows, List of BSA local Order of the Arrow (OA) lodges got put up on AfD for violating WP:NOT a directory. A bunch of subset articles are also up under the same nomination. I've voted to Delete per that reasoning, but whatever the outcome we need to make sure that the articles we create are actually notable, and are more than just simple lists. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 06:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I've left a note on that user's talk page and asked him to join the project and follow the guides. The info needs to be saved as it could seed our larger goal, but the articles should not be around very long. The info could be saved by pasting into a file for future use or put into an article that meets our goals. Rlevse 11:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
call for immediate consensus let's get this agreed upon, in light of recent Afds, and I will begin to add merge tags to sub-state articles and start on renames and opening paragraphs. Chris 20:51, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have gone ahead and done three test articles, for anyone to improve, as right now they are just adds-back-in of other articles. I used Alabama 1) as alphabetically first; 2) as it had no links so no one would complain if I moved it; and 3) as a scarcely-visited article, we can test and modify as seems appropriate to us. (As to the clip I borrowed from the controversy page, some states just don't yet have a lot of unique things I know about them, and for that my apologies). I then tried to set an example merging my own Colorado and Hawaii articles into new state pages.Chris 03:37, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If the info should be saved, perhaps putting it all on a User subpage for now would be the best way to keep it around and wiki-formatted until its decided whether or not we need it. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 21:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I liked your Colorado and Hawaii articles Chris. I like the box at the bottom with all of the links to the other states. I think each state should have a picture at the very top with an image of the state showing how it is divided by the councils in the state, or at least at the beginning of the Boy Scout Section, and if other types of scouting are included then a similar image should be at the beginning of each of these sections as well. I also think that each council and lodge should have an image of its patch/flap. The pictures of camp patches are useless in my opinion. While the list of districts may not be necessary, all of the camps and properties owned by the council should be present, and if the camp is in a neighboring state/council it should say so, otherwise it should just have the location. But maybe a list of the districts would give enough room for an image of the council patch and an image of the section of the state it occupies. As for the OA lodges I think they should be grouped by Section, in seperate articles. I do think that they should remain as part of each state article with the article stating the name, number, current lodge flap, totem, meaning, language of the totem, and anything else that is relevent.

BSA Scout camp categories[edit]

Randy had also addressed that we may need to create a new category or rename the Category:National High Adventure bases (Boy Scouts of America) category. Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation wasn't a High Adventure base, but it was a national rather than local camp. I propose the rename as either Category:National camps (Boy Scouts of America) or Category:National camps and High Adventure bases (Boy Scouts of America) in alignment with the name Category:Local council camps (Boy Scouts of America). The first is a little less cumbersome. Chris 02:33, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like the first. Go for it. --evrik 02:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like the "national camps" one. Go ahead.Rlevse 09:52, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Done, at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 August 17 Chris 01:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I just added the CFR. --evrik 14:35, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BSA Scout camps[edit]

Could someone please point me to where the standard is for the notbaility standard of a camp or scout reservation? I object to the wholesale lumping of camp articles in the council's description. Many camps are notablale in their own right. Here we say,

This category is intended for Council-level Scout reservations of the Boy Scouts of America. For BSA national level high-adventure bases, see Category:National High Adventure bases (Boy Scouts of America)

The Scouting WikiProject endeavors to have state-related articles rather than 400+ council articles. Articles on lodges, camps and districts will immediately be suggested to merge into the proper state or council article. If your council camp crosses state boundaries, choose the state the main council office is located in.

The discussion above was vague on the notability of the camps and the difference between a camp and a reservation. Where was this developed?

As an example, I just reverted the Resica Falls Scout Reservation merge. I think it can be expanded, it is longer than a stub ... and placing it with Cradle of Liberty Council makes that article too bulky. That council also has the Treasure Island (Scout reservation).

