Talk:Scouting sex abuse cases

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Scouting sex abuse cases is part of the Scouting WikiProject, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Scouting and Guiding on the Wikipedia. This includes but is not limited to boy and girl organizations, WAGGGS and WOSM organizations as well as those not so affiliated, country and region-specific topics, and anything else related to Scouting. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.
	This article has been marked as needing immediate attention.

	Criminal justice Portal This article is part of WikiProject Crime, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide on true crime and criminology-related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as start-class on the assessment scale.
Low	This article is on a subject of low-importance for crime-related articles.
WikiProject Crime To-do: edit  Here are some tasks you can do to help with WikiProject Criminal Biography: Requests: Magdalena Solis, Justina Morley, Impersonating an officer, List of major crimes in the United States, Shanghai Kelly, Tucker Prison Farm, Kendall Francois, Purgatory Correctional Facility Expand: Credit card fraud, Theresa Knorr, Marybeth Tinning, Brenda Ann Spencer, Lords of Chaos (self-styled teen militia), Stubs: Calling card (crime), Federal crime, Leslie Irvin (serial killer), Violent crime, Crime Classification Manual, Anthony Sawoniuk Perfect crime Images: Charles Ray Hatcher, Thor Nis Christiansen, Richard Cottingham, Caleb Fairley

This article is part of a WikiProject to improve Wikipedia's articles related to pedophilia. For guidelines see Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.

Contents 1 World view 2 Requested move 2.1 Survey 2.2 Discussion 3 Review 4 First reply to review 5 Essay tag 6 Delete this POV hack job 7 Cases after the 1980s 8 Recent reports 8.1 Worldwide view 9 adding tags to article

[edit] World view

Given the assertion this is a problem in the whole movement, why is the article fixated on the BSA? Almost every single example discussed is from the BSA. This article is also only listed in BSA related articles. Why not Scout associations from other countries? Cases from other countries, and girl scout associations as well, should be discussed to give it proper focus, that this is a worldwide problem, not just a BSA one. In its current state, this article comes off like a tirade against the BSA and implies this is not a problem elsewhere. Rlevse 11:11, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved.

[edit] Review

A quick review. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 15:12, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

• General:
  • As noted, the title implies a world-wide scope, but the body is BSA specific except for a few minor statements.
  • With a title of Scouting sex abuse cases, I would have expected to see some specific cases; instead we have generalities.
  • There is no context. How does the BSA relate to other organizations, how does it relate to American society? If this is a world-wide article then it needs a world-wide context. For example, how does the BSA compare to schools or churches? Simply throwing links into See also does not work.
  • Scout, Scouting and Chief Scout Executive should be capitalized, except where quoted. See the Language of Scouting.

• Lead-in:
  • The lead-in does not summarize the article.

• Extent:
  • The section starts of with the B-P statement; with no assertion that he was ever involved in sex abuse, this appears to have no relevance.
  • The section is mainly quotes that aren't tied together to properly make the point. I would expect this section to show the extent of the issues.
  • The last statement is tautological.

• Methods of seduction:
  • The title reads like a how-to section.
  • These "methods" are quite incomplete- they simply do not cover all of the elements required for abuse to happen.

• Boys Scouts of America: history of concealment
  • Again, there is no context. For example, at the time the BSA was making "deals" with abusers, weren't most other organizations doing the same?

• Washington Times investigation
  • These articles appear to have used data from 1986 and earlier, and this article seems to based on that. What has happened in the last twenty years?

• Responses
  • Basically just a link to Youth Protection program (Boy Scouts of America)? That article is still basically a stub, so there is no meat to this section.

• References:
  • The references to The Washington Times do not cite the article title or author. One might think they were simply culled from the book Scout's Honor. --Gadget850 ( Ed)
  • Although noted, Scout's Honor oddly enough is not used as a reference.
  • References need to use the cite.php method and a template. See Tutorial: How to use footnotes for further information.

