Talk:The Scout Association/Archive 2

Name

Which is more correct? The Scout Association of the United Kingdom or The Scout Association in the United Kingdom? --Jagz 12:24, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the official name is just The Scout Association, so either of or in can be used. --Bduke 22:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

--CKUK (talk) 17:54, 5 May 2008 (UTC)I think we are just called The Scout Association. If it is listed alongside other NSOs it is usuall The Scout Association (UK).

B-P image

The current B-P image is up for deletion. The copyright for Image:Baden-Powell USZ62-96893 (retouched and cropped).png has been determined and is no being used in the B-P article. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 22:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Good article nomination successful

Congratulations, this article meets all of the GA criteria. Particularly impressive are the breadth of coverage of the topic, written expression, and referencing. I wish you all the best with your editing... -- Johnfos 11:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks :) --Mas 18 dl 11:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations to Mas 18 dl. Well done indeed. --Bduke 13:10, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Scotland

An anon editor at Scouting in Ayrshire has indicated that in April 2008, eight new Scout Regions will replace 31 Scout Areas in Scotland. This will mean that 30 articles need to be merged into 8 (we had one - Orkneys - deleted). This will be a complex job. Can we build a team to think about it in advance? Any editors from Scotland? --Bduke (talk) 22:44, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Royal Charter

Since it was a royal charter granted by the kind, why is the UK parliament mentioned as the awarding authority? MikeGH (talk) 23:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Other articles

These articles should be summarized here:

• Scoutlink (UK)
• Progressive Award Scheme (UK Scouting)

--— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:39, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Done... slow, but steady :) -- Horus Kol Talk 13:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

County/Area articles

I am concerned about several issues with the articles on UK Scout Counties and Areas. First, there is the issue of sourcing. Only a few have any recognition of notability from outside sources, although these should be available. The 2007 Centenary gave rise to a lot of press reports, museum displays of Scouting history and so on. I have just added something of this kind to Scouting in Hampshire. However some smaller counties or areas are more difficult to source. I have just worked on Scouting in Perth and Kinross, which prior to my efforts had no references whatsoever and was so tagged. I have still been unable to obtain any non-scouting sources. The change in Scotland, mentioned above, to 8 regions rather than 31 areas, may possibly improve the situation as we will have to merge 31 articles into eight. Incidentally that reorganisation is confirmed here, but the details are not given.

Second, there is the issue that many of these articles have long lists of Scout Groups. These are not really acceptable. Wikipedia is not a directory. The lists are unmaintainable. Editors, often IP editors, drop in and add or remove a Group. They are probably right working from local knowledge, but this is unsourced and original research. It could however be vandalism, with some clown deleting the name of their rival Group down the road for fun. In the Scouting in Perth and Kinross article I removed seven Groups and added two to make the list agree with the latest (2008) reference from the Area web site. There will always be pressure for this. It exists in other countries. The Singapore Scout Association is one of the worst, but other countries have avoided it. I have a proposal. The ScoutWiki is the place for this sort of thing. Articles on individual Groups are welcome, so the lists on "Scouting in XXX" articles, could become a set of links to Group articles. The licensing on ScoutWiki is the same as Wikipedia. I am slowly copying over the County/Area articles (leaving the Scotland Areas until the reorganisation is complete) to ScoutWiki. I propose that when this is completed, we remove the Group lists from the Wikipedia articles. If there is consensus here to do that I will post something on the talk page of every County or Area article.

Third, most of these articles are lacking in real encyclopedic information. We need stuff on the history of scouting in the area, the ways it was organised in the past, famous scouting personalities, prominent events, and so on.

Forth, there are still some articles missing. There are 8 counties in England with no articles. Scouting in West Mercia was speedy deleted on 18 Feb, 2008 (created 1.39; tagged 1.41; deleted 2.04). It contained very little. Scouting in Greater Manchester East was deleted on 18 February 2007, with the comment that it contained no content except external links. That comment was correct. We saved a few articles at that time, but not that one. To recreate these we will have to be careful and make sure that they are properly sourced. I will try to have a go with those two. Wales and Northern Ireland are complete. Scotland is just missing Orkney, which is very small, and the small article was speedy deleted last February. I have already saved the old version and put it on ScoutWiki. However, Orkney will be merged in with a new region, so we should not try to create the WP article on it.

