Talk:James E. West (Scouting)

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Contents

[edit] James E. West (politician)

Please argue for change of name for the James E. West article on the disgraced politician. The guy moved it back to the earlier name, and now all James E. West searches disambig to the disgraced politician. Chris 06:32, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Additions/fixes

Fixed the info on who served before West, based on info on the recent West bio which is already on the Chief Scout Executive page. Also added some of the other books West wrote/edited. I think that's all of them, except for the Jamboree book he did. Hopefully others can add data to this list. --Emb021 14:06, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grave

Is his grave in Valhalla, New York really untended?

http://www.wpcbsa.org/Contact

Someone should contact the local council to find out for sure. --evrik 22:02, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I just got James E. West and the History of the Boy Scouts of America in the mail today. The first sentence is "His grave in Vahalla, New York is untended." --Gadget850 ( Ed) 22:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Does it say where he is buried?--evrik
  • I just called the cemetery. The lot is owned by Marion West Crandall, Section 187, Lot 14037, (Computer Number 15669). I also just spoke with a local Scouter who said that he would go check it out when he got the chance. --evrik 14:29, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Good. I meant to just work on this article for a few days, but there is stuff about Seton, Beard, Boyce and others that I just can't ignore. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 15:32, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

  • I just posted a picture. The grave is not as untended as the article made it. Will post more later. evrik 20:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Guess it depends on your concept of untended. The Rowan book makes it appear that West is no longer appreciated for his work in the BSA. The book makes me appreciate the man and his deeds. West was autocratic, demanding, self-aggrandizing, tireless, dedicated, patriotic and focused. Just the kind of person to get the BSA through the first third of the BSA history. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 00:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Marion West Crandall must be his wife. James West died in 1948 and his wife Marion remarried to Perry Crandall in 1951. She died in 1959 and is buried beside West. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 15:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plagiarized content removed

Someone removed some plagiarized content, someone else put it back, I've removed it again. It was taken from http://www.threefirescouncil.org/History/founders.htm Don't put it back. If the information is important, someone should rewrite it in their own words and site the page as a source. --Xyzzyplugh 06:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't be so high and mighty. Yours is not the only source for this info. It appears almost word for word in other sources. Why doesn't your site cite its sources? I'm sure your council didn't do all this research on its own. Rlevse 12:14, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't get to heated up over the removed material- its not that good, it was going to be replaced and I have better sources. It does appear that it was copied from that site (I remember when the homework sentence was still in this article), and the site does have a copyright on the footer. It probably comes from some BSA handbook or some such. I need to get back and finish this- work has been consuming a lot of my time lately. And then there are all these FACs that folks want me to look at :-)

Brandt was mentioned in the edit summary. I know of the issue in question [1]. Is his plagarism tool available or is there a list of articles that need to be checked? --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to give one example from the text in question:

"West virtually deleted Boyce's name from BSA records."

It just isn't true. If it had said Seton, then yes. West actually emphasized Boyce as the founder of the BSA, apparently to stop the squabbling between Seton and Beard. Boyce received a Silver Beaver after the LSA merger- that would not have happened if West was against it. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

"It probably comes from some BSA handbook or some such." Precisely my point, which means they plagarized it from somewhere and are in copyvio themselves as they don't cite their sources and have a copyright tag at the bottom of the page.Rlevse 13:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, that's their bad. We don't need it, so let it go. We have enough on our plate. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I know nothing about this topic. But, this wikipedia article, along with 100+ others, was the subject of a widely published news story about wikipedia articles containing plagiarism. So we need to make sure it no longer does. Others have gone through and removed the copyvio text from all the articles in question, this is the only one I know of where the text has been put back. --Xyzzyplugh 13:57, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I had not seen an actual list of articles in question- where is this article listed? --Gadget850 ( Ed) 14:21, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

There's User:W.marsh/list, a list wikipedia editors were/are using to fix the problems. There's also a webpage by the wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt, which is where the list originally comes from: wikipedia-watch.org/psamples.html --Xyzzyplugh 14:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks- I don't see anything else we are involved in. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 15:20, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but the pot shouldn't be calling the kettle black.

Rlevse 16:15, 5 November 2006 (UTC)