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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 01:09, 3 April 2007.

Boy Scouting (Boy Scouts of America)

[edit]

I was REALLY blown away by the quality of this article. I believe it easily qualifies for featured article status. I know there are some out there who be negative-nellies about virtually anything, but I defy even the most resolute doubter to find fault with this piece. IT IS REALLY REALLY GOOD. - Sue Rangell 02:38, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • 'Weak Support'Strong SupportNeutral I'm an Eagle Scout and thus want to support this article. But there are few MINOR things I'd like to see improved. 1) The intro needs to be expanded. 2) More citations in the Emblem section. 3) I didn't like the section with the law/motto/etc. They are absolutely necessary, but I didn't like how they were presented. They weren't aesthetically pleasing/introduced.Balloonman 04:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
addressed 1 and 2, will work on 3 later.Rlevse 12:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
done with 3, good input.Rlevse 22:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
With the changes that you made based upon the comments on my talk page, I am changing my vote to strong support.Balloonman 04:03, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Changing vote to neutral per concerns about sources only coming from BSA... I don't believe that it is necassary to include the controversy of gay/athiest, but the sources should be...Balloonman 02:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Trying to clarify again my issue with the sources which might help out here. The page uses scouting sources, both BSA and USSSP. This is the problem. You are relying on scouting organizations to represent scouting fairly and impartially. But their publications are going to have an interest in representing scouting in a positive light. That is why the page needs sources not published by organizations with a vested interest in scouting itself. Scholars who study scouting are more distanced from it and tend towards dispassionate investigations of scouting. Scouting literature, obviously, wants to present scouting in the best light. It is not that the page cannot use scouting literature at all. It must just be used very carefully and for specific sorts of information (such as what one must do to gain a badge) but other kinds of claims, such as whether or not scouting actually promotes the ideals it claims to in its literature requires sources indepedendent of the scouting world. Awadewit 20:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Needs more citations from printed sources--History Fan 00:21, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see, don't like anyone to disagree, so just say their opinion is not valid. Good articles should draw on many source including printed. I guess not everyone can contribute to wiki then.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Historyfan07 (talk • contribs)
    • Stop being so sensitive. You made an objection based on something not required; sources are required but being in hardcopy is not required. The article has several different sources, AT LEAST THREE (footnotes 4, 13, and 14), ARE HARDCOPY REFS, so your objection is even less valid. Several other footnotes, at least 3, 11, 12, and 16; are available in both web and hardcopy versions and the refs in total come from at least 10 different entities.Sumoeagle179 15:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support. The changes made by Rlevse per Balloonman's suggestions, esp the boxes on the side, are really nice. Very nice article.Sumoeagle179 02:03, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support. though note I was a minor contributor. Gadget850's recent additions were excellent.Rlevse 15:58, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments Thanks Randy- I really like the boxes for the Oath and Law- obviously we need to replicate that in the other articles. Life has been busy, but I found some time to get back to this. One big issue is the article name: Per the Language of Scouting, it probably should be Boy Scouting, not Boy Scouts. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support. It just occurred to me that I never officially said that I support the page. (Even though it's obvious because I nominated it) So it's missing my contribution of bold letters. The recent upgrades are great, taking an already great page and making it REALLY super. I am proud to promote, nominate, and strongly support this page. I don't even want to guess at how many hours of work went into it, I hope all the contributers get barnstars. Sue Rangell[citation needed] 17:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. In printed sources 13 and 14 I see no page numbers.--Yannismarou 09:25, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I'm not going to bother to lodge an oppose on an article that obviously isn't ready yet, because the regular editors should know this article is nowhere near FA-worthy. As but one small example, can someone explain why Scout Motto isn't wiki linked ? If regular scouting editors allow this article to be promoted in this shape, I'm surprised.  :-) Sue Rangell also nominated Sonoma County, California for FAC, about here. If regular scouting editors want respect for their articles, I suggest they clean up this article, or oppose the nomination. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This article needs more reliable sources and is far from comprehensive. The fact that it does not address the controversy of gay and atheist members at all but leaves that to an internal wikilink is astonishingly POV. Awadewit 23:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment that is an issue for the Boy Scouts of America article, which does discuss it and links to the FA on Boy Scouts of America membership controversies, which was already in this article's See also section. This article is on the program not the association, please don't confuse the two.Rlevse 01:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Reply The lead begins Boy Scouting is one of the traditional membership divisions of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), part of the worldwide Scout movement. Available to boys ages ten through seventeen, it provides a program for community organizations that, along with Cub Scouting and Venturing, offers effective character, citizenship, and mental and personal fitness training for youth. - Because "boy scouting" is directly linked to the BSA this information must be included. Moreover, the page claims that "boy scouting . . . [is] [a]vailable to boys ages ten through seventeen." But, of course, if those boys are atheists or gay, then "boy scouting" is not available to them. This must be made clear. A link in the "See also" section is not enough. Awadewit 01:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Let's just shoehorn it into this and the other membership articles. We will worry about keeping it synchronized later since it is going to creep all over the place. Given the edit history in the main BSA article, no one is reading the comment embedded in the section, so we will have to patrol it aggressively. We obviously need to reword the lead-in since "available" doesn't mean what I thought it meant. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 02:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would also like to point out that almost every source for this page is published by the BSA or Boy Scouts themselves. One would like to see some independent sources here to verify what the Boy Scouts are claiming about themselves. There are also scholarly works on the Boy Scouts. Why those are not cited here, I am not quite sure since wikipedia encourages the use of such sources whenever possible WP:ATT, WP:CITE, and WP:RS. Awadewit 16:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Only about half the references are from BSA sites or manuals. The U.S. Scouting Service Project is used for several references (and I can see where they have more)– it is not formally associated with the BSA. If you have any further references that pertain specifically to the Boy Scouting division, please let me know. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:15, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are missing the point. Using references from associations themselves to prove information about those very associations has to be done extremely carefully. The Boy Scouts have an interest in representing themselves in a particular way in their literature as does the USSSP. Here are some books that I found in a quick search. There are obviously more books and articles available. Some of these books would allow the editors to historicize and contextualize boy scouting more. It has not always been the same and it arose out of a particular historical context.
