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Boy Scouts of America has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones Date Process Result June 30, 2006 WikiProject A-class review Approved February 17, 2007 Good article nominee Listed June 28, 2007 Featured article candidate Not promoted June 19, 2008 Good article reassessment Kept July 26, 2008 Featured article candidate Not promoted January 4, 2010 WikiProject A-class review Demoted A fact from this article was featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on June 15, 2004. Current status: Good article

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A fact from this article was featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the On this day section on February 8, 2010 and February 8, 2011.

Membership controversy: update

According to website PinkNews (17th July 2012):-

"US: Boy Scouts will keep ban on gay people"

The Boy Scouts of America has announced it will retain its ban on gay members, volunteers and staff.

Bob Mazzuca, chief scout executive, said: “The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers, and at the appropriate time and in the right setting.

“While a majority of our membership agrees with our policy, we fully understand that no single policy will accommodate the many diverse views among our membership or society.”

There is discussion which includes this at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Scouting#Sponsorship_of_BSA_units North8000 (talk) 14:55, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussion Page Is More Informative

I would like to also comment on the article in that the discussion page tends to be more informative than the actual article page insofar as the contemporary Boy Scouts of America. There is a great deal of information missing in the article which makes the article fairly irrelevant. The Boy Scouts of America of 20 years ago is nothing like the Boy Scouts of America today. The Mormon Christianic organization has pretty much taken over the BSofA at the National Level to the point where hatred and bigotry has swamped the otherwise good and beneficial BSofA that used to exist.

Scout Leaders across the country lament this problem, in fact, and discussions held on Scout forums such as on LinkedIn routinely have Scout Leaders asking members of the forums what can be done to try to wrest the organization from the brink of extinction caused by religious extremism "hijacking" the organization. Membership is dropping even as world-wide condemnation of the organization increases -- which is unfair to the boys who wish to learn and camp and hike without the baggage of the oppressive bigotries and hatreds that their parents' religious leaders wish to impose.

Has there been a problem with updating the article to be more informative and inclusive of contemporary information about the national organization? It seems highly likely that cult followers will oppose any updates which cover and reference what the organization has become. The article will have to remain a description of what the organization used to be since it seems likely that any informative update that brings the article up-to-date will be challenged, reversed, and vandalized.

On the other hand the problems with the organization tend to exist at the National Level, not the Troop Level so much. At the Troop Level things are quite a bit different depending upon the specific cult that charters a Troop. The core ideologies of hatred, bigotry, and division that we see advocated at the National Level is seen mirrored at the Troop Level perhaps half of the time, with half of the Troops and their leaders obeying the hate-centric dictates and policies of their National leaders, but the other half clinging to the core beneficial, love-inspired aspects of the BSofA as they used to exist prior to the organization's take-over by right wing religious zealots.

I should note that I don't wish to offend anyone, discussion about religious-motivated hatred, bigotry, and division can be done in an adult fashion with calm reason. To be sure the article here does not need to be complete yet if it's to be an historic examination in to what the organization used to be, it might be reasonable to note the fact that the article here is very much historic rather than contemporary. Damotclese (talk) 20:17, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

This sounds more like an implausible personal opinion rant rather than any potential source material to be added. Do you have any wp:reliably sourced material that you are proposing to add? North8000 (talk) 20:34, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Bottom line: reliable sources. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  23:52, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, just off the top of my head Penn & Teller: Bullshit! did a whole episode on the topic. (S4E1) I dunno if it qualifies as a "reliable source" but it proves Damotclese isn't just pulling it out of thin air. 64.83.197.250 (talk) 07:53, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I have seen the P&T episode— while it touches on these topics, in my opinion it is not a reliable source. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  12:31, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Nobody said anything about thin air. I think that all of that mis-sumarization/exagggeration/ranting grew from actual opinions of some people. Which in turn grew from the actual "no avowed atheists" policy, the now-disappeared policy against avowed homosexuals in leadership positions, and cases of enforcement of both. North8000 (talk) 11:35, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Recently added "whistles" external link

Considering the shortness of the list and the broad scope of items on it, this entry may be too specialized for adding here. North8000 (talk) 12:14, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Recent changes in lead / state of lead

First, as a sidebar, the recent changes back and forth in the lead caused me to take a closer look at the lead overall. I think that it may need a look overall that it represents a summary of the overall article. Right now it seems to just cover some selected items, some of them very narrow. This is a wide ranging 100+ year old multi-million person organization, so there is a lot of material.