Also, I think Category:Local council camps (Boy Scouts of America) should become Category:Boy Scouts of America reservations. --evrik 17:00, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a matter of volume, and was developed in February 2006 after we lost 50+ articles to non-notability. Non-Scout Wikipedians are the ones who vote to delete such articles, not us, but as they are the vast number of Wikipedians out there, they call the shots generally. Last night I found several more Scout articles that had been deleted or nominated for afd, because they were counted as non-notable by others. You wouldn't believe the good stuff I had to bring back from the dead, that was deleted wholesale without being properly merged before redirect. Brother, I have nothing against your camp, I wish all camps and lodges and districts could have articles, the cold fact is, most Wikipedians disagree. For that reason, the only logical place for such sub-council articles is within the council article itself.
For the record, I am really tired of having this discussion, with new participants and old alike. It's a common-sense approach to what has been a bad situation for a long time. I hate losing any Scout article to deletion, and this was codified to prevent that. It has nothing to do at all with whether one's camp or lodge is really great, or whether a participant is longstanding or no. At this point I need to call for a vote and get this decided as official policy, once and for all. Chris 17:12, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not saying that every camp needs an article. I do think we need a length standard or something that we can point to that says that the article deserves to be there - we need an objective standard. --evrik 17:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, this is in a few spots, let's centralize here. I'm not trying to be wishy washy, but....I'm tired of this keeping coming up too. I understand people want articles on "their" camp,etc. But Chris is right too, if we don't keep a lid on it, we lose them. But I also see Evrik's point a more concrete standard would help. First, I think some confusion exists out there about "sub-council". If Council XYZ has camp/reservation that is it's main camp, is that sub-council or council-level?? Second, at what point do we say "this is a full article and can stand on its own with a summary and 'main' fork from the council/state article? I think we all agree stubs should get merged. B-class and above can probably survive. The problem as I see it is the start class. As I see, the Resica article is weak: it's barely more than a stub and nowhere near B-class. Let's move the discussion of what to do with the cat names separate from this one.Rlevse 18:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Standards?
    • Notability
    • Article Length (more than 1500 characters)
    • Completeness
    • Camps versus reservation?
    • Other projects (is the article tagged with another Wikiproject)
Just some thoughts. --evrik 18:10, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Sometimes the diff in a camp and reservation is in name only. Length should be B-class or above, maybe a strong Start class, complete-cover all major areas.Rlevse 18:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I do not support any opening on this, else that door will never be able to be closed to articles of uneven quality written by those who come in future. Consensus on sub-council entities was already reached, as per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/RulesStandards, in February, 2006 (above). I have written the bulk of the stubs on here, and I would love to see the national articles expand or find homes. The fact is, right now there is no place to tuck many articles, and we always risk losing several. For those articles that have a place to be, they need to be there. Camps and lodges and such may locally be notable, but outside of Treasure Island, there are none that are nationally significant to Scouting heritage outside of another, larger article. That's why local garage bands get deleted all the time. There should only be camp articles on national camps like Philmont, plus Treasure Island because of its notability to national Scouting, and that's it. All others, even if good articles, are sub-council entities, and as already agreed upon, need to be subsumed or expanded into Council articles. I have to stand by that, and do not support any leeway. Those not of our project see _all_ of our work as non-notable. Sub-council articles need council or state homes. 90+ percent of the Project members are BSA, there really needs to be a hard-and-fast mandate. Chris 19:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have to go with Chris on this one, let's stick to the RulesStandards as is instead of constantly fighting the battle of people protecting their own sugar bowl article. Rlevse 16:39, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I still have to disagree. First, camps were never explicityly covered in the previous discussion, Second, I think we need to come up with an objective standard for quality and length and stick with it. I think that by, as a rule, tucking them into the state and council articles we risk making those articles, large, difsue and unwieldy. The biggest reason we lose articles is that we don't have enough volunteers who come to the rescue and 'vote' to save articles. --evrik 17:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Local Cubmaster roundtables and OA chapters were never explicitly covered in the previous discussion, either, yet they are just as obviously sub-council entities covered by the same standard camps are, in the previous discussion above, agreed upon six months ago. You've touched upon it yourself, we don't have enough volunteers who come to the rescue. Since we do not, we need to build the root articles before we even start thinking about allowing breakaways. Disagree or no, this has been covered long since, and it does cover camps whether they were explicitly listed or not. Camps are sub-council entities. Chris 01:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is just going around in circles. The rule was set, not enough consensus and editors have agreed to change it, so the rule stands as written on our RulesStandards page.Rlevse 02:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ummm ... no. There is really no rule about camps. Camps were not explicitly covered. Camps are not districts or troops, nor are they roundtables. OA Chapters and roundtables are clearly sub-council. I think we (even if it is just the three of us) should develop a standard for camp articles. We then post that rule on at the Village Pump and then we stick with it.
On a related subject, we should have a "article in danger" section of the project page and a quick action team to come to the rescue of endangered articles. --evrik 02:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Camps are at the level of their council, district, whatever; Philmont, Sea Base, etc are national. I'll add that in a moment. An article in danger section likely draw no more response that the announcement section.Rlevse 09:52, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Umm... yes. I am not going to participate in developing a separate standard, nor would I support anything developed and decided upon by only three project members, especially since two of those suggested members have already covered in great length and detail that there is a rule about camps, as sub-council entities, and in doing so stated their support for the existing policies. That rule has already been posted, and belabored, and then some more, and that is the one that needs to be stuck with. You're the lone dissenting voice on this one, this time. In brotherhood, I hope you will accede to the decisions several others made already, six months ago. Chris 01:50, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • By the way, earlier on this page it was mentioned that we had a mass article deletion earlier in the year. I think it's sad that we can't muster enough support to defend our articles. Category:South Park episodes is an example of something completely trivial. Surely, our camps ar as important as an episode of South Park. --evrik 22:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In this section, I would like to clarify the standards by inserting the following text:

