Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Boy Scouts of America/archive2

Boy Scouts of America

Nominator: --—— Gadget850 (Ed)

previous FAC

• Featured article candidates/Boy Scouts of America/archive1
• Featured article candidates/Boy Scouts of America/archive2

Self-nominator --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:10, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Restart, old nom. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• 'Units are led entirely by volunteers, supported by local councils using both paid professionals and volunteers." - comma -> "and"?
• "The YMCA was an early promoter of social welfare and other reforms involving young men that focused on programs of mental, physical, social and religious development." could be better phrased as "The YMCA was an early promoter of reforms involving young men, such as social welfare, that focused in programs of mental, physical, social and religious development." The former could be misread more easily, methinks.
• Does the MOS have anything on U.S. versus US? Seems to me that every other acronym in the article is sans periods.
• "the Woodcraft Indians started by Ernest Thompson Seton in 1902,[7] and the Sons of Daniel Boone founded by Daniel Carter Beard in 1905." - why the serial comma? It's only two items in a list.
• "Several small local Scouting programs for boys started independently in the U.S. soon after— most of these later merged with the BSA after it was formed." - is the "after it was formed" really necessary? It's fairly obvious that it couldn't merge with anything before it came into existence.
• '"... to teach [boys] patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred values ..."' - I'm fairly sure the ellipses after the phrase aren't needed. Additionally, the other two quotes don't have ellipses before them, either, and I'm fairly sure consistency should be maintained.
• "Later, in 1937, Deputy Chief Scout Executive George J. Fisher expressed the BSA's mission, "Each generation as it comes to maturity has no more important duty than that of teaching high ideals and proper behavior to the generation which follows"" - should the comma after "mission" not be a semicolon?
• "These policies are controversial and are considered by some to be unfair." - the reference is to an organisation which considers exactly that. "Some" is vague and isn't really upheld by the reference.
• "The organization's legal right to have these policies has been upheld repeatedly by both state and federal courts." - in the reference given, only three cases are described, and only one can really be described as upholding the legal right mentioned in the article.

More later, possibly. Interesting reference style, by the way. Nousernamesleft (talk) 21:40, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

• Reply
  • 'Units are led entirely by volunteers, supported by local councils using both paid professionals and volunteers." - comma -> "and"?
    • Changed comma to "who are"
  • "The YMCA was an early promoter of social welfare and other reforms involving young men that focused on programs of mental, physical, social and religious development." could be better phrased as "The YMCA was an early promoter of reforms involving young men, such as social welfare, that focused in programs of mental, physical, social and religious development." The former could be misread more easily, methinks.
    • Changed to "The YMCA was an early promoter of reforms for young men with a focus on social welfare and programs of mental, physical, social and religious development."
  • Does the MOS have anything on U.S. versus US? Seems to me that every other acronym in the article is sans periods.
    • Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations), U.S. more common in American English.
  • "the Woodcraft Indians started by Ernest Thompson Seton in 1902,[7] and the Sons of Daniel Boone founded by Daniel Carter Beard in 1905." - why the serial comma? It's only two items in a list.
    • Fixed
  • "Several small local Scouting programs for boys started independently in the U.S. soon after— most of these later merged with the BSA after it was formed." - is the "after it was formed" really necessary? It's fairly obvious that it couldn't merge with anything before it came into existence.
    • Fixed.
  • '"... to teach [boys] patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred values ..."' - I'm fairly sure the ellipses after the phrase aren't needed. Additionally, the other two quotes don't have ellipses before them, either, and I'm fairly sure consistency should be maintained.
    • Fixed.
      • Comment: As this is a quotation fragment, I believe the article did comply with WP:ELLIPSES in its original version, to indicate that portions of the original quotation were omitted. Also, with regard to the Fisher quote (below), it is customary in American English to introduce the speaker's or writer's quotation with a comma (or sometimes a colon), not a semicolon. JGHowes ^talk - 04:49, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
  • "Later, in 1937, Deputy Chief Scout Executive George J. Fisher expressed the BSA's mission, "Each generation as it comes to maturity has no more important duty than that of teaching high ideals and proper behavior to the generation which follows"" - should the comma after "mission" not be a semicolon?
    • Fixed.

--—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 02:49, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - I'm a little confused about this article still, but I think that it has improved over the course of this FAC. I still would like to have those 2007 membership figures instead of 2006. Changed to neutral, if that's possible for an FA. :) --Meldshal (§peak to me) 18:08, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Reply If you have specific concerns, please list them— if you are confused, others may be as well. I finally found the full 2007 numbers with a bit of help, so this has been updated. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:