[edit] First reply to review

Many of the points raised are answered by the research material published by the Washington Times, which I have now added to the page as an external link. For completeness, the 5-part series of Washington Times articles on scouting and child sex abuse is online at [[1]] (warning: the articles total over 35,000 words, so this is a big file, 70 pages of text in fact)Testbed 09:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Testbed

[edit] Essay tag

I added the essay tag to this article, as I felt that having sections titled things such as "Methods of seduction", and "Boys Scouts of America: history of concealment" sounded more akin to an essay or a scaremongering Tonight with Trevor McDonald investigation, in written format. Oh, and in response to a point raised in the move request above:

• "if you're saying the problem doesn't exist or is minimal in other countries, no way. Just look at the Catholic Church problem, worldwide."

That is true, but it is also nothing to do with the Boy Scouts. --Dreaded Walrus ^{t c} 14:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Delete this POV hack job

The article is a very POV attack against BSA, describing ancient history from a period when the public in general didn't treat sexual abuse seriously in any venue. BSA developed and implemented it's Youth Protection Program in the late 1980's to prevent such problems AHEAD of most other youth organizations and is still considered the leader in such efforts. Obviously, the problem is harder to solve in an organization that takes kids camping, but BSA deserves more credit than this simple rehash of the Scouts Honor hack job. As the largest youth organization by a few orders of magnitude, there will still be a few cases (any case is one too many) but BSA is still the leader among all youth organizations in fighting this problem. GCW50 19:26, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

If you think something should be deleted, you should submit it at WP:AFD. If the consensus there is to keep it's kept, if to delete, it's delted. Bringing it up here won't get the issue resolved. Rlevse 01:35, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

See [2] for coverage of more recent cases (e.g. in 2005). Or all the post-1980s cases I quoted on the Talk:Scouting discussion page Testbed 17:46, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Testbed

No case involving children was posted there and you were instructed to post your comments here. The quality of your "research" is discussed below GCW50 15:13, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cases after the 1980s

If you search for abuse within scouting in English-language newspapers, you are immediately confronted with 100s of cases which postdate both "Scouts Honor" and the BSA scouts Youth Protection program. Despite some assertions by other editors the issue is not one of needing to prove that things continued after the YPp was set up; the problem is rather how best to summarise all the very many cases which make the point.

To this uninvolved outsider (to declare my non-interest I have never been a scout nor have any of my children been scouts/guides, but then neither have I been molested by a paedophile either) a balanced judgement seems clear enough: there were problems, steps were taken to improve matters, things have got better but problems continue, nonetheless some relatively uninformed and/or defensive folk want to present an unrealistic picture of scouting. However I assume that someone will eventually turn up who is motivated to render the mass of secondary source newspaper information which postdates "Scouts Honor" into an appropriately encyclopaedic form for this page (I notice that e.g. on Catholic church sex abuse pages there is what seems to me to be a slightly unhinged tendency to detail case after case, but this is not the place to debate that editing issue).

In the meantime, just to illustrate the scale of the problem (and provide some references for those who continue to run the slightly odd argument that only one case can be found since the 1980s) here are two summary examples from newspapers within the last week (these are not particularly good illustrations, just two very recent ones out of 100s):-

The Press Enterprise (Riverside, CA.)

June 19, 2007: A former Girl Scout camp counselor from Mountain Center has been convicted on federal charges of possessing child pornography and traveling to New Mexico to have sex with the 7-year-old son of longtime friends.

Bay City Times (Michigan)

June 13, 2007: Judge orders Boy Scout leader to face seven counts of child abuse

Testbed 06:53, 20 June 2007 (UTC)Testbed

Sadly, the problem will never totally go away, just as other crimes will never totally go away. You really need to address this as an international issue, this article and most of your edits focus on the BSA and it's hardly an America or boys only problem. It gives an unbalanced view of things. See WP:SOAP and Gadget850's response on the BSA talk page. Rlevse 09:58, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be a bit of a logic slip in that last comment from Rlevse:

(1) several (I think two) editors seemed to want to reedit the page to imply that no (or no more than one) problem existed within the BSA after their Youth Protection program had been started