After this sentence, Such sub-articles are warranted when length, detail, or some other factor (such as Councils that cover parts of more than one state) warrant. Insert the following text:

Some general guidelines are as follows: notability – is there something particularly notable about the camp and its impact on people or in its region; length is the regional or council article in which it sits too long, or will the article be at least 1500 characters on its own; is the article complete and well-written; is this article also claimed by another wikiproject.

Rewrite this paragraph to read:

Camps and reservations are considered to be at the same level as their supporting organization. Some camps may be national in scope and those warrant their own article. To use the United States' BSA as an example, these are Philmont, Florida Sea Base, Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation, etc. A camp or reservation supported by a council is a council level organization and falls under council level rules. A camp or reservation run and supported by a district is a district level camp and falls under sub-council rules. The guidelines noted above also apply.

--evrik 09:53, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

    • If there is no objection ... I will do it. --evrik 13:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I object. The second para (camps and res...) says the same thing as the current version. I think the first one (general guide...) would only perpetuate this can of worms that keeps coming up. 1500 characters is not very long. Rlevse 21:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I second the objection as per Rlevse. Chris 02:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Rlevse, is there a way we can broaden this discussion? I really tink we should have a better policy, and no one else from the wikiproject seems interested in discussing this. --evrik 02:03, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Evrik, the only people who keep bringing this up are you and Chris, which seems to indicate you're the two who truly care about it and you're on opposite sides of the fence. I am not so sure broadening would do much good as no one else has participated in a long time; but before saying yea or nay or whatever, I'd like to hear what Chris thinks about broadening it (which I'm taking to mean you want to try to get more people involved). I doubt you and Chris would ever agree about what a better policy is.Rlevse 02:15, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My stance is what it has always been. Camps are sub-council entities, and subordinate to a parent council or state article. Chris 16:40, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • We now have the the Kintetsubuffalo standard, an article "fails notability - (if) it is not a Treasure Island or a Brownsea." You don’t understand the value of how the information is presented. The information may be copied to a larger article, but the article itself is lost. The article is what gets picked up by google and the article is what draws people in to our work. We should advance the opinion that, "individual scout camps have the right to be articles." We should stand together on this. If we stand together on this, there is no way any article would be deleted – but instead we do it ourselves. --evrik (talk) 16:32, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Propsal[edit]

In this section, I would like to clarify the standards by inserting the following text:

After this sentence, Such sub-articles are warranted when length, detail, or some other factor (such as Councils that cover parts of more than one state) warrant. Insert the following text:

Some general guidelines are as follows: notability – is there something particularly notable about the camp and its impact on people or in its region; length is the regional or council article in which it sits too long, or will the article be at least 1500 characters on its own; is the article complete and well-written; is this article also claimed by another wikiproject.

and rewrite this paragraph to read:

Camps and reservations are considered to be at the same level as their supporting organization. Some camps may be national in scope and those warrant their own article. To use the United States' BSA as an example, these are Philmont, Florida Sea Base, Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation, etc. A camp or reservation supported by a council is a council level organization and falls under council level rules. A camp or reservation run and supported by a district is a district level camp and falls under sub-council rules. We note however that "individual scout council and camps have the right to be articles if they meet guidelines noted above."

--evrik (talk) 16:39, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'd agree with this so long as individual council camps have the ability to have be stub articles, so long as it is cleared up that verifiable regional notability is acceptable. Justinm1978 08:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stub Camp Articles[edit]

Issue: How should we handle stub articles on individual Scout camps?
Proposals:

A. Blanket policy that we allow a stub for any Scout camp. Mark as stub and try to expand on it.
B. Blanket policy that Scout camp stubs are merged into corresponding "by State" article. A redirect is created. If enough information becomes available, use the Talk page to propose splitting into it's own article. (Must be at least B-class to justify splitting).