That leads to noting that about 20% of the lead is currently devoted membership requirement related controversies/court case etc. If not too much, this may be borderline. One of the two big problems with the most recent (reverted) insertion was that it makes the percentage of the lead devoted to this narrow area even larger.

The second challenge with the reverted addition to the lead is that such an attempt to create a brief personal summary of the current policies (including the qualifiers on the exclusions and which parts of BSA they do and don't apply to) is inevitably innacurate, probably syntheses, and very prone to spin.

Other than IMO the recent major attempted changes to the lead are not good/beneficial, I'm not sure of the answers, just some of the questions. Again, this the top level article on a wide ranging 100+ year old multi-million person organization, with lots of sub-articles, so we have to be judicious about the amount of coverage what gets in the article and doubly so for the the lead. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:10, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

We are a global encyclopaedia. From a global Scouting perspective, rather than just an American one, what makes Scouting in America notable is precisely its very conservative and blatantly discriminatory approach to membership. American Scouting people may not like the image, but it is a sad reality that their position is an extreme one within the global Scouting movement. Many see it as a breach of the basic principles of Scouting. This global encyclopaedia needs to highlight that, rather than just taking the perspective of American Scouting supporters. HiLo48 (talk) 22:42, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with HiLo, but suggest that the discriminatory approach to membership is what makes the BSA most notable, in our WP terms, in the USA also. There seems to have been a lot of recent press notice about the latest announcement that the BSA is not changing its policy. Of course the BSA does lots of other things and they are good things, but these will get noticed in the local press for local events, not the national press. I have no problem with the change that was being proposed, as it addresses this very notable activity within the USA about the BSA. --Bduke (Discussion) 01:18, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I locked the article for 24 hours due to the edit warring. Please make specific proposals here. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  01:26, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know enough about the global Scouting movement's perception of American scouting to know whether discrimination is part of BSA's international image, but I rather think that it forms part of its American image. That said, my main concern here is that we toss the SCOTUS case into the lede with no context - it's all very well to say wooo! free association! but it's downright weird and possibly POV to suppress the content of the membership controversies. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:10, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

We need to do this right and not suppress anything. My main concerns are accuracy of any summary and weight for the article and for the lead. Also even though I reverted the removal of the SCOTUS sentence, I did that because it took away half of a two sentence item; I don't necessarily say that the SCOTUS sentence should be in the lead, but it probably should be there if that overall topic is covered there because it is very salient/notable with respect to that topic. We should work out something here in talk. North8000 (talk) 11:26, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Since there seems to be some consensus that it doesn't belong in the lead, I moved it. 24.45.42.125 (talk) 00:22, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

You went to the most problematic version, including truncating half of the two sentence coverage where the halves are dependent on each other. Again, let's develop what we want to do in talk. North8000 (talk) 00:56, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

While not too thrilled about the process (I think we needed to develop it in talk first) the most recent change does leave what's left in the lead as a complete thought. North8000 (talk) 13:14, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Looks like we've reached a compromise. Still-24-45-42-125 (talk) 17:45, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmmmmm. It's pretty shallow. It says nothing about who those "critics" are. The mention of litigation and federal courts is all about America, not the global situation. It's all parochial. The issue of ignoring what the rest of the world thinks is now both the problem with the BSA, and with the article. HiLo48 (talk) 18:12, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

How would you improve it? Still-24-45-42-125 (talk) 18:16, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Sex abuse

I'd like to give North800 a chance to explain why they believe this is undue. Still-24-45-42-125 (talk) 05:46, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Because we have an entire article on this subject: Boy Scouts of America membership controversies. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  09:03, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

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