Wikipedia:WikiProject Scouting/Project editing conventions

Template:WPScouting Navigation This is the page for the agreed upon rules and standards of the Scouting Project and Portal. Please don't discuss issues here, use the talk page.

Hierarchy of Categories

Articles/real-people can be in more than one horizontal subcategory, but should not normally list a subcategory and its parent category.

Encyclopedic categories: "Scouting" is the top parent category, with a hierarchy thereunder. The Scout association in most countries belong to Category:WOSM member organizations and/or Category:WAGGGS member organizations. The article dealing with a countries' Scout organization should be in one or both categories, not directly under the Scouting catgory.

There is a "Scouting by country" category that holds a group of articles pertaining to one country. Each country has its own subcat here. An article can be here and also under WOSM and/or WAGGGS. Using the "Scouting by country" cat/subcats also means we're no longer violating the rule of using a sub and its parent as we're using horizontal categories. Organizations that are not members should be in their appropriate "Scouting in (country)" category.

Real people categories: "Scouting Wikipedians" is the top parent category, with a hierarchy thereunder. Currently, there are only 4 subcategories and those are not further subdivided.

Categories of real people, such Wood Badge Wikipedians, should not be mixed in with encyclopedia article categories.

Note: The "Eagle Scout Wikipedians" subcategory has mostly BSA Eagle Scouts, but at least one Philippine Eagle Scout (their highest rank is also Eagle Scout and the design of the medal and knot are very similar), so it also is an international category.

Non-aligned Scouting organizations

This category is for Scouting organizations that are not recognized by WOSM or WAGGGS, for whatever the reason. This includes Royal Rangers, Traditional Scouting, Primitive Scouting, WFIS, FSE and OWS, which are all Scouting or Scout-like movements. There are only very few known non-WAGGGS (girl) organizations like the American Heritage Girls and some German associations.

Article issues

Scout Movement the first 'M' in Movement should be capitalized.

Article names

Use the Wiki guideline at Naming conventions to name articles. This same guideline says to use the Roman alphabet and standard English spelling (ie, Vienna not Wien). It also says to use the original spelling and alphabet in the first line of the article. Only use the foreign name if it meets this standard: If there is no commonly used English name, use an accepted transliteration of the name in the original language. Latin-alphabet languages, like Spanish or French, should need no transliteration, but Chinese names can use Pinyin, for example.

There should be redirects from common versions of an association's title to what version is in use for the article title. This applies to English and non-English versions of the title. At a minimum, there should be a redirect to the alternative version used in the lead sentence of an article.

Over a protracted period at the beginning of 2007, there was debate to mediate disagreement about the naming of articles for Scouting organizations in non-English speaking countries. That debate is archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Translations mediation. The result was as follows in the three sub-sections below.

Main points

1. For naming articles on Scout organisations/associations, we use an English name if the organisation itself verifiably uses an unique English name in its own documents (if we can not find such a name, we ask the organisation for a name and a source for its use).
2. If no official English name becomes available, we seek consensus on whether there is one clear translation to English of the organisation's name and use that. If there are several translations that differ only trivially, we seek consensus on whether one of them can be used. By trivial, we mean different prepositions (e.g. "in" or "of") or word order ("Scout Association" or "Association of Scouts")
3. If no consensus is reached on point (2), we seek consensus whether the "Scouting in XXX" proposal (see below) can be used to write a complete article on all aspects of Scouting in a particular country to replace the article with a contentious title.
4. Failing resolution of an English name from points (1) - (3), we use the official non-English name.

Related points

Separate from these key proposals we note:

1. We use the now completed "Scouting in XXX" proposal to give English names for readers to find articles about Scouting in all countries, whether English speaking or not, and without having to know the name of the Scout organisation in the country. These can be redirects, disambiguation pages or articles. In some cases we should also create "Guiding in XXX" or "Scouting and Guiding in XXX" links in the same way as above.
2. We will be extremely liberal in the use of redirects both to the "Scouting in XXX" articles (e.g. "Scouting in USA") and to the individual articles of organisations (almost any plausible translation - redirects are cheap).

Summary

We try to find whether the organisation uses an official English name. Failing that we see whether there is an obvious translation. If that is not unique, are the different translations trivial in the sense that they translate back to the same name. We use Scouting in XXX, for all countries XXX including English-speaking countries, as a redirect, a disambiguation page or a brief article. If the first two points do not resolve the name, we consider using Scouting in XXX to cover ALL aspects of Scouting in the country. If that is not acceptable, due perhaps to there being many Scout organisations and the argument is only about the name of one of them, we use the non-English name used by the organisation itself. We then use any English translation as a redirect to the non-English title. Note, if this summary conflicts with the points above, it needs to be corrected as the points above are the agreed wording.