  • Jay Mechling, On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth, University of Chicago Press (2001)
  • M. Rosenthal, The Character Factory: Baden-Powell and the Origins of the Boy Scout Movement, Pantheon Books (1986)
This one is used in Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell- it is specifically a biography of B-P and history of The Scout Association.
  • R. H. MacDonald, Sons of the Empire: The Frontier and the Boy Scout Movement, 1890-1918, University of Toronto Press (1993)
Again, more oriented towards UK Scouting history.
At first glance, reviews of On My honor' made this one look like it belongs more in Boy Scouts of America membership controversies, but it might just be worth a look. The last three are really about the history of UK Scouting. These last really are not relevant to the BSA Boy Scouting troop program, except as a historical reference of another national program. Some like material is in History of the Boy Scouts of America, another part of the BSA series. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On My Honor, from its table of contents, is clearly about more than just the controversy. Also, my point here is that there are reliable published works about scouting by scholars. If these books are not helpful, their bibliographies might lead you to more relevant material. Moreover, I found these sources in just five minutes of searching on google scholar. Imagine what a sustained search amongst various research tools by the editors of this article would elicit. Awadewit 22:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose—1a. The top of the article has a density of linguistic and logical problems that indicates the urgent need for thorough copy-editing throughout. Here are random examples. Please don't just fix these.
    • "The aims and methods of Boy Scouting are: ideals, patrols, outdoor programs, advancement, adult association, personal growth, leadership development and the uniform." This is a bizarre statement. Can "ideals" be aims? Advancement as an aim seems impossibly general. Is "the uniform" an aim or a method. "Adult association", for a cynical reader, might bring to mind the reputation for wrongdoing by the bad apples among scouting leaders. The colon seems unnecessary.
    • "The program had an estimated registration of 61,495 in 1911.[1] As of the end of 2005, the Boy Scout program was serving 879,789 Boy Scouts with 543,971 troop level leaders in 42,811 troops." "Troop level" should be hyphenated as a double epithet. "Registration" is compared with "serving"—is this intended to underline the growth of numbers historically? "Leaders" in "troops": huh?
    • "All members of the program are Scouts, youth are referred to as Boy Scouts and adults as Scouters." The comma is grammatically wrong; use a colon, semicolon or em dash.
    • The lead disintegrates into two stubby paragraphs at the end.
    • "Boy Scouts express their ideals through verbal statements of principles, which Scouts must memorize and understand. They also represent these ideals symbolically in official emblems." When are statements of principles not verbal?
    • "world-wide"—no hyphen. Tony 00:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, the objection-bot, Tony, expects people to read his mind, towit: "copy-editing throughout...please don't fix just these." Sumoeagle179 00:52, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's right—I'm not your free, private copy-editor; it's your responsibility, not mine. I function here to provide examples of why nominators need to get real about the standards of so-called "professional" writing if they want a gold star on their articles. Tony 21:37, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, at least I didn't resort to name calling. You called me a "rude little nark" on your talk page and a "low-down little tic" on mine. Oh, and I'll edit any talk page I want.Sumoeagle179 22:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
True, but you were offensive on my talk page. Rather than droning on about me, why don't you spend time networking to locate good collaborators who might copy-edit with you? Tony 23:15, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For the same reason you keep droning on about me.Sumoeagle179 23:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Rlevse, but this is not enough on "the rest". I've pointed out the density of issues at the top. I myself would need to persuade another copy-editor to go through it—someone with strategic distance from the text will have a great advantage over those who've worked on it already. Sorry to frustrate you, but "professional" standards of writing don't come easily, not to me, anyway. Tony 02:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment While I myself (please note redundancy for emphasis) spend endless hours working with students to improve their writing and thus am often dismayed at the level of writing on wikipedia, I would like to point out that Tony1 is advocating a specific style of prose. I have closely read (I prefer split infinitives - we are not writing in Latin) his extensive page on copyediting and style and if one were to follow all of his recommendations, one's prose would never be "brilliant" or "compelling." One's prose would be functional, mechanical and sparse. This is only one opinion of how prose is supposed to operate and I find Tony1's insistence that wikipedia editors follow his stylistic preferences (such as worldwide/world-wide) detrimental to the project at large. While he often has good points to make, his attitude that there is one single effective prose style is misguided (again, note that I am using redundancy for rhetorical effect here). Awadewit 20:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You start by seeking to make a cheap point about my continual comments about dysfunctional redundancy in FACs. "I myself" contains no redundancy, since the second word serves to mark the item, as you seem to point out. Please look up "world-wide"—I don't think you'll find it in a standard dictionary. To use this example to bolster your argument that I'm somehow "pushing" a specific style is self-serving nonsense. What I promote is