(2) so I provided verification that many US cases postdate that program, no big deal I would have thought but some people wanted to argue this point

(3) as well as show that there are many 100s of cases within the English-speaking world (i.e. beyond the BSA) as a start towards an "international" view

(4) yet you now say I "really need to address this as an international issue"

(5) so I refer you back to my earliest comments on this subject, which, as I am from England not the US, refer to UK cases (which I seem to remember led to my being accused of knowing nothing about the US and hence my going to look at what US newspapers had published - this feels a little circular)

(6) no doubt people who speak languages other than English can and will provide examples from newspaper reports in still other countries (when I have time I'll have a go with the German newspapers, as I read German)

(7) however in any case many of the Washington Times interviews with experts relate to behaviour, rather than local/national questions within the BSA / United States, and so can stand for scouting internationally

(8) btw Gadget850 commented on material added to the BSA page by others, not me.

Hope that helps clarify what I posted earlier.

Testbed 10:40, 20 June 2007 (UTC)Testbed

the logic slip is yours on the international stuff, but yes the edits were someone else. Sorry on that one.Rlevse 11:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

As someone seems (for whatever reason) to persist in (mis)reading the evidence and claiming it is sensible to write that there has been only one case of sex abuse in scouting (internationally? in the BSA? I'm getting a little confused what exactly I am supposed to be presenting evidence for here) since the Youth Protection program, here is some further reading on the subject. I have just done a quick (international) newspaper search, for articles written in English which include "sex abuse" and scout/scouts/scouting. I went back over only the last 2 years, rather than go back to the 1980s (which really would be too much like work) and the results are available for all to read at [3] (warning: over 200 articles, so this is a long document, over 400 pages). Of course this collection of articles is a mechanical exercise, so there are *plenty* of false positives; however there are enough examples to prove the (one would have thought self-evident and already demonstrated) point. Testbed 22:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I read the first 40 of 265 article - none of them mentions recent cases. There were some perhaps - but if you want to prove that you should give individual references. --jergen 08:21, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Precisely. The Youth Protection Plan obviously can't prevent new legal cases involving ACTS committed before it's introduction, but has substantially made Scouting a much safer environment, much more so than things like youth sports leagues, etc. which haven't addressed the issue at all. Will there always be an occaisional incident of abuse? Unfortunately yes, but considering that BSA is the nations largest youth organization with 4 million members, it's record in combatting sexual abuse of children still stands well ahead of everyone else. It's safe to say that more youth and parents have learned about preventing Child Sexual Abuse thorugh BSA's program than through any other agency. This article purports to say that it has not. GCW50 15:03, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I've never said that there has only been one case since the introduction of YPP. It is just that this article was pretty much based on the Washington Post articles that are 20 years old. While I am quite sure there have been several cases since YPP, only one such case has been presented until now. YPP is a good program, but it is not and cannot ever be perfect. There are still going to be folks who ignore the rules or ignore the evidence- that is just plain human nature as repugnant as it may be. Unfortunately, this is my opinion, and it does not count as a reference. The article cannot stand with only one case presented since YPP to show this point on either side. I skimmed through page 133 and found one article on an abuse incident that involved BSA leader in the Scouting context post-1988, not counting an article on Stowell, who is already documented. There are a few non-USA incidents and several pre-1988 incidents. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 23:41, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

"I've never said that there has only been one case since the introduction of YPP." Just to be clear: the number of BSA cases question did not come from you. The page has been repeatedly edited to say inter alia All of the cases described occurred before the BSA's Youth Protection program was placed in effect but despite these efforts one case came to light subsequently - this rather odd wording was not your doing. Looking at a quick two-year slice of stories was simply a way to deal with this point (and if the first 133 pages of over 400 produces a new BSA case from the last two years, how many will emerge from looking at the whole file, and then, by extension, by going back twenty years?) However people might also want to use the material to improve the "international" element. Testbed 06:08, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I looked at your last fifty cases. Only one involved an act in BSA after the YPP and that was from the late 1980's while it was being introduced. A simple crawl is not research worthy of footnoting in Wikipedia. GCW50 15:11, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent reports

