Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Project editing conventions

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)

I like this idea.Rlevse 23:03, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

[edit] OA Lodges, Lists, and Notability

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

[edit] BSA Scout camp categories

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)

• I like the first. Go for it. --evrik 02:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
• I like the "national camps" one. Go ahead.Rlevse 09:52, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Done, at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 August 17 Chris 01:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

• • I just added the CFR. --evrik 14:35, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BSA Scout camps

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)

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)

• 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)

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)

• 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)

• • • 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)

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)

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)

• 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)

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)

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)

• 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)

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)

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)

• 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)

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)

• • If there is no objection ... I will do it. --evrik 13:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

• 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)
• I second the objection as per Rlevse. Chris 02:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • 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)
    • 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)

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)

• 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)

[edit] New Propsal

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)

• 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)

[edit] Stub Camp Articles

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)

• 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)
  • 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)

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)

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:

• organizations that had early influences on Scouting's beginning, including but not limited to: American Heritage Girls, Boys' Brigade, Campfire USA, Kibbo Kift, Royal Rangers, Sons of Daniel Boone, Woodcraft Indians, The Woodcraft Folk(?), and YMCA.

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

• those who had an major impact on the formation of Scouting (eg Boys' Brigade Sons of Daniel Boone, Woodcraft Indians and YMCA),
• those who developed out of the movement using major parts of its method (like Kibbo Kift and The Woodcraft Folk),
• and those who started as parallel organizations using major parts of its method (like Royal Rangers, Campfire USA, American Heritage Girls or SpiralScouts International)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Yes - that is the sort of thing I had in mind. Sorry - I didn't spot it. Jll 10:47, 9 September 2006 (UTC)