Feel free to discuss, modify, or add to these proposals. --NThurston 19:13, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • My proposal is directly above this. I want to let people know that as of today, there are at least 84 article (the ones I could find at tag) that we have merged. You can see for yourself here: Category:Scouting Redirects from merges. --evrik (talk) 17:58, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would support that individual camps/reservations (as in property owned by councils) be allowed their articles, but marked as stubs and attempt to expand. Merging it all into "by State" will clutter those up horribly and look bad because it takes forever to split anything out. I would also suggest a standard infobox be used for camps that include location, owning council, date opened, etc. Articles usually get deleted because they are either all fluff, direct copyvios, or just look bad.Justinm1978 08:31, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We have an infobox that is highly customizable, see Template:Infobox WorldScouting. If you need it to do something that it doesn't currently do, contact User:Wimvandorst.Rlevse 11:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images and terms[edit]

  • I recently noted the {{scoutlogo}} image tag. I recommend use of this tag for any images that are "official" logos, patches, medals, etc. Another advantage is that these images will show up in Category:Scout logos.
  • BSA seems to use the term emblem for any patch indicating leadership or other position of responsibility.
  • For BSA articles, I suggest useage of logos from the official BSA site whenever possible.
  • Girl Scouts USA seems to be very restrictive on image and logo use: see http://www.girlscouts.org/faqs/copyrights_trademarks.asp

--Gadget850 ( Ed) 23:31, 20 January 2006 (UTC) --Gadget850 ( Ed) 09:08, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Would somebody please go to List of 2005 National Scout Jamboree Council Patches and change this guy's don't know tags to {{scoutlogo}}? I've been trying to help the poor fellow out, but I shortly have to go home and don't have a computer there presently. I tried to leave a note on the guy's talk page, but he's not gotten the message. Chris 05:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I started doing that (got up to H). See Talk:List of 2005 National Scout Jamboree Council Patches for comments. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 12:10, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think using the {{scoutlogo}} tag is a great idea.Rlevse 19:27, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Randy, why should they not all be labeled {{scoutlogo}} as opposed to logo, since it is available? Chris 01:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just said using it is a good idea, the scoutlogo tag that puts them in the Scouting category, that is.Rlevse 03:08, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My bag, there was a page it appears you say use logo for some and Scoutlogo for others, and I didn't get the differentiation. SorryChris 03:34, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No: I had recommended logo some time back before I found scoutlogo. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 10:48, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll add this to RulesStandards. Rlevse 11:16, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

GSUSA vs. GSA[edit]

The proper name for the US Girl Guiding movement is Girl Scouts of the United States of America, and its abbreviation is GSUSA. As far as I know, though, this was not the original name of the organization. I assume that, like BSA, the name was originally Girl Scouts of America, but am not sure. Does anyone know/can anyone find out what the original name was, and when the switch was made. Also, would it be more proper to use the older term for articles referring to the organization before the switch, and just have the wikilink refer back to the GSUSA article? -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 21:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This should be covered in any article discussing this. I believe it was indeed originally GSA. I think the standard practice is to talk about in using its present name, using clauses where needed to refer to the prior name. Rlevse 21:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it was first named Girl Guides of America in 1912 and changed to Girl Scouts of America in 1913. It became Girl Scouts of the United States of America in 1947. [1] --Gadget850 ( Ed) 00:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Updated the GSUSA article to show the history of the name changes. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 14:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Project focus[edit]

IS this project mainly focussed around BSA? --Paul 13:22, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This started as an informal collaboration of Americans, so the initial focus was on BSA, BUT we VERY MUCH want to include ALL SCOUTING, world wide, boys and girls. We have already recruited other users with non-BSA backgrounds and we're glad to have ANY Scouting topic included. Rlevse 14:09, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Insular Category[edit]