Criteria for an organization's article inclusion

As stated on the project main page, our scope is all Scouting articles; but we need to define what constitutes Scouting. We have reached this consensus: If an organization veers too far from the Scout method, and/or becomes overly politicized and/or militarized, it shall not be included in this Project. The organizations identified that fail to meet our criteria are: Hitler Youth and Young Pioneers. See talk page for why.

Organizations that are covered by our project include, but are not limited to:

• all World Organization of the Scout Movement affiliated organizations
• all World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts affiliated organizations
• all Confédération Européenne de Scoutisme affiliated organizations
• all Union Internationale des Guides et Scouts d’Europe affiliated organizations
• all Order of World Scouts affiliated organizations
• all Scouts-in-Exile affiliated organizations
• all World Federation of Independent Scouts affiliated organizations, which includes Baden-Powell Scouts and Traditional Scouting
• those who had a major impact on the formation of Scouting: Boys' Brigade, Sons of Daniel Boone, Woodcraft Indians, and YMCA
• those who developed out of the movement using major parts of its method: Kibbo Kift, and The Woodcraft Folk
• those who started as parallel organizations using major parts of its method: Royal Rangers, Campfire USA, American Heritage Girls, or SpiralScouts International

Dialects

For spelling variations, such as American vs British spelling, use the standard form of the language of the country the article is about. In generic articles, such as Scouting, use American.

Male-Female issues

As stated elsewhere, the Scouting WikiProject's scope includes male, female, and coed Scouting units. Articles about the WOSM and other primarily male affiliated Scout organisations in a particular country should not mention, other than a "See also" link, the equivalent WAGGGS or other primarily female organisation in that country. Material about the WAGGGS organisation should be put into a new article, even if only a stub, and vice versa for WAGGGS/female articles and their mentioning of WOSM/male organizations. This is meant to assist in providing equal weight to female Guiding and Scouting as the project has mostly male editors.

BSA references

If the BSA is used in a title, spell it out. EX: History of merit badges (Boy Scouts of America)

Upon the BSA being first referred to in the article, put the abbreviation immediately after the spelling out, EX: ....the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), and then use BSA in the article. There is hence no need to spell it out.

In most all instances, "the" is needs to precede BSA, EX: "The BSA requires...", NOT "BSA requires...".

Latter-day Saints

Use one of these to refer to this church:

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Latter-day Saints
• Mormons

Note the punctuation and capitalization of "Latter-day."

Do not use any other forms or abbreviations.

Divisions of national organizations

Cub Scouts (Boy Scouts of America) is the proper name for American Cub Scouting, not "Cub Scouts" or "Cub Scouts of America" or the abbreviation "CSA"; though they are common phrases, they are not the name of the organization. Use the correct name.

BSA (spelled out, see above) should be part of article titles, not the section of BSA, EX: Skipper (Sea Scouting) to Skipper (Boy Scouts of America), Skipper is not the name used in all Scout organizations. This pattern should be used for other countries like "... (Boy Scouts of the Philippines)", vice "....(BSP)".

Lists of famous Scouts

For articles that are lists of famous Scouts, such as List of notable Eagle Scouts, place this notice at the top of the talk page, below the Scouting WikiProject notice:

Criteria for inclusion This is a guideline that has been accepted by consensus. If the Scout or Scouter meets the criteria per Notability to rate an article, then he/she is notable enough for this list. If it is believed that the article does not meet the criteria, then the article and/or list entry should be recommended for deletion per Articles for deletion. If the article is deleted, then the Scout/Scouter in question should be removed from the list. A notable Scout or Scouter who does not have an article can be added to the list using the same criteria. Development of a biography for such persons is encouraged. If the entry fails the notability test, the entry should be tagged with {{fact}} and the editor should be requested to add a citation. If a request for cite is not met in a reasonable time, then the entry shall be removed.

NOTE: similar notices should be used for any page that requires guidelines. Customize the first line if need be; for example, on the List of Distinguished Eagle Scout Award recipients it says "...IF they are in fact a Distinguished Eagle Scout".

Manual of style and standards

The Wikiproject Scouting Manual of Style is a series of supplements to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. It aims to promote consistency, simplicity and professionalism in Scouting related articles.

Guideline	Shortcut	Status
Article layout	WPS:ART	proposed
Article names	WPS:NAMES	proposed
Capitalization	WPS:CAP	proposed
Categories	WPS:CAT	proposed
Image standards	WPS:IMAGE	accepted
Inclusion criteria	WPS:INCLUS	accepted
Lists	WPS:LIST	proposed
Local Scouting articles (BSA)	WPS:LOCALBSA	accepted
Merging, moving and deleting articles	WPS:MMD	proposed
References	WPS:REF	accepted
See also and External links	WPS:LINK	proposed
Style guides and standards	WPS:STYLE	proposed
Templates and userboxes	WPS:TEMP	accepted