Please comment on these issues, particularly on removing the long lists of Groups. --Bduke (talk) 23:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I was just going through the Scouting in the UK category today and doing some cleanup (WP:SCOUT has proposals to cleanup the names of SA related articles). At the risk of being tendentious, I will point out WP:SCOUTMOS#Non-national articles. For lists and links of units, we have a solution listed at WP:SCOUTMOS#Unit links. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:48, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

For those of us unfamiliar with the organization of The Scout Association, I found this chart today: [1] Counties (England and Northern Ireland) and Areas (Scotland and Wales) are equivalent to councils in the BSA. While the BSA does have districts, we do not have groups. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 02:00, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that creating Category:The Scout Association as a subcat of Category:Scouting in the United Kingdom is appropriate and will help manage SA related articles. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 03:44, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

That is a good idea, but I would also create Category:Girlguiding UK, which would leave very little for the parent category - B-P Scuts really. I would also empty the category of campsites as they are SA camps and put them in Category:The Scout Association and then delete the campsites one. --Bduke (talk) 04:51, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

OK- recatted a bunch. There are some folks left in the parent cat that I could not immediately ID.

Great work. I will look at the odd ones left, but probably not today as I will be out at a Melbourne Wikimedia meetup. --Bduke (talk) 22:24, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Renaming the County/Area articles

The "Scouting in xxx" titles are a mess. I think this was copied from the BSA structure, where we have "Scouting in <state>" articles, but they cover Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts and any other groups. What you have here is say, Scouting in Aberdeen that is really about the Aberdeen Scout County of The Scout Association. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:04, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I see it differently. I see it as "Scouting in XXX", as opposed to "Guiding in XXX". If there is anything to say about, for example, B-P Scouts in Aberdeen, it could go in Scouting in Aberdeen. However, that means we should not have moved those articles under the SA category!! Perhaps we should rename them to XXX Scout Association County, or "XXX County (The Scout Association)" or "XXX Area (The Scout Association)" for Wales and NI. Scouting in Aberdeen will be a redirect soon to "YYY Region (The Scout Association)" or "YYY Scout Association Region" or "YYY Scouts Scotland Region" or "Scouting in YYY", with the new 8 regions replacing 31 areas in Scotland. Which should we chose do you think? --Bduke (talk) 22:24, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The project decided early on that "Scouting" includes Scouting, Guiding and any variant, and that is how the BSA "Scouting in xxx" articles treat it (it is clearer with Girl Scouts). I will let you decide- are those articles only about the Scout Association or should they be expanded to cover all Scouting and Guiding in that geopolitical area? --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 00:51, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that the areas/counties are not always geopolitical areas and they are often quite different from the boundaries that the Guides use. Another problem is that there are very few UK wikipedians interested in these articles as a whole. I have been thinking for sometime of ways to get more interest, including posting on the usenet group uk.rec.scouting. This will prompt me to do just that but not until tomorrow. It is beginning to look as if these should be just about the individual Scout Counties/Areas/Regions - the next level below national - but we need a wider debate. There is the same problem in Australia. Scouting in Victoria is not about Guides. That however, is more doable as we have several people here. --Bduke (talk) 01:16, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal that articles currently called Scouting in <British County> should be renamed as X County (The Scout Association), or very similar wording to reflect their official name. In general, I think that regional information about the Scout Association and Girlguidng UK should be organised into articles reflecting these organisations' regional struture. Additionally, other Scouting/Scout-like organisations in the UK should follow this principle as well. So those theoretical B-P Scouts in Aberdeen mentioned earlier should put their information in an article called something like Aberdeen and a Few Other Places Region (B-P Scouts).

Scouting in <US State> articles is a solution that has worked, if imperfectly, for the USA. It is not the only solution that would have worked, nor are we are obliged to make this solution fit a different situation if it is not a good fit. There are two reasons why I think it is not a good fit.

