Talk:Boy Scouts of America membership controversies/Archive 3

message: How about if the main article was changed to just a couple of introductory paragraphs with a link to the old article and a link to the new (rewritten) article?  The old article could be modified to make it pro-BSA and the new article modified to make it anti-BSA. By presenting both points of view, we should be able to achieve NPOV.--Jagz 01:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think what you're describing is called a Wikipedia:POV fork, and supposedly it's "naughty" for the reasons expressed in that article. hehe. I personally think there's a lot of merit to the "This is what side 1 thinks", "This is what side 2 thinks" style of writing has a of merit, and I tried to do it in this article:  "BSA's position, Critic's position, Critics of the Critics position", but I'm inferring you feel the current version than admirable explaining BSA's side?  -Alecmconroy 02:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Idea for Controversies about BSA article 

message: Nahallac Silverwinds, incredible job on all those inline citations!  you're my hero. 
Jagz, I think the table of contents onlys show up after there's several different headings.  Maybe this post will bring in back.  
-Alecmconroy 18:19, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem, I like fixing things and making them pretty :P --Naha|(talk) 05:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inline Cites 

message: For consistency, please use the following definitions when editing the article. These definitions are based on The Language of Scouting:
*Adult- A person 18 years of age and up, male or female.
*Charter- BSA authorization for an organization to use the Scouting program.
*Chartered organization- A religious, civic, fraternal, educational, or other community-based organization that has applied for and received a charter to use the Scouting program.
*Commissioner- A commissioned Scouter who works with packs, troops, teams, and Venturing crews to help the units succeed.
*Committee- A local chartered organization has a unit committee, composed of volunteers, to administer the affairs of each unit it operates.
*Council- An administrative body chartered to be responsible for Scouting in a designated geographic territory.
*Leader- All Scouters are classified as leaders regardless of position held (Scoutmaster, troop committee member, etc.).  A leader is also a Scout in a leadership position (Assistant Patrol Leader, Senior Patrol Leader, etc.).  Every youth advancing to the Star, Life, or Eagle rank must serve in a leadership position.  ("Leader" is commonly used to refer to a registered adult, however, in this article, "leader" refers to a youth or an adult as discussed above.)
*Member- A youth or adult who is registered with BSA.
*Pack- A group made up of several Tiger Cub, Cub Scout, and Webelos Scout dens, including their families and leaders. (For boys younger than Boy Scouts.)
*Professional- A salaried employee.
*Scout- A registered youth member of a Boy Scout troop, synonymous with "Boy Scout".
*Scouter- A registered adult member of the BSA.
*Scoutmaster- A volunteer Scouter, 21 or older, appointed by the chartered organization to lead a Boy Scout troop.
*Troop- The unit that conducts Boy Scouting for the chartered organization.
*Unit- The entity that conducts Scouting for the chartered organization; it consists of registered youth members and registered adult volunteer members. A unit may be a pack, troop, team, crew, or ship. Its affairs are administered by the unit committee, which is appointed by the chartered organization.
*Volunteer- Individual who donates service, time, or funds to support the program of the BSA.
*Youth- A boy or young man, 10 or older (additional rules apply to minimum age) to 17 years old (under age 18).
Note:  Venturing is a BSA program for young men and women who are 14 through 21 years of age.  Some of the definitions above do not apply to the Venturing program.
--Jagz 15:48, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definitions 

message: I went ahead and put the page up on RFC to get more eyeballs on the page. 
So for anyone just joining our program already in progress:  There was an old version of the page, here.  Some people felt it was POV, too Pro-Boy Scouts of America.  Some feel the current version is POV, too anti-Boy Scouts of America.
So, the questions we're looking at are:
#  Which version is better, old or new?
#  How can the article be made more neutral?
#  How can the article be improved in general?
--Alecmconroy 03:18, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for Comments 

message: GCW50, 
I tried very hard to make a neutral article.
I tried very hard to explain in detail why I made some of the choices I have, and see other people's opinons on the specific cases you've raised.
I put up a request for comments to get more opinions on it.
If we need to, we can go to mediation for this, but after all the time I put into trying to improve the old article, I feel very strongly that the improvements should not be reverted in the absence of a strong consensus. 
Please, reply the above discussion regarding the United Way statistics.
Please, don't revert wholesale again.  Let people come to the site via the RFC and be able to weigh in the new versions.
I'll only make this one revert to make my objection, but i won't revert-war. If you rever again, we can go forward in the dispute resolution process.  Right now, you're the only person who's suggested that the new version is so attrocious that it should be deleted in its entirety.
-22:53, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please, talk, don't revert 