Stayed away from editing this page for some months (the propaganda instincts of some scout-enthusiastic editors seems rather unscholarly) in the hope that other editors would come in and improve the page. Hasn't yet happened, despite all the attention which other pages on sex abuse receive. Anyway, thought it might help if I provided some recent citations for the benefit of others:

Eureka Times Standard (California), May 7, 2008: Scout leader gets five years for molestation - An assistant Boy Scout leader charged with molesting two minors was sentenced Tuesday to five years and eight months in prison for one count of possession of chid pornography and two counts of child molestation, the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office said. Testbed (talk) 16:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The Associated Press State & Local Wire, April 30, 2008: A longtime Boy Scout volunteer was arrested Wednesday on charges he tried to sexually abuse a boy while working on a project. Irvin Austin Barron, 78, of Altoona, was charged with assault with intent to commit sexual abuse. Officials with the Polk County sheriff's office said the incidents occurred on more than one occasion while Barron and the 15-year-old boy were alone...Barron was chairman of the troop committee in Altoona, said Ely Brewer, scout executive of the Mid-Iowa Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which oversees the organization in central Iowa. Testbed (talk) 16:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Lewiston Morning Tribune (Idaho), April 22, 2008: In Idaho Falls, a new cadre of Scouting leaders has similarly reversed the unconscionable negligence of predecessors toward a Mormon missionary and camp counselor who molested no fewer than 24 boys. Although former council Director Brad Allen was told of Bradley Stowell's abuse of children in 1995, he covered for Stowell for two more years while telling other Scout leaders there was "no basis to the allegations." Meanwhile, the basis grew. At least four more boys had been abused by Stowell by the time he was arrested in 1997, and later sent to prison.

Wisconsin State Journal, April 12, 2008: A former Boy Scout leader and soccer coach pleaded guilty Friday to having repeated encounters with teenage boys that involved trading money, drugs or alcohol for sex...Under a plea agreement approved by Dane County Circuit Judge Stuart Schwartz, Francis pleaded guilty to four counts of repeated sexual assault of a child...Assistant District Attorney Robert Kaiser and Francis' attorney, Jordan Loeb, did not agree to any sentencing limits. Francis faces up to 40 years of combined prison and extended supervision on each count. Francis was charged in October with paying the boys for sex after the allegations surfaced during an investigation of a serious traffic crash involving Francis' son. Boys who were interviewed by Dane County sheriff's investigators said they had been involved in sexual activity with Francis as early as 2003. The last of the encounters, according to a criminal complaint, occurred on Oct. 13, only about 10 days before Francis was charged in the case.

Buffalo News (New York), April 4, 2008: Norman F. Grimm Jr., a former South Buffalo Boy Scout leader and church custodian, today was sentenced to 15 years in prison for molesting three young boys in his Ryan Street home...David G. Jay, Grimm's attorney, told the judge Grimm "stepped up to the plate and admitted his responsibility with his combined guilty pleas of last summer. The mothers of all three boys, now ages 6, 8 and 9, were in the courtroom.

Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City), March 17, 2008: Robert Michael Tubbs used two of the most trusted titles in the community to prey on teenage boys. As a Scoutmaster, he sodomized four brothers ages 12 to 17 for more than a year...Tubbs became acquainted with his victims -- four brothers ages 12 to 17 -- through the Order of the Arrow, the Boy Scouts of America brotherhood of select young men who best exemplify the Scout oath and law, which includes terms like trustworthy, loyal and kind. Tubbs was an area leader...In separate incidents, he groped and sodomized the boys from June 1992 to August 1993. At age 17, as one of the victims was preparing for an LDS mission, the boy told his bishop about the abuse. The church leader called the police and Tubbs was arrested. Testbed (talk) 16:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York), January 19, 2008: Word that a Troop 43 assistant Scout leader had been charged with four felony sex offenses left Cayuga County Boy Scout Council Executive Don Grillo with a sense of betrayal.