Do we want all the groups not affiliated with WOSM or WAGGGS in that category? There are a number of breakaway orgs that are members of other multinational scouting groups (such as the World Federation of Independent Scouts) that would fit in such a category, but would arguably belong on their own. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 00:35, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am not very familiar with these organizations. There are also organizations such as Traditional Scouts and Primitive Scouts. These two and the one you mention should probably be in their subcat. For the Insular cat, I was thinking more along the line of orgs that are in their fledging stages and/or being cared for by the org of a larger country. Someone should educate me more on this subject of non-WOSM and non-WAGGGS before I go further. For now, we'll use Insular for orgs that have nowhere else to be put for now or fall into the intended purpose. We can always move cats around and re-categorize later. Rlevse 01:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Randy, the five nonWOSM international organizations, and several dozen non-aligned Scout movements believe 1) that WOSM has become too political (they're not entirely wrong), or that 2) WOSM has strayed from B-P's original purpose (up for debate). Those organizations range from the WFIS and FSE which comprise dozens of organizations, to the OWS which has but three. Thus far, most of the national members of these organizations do not have their own articles, and brief mention is made of them as "other Scout associations in x-country" in many WOSM articles.
Note there is not a similar nonWAGGGS organization, so the issues lie specifically with Boy Scouting. Chris 01:40, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like I need to make a "non-aligned Scout organizations" category. Then someone that knows about them needs to write a set of articles. I'll put this on the Todo list....Rnady, Rlevse 01:47, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There are existing articles on each of these organizations, which link to the breakaway and nonaligned section of the mainScouting article, about midway down. Chris 01:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I went through that and added them to the non-aligned cat. I found one female organization: American Heritage Girls. Randy. Rlevse 02:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the Heritage girls struck me on the way home. D'oh. I am burning out on the 'pedia tonight. Chris 04:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Several dozen non-aligned Scout movements" seems a low estimation to me. Germany alone has about 130 non-aligned organizations, France about 60 and Italy about 30. About half of them are single-troop organizations (and thus non-notable), but we won't run out of work in this field. --jergen 14:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Non-aligned Scouting organizations[edit]

Being a German Scout, I'm not comfortable with having the Hitler Youth in Category:Non-aligned Scouting organizations or in any other Scouting category. I think we should use this category only für such organizations that really use (or abuse) the Scout method. --jergen 14:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I meant no offense. Do you feel likewise about the Young Pioneers (communist)? While I do NOT support the HJ, many German Scouts were forced to join them (as I've always heard), so there is a connection there; and granted the HJ were highly politicized and militarized. Is this same true of the YP? This would beg the question, which needs addressing obviously: At what point and by what standards do we say a youth organiztion's article is not part of our project? I'm all open to suggestions. Did the HJ not abuse/warp the Scout method? Granted, I need to know more here. Rlevse 16:16, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is different with HJ and YP, the HJ used only are very small part of the program and the uniform style, while the YP were - in an early stage - kind of a socialist Scout Movement using wide parts of the Scout method. But I wouldn't even list the YP as "Non-aligned Scouting organization", it should be something like "look-a-like organization".
But I feel the problem is deeper: as long as we don't have anything on the Scout method we may come to this discussion again. I tried to describe the method in German (see: de:Pfadfinder#Die Pfadfindermethode) but i dont feel able to do it in English. --jergen 17:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wann ich war Student aufs Universitaet; Ich habe Deutsch als Hauptfacht studiert, aber jetzt habe Ich ganz zu viel vergessen. I have not used my German much since those days 25+ years ago. But, I remember enough to understand the gist of what you wrote in the German article. I understand you to be saying that if the orgnization veers too far from the Scout method and/or becomes overly politicized; we should not include it. Given that and the additional details you provided on HJ and YP, I'll remove them from the project and alter any articles referring to them as appropriate. Rlevse 17:39, 24 January 2006 (UTC) PS: I've also made this part of the RulesStandards. Rlevse 17:42, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with the exclusion of the YPs. As far as I know (I was never a YP myself), they were more than just an indoctrination machine. Like the Scouts, they developed character, with proper Communist ideals foremost but far from exclusive. I've been led to believe that their emphasis on Communism did not far exceed, say, the BSA's emphasis on faith and republican citizenship. IMHO, they have a place on the not-too-distant fringes of the Scouting family tree. --Smack (talk) 21:43, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was chewing on the answer to this last night. Both the Pioneers and the Hitler Jugend have their roots in Scouting, as the wide-game worked and appealed to youth, and they did not want to reinvent the wheel. However, having lived in the former Soviet Union, there was no doubt that their influence did in fact exceed mere citizenship. Pioneer membership was almost a prerequisite for better government jobs, and most certainly children who did not belong for one reason or another faced ostracism from their peers. I don't even like the fact that the Eurasian Region has taken over the reins, literally, from the Pioneer movement, as the locals will see Scouting as tainted for years. However, I think there needs to be a new category, having to do with youth organizations that stemmed from Scouting yet had their own evolution separate from it.Chris 21:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree that HJ and YP are outside our normal scope. However, I am open to a separate category, but only with more discussion and consensus. Rlevse 22:12, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While at some time even B.-P. himself had favourable comments on the Balilla (the fascist youth organization) it should be remembered that all these organizations were founded in opposition to scouting, and disbanding the local scout organizations, where they existed. We can't group them with scouting. We can, on the other hand, mention them because they have been influencing in our history, But we must mention them as something else... a sort of enemy! --Lou Crazy 04:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't go so far as to call them "enemies." That term implies a simplistic worldview and encourages militant and fanatical behavior, which is not acceptable in Wikipedia. These organizations were imitations of Scouting, set up by governments that brooked no opposition. Some turned entirely to serve a political cause; others merely leaned in that direction. --Smack (talk) 06:20, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have to concur with Smack, let's stay away from terms like "enemies", a term like "not true reps of the Scouting movement" or something would be better.Rlevse 11:29, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reviews[edit]