message: If we feel there are other controversies worth mentioning, they should probably be in a separate section at the end of the article, so that it's clear that they're totally unrelated to the "big" gay/atheist controversy.
As for the violence controversy, I ommitted it during the re-write because i'm skeptical that it's really notable-- one report of some bullying and a few lone scoutmasters condoning it that happened at some scout camp twenty years ago.  Is it part of a larger on-going problem throughout scouting, or really was it just an isolated event that almost no one remembers.  I don't know.  I mean-- if it was a big enough incident that it was being talked about on CNN at the time, and "No history of the controversy of the boy scouts would be complete without mentioning this incident", then i guess it would be notable.  
In any case, if we include it, we should source it.  I did a few googles but couldn't come up with anything (other than the wikipedia mirrors and forks of course).
-Alecmconroy 09:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was an eye witness to the incident.  It occurred in the summer of 1986 at Goshen and involved troop 1802.  The scout was pretty much beat half to death by three other boys and had to go to the hospital.  The people that beat him went to juvi-hall.  I saw similar incidents in my 5-6 years of Scouting where kids would get beat up on camping trips (but nothing as bad as Goshen).  If I ever have kids, I will keep them out of Scouting for that very reason. -Husnock 17:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The controversies presented in this article should be current or recently resolved controversies. Also, just because the BSA has a problem, doesn't necessarily make it a controversy.--Jagz 02:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The constant removal of the information about the 1986 beating by certian users strikes me as article ownership.  The incident happened and, even twenty years later, the kind of attitude that allowed such violence has affected present BSA policies to prevent future occurences.  Blatant removal of an entire section of the article would only be justified if it was proven factually inaccurate.  Violence in the scouts is an issue, it should be in the article.  I hope certain users discuss this instead of simply removing the material over and over again. -Husnock 02:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

text: What? Why would we include only current controversies? Just because something happened a long time ago doesn't make it unworthy of documentation. By that standard, we should delete all the history articles from Wikipedia because they aren't "current." If something has been a noteable controversy within the organization it doesn't matter when it occured. I'm not pointing at any particular situation/mishaps/controversy - just in general. We don't discount something because of when it happened ..I can't even fathom that. --Naha|(talk) 19:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

text: A good solution would probably be to start up a new article, called something like "Violence in the Boy Scouts", giving a history of incidents in the organization. There was at least one case I saw on a documentary where somone went into a BSA camp and killed a scout (back in the 60s). The guy was a serial child killer who got caught years later.  Then there was the beating I saw and I'm sure, back in 1930s Scouting could get pretty rough.  The mentality from thsoe days (or so my grandfather used to tell me) was that a boy had to "take care of himself" and I imagine the BSA of the 30s encouraged that (but I dont know for sure).  So, if the info needs to be removed from this article, thats fine.  We can start another article, and if still there are problems we can go down VfD road.  If such an article was VfDed that would pretty much be the end of the issue. -Husnock 13:58, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are probably several current BSA problems that could best be covered in a separate article. It's important to distinguish a problem from a controversy.--Jagz 17:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I attempted to cover violence in the Boy Scouts in a separate article but it was attacked and nominated for deletion less than 24 hours after its creation.  As such, I fully intend to reinstate the violence and hazing section in this article.  Since specific examples are being frowned upon, I will cite articles and other primary sources about the action of hazing, and how it has gotten into several groups, the Boy Scouts among them. -Husnock 15:09, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you establish it as a documented current controversy then it can probably stay in this article. If it is a recently resolved controversy then maybe it can stay. Otherwise you should find another forum. This article doesn't cover racial segregation and other controversies from years ago. I'm sorry but I was a Scout for 7 years in two different regions of the country and worked as a Scout summer camp staff member several times but can not relate to your section on violence. Sounds like you were traumatized. I saw a guy almost cut their thumb off with a hatchet during a Camporee event but I'm not writing an article about the dangers of Scouting.--Jagz 16:30, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Violence and other controversies 