UPI, November 21, 2007: A 33-year Boy Scouts of America veteran faces charges in Illinois following the emergence of journal entries allegedly describing relations with young boys. Charles Bickerstaff, 56, is the subject of a lawsuit filed on behalf of a 16-year-old boy detailing an alleged 10-month sexual relationship with Bickerstaff, the Rockford (Ill) Register-Star reported Wednesday. Bickerstaff, imprisoned since April on a $3.5 million bail in the Lee County, Ill., jail, also faces multiple counts of child molestation with the 16-year-old boy.

The Seattle Times, August 23, 2007, "Brothers force Scouts to reveal scope of abuse": ...Finally, after decades of silence, the Stewart brothers grew convinced they weren't alone. In 2003, they sued the Boy Scouts and their former Scoutmaster and won an out-of-court settlement. Four years later, the case has become a landmark in the 97-year history of the Boy Scouts, and the brothers spokesmen for a much larger issue. For the first time, the Boy Scouts of America has been forced to turn over, to the Stewarts' attorneys, its entire archive on sexually abusive Scout leaders. The previously private records show the Boy Scouts have ejected at least 5,100 adult leaders nationwide for sexual abuse allegations since 1946. And the files reveal that despite efforts to keep potential abusers from joining, the problems persist: In the past 15 years alone, the organization has kicked out leaders for such allegations at a rate of once every other day...And there have been complaints about thousands of other Scout leaders in the U.S. In fact, since its founding in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America has kept files on volunteers it considers "unfit," including sexual abusers, criminals and even homosexuals. The organization has periodically purged the files, according to depositions in other cases. As early as 1935, the organization had files on about 1,000 "degenerates." The Stewarts' attorneys counted 732 files from 1946 to 1971...The secrecy of the files has also meant that the Boy Scouts have kept them from their own sex-abuse advisers, a group of respected experts first convened in the late 1980s to help craft a youth-protection program. During the past 15 years, the group repeatedly suggested that the Boy Scouts study the files to see whether their prevention measures were working, said one adviser, David Finkelhor, who heads the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. But the Scouts' lawyers rebuffed the recommendation, Finkelhor said. Because of that resistance, it's impossible to know whether the organization has overcome the "reputation or mythology" that has developed about sexual abuse in Scouting, Finkelhor said...According to the files opened by the Stewarts' lawyers, the Boy Scouts ejected a leader, on average, once every three days between 1971 and 1990. From 1991 to 2005, the total was about 2,500 adult volunteers, a rate of about 15 a month, or one every other day.

And the full text of another Seattle Times article is available here: [4]. It finishes with the words: "They have thrown just an unbelievable amount of money and effort at preventing us from getting these records and telling the world about them," he said of the Boy Scouts.

Testbed (talk) 15:45, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Where is the research? The reports show that incidents have happened, but there has been no research since the 1991 Washington Times investigation based on records from 1971 to 1986. I really would like to see a new report that would document the effectiveness of the Youth Protection Program after 20 years. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Precisely. A similar simple web crawl for articles on "automobile accidents" could lead to the conclusion that all automobile drivers are guilty of causing fatal accidents. A web crawl is not research unless you place it in context against the base number of persons engaged in the activity. There are close to a million adults currently involved in Scouting in the USA and four million Youth and over 100 million historically, Because of the YPP, the rate of the problem in Scouting is probably much lower than most youth sports leagues, public schools or even some churches. GCW50 (talk) 02:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Worldwide view

As regards the long-standing tag that the article is too US-orientated, here are a couple of recent references from other countries:

The Daily Telegraph (Australia), September 14, 2007: Senior scout officials ignored at least three warnings that a Sydney scout master was a serial paedophile, allowing him to abuse a young boy hundreds of times. In an extraordinary failure of their child protection duties, the scout leaders chose not to act on information that one of their own was a predator. Yesterday, former scout Xavier McCrae was awarded more than $1.2 million compensation after suffering years of sexual abuse at the hands of scout master Robert Potter. In 1988 and 1994 two families made separate complaints to the scouts about Potter, a senior leader of the Narwee Venturers. A third warning came in 1996 when police passed on an anonymous call about Potter from the dob-in line during the Wood Royal Commission's investigation into paedophiles. Yesterday, after his client was awarded the compensation, Mr McCrae's solicitor Greg Walsh said the scouts had failed to act on the complaints about Potter.

