Talk:Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America)

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[edit] Similar awards

I'm thinking of splitting this into something like List of highest awards in Scouting or some such. I've never been real happy with this section and it is continually tweaked. I think it worked better when it was a list, but the list format didn't survive the FAC. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

  • why not. --evrik (talk) 20:56, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Try using a template. That's what we're doing on College football for awards, bowl games, conferences (soon) and other things that really need to be a list but can't because of the desire for FA status. z4ns4tsu\talk 21:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't get it- I don't see any templates there. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 02:00, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
At the bottom of the article, there is a template for individual awards (Heisman, et al) and one for the bowl games. These both replaced long lists of the same information. We also just today created two more templates that haven't been put on the page yet, but will replace the lists of conferences. They're at {{NCAA DI-A Conferences}} and {{NCAA DI-AA Conferences}}. z4ns4tsu\talk 03:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I get it now. The only problem is that the similars awards section gets edited fairly often- using a template will make it more complicated for editors. Something to think about though. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 11:35, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I sandboxed a list at User:Gadget850/Sandbox4 --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice, Gadget850. See: List of highest awards in Scouting. Dddstone 00:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

It really should be "Scouting and Guiding". I was waiting until we resolved the WOSM/WAGGS issue. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 03:07, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Guides are Scouts too, it's one movement, if not whey did girl guide/girl scouts form into one organization--WAGGGS. It's like the difference in car and auto.Rlevse 03:10, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Someone noticed

http://markyork.blogspot.com/2006/11/eagle-scouts.html --evrik (talk) 21:25, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

This one cracked me up. Raul654 03:06, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Raul, I rolled my eyes when I read that. It disgusts me that so many men (and it's always men) mock those who choose to become Scout leaders. --Habap 14:00, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I thought it was crass. It may have been satire, but still crass. Rlevse 14:40, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eagle Scout Statistics

I made a revision to the to the After becoming an Eagle[[1]] section pertaining to the percent of Boy Scouts who attain Eagle, This revision was reverted soon after, to make clear my reasoning i will explain myself, by gathering two numbers from wikipedia on overall members found on Boy Scouts of America, which states there have been OVER one hundred million members, then the number of Eagle Scouts to have attained the rank, 1,835,410, using a calculator 1,835,410 divided by 100,000,000 equals .018 which is almost 2 percent not almost 5 pecent, I understand the citation of scouting.org says "...only about 5 percent of all Boy Scouts do so. This represents more than 1.7 million Boy Scouts who have earned the rank since 1912." but we must understand that the person who wrote this may have been "rounding" up or simply guessing at a percent instead of statistcally finding the correct amount. I feel that this should be voted on and a decision should be made otherwise the statistics contradict themselves. Please reply to this subject with your feelings on it.--Joebengo 02:01, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

You are presuming that this number is over the life of the program. If you consider that 49,895 Eagle Scouts were awarded in 2005 out of 879,789 Boy Scouts + 63,637 Varsity Scouts then it works out to 5.3%.[2] I recall the number was stated as 4% years ago. I think giving a percentage for the life of the BSA is misleading as the requirements have beeen changed over the years and the signifigance has changed from a super merit badge to a rank. There were less than a hundred Eagles in the first ten years- that is a big skew. I do think we need to clarify this. How about:

"In 2005, 5% of the Boy Scouting membership were awarded Eagle Scout."

--Gadget850 ( Ed) 02:51, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

That does sound a lot better but it doesnt seem like the right fix for the problem permanently, would it be better to consider adding an additional section about the statistics of eagle scouts?

--Joebengo 01:37, December 25 2006 (UTC)

Just make it what it is, a whole para isn't needed, just one sentence that says something like "While the percentage of Scouts making Eagle Scout each year has been as low as 2%, in 2005 it was 5%." Sumoeagle179 12:43, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the lowest was in 1911 at 0%. We just had this discussion over at Scouter.com [3]- some claimed it was as high as 20%, but a lot of that was "gut feeling" numbers. I did some searching then, but there are no real sources. Let me know if you find anything. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:05, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

So what is the consensus here? "While the percentage of Scouts making Eagle Scout each year has been as low as 0%, in 2005 it was 5%.", or should we just put "Over the history of the Boy Scouts of America only about 2% have attained the rank of Eagle"?--Joebengo 04:54, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

How about ""Over the history of the Boy Scouts of America only about an average of 2% of Scouts have attained the rank of Eagle, but in 2005 it was 5%" ... with the ref of course.Sumoeagle179 14:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm really wondering just how much these numbers add to the article. The only reason to quote a percentage like this is to emphasize the "rarity" of Eagle Scout.
"In 2005, about 5% of the Boy Scouting membership earned Eagle Scout– over the life of the program, 1.8 million young men or about 2% of the total have earned Eagle."