message: Scout, Scouting, Scout master, Scout troop ..and basically all instances of the word "Scout" as they pertains to the context of this project are CAPATALIZED. While this is a talk page, and grammar isn't quite as important as it is in article space, some of the people who have commented on this page using the word "Scout" spelled "scout" are the same ones who have consistantly not capitalized the word correctly in article space. I know this because I've corrected dozens of instances of the word in various articles, hehe. Please check your capitalization of the word before you click "save page" when editing articles. Thanks! --Naha|(talk) 19:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See The Language of Scouting. Also see Scouting.--Jagz 01:20, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

text: packanimal, these are for all areas of Scouting, not just BSA. --Naha|(talk) 04:55, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reminder 

message: I've been cleaning up the footnotes: the works and titles did not match in most instances.  I am updating the access dates as I update the titles.
*Footnote 5 is a bad link: anyone have any idea on this?
--Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnotes 

message: Not surprisingly, all references to enrollment scandals, abuse scandals, and other issues including removal of volunteers criticizing or questioning paid staff on finances, enrollment claims and property sales are regularly removed from this site.  BSA's Chief Scout Executive has one of the highest compensation packages of all non-profit CEO's - $915,000 in 2004 (from Guidestar.org) despite continuing drops in membership.  The head of Youth Protection efforts was assested and pled guilty to distribution of child pornography in 2005.  A CDC report was highly critical of BSA's National Jamboree during the summer of 2005 where hundreds fell ill from heat exhaustion.  Questions have been raised concerning the unusually high number of Scouts killed in accidents in 2005 as well.
This was added to article by 69.124.137.249 on 17:01, 11 March 2006 and moved here where it belongs by --Bduke 07:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other Controversies 

message: The page looks pretty well-organized, but I find the headings verbose.  The TOC is a little overwhelming - it should give an overview at a glance, but with the headings the way they are, you have to actually read the whole thing to understand what's going on. --Smack (talk) 06:00, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page organization and headings 

message: To me, it feels like fingernails on a chalkboard when I read "governmental entities" and "governmental support". Isn't "government entities" and "government support" more common usage? While the "als" are technically correct, they just don't sound like American English. --Habap 19:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a native speaker of American English and they sound just fine and normal to me /shrug. --Naha|(talk) 04:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Governmental vs Government 

message: BSA records show that the number of Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts had dropped by about 14% (as of end of 2007) since the Dale Decision in 2000.[108][112] It is unclear why membership had dropped and whether the membership policy controversy has had an effect on membership levels.
During the same time period, membership increased in other youth organizations, such as the Girl Scouts of the USA and the BSA's Learning for Life program
The table shows Scouting membership through 2008. According to the Learning for Life Annual Participation Summary, LfL participants dropped by 24.9% for youth and 32.7% for adults from 2007 to 2008. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 00:40, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't edit the text at the time I made the table because I didn't have up-to-date figures on the other organizations. I think the GSUSA may also have had a drop in the last couple of years, no idea about Campfire.  I must admit the LFL figures do some interesting jumping though the records I found on a quick search only go back to 2005.  A drop of 25% is huge, I wonder if they lost some big school districts?--Erp (talk) 06:01, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  BSA membership size 

message: Conservapedia on their news page considers this a "smear article".  Apparently giving BOTH sides of the controversy is, in their eyes, a smear. Alloco1 (talk) 16:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: And, what does an opinion written on a website for humorous purposes matter here? Should we quote from another joke site, liberapedia as well?? --217.91.40.206 (talk) 19:19, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: What are you talking about? I removed that inaccurate news item two days ago? Contrary to Alloco1's post, there is nothing wrong with giving both sides of the controversy. --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:29, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

text: Actually, neutrality is a requirement for article titles, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions.  But what is non-neutral about this title?  It seems pretty neutral to me.  Nobody can deny that there are "controversies" regarding BSA membership policies, regardless of what side of any controversy one may be on.  (As for the text of the article, I would agree that in some ways it is not neutral enough, but I don't really have the time to wade into these issues at the moment.)  Neutron (talk) 21:54, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

text: Are you saying you don't think there should be an article on this subject at all?  It is a notable subject.  As I said before, the text of the article is a different subject.  If it's not neutral, that can be remedied through editing.  It seems to me that the alternative to having this be a separate article is to have these subjects covered in the main BSA article, which I take it has been tried before, resulting in much unhappiness.  There is never going to be a perfect solution for controversial subjects, we just have to make the articles as neutral as possible.  And by the way, please sign your posts, you are making SineBot work too hard.  :)  Neutron (talk) 15:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Or he wants no controversies described at all in Wikipedia.  --Erp (talk) 15:58, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if that's the case, all I can say is "good luck."  :)   Neutron (talk) 18:50, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