1) County boundaries in Britain are not like State boundaries in the USA. To expand on Bduke's comment above, in the UK, political county boundaries change every 10-20 years. People in Britain are used to the idea that sporting, church, police, fire brigade, ceremonial and politial counties do not match up. There are plenty of people who would like boundaries changed to whatever their favourite scheme might be and would be delighted to explain to you how much better it was/is/will be that way. There are some people who are adamant that P-town is in Q-shire, come what may. Trying to organise information about places depending on what political county it happens or happened in will get impractically difficult to keep up with.

2) I don't think it's a good idea that Scouting in <british county> should include the information about Girl Guiding. In the UK, Girl Guiding isn't usually considered to be including in the the term Scouting, in everyday usage. So people looking for information about Guides in, say, Hertfordshire, wouldn't think to look in an article called Scouting in Hertfordshire and might assume any redirect to that article was a mistake or not going contain the information they are looking for. The situation is not the same in the USA with the Girl Scouts. Often Girl Scouting is refered to as "Scouting".

If it is deemed absolutely necessary to have pages called Scouting in <british county>, then I think they should be disambig pages pointing towards information about each organisations' appropriate local page(s), rather like a lot of Scouting in <country> pages.

As for Australia, and anywhere else, I think that each country needs to find its best solution. Kingbird (talk) 07:00, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks like the Scouting in articles should be about the Scout Association only, and be renamed to match the proper county/area naming scheme. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 10:47, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

That is looking like the consensus. I agree. The question then is what name do we select? "XXX Scout Association County" or "XXX County (The Scout Association)" or are there other alternatives. In Wales and NI we would need to replace "County" by "Area". Once we get the new Scottish Regions known, we would have "Region" in place of "County". How do we decide? The latter, "XXX County (The Scout Association)", fits in with other usage, but I think it is more clumsy. We would need a bot to alter the redirects. --Bduke (talk) 10:58, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd call the articles "xxxx Scout County" , which from my experience would be the most common name for them.--Mas 18 dl (talk) 11:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

 But what if the B-P Scouts has Scout Counties too with different boundaries so their information could not be added to the Scout County articles about the SA, and they needed articles. I think "The Scout Association" has to be there even if it does read clumsy. --Bduke (talk) 11:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I looked at the B-P Scouts and the Girlguiding UK websites and cannot get any sense of their organization at this level. I have no preference at this point— either "xxx Scout County" or "xxx Scout County (The Scout Association)." --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I think, on balance, that having articles with "(The Scout Association)" would be the better way to go. Kingbird (talk) 20:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Works for me. Since all of these articles use {{Scouts UK Counties}}, they are all linked together and it makes checking backlinks and double redirects painful. I recommend that we disable {{Scouts UK Counties}} temporarily by commenting out the code to make that easier. I'm tied up this evening in a CPR class, but let me know when we want to kick this off. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:19, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Ed, re your question on this on my talk page, I support this. I'm just very busy and will not be on WP after an hour for most of the rest of the day (9.00 a.m. here). --Bduke (talk) 22:06, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Making these sites "Scout Association" only is simply advertising through Wikipedia, which is strictly banned, and I will relentlessly edit any such attempts to hijack Wikipedia. All and any Scout Groups in the County should be allowed equal status. If you want a list of just Scout Association Groups use the one Scoutbase. Too many of the people running this project are running to agendas outside of Wikipedia, and this needs to be dealt with. 87.82.19.95 (talk) 20:03, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to convey here. --— Gadget850 (Ed)talk 20:34, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

To the anon editor above. The County articles are just about an organisational level of the Scout Association. The term County does not refer to any general political or administrative use of the term County. Note also that the articles in Wales and Scotland are about Scout Association Areas. It is well established on wikipedia that Scouting includes Guiding. Guiding is organised differently and there is nothing about Guiding in these. Similarly there is nothing in these County articles about BP Scout Groups etc. That is in the article on that association. The titles should include the words "The Scout Association". They are not advertising and neither is The Scout Association article. However, the lists of Groups are advertising and they should be removed. Wikipdia is not for listing stuff and anyway, the lists are unreferenced and unmaintainable. Stuff gets added and removed, but this is largely original research which is not allowed. They are of course probably correct from someone who knows the local scene but they are OR and unsourced. The place for these lists of Groups is Scoutwiki and I have proposed moving them there before deleting the details of groups here. I have done some, but I am busy. Also the Scottish articles need to reflect the new organisation into regions - a much smaller number of regions than there were Areas - and that is higher priority. --Bduke (talk) 00:20, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