efficient, crisp, plain, easy-to-read wording—nothing more, nothing less. Mostly, this coincides with my own stylistic preferences, but in significant ways, I draw a line between my own style and a more general, public style that has wide acceptance, or at least that is supported by logic. Thus, I strongly disagree with your assertions, which have have already been tried on this page to discredit reviewers. Tony 22:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is not a cheap point; it is a significant point. Style is tricky because much of it relies on personal preferences, as you yourself acknowledge. There is no "general, public style that has wide acceptance"; many grammar "rules" are not even hard and fast rules (as any grammar and style manual will tell you). Moreover, style is often not about logic at all, as you claim. Please do not conflate argumentation (which does rely on logic) with stylistic expression. (Also, the Oxford English Dictionary cites both "worldwide" and "world-wide" as acceptable spellings. Certainly, they would like to hear from you that "world-wide" is unacceptable and that they are not a standard dictionary.) Awadewit 22:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Style allegations aside, I have to disagree, Awadewit; I've never seen Tony object to a well-written article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you have more personal experience with Tony1 than I have, but based on the evidence of his stylistic recommendations and copyediting suggestions, both here on FAC in the past week or so and in his own MOS, it is clear to me that Tony1 is pushing a personal style at the same time that he is trying to improve the quality of the writing on wikipedia. While I find his overall goal laudable, his attitude and tactics are undercutting that aim. I am sure that my FAs would not have passed his scrutiny although I know they are well-written (unlike the many editors who, in their defense, say "I am not an English major," I was an English major as an undergraduate and am working on a dissertation in English literature; as part of my training, I spend every day teaching undergraduates how to write). I, like Tony, have spent years improving my writing, but I have come to different conclusions regarding certain preferences (such as when to use commas or "additive terms"), but when critiquing the writing in an article, I try not to force those preferences on others. My writing, though it uses a different kind of "voice" than Tony1's, is not poor. Unfortunately, Tony1's rigidity and inflexibility, displayed in particular in the tone of his MOS and his comments to other reviewers, does not inspire other editors to improve their writing (as is evidenced here). I have found that suggestions demonstrating how a sentence or phrase could be improved are received far more gracefully that Tony1's comments. I agree with him that he does not have to copyedit every article that he reviews but editors are genuinely confused regarding their writing and it behooves Tony1 to suggest improvements for the problems he points out and to emphasize larger syntactical issues and diction problems than hyphens because editors perceive (rightly or wrongly) punctuation as an irrelevant part of their article. Both tact and tactics are relevant to improving the writing on wikipedia. Awadewit 22:58, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Both of you know way more about prose than I do :-) My personal experience is that I can see when an article is poorly written, but I can't define why. Tony can; so can you. It's a hard thing to do, and I'm glad Tony does it. I don't believe he pushes his style, because he doesn't object when an article is well written. Tony's point is more often to give examples, and then suggest that nominators should seek out competent copyeditors before nominating a FAC (in defense of the Scouting Project, they didn't nom this article.) Do you think this article is well written? (Maybe it is now—it was quite discouraging when first nominated.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:14, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just had another look; beginning with the title (which is still confusing), the article has problems. Here's another example: The Scout Sign is used when giving the Scout Law or the Scout Oath and as a signal for silence. The Scout Salute is used when saluting the flag of the United States. I wondered why Scout Sign wasn't wikilinked; turns out both redirect to Three-finger salute (Scouts). So, what's the difference, and why are they mentioned separately? The article isn't ready for FAC, and the Project editors have enough experience that they should know that; it wasn't nominated by them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sign and salute are similar, but not the same. I'll look into this part of the article.Rlevse 23:28, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's right, we didn't nom this, but I'm letting it run hoping to get constructive feedback, which has occurred. I did almost once remove it. I also am not that good at copyedit and of course it's even harder to ce stuff you've worked on yourself.Rlevse 23:20, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And that's why I haven't objected; I don't think you all deserve that, since you didn't nom it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rlevse and I discussed removing it from FAC, but there were already a lot of comments, so we decided to let it run. There is a lot of good stuff here, and it will help get the other membership articles up. Regardless of FA status, it is a win situation if it makes the article better. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 14:42, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let me put it to everyone this way; I sometimes get more nitpicky with "in order" tos than Tony does! He is very fair with his critique, and he only objects if he disagrees with more than one or two things. He's not the type of editor to oppose if you have one case of the nasty word "utilize" or a couple instances of "whilst". — Deckiller 23:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.
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