South Wales Echo, April 23, 2008: Pensioner and former scout master Glyndwr Jones committed acts of gross indecency and indecent assaults on young boys and girls in a catalogue of abuse dating back more than 20 years. He committed 26 acts on nine youngsters, some as young as eight Testbed (talk) 16:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what's your point here. As far as I can see, only some of the reports above meet the definition "situations where youth involved in scouting programs have been sexually abused by someone who is also involved in the scouting program" - in many cases "scoutmaster" seems to be a mere descriptor.

Could you please formulate your propositions on the article in a few sentences instead of posting a dozen possible copyright violations? --jergen (talk) 12:09, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The article is tagged as needing more worldwide examples. I will it up to others to assess how best to proceed (and maybe it would be a good idea to wait on some new editors who have not yet contributed to this discussion, as the positions of the established names on this page are probably familiar by now). Incidentally, in all the cases I quote from, the (full) reports make it exactly clear what was going on, so I leave it to you to research further if that's important to you. I am not minded to try editing the page further but am encouraging others to get involved.

As to any possible copyright infringement, I am relying on UK case law, with which I am familiar. There may be considerations in other jurisdictions with which I know nothing about. Testbed (talk) 19:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the {{globalize/USA}} tag means it needs more examples from other countries - rather, it means that the article itself is US-centric. An example would be in the intro itself, where "The Boy Scouts of America, the nations largest youth organization" could be better rephrased as "The Boy Scouts of America, the largest youth organization in the United States". Likewise, every section from then on focusses entirely on the US. "History of sexual abuse in scouting" may as well be "History of sexual abuse in scouting in the United States", and so on. I realise that a year ago there was a proposed move to Sexual abuse of children in the Boy Scouts of America and nothing came of it, but I seriously feel that something like Scouting sex abuse cases in the United States would relay exactly what the article currently covers, and what it has covered for the last year+, and if ever the article can be expanded to not be so US-centric, then it could be moved back to the current title. Dreaded Walrus ^{t c} 20:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The current article is about child sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America. There is no adult-adult abuse, nothing about the Girl Scouts of the USA or any other Scouting group. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry if my point was unclear. My point was not that the other proposed title was inappropriate, and certainly not that I thought the current article covers adult-adult abuse, or abuse of Girl Scouts. My point was that the current article focusses exclusively on the US, whereas the article's title does not reflect this. The only reasons I suggested Scouting sex abuse cases in the United States over Sexual abuse of children in the Boy Scouts of America were because A, the previous move request to the latter title resulted in no consensus, and B, it is simply an "in the United States" version of the current title. I have no real preference over any title (within reason) that notes that this article deals solely with the US. (Sorry for not responding to this sooner - I missed it on my watchlist) Dreaded Walrus ^{t c} 05:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, having just read your review from last year, my point is summarised quite excellently by your very first point there: "As noted, the title implies a world-wide scope, but the body is BSA specific except for a few minor statements". My point is, basically, the exact same thing you've mentioned there. I do ramble on a bit, I admit. My proposed solution to this issue which still hasn't resolved itself in this past year would be to either expand the article to not focus singularly on the US, or to rename the article to reflect its focus. As you can probably tell, I'm not an experienced contributor in this area, so I was mainly just having my say as Testbed asked for uninvolved editors. My only ever edits to this article have been to 1 unsubst the {{globalize}} tag and add {{essay-entry}} to it (my reasoning was in the edit summary), and 2 fix two external links that were wikified as internal links. Dreaded Walrus ^{t c} 05:32, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] adding tags to article

I have added several tags to the article as per WP:OR "Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought." These comments should be sourced or deleted. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)