 Done England and Wales. Scotland is being reworked and Northern Ireland is under discussion. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:10, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Well done, Ed, it is a tedious job. "Scotland is being reworked" refers to the need to merge the current articles on areas into new articles on the new larger regions. One has been done. Help is needed to finish that job. "Northern Ireland is under discussion" refers to a suggestion that the Northern Ireland articles should be merged into a single article on the Scout Association in Northern Ireland. See a discussion here. I will try to add something to all their talk pages and direct discussion here. See section below. --Bduke (talk) 22:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

New Scotland Regions

I have started the process of writing artciles on the new regions in Scotland. The first is South West Scotland Region (The Scout Association) which was previously the three previous Scout Areas of Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire and Galloway. I have taken this opportunity to rename the articles on the region in a more Scout Association perspective (see discussion above). I have also taken the opportunity to remove the long list of Scout Groups and Explorer units. This needs more justification. Such lists are not encyclopedic or appropriate for wikipedia. They are self-promotion and often original research. Editors, often IP editors, add or remove entries with no explanation. They may of course be correct, but if they are it is original research and if they are wrong it is vandalism. Sources often differ. Scoutbase can say one thing and an article on the District can say another. They really have to go across the board. However, I am copying the articles with the list of Groups to Scoutwiki. They encourage articles on single Groups so these lists can link to Group articles. I propose that htis be done for all the UK County/Area articles.

OK. the process I have used and propose is as follows:-

1. Merge together the areas articles that cover the new region in a sandbox, removing Group information and adding as much other sourced information as you can find.
2. Copy the articles to Scoutwiki or ask me to do so. An account is needed.
3. Copy the sandbox to create the new article on the region.
4. Create the talk page with the appropriate Project templates that were one the Area articles.
5. Make the area articles redirects.
6. Make the talk pages of the area articles redirects after moving any content that should be of interest on the talk page of the neew region article.
7. Fix redirects, particularly double redirects.
8. Edit Template:Scouts UK Counties to add the new region and remove the old areas.

I hope I covered everything. --Bduke (talk) 04:14, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Scout Association in Northern Ireland

The articles on SA areas in NI have been tagged with notability issues and a merge to a single article has been proposed. See a discussion here. Northern Ireland is unique in the UK as the Scout Association is not the dominant association as there are some Groups belonging to Scouting Ireland. I support this proposal for a single article on The Scout Association in Northern Ireland with the 7 current articles on SA Areas made into redirects. At the same time we can make this article better and remove the non-encyclopedic lists of Groups (see comments above). --Bduke (talk) 22:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I have now added merge tags to all these articles after remembering that the proposed target does exist (it was named slightly differently and I have renamed it). The discussion is at Talk:The Scout Association in Northern Ireland. --Bduke (talk) 02:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Review: Pass

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Culture and Society" articles. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have made several minor corrections throughout the article. Altogether the article is well-written and is still in great shape after its passing in 2006. Continue to improve the article making sure all new information is properly sourced and neutral. The two images (Image:The Scout Association.svg and Image:Royal Navy Recognised Sea Scout Ensign.png) need fair use rationales specifically specifying this article for use. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article history to reflect this review. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 22:09, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Logo

Could someone, out of the goodness of their heart, tell me the name of the French symbol (the spearhead) used by the Beavers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.52.67 (talk) 00:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Gimmie 5 merge

I think we should revisit this merge proposal. I have added the merge tags. The article has no references and has no substantive edits for over a year. It does appear to be a specifically Scout Association activity as was "Bob a Job". Please indicate you views below. --Bduke (Discussion) 21:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I have moved this down from the old merge discussion above on this since Ed started a new section. The discussion above is relevant however and I addressed one of the points raised there. --Bduke (Discussion) 23:04, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

• Strongly support merge. --Bduke (Discussion) 21:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
• support --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
• support Chris (クリス • フィッチ) (talk) 13:59, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I have done the merge. --Bduke (Discussion) 07:19, 26 October 2008 (UTC)