text: I Think the title is neutral, it merely refers to BSA membership controversies. The title makes no judgment about it, as it does not say "people excluded by" or anything like that. — Rlevse • Talk •  21:45, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

text: Your opinion is duly noted, thank you for making it known.  -- Banjeboi 20:00, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conservapedia 

message: "In 2004, the BSA removed restrictions on certain volunteer positions previously restricted to citizens, although it never required proof of residency or citizenship when the restrictions were in place."  
The BSA requires a social security number, valid drivers liscence (or state id card), and a background check prior to letting any adult work with children.  Unless someone can confirm this from a reliable source, of which it should documented, this is not justifible to remain in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.231.213.27 (talk • contribs) 
From the cited Chicago Tribune article:
To avoid questions about Immigration status, Colón and other recruiters emphasize that a Social Security number or other government ID isn't required when they carry out mandatory screening of volunteers that is designed to protect children from potential predators. Neither do they ask the Scouts about their Immigration papers.
I don't understand this either, but I think the Chicago Tribune is a reliable source, but it is the only source. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:57, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I mean that isn't calling them 'Illegal Aliens' like having a section titled:"Position on Niggers"? IAmTheCoinMan (talk) 22:39, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hardly, compare Alien (law) to Nigger. — Rlevse • Talk •  23:31, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we've bumped into a language issue here. In most parts of the English speaking world the word alien almost exclusively means someone or something wierd, fictional and from outer space. To call another person an alien would generally be seen as an insult. It's an American idiosyncrasy to also use the term for people/humans who are not American citizens. I note that IAmTheCoinMan, like myself, does not live in the USA. Ain't language wonderful? HiLo48 (talk) 20:24, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There may be a language issue, but I think that you mis-characterize it. See , , , . For some parts of the world outside of the U.S., see , , , , . Google books: . Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:18, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the language issue might be between "Legal English" and "everyday English".  Legally "alien" means someone not of the citizenship of the country in question so an American as far as New Zealand law is concerned would be an alien and possibly an alien living illegally in New Zealand.  Note that as far as the US is concerned aliens might be living outside the US, might be legal permanent residents in the US ("green card holders"), might be legal temporary visitors in the US (e.g., tourists), might be legal temporary residents (students on F1 visas, temporary workers on H1 visas, etc or spouses or minor children of the same), might have diplomatic status, or might be illegally living in the country.  Children who are not US citizens who live in the US can join the BSA (assuming they are the right age, sex, aren't honest atheists and possibly aren't a honest gay/lesbian).  They also have the option of being lone scouts of their home nation's WOSM scouting organization or, if they live near the Canadian Embassy in DC, joining the Canadian troop based there (non-Canadians other than US citizens can join).   Or joining a non-WOSM scouting or scouting like organization.  The question here is the status of adult volunteers.--Erp (talk) 16:51, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Illegal Aliens 

message: Chopped the intro sentence "Homosexuals, though not atheists, can be youth members though they are forbidden from holding youth leadership positions." 
I don't think we actually know this, do we? Excluding, of course, the trivial case where the scouts don't reveal their orientation.   Are there any openly gay boy scouts?   There are now many openly gay high school students-- are any of them in the boy scouts?  
I genuinely ask--I don't know what the answer is, and a reliable source on the answer would be great for the article too.
I know there are a lot of "Former Openly-Gay Scouts",but I don't think I've ever read or heard of one who was actual scout for any major period of time after being openly gay. 
Short of that, I think we have to leave the question of openly-gay scouts open.  The 2004 wording is ambiguous and while it could be interpreted as reopening the door to "non-leadership openly-gay scouts", ultimately that's just us speculating that the wording indicates a policy shift.   What's needed is:
*A clarification from BSA national
*A reliable source reporting a policy shift
*Reliable sources reporting the existence of openly gay scouts who are allowed to participate in a non-leader capacity.
*Reliable sources reporting the existence of scouts whose outing resulting in loss of membership.  
--Alecmconroy (talk) 02:15, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro paragraph on openly gay youth