Talk:Scouting and Guiding in England

This merge discussion is now closed.

Merge of County articles
I will be proposing that all the County articles in England be merged into several articles, representing the 9 official regions of England. This involves the following articles:-


 * Cleveland Scout County (The Scout Association)·Durham Scout County (The Scout Association)· Northumberland Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in North East England covering North East England. Done.
 * Cumbria Scout County (The Scout Association)· Cheshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· East Lancashire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater Manchester East Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater Manchester North Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater Manchester West Scout County (The Scout Association)· Merseyside Scout County (The Scout Association)· West Lancashire Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in North West England covering North West England. Done.
 * Central Yorkshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Humberside Scout County (The Scout Association)· possibly part of Lincolnshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· North Yorkshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· South Yorkshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· West Yorkshire Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in Yorkshire and the Humber covering Yorkshire and the Humber. Done.
 * Derbyshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Leicestershire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Lincolnshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Northamptonshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Nottinghamshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Rutland Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in East Midlands covering East Midlands. Done.
 * Birmingham Scout County (The Scout Association)· City of Coventry Scout County (The Scout Association)· Hereford and Worcester Scout County (The Scout Association)· Shropshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Staffordshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Warwickshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Solihull Scout County (The Scout Association)· West Mercia Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in West Midlands covering West Midlands. Done.
 * Bedfordshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Cambridgeshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Essex Scout County (The Scout Association)· Hertfordshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Norfolk Scout County (The Scout Association)· Suffolk Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in East of England covering East of England. Done.
 * Greater London Middlesex West Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London North Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London North East Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London South Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London South East Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London South West Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in Greater London covering Greater London. Done.
 * Royal Berkshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Buckinghamshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· East Sussex Scout County (The Scout Association)· Hampshire Scout County (The Scout Association)·  Isle of Wight Scout County (The Scout Association)· Kent Scout County (The Scout Association)·Oxfordshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Surrey Scout County (The Scout Association)· West Sussex Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in South East England covering South East England. Done.
 * Avon Scout County (The Scout Association)· Cornwall Scout County (The Scout Association)·  Devon Scout County (The Scout Association)· Dorset Scout County (The Scout Association)· Gloucestershire Scout County (The Scout Association) · Somerset Scout County (The Scout Association)· Wiltshire Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in South West England covering South West England. Done.

This is in accordance with the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Archive 2008. The idea is to use the 12 regions defined by the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics shown in the image on the right that shows the 9 regions of England, to which Wales, Scotland and Northern Island are added. This process is completed for Northern Ireland with the article, Scouting in Northern Ireland. The idea is to cover all Scouting, but not Guiding, so that article for NI covers Scouting Ireland units as well as those for the Scout Association. Guiding is not included because the term in UK is not understood to be part of Scouting, so the Project convention does not work for the UK. Also the Guides have a small number of relatively large regions in their organisation and articles on these are developing.

There are many reasons for doing this:-
 * The current articles are lacking in notability and third party independent sources.
 * They are currently unmaintainable due to the small number of Scouting editors in the UK, which has significantly decreased since they were first written. For England this means that no missing articles have been written over the last year.
 * The lists of Groups should be removed, as they are quite unencyclopedic, are not notable, not verified and are original research. Editors pass by the articles adding, changing or removing entries for their own Group, but with no sources. Not all articles on Counties/Areas have these lists and they are much better articles. It is also not the case that such lists are common for articles on similar structural regions in other countries. The proper place for information on Groups is Scoutwiki, where articles on individual Groups are welcome. I will copy the County articles there at some point.
 * Much the same applies to names of District and County Commissioners. These are living people. We do not know whether these entries are correct as again there are no references. Indeed this point and the one above constitute the vast majority of edits to these articles in the past year.
 * There has been some debate about whether these should be restricted to matters concerning the Scout Association or whether they should cover the BPSA and other traditional Scouting associations. There was some disagreement about the move from, say Scouting in Cleveland to Cleveland Scout County (The Scout Association). In some cases information on non-Scout Association units has been added to the articles. This was particularly true for the NI articles.

So, a smaller number of articles is much more likely to give us high quality articles. With non-notable material removed, I do not think the articles will be too large. If in future they become two large, we can look again at this, perhaps forking off articles such as Scout Campsites in North East England or even Scout Campsites in England.

I will be adding the tags later after seeking a few other eyes to look at the above and improve it. --Bduke (talk) 00:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good coherent plan to me. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 02:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

It appears that the Scout Association now has Regions as an organisational structure above Counties. They have regional Commissioners for example. The regions appear to be:-
 * South West
 * West Midlands
 * North East
 * South East
 * Greater London
 * East Midlands
 * North West
 * East of England

How do these 8 compare with the 9 government regions in the proposal above
 * South West
 * West Midlands
 * North East
 * South East
 * Greater London
 * East Midlands
 * North West
 * East
 * Yorkshire and the Humber

They appear to match except that Yorkshire and the Humber is missing. Is this part of the SA East region? I'm continuing to search for reliable information. The Regional Commissioners are defined in POR, but I can find where the Regions are defined. --Bduke (talk) 01:50, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have found one reference on ScoutBase that confirms there are 8 SA regions, so they are not the same as the 9 government regions. I propose we stick to the government regions which are separate from any one Scouting organisation, but we do need to know how that they are defined. --Bduke (talk) 01:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yorkshire and the Humber would be part of the SA North East region -- Horus Kol Talk 12:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Currently in the SA there are no Regional Commissioners in England only Chief Commissioners. Notoneidea (talk) 19:09, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you sure? POR on ScoutBase has entries about Regional Commissioners and someone on uk.rec.scouting told someone else there who their Regional Commissioner was. It is not however important for the discussion of this merge, which you will notice I have not yet made into an official proposal by tagging the articles. I want to sort out the Welsh Ateas first. --Bduke (talk) 00:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Greater London certainly has a regional Commissioner. --Bduke (talk) 02:22, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Two small points:
 * I'm missing a link to Guiding in the same area. A simple disambiguation line should be enough.
 * To save the county badges in the articles from the image-deletionists there must be some critical commentary on the "artwork" of the badge in the article, about for example the elements on the badge that characterise that county.
 * --Egel Reaction? 12:32, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Guiding. OK, I'll add that soon. I have added "See also" links, but a disambiguation line would be fine. The Guide regions are different and two of them do not yet have articles on them. --Bduke (talk) 12:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * County and District badges. I am not a great fan of these. If others want to add a description of the badges to keep them, then fine. I'm not going to do it. Getting these articles up to scratch is more challenging and more important. --Bduke (talk) 13:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge of Greater London County
The proposal as above is to merge Greater London Middlesex West Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London North Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London North East Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London South Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London South East Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater London South West Scout County (The Scout Association) to Scouting in Greater London covering Greater London, one of the official government regions of England (note: this is not intended to be the Scout Association Region).

We can not do all these merges at once so I am selecting two to tag and discuss first. London seems a straight forward one, so I have selected that first. Please indicate your view on this merge below. --Bduke (talk) 23:37, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support obviously as nominator. I have started a draft of the new article at User:Bduke/Sandbox2 (now removed after merge and sandbox will be used for another draft). As of this time, it is very basic, just putting together the material from the County articles. I have removed material about people (Commissioners) and Groups as discussed above. These are simply not maintainable. It needs more work. Please free to join me in editing this draft. --Bduke (talk) 00:27, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I have done the merge. These London articles were not very good. There was not a single non-Scouting reference. While the support for the merge was not indicated here, neither was any objection. The similar merges for Scouting in Wales and Scouting in Northern Ireland have not caused any dissent. I think we need to keep up the momentum on this project. --Bduke (talk) 23:17, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge of North West England
The proposal as above is to merge Cumbria Scout County (The Scout Association)· Cheshire Scout County (The Scout Association)·  East Lancashire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater Manchester East Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater Manchester North Scout County (The Scout Association)· Greater Manchester West Scout County (The Scout Association)· Merseyside Scout County (The Scout Association)· West Lancashire Scout County (The Scout Association) to Scouting in North West England covering North West England, one of the  official government regions of England (note: this is not intended to be the Scout Association Region).

This is the second one selected. Please indicate your view on this merge below. --Bduke (talk) 03:40, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support obviously as nominator. I have started a draft of the new article at User:Bduke/Sandbox3. As of this time, it is very basic, just putting together the material from the County articles. I have removed material about people (Commissioners) and Groups as discussed above. These are simply not maintainable. It needs more work. Please free to join me in editing this draft. Note the articles for merging contained a large number of images. These have for now been commented out, otherwise a bot will delete them as not being connected to the name of this draft. They can be added later, but care will be needed with the image descriptions. --Bduke (talk) 04:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support This would aid the general quality of the pages, aiding the end user to get a better overview. Particularly support the pooling of camp site information as for a large number of interested parties a regional view would be more useful. References to specific people (CCs DCs and their assistants) are too hard to keep up to date due to the rate of change and the lack of authors to update. Groups are too numerous to list at this level, but a quick overview sees that the majority of counties don't list groups in a current format. pwillingham

I have done the merge. While there was not a lot of support for the merge indicated here, neither was there any objection. The similar merges for Scouting in Greater London. Scouting in Wales and Scouting in Northern Ireland have not caused any dissent. I think we need to keep up the momentum on this project. --Bduke (talk) 07:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge of North East England
The proposal as above is to merge Cleveland Scout County (The Scout Association)·Durham Scout County (The Scout Association)· Northumberland Scout County (The Scout Association) merged to Scouting in North East England covering North East England.

This is the third one selected, after the first has been merged. I will now add them in order as above, keeping two active at one time. Note this is quite a small one with only three counties, but Durham does not have an article so more work will be required to get that information. Please indicate your view on this merge below. --Bduke (talk) 23:42, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Support obviously as nominator. I will be starting a draft of the new article at User:Bduke/Sandbox2. As of this time, it is very basic, just putting together the material from the County articles. I will removed material about people (Commissioners) and Groups as discussed above. These are simply not maintainable. It needs more work. Please free to join me in editing this draft. Note the articles for merging contained a large number of images. These have for now been commented out, otherwise a bot will delete them as not being connected to the name of this draft. They can be added later, but care will be needed with the image descriptions. --Bduke (talk) 23:42, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * User:Bduke/Sandbox2 is started but very rough still. I will be working on it, but also on User:Bduke/Sandbox3 for North West England. --Bduke (talk) 02:22, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I have completed the merge. The new article needs more work, particularly on history and general community impact. --Bduke (talk) 03:58, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge of Yorkshire and the Humber
The proposal as above is to merge Central Yorkshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· Humberside Scout County (The Scout Association)· North Yorkshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· South Yorkshire Scout County (The Scout Association)· West Yorkshire Scout County (The Scout Association) to Scouting in Yorkshire and the Humber covering Yorkshire and the Humber.

This is the 4th one selected. I am now adding them in order as above, keeping two active at one time. I now do not think we need to merge anything from Lincolnshire here, even though it is mentioned above. Please indicate your view on this merge below. --Bduke (talk) 00:01, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Support obviously as nominator. I will be starting a draft of the new article at User:Bduke/Sandbox3. I will removed material about people (Commissioners) and Groups as discussed above. These are simply not maintainable. Please free to join me in editing this draft. Note the articles for merging contain some images. These will be commented out, otherwise a bot will delete them as not being connected to the name of this draft. They can be added later, but care will be needed with the image descriptions. --Bduke (talk) 00:01, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I have completed the merge. The new article needs more work, particularly on history and general community impact. --Bduke (talk) 08:21, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge of East Midlands
The proposal as above is to merge Derbyshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Leicestershire Scout County (The Scout Association), Lincolnshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Northamptonshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Nottinghamshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Rutland Scout County (The Scout Association) to Scouting in East Midlands covering East Midlands.

I have decided to tag all the articles, to attract the maximum possible interest. I will however delay drafting an article until those above have been completed. Of course if any one else wants to do a draft of the merge article, please go ahead. --Bduke (talk) 05:07, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Support obviously as nominator. I have started a draft of the new article at User:Bduke/Sandbox2. --Bduke (talk) 08:22, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This one is about ready to move into place. --Bduke (talk) 08:17, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I have completed the merge. --Bduke (talk) 22:21, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge of West Midlands
The proposal as above is to merge Birmingham Scout County (The Scout Association), City of Coventry Scout County (The Scout Association), Hereford and Worcester Scout County (The Scout Association), Shropshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Staffordshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Warwickshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Solihull Scout County (The Scout Association) and West Mercia Scout County (The Scout Association) to Scouting in West Midlands covering West Midlands.

Halesowen Scout Band probably should be merged here. The right County would be West Mercia Scout County but that article has not been created, so the merge should wait until this issue is resolved and it can then be merged into Scouting in West Midlands or into a created West Mercia Scout County (The Scout Association). This is just a reminder mainly to myself. --Bduke (talk) 23:23, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

As one above. However, note that two Counties do not have an article and a few have little content. A lot of content is to be added. --Bduke (talk) 05:13, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Support obviously as nominator. I have started a draft of the new article at User:Bduke/Sandbox3. --Bduke (talk) 04:37, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Although as always needing more work, this one is about ready to install. However I missing tagging the Birmingham County article for merge, so I will leave it for a while. --Bduke (talk) 01:05, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I have completed the merge. --Bduke (talk) 01:28, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Merge of East of England
The proposal as above is to merge Bedfordshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Cambridgeshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Essex Scout County (The Scout Association), Hertfordshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Norfolk Scout County (The Scout Association) and Suffolk Scout County (The Scout Association) to Scouting in East of England covering East of England.

As two above. --Bduke (talk) 05:22, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Support obviously as nominator. I have started a draft of the new article at User:Bduke/Sandbox4. This is the last one to be drafted.--Bduke (talk) 09:00, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Support (please also consider this as support for all the similar "area" proposals listed here DiverScout (talk) 15:17, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I have completed the merge. --Bduke (talk) 07:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Merge of South East England
The proposal as above is to merge Royal Berkshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Buckinghamshire Scout County (The Scout Association), East Sussex Scout County (The Scout Association), Hampshire Scout County (The Scout Association),  Isle of Wight Scout County (The Scout Association), Kent Scout County (The Scout Association), Oxfordshire Scout County (The Scout Association), Surrey Scout County (The Scout Association) and West Sussex Scout County (The Scout Association)  to Scouting in South East England covering South East England.

As one above. Note, one County does not have an article. --Bduke (talk) 05:32, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * support - to reduce the 'self-advertising' linkaging that has been taking place, and to generally improve the quality and neutrality of the articles (there's more than one Scouting programme in the region). I've started a draft at User:Horus_Kol/Sandbox -- Horus Kol Talk 10:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have merged these articles into a single one at User:Horus Kol/Sandbox - almost all of the information is there (except for the Groups), but what I've edited during the merge really isn't necessary. Some other information in the county articles has been added elsewhere (for example, H007 is included in Scouting 2007 Centenary). What's next? -- Horus Kol Talk 13:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Excellent. I suggest we leave it for a while, before putting it in place. The merge tags have only been on the articles for 3 days. We should give people time to comment, although I am not optimistic as comment so far is sparse. I think maybe early next week we can move it into place along with a couple above. Care to start another one? --Bduke (talk) 22:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I have done the merge. Many thanks to Horus Kol for the draft. --Bduke (talk) 05:18, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge of South West England
The proposal as above is to merge Avon Scout County (The Scout Association), Cornwall Scout County (The Scout Association), Devon Scout County (The Scout Association)· Dorset Scout County (The Scout Association), Gloucestershire Scout County (The Scout Association), Somerset Scout County (The Scout Association), Wiltshire Scout County (The Scout Association) to Scouting in South West England covering South West England.

As one above, but note that two Counties does not have an article. --Bduke (talk) 05:42, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Support obviously as nominator. I have started a draft of the new article at User:Bduke/Sandbox5. Since this one had two Counties without an article, I thought it best to start this one before the very last one. --Bduke (talk) 01:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I have done the merge. I still have to fix some redirects. This is the last for England. --Bduke (talk) 07:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

That is all the English regions done, so there is now no reason for further edits here. With Wales and Northern Ireland done, there now only remains Scotland. I will be proposing that all Regions/Area articles in Scotland will be merged to Scouting in Scotland with the discussion on Talk:Scouting in Scotland. This will overwrite the redirect currently at Scouting in Scotland. --Bduke (talk) 09:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)