Do we have somewhere we can submit articles for peer review? Gadget850 ( Ed)

The collaboration of the month is sort of a peer review. You also have the standard wiki peer review process. If you mean a Scouting Project place, go to the Scouting Portal and select the "candidates option" on the collaboration article box.Rlevse 22:29, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stance on OA Article Specificity[edit]

We all know that the articles about the Order of the Arrow are constantly being altered between two groups: one who want to list as much information as possible in them, and the other who don't think that details about the OA are appropriate on a public encyclopedia. Now that said articles are part of this project (or are they?), how is this going to be dealt with? It seems to me that a policy on this should be added to WikiProject_Scouting/RulesStandards Bcaff 21:45, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have noticed this and would like input. Bcaff: Tell us what you think, thanks for bringing this up, feel free to join the Project, and let's move this to the OA talk page at Talk:Order_of_the_Arrow. Rlevse 22:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I do have one question, though. How do I join the project? Do I just add my name to the list above? Bcaff 12:19, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To join, add your name and interests here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Scouting#Participants_and_primary_areas_of_interest Rlevse 13:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria for inclusion[edit]

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

I'd like to split the following paragraph into three parts:

because it covers in the actual state three differing groups of organizations:

I feel it necessary to widen the criterias to 'political' Scouting organizations like The Woodcraft Folk (which states despite its connections to the cooperative movement and to the International Falcon Movement: The Folk do not have political affiliations but does endorse and support the work of the peace movement.).

We should also remember that there are (or were) quite a large number of real 'political' Scouting organizations, some examples from Category:Non-aligned Scouting organizations are Hanoar Hatzioni, Hashomer Hatzair or Fianna Éireann, but there are a lot more (I know at least five defunct German organizations). All these organizations were started as Scouting organizations but with a clear political orientation - thus they could not reach membership of WOSM or WAGGGS. --jergen 08:51, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jergen, I knew you would know a lot about this, thanks. I'll get to work on it today. WE defeinitely should not cover groups that meet this: "compulsary youth organisations introduced by extreme political groups who were governing a country as a dictatorship.", ie HJ and YP. So where should we draw the line? Rlevse 10:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Troops?[edit]

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Would it be possible to have clear policy on the inclusion of individual scout troops? I have come here from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/4th New Forest North (Eling) Sea Scouts, and there is a policy implied but no crystal clear statement either way. Jll 10:15, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean more specific than..."Generally, an entity smaller than a Council (such as a troop or district) should not have its own article, unless it has done something truly exceptional or unique."? Also note our project didn't know of that article until 3 days ago, which is why our template isn't at the top of the talk page. Rlevse 10:44, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - that is the sort of thing I had in mind. Sorry - I didn't spot it. Jll 10:47, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image standards[edit]

We have updated the image standards on the project page. Please let us know of any concerns or issues. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 14:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

fr:Projet:Scoutisme de:Wikipedia:WikiProjekt Pfadfinder

Milestone Announcements[edit]

Announcements
  • All WikiProjects are invited to have their "milestone-reached" announcements automatically placed onto Wikipedia's announcements page.
  • Milestones could include the number of FAs, GAs or articles covered by the project.
  • No work need be done by the project themselves; they just need to provide some details when they sign up. A bot will do all of the hard work.
Click here for more information or to sign your project up.

I thought this WikiProject might be interested. Ping me with any specific queries or leave them on the page linked to above. Thanks! - Jarry1250 (t, c) 22:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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