--Gadget850 ( Ed) 14:37, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. We had numbers in three different sections. I simplified the lead-in and moved the others to history. I think this is now more clear. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:30, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History

I think a bit of reorganization of the history material would be better presented as:

History

  • General
  • Requirements
  • Medal
  • Badge
  • Other insignia

--Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:35, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

How about making it in your sandbox first so we can compare them? Rlevse 17:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Check out User:Gadget850/Sandbox2. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:34, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

OK with me.Rlevse 11:45, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Blood Drive As An Eagle Project

I was noticing in the examples for Leadership projects, one of the examples including running a blood drive. The blood drive itself does not totally count as leadership since the blood center self-corinates (its a matter of picking a phone and asking them to be at place for a time and date, nothing else). I bring this up beacuse another scout in my troop did a blood drive a few years ago. After the scoutmaster confence (and a jackass stunt at school), the scoutmaster tried to revoke that sign-off, to no-avil. Ever since, this scoutmaster has been cracking down on possible eagle canidates (including me). Just my two cents. KB1KOI 23:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC) (soon to be Eagle scout,currently pending BOR)

So whats the point here? Do you have a question or are you just stating something? --Joebengo 23:36, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

We have had one Scout do a blood drive in my troop. I wasn't his mentor (and I can't give blood... moo), so I'm not sure exaclty what was involved, but I do recall that he promoted it to the point where they had to turn away donors. So, yes- it is a legitimate example. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 23:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Blood drives are possible as Eagle projects, but the Scout has to set it up so he shows leadership--the reason people frown on them is that it's easy for one not to do much at a blood drive. NOw, if the SM already approved it, he can't unapprove and he's not the final sign off anyway as the district adv chair is. Rlevse 01:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC), a district adv chair

[edit] Similar awards in other organizations

Didn't we have the Billy Mitchell award here at one time and remove it? Ditto for the Royal Rangers and some other non-Scouting groups. While I can appreciate that other organizations describe their awards as their equivalent to Eagle Scout (which makes Eagle more notable), this is going to drag out like the Scouting awards list did.

I think that if editors want to compare their award to Eagle, then it should be done like we did with List of highest awards in Scouting. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:14, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree with gadget. Rlevse 18:45, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

Previously on Wikipedia. Back in March of 2006, we had a consensus to merge the Cub Scouting and the Boy Scouting advancement articles as I have proposed below. These merges were made and the links and redirects fixed. In June 2006, User:Cool Cat unilaterally reverted all of these changes. There was a lot of discussion and acrimony, and we left it as it was.

It is now almost a year since the original merges and the articles in question have stood as stubs since then, with only a few minor edits. I now propose to reinstate those merges. These merges are effectively already done, as the information was moved back in March.

Merge Eagle Palms into Eagle Scout

As noted, this merge has effectively already been performed- this is a pro forma notice. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Please oppose, support or comment:

  • support.Rlevse 13:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Support The Placebo Effect 14:03, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Support merging Eagle Palms into Eagle Scout. --Habap 15:27, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Support Spin2cool 05:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

done; Redirects in articles fixed. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 01:02, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pins

"The Eagle Scout Mentor pin was introduced in early 2004 in a gold-plated version, and was changed in early 2006 to pewter to match the mother and father pins."

The pin shown on ScoutStuff [4] has a gold color, but is not gold-plated. Also, the mom's pin was redsigned at some point [5] to match the [6] dad's pin. These are not pewter, but "antique finish". The mom and dad pins are also available in sterling.

The Eagle Scout Award Kit [7] seems to show all three pins in a silver color. I will try to take a photo of the current kit this coming weekend. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:21, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The kits had gold (gold colored) mentor pins at first, but then pewter ones for the last year or so but the last few I bought had gold color ones again. Not sure why.Rlevse 16:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
It is back to gold colored. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 00:53, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] advanced U.S. military rank for Eagle Scouts

Apparently the army no longer offers an immediate rank advancement to all Eagle Scouts who enlist, but still fast track them for advancement. Any one have a source on this? Boatman666 01:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I deliberately wrote this as "may receive advanced rank" to deal with differences between the service. I never found a reference for the --Gadget850 ( Ed) 03:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)Army- let us know if you find one.

The only source I have is that when one of my friends (who is a fellow Eagle) entered the service he was promoted 2 weeks out of boot camp while another Eagle was not, he inquired and his CO told him that Eagles get special consideration but that they are no longer able to give the defacto promotions due to a law suit. Boatman666 05:31, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

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