Talk:Scouting in South West England

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I was disappointed to see that this article has had all the useful information gutted from it. It used to contain a complete listing of groups in each District, a number of which I had updated. This list was clear, easy to read and was extremely useful for driving interested parents and volunteers to the appropriate group websites. Moving this info to Scoutwiki is all well and good but most people attempting to find out about scouting are going to be using Wikipedia.

I was actually stunned to find out that the person who made all these changes doesn't even live in this hemisphere. How about people refrain from ruining useful recruitment tools for other people and stick to pages that relate to their own communities! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.68.211 (talk) 21:53, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * See WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Frankly I think the article has scope to be cut down even further. --TimTay (talk) 22:04, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

In response to the IP editor, yes, I do live in Australia but I was involved in Scouting in the UK many years ago. But so what? WP is an international operation. I would add that there have been plenty of opportunities for UK editors to take a broad view of UK Scouting articles, but they have in recent times only edited stuff about their own back yard. This article has not had the list of Groups etc removed. They were never here. They were on individual County articles that were merged after a long discussion on the Scouting Project. As TimTay says they were just a directory. They were not properly sourced and changes, such as adding or deleting a Group were not sourced. WP is NOT intended to be a recruitment tool. I agree with TimTay about cutting the article down. It is disappointing that almost all activity on these region articles such as this one is about list of Gang Shows and the information on campsites. Where is the history, and the details of the impact of Scouting on the community? We are writing an encyclopedia. Please join us in that endeavor. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  23:20, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Not a satisfactory article
I find this article deeply unsatisfactory. The information for individual counties is split between various sections within the article, which makes it much harder for both readers interested in Scouting in a particular area, and for editors with information to add. The "official regions" of the UK are used by almost nobody except government, and are largely irrelevant for Scouting matters. I would suggest as a first step re-arranging this article into county-by-county subsections, which could then be the destinations of the various county redirects which currently have to point to the article as a whole. DuncanHill (talk) 14:12, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I was responsible for gaining consensus on the creation of this article and all the others on regions. This was after we were seeing a real weakness in the county/area articles which had existed, and were nothing much more than a directory of Groups. There was also a strong view that we should move away from using geographic sub-units of the Scout Association. Both now and in the past, the Scout Association has not been the only scouting association. This article for example should have a section on the BPSA in this region, and it should mention other past associations and their presence in the region in the history section. This is about all Scout Associations, but not, unfortunately, Guides. Guides have their own regional structure which does not match the regions of the SA or the government regions. In Australia, in contrast, we are able to work on the States and Territories and have articles that cover both Scouting and Guiding. I split off the camp sites because I felt that perhaps there were some that were not run by the SA and perhaps some that were also used by the BPSA. I gather the latter is not correct as the SA bans all cooperation with the BPSA. I also split off the Gang Shows as they are sometimes a joint Scout/Guide activity. Whether we move in the various camp sites and gang shows under the County headings is something that should be uniform across the region articles, including Scotland, Wales and NI. We need also to be sensitive to describing associations other than the SA. Scouting in East of England is a good example of coverage of several different associations. So the discussion should be moved elsewhere, but let us leave it here for a while. A lot of the earlier discussion is at Talk:Scouting and Guiding in England, but I think there is some in the Project archives. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  22:04, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Couple of quick points - SA does not ban all cooperation with the BPSA, haven't a clue where you got that idea - they're treated the same as any other independent youth group. I see no reason to worry about Guiding being treated entirely separately - entirely separate organization, different structures, programme and ethos. While I agree that we need to be sensitive in describing the minor (non-SA) associations, I feel that the article as it stands gives them undue weight considering their low membership and limited number of groups. I would really appreciate links to the prior discussions, as I was unable to find them when I looked after posting here earlier. DuncanHill (talk) 22:43, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Some of the discussion is at Talk:Scouting and Guiding in England as I mentioned above. Some is at the link below the blocks of links for the merge proposals themselves. I have just corrected the link to the archive where it now is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Archive 2008. There are other discussion in that 2008 archive. Sorry, I do not have enough time to give specific links. You will see a lot of discussion about the BPSA there. As to the SA banning cooperation, I was thinking of SA members being stopped attending the BPSA run Jamboree 2008 (Northumberland). You are right about them being able to use SA camp sites like other organisations, but is that cooperation? -- Bduke    (Discussion)  00:04, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Were SA members stopped from attending? Our article says the opposite. I did, some years ago, attend a county (SA) jamboree which had BPSA Scouts camping alongside SA Scouts. Thanks for the links, I will look at them over the next few days. DuncanHill (talk) 00:12, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Our article says that it was hoped to involve WOSM members and then later states "Although the Scout Association decided not to support the event, they also did not issue a blocking statement, so a number of SA members attended". However the reference given there has the CC saying "I have been informed that the Baden Powell Scouts are planning on holding a “Jamboree” near Humshaugh this summer. The web-site advertising the camp implies that this is a joint event with The Scout Association, Guiding UK and the World Organisation of Scout Movements. This is NOT the case. BP Scouts are a dissident organisation with which the Scout Association will not become involved. As members of The Scout Association we will not participate in this or any other BP Scouts event". I do not find that very friendly. DiverScout said something about this somewhere. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  01:01, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, if they advertised it as a joint event when it wasn't, they weren't being very good Scouts. A CC doesn't have the ability to issue such a directive (though I'm sure some of them think they do). Still doesn't address my point about this article giving undue emphasis to tiny organisations (this may well be a problem with other Scouting in the UK articles). DuncanHill (talk) 01:21, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * As for the merge "discussions" at Talk:Scouting and Guiding in England, I'm very sorry to have to say this but it looks like two or three editors just deciding to do what they had already decided to do. DuncanHill (talk) 00:18, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you need to study it carefully and look for other discussions. The views of many of us changed as the debate went on. Others joined in elsewhere. That discussion was in a prominent place for Scouting editors. The problem has always been that there are few of them in the UK. I do not think we can go back to pure SA articles on counties or SA regions - they come under "chapters of organisations". I am however open to change if we can get a wider debate. We do however have to look at the wider question of how Scouting is reported for the areas of other countries, so there is some consistency. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  01:01, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see the need to report in the same way for different countries. To return to the current article, it is not laid out in a manner helpful to the reader or to the editor. That is vastly more important than fitting some "one size fits all" masterplan. My suggestion, of re-organizing this article into county sections, with the incoming redirects from the former county articles going directly to the county sections here, strikes me as better for both the reader and the editor, who are thus more likely to encounter what they were expecting rather than some irrelevant information about a completely different part of the country. You may not be aware of this, but the governmental regions are virtually unknown to people in England, certainly they do not impinge visibly on any aspect of everyday life. Counties are both more visible and more memorable. Most will know roughly where any given county is in the country, but almost no-one will be aware of which Government Regional Office said county will fall under (even a local government policy-wonk like me gets hazy on them). You say that there is a problem with a lack of UK Scouting editors. Articles laid out like this one will not encourage any more to start editing. People do not think in regions. They think in their town or village, then their county. As I said at the beginning of this thread, this article as it stands does no good for either editor or reader. DuncanHill (talk) 01:21, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

First, I did not say that we need to "report in the same way for different countries". I said we need to look at the wider question, if for no other reason than that all other members of the Scouting Project know what we are doing. However, we do need to treat all 9 articles about Scouting in England, along with the similar articles for Scotland, Wales and NI, in the same way. Second, I am well aware that "the governmental regions are virtually unknown to people in England". They are just a convenient way to break up the country as England would be too large. What would you suggest otherwise? Counties will not do. Scout counties do not always aline with government counties. Scout counties are just SA. As I mentioned, chapters of organisations have dificulty in justifying articles. There are also far too many. Anyway, I get the message that you do not like it. Before, we make any changes, you need to make clear what you think the purpose of the article is. The consensus was clear that it is not just about the Scout Association, although of course the bulk of the material will be about the SA. I think the lede and a history section should be general. I am sure that people in one county will be happy to learn about the history in nearby counties. I do not support splitting the history section into the county sections. If there is wider support to move the camp site and gang show material into the county sections, for all 12 articles, then of course I will support it. However I do not support doing it on just this one article. I am going to open up a new section at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting and point to it from the talk pages of all 12 region articles and maybe some other UK Scouting articles. Let us see what others think. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  09:02, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I have opened up a wider discussion on this topic at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting, so please do not add to the discussion here. I will add a note to the talk pages of all the other 11 region articles, but it may take a while. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  09:24, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that this is a less-than-great article, as the internal boundaries of The Scout Association appear to be being employed to describe the geographic spread of Scouting in the area. As these are unknown to most people outside of TSA and do not alway agree with real boundaries I would agree that these should be rewritten to cover the national geopolitical boundaries.  Whether these county articles were stand-alone articles on geopolitical counties (as they were before they were hijacked as TSA Counties), or were re-directs into dedicated sections of the exisiting regional pages would not make many odds to me.
 * As to coverage of non-TSA Scouting, this should be covered in an encyclopedia article. Covering only one association implies that there is only one, which is PoV if not direct advertising, and I feel that it would be challenged on an ongoing basis.
 * Having sat on both sides of the fence I would say that in several (but not all, by any means) areas the treatment of non-TSA Scouts is far below the manner in which other youth groups are treated. As the other article says, Jamboree 2008 was established independent of association, although the originators mostly came from the B-PSA.  I'd argue that the cited letter from the CC says a lot more about being a "not very good scout" than an open attempt to build bridges within the family, although I guess it may have been written from a basis of minunderstanding of the event.  The refusal to allow B-PSA Scouts to purchase certificates or badges for completing the nearby Baden-Powell Walk makes me wonder, though. DiverScout (talk) 16:39, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

The lede
An IP editor has twice edited the lede to state that the second sentence only reads as "It is represented by the "Scout Association", making no reference to other Scouting organisations however minor. The situation is this. There is clear consensus that articles about a part of a country should not be about one organisation only. All other UK regional articles have a similar wording that mentions other organisations. For the first reason, these articles are not about Scouting in the Scout Association regions but about Scouting in the official government regions. However, I have no idea whether any Scout association other than the Scout Association is active in this region, although it seems likely that a few are. Even if none exist, there should be a mention of the possibility, but a change in wording might be appropriate. To the IP editor, I hope you now understand the situation, but if you still have concerns, please discuss them here. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  07:21, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * B-PSA groups in this region include 1st Upavon, 3rd Wiltshire, 5th Wiltshire, 6th Wiltshire Kiwis, Lyme Bay and Wye Valley - so, yes, I do think that the association is represented in this area. DiverScout (talk) 20:21, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. Do you have a source so we can add something about the B-PSA presence in the SW? That might convince the IP editor. He has been removing it again with a diffferent IP address, so there is no point in writing on his talk page. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  07:54, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Only the B-PSA directory. Some of the groups may have an individual web presence. DiverScout (talk) 18:28, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Scouting in South West England. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20051215173355/http://scouts.org.uk:80/magazine/AugSep05/augsep05_p28.htm to http://www.scouts.org.uk/magazine/AugSep05/augsep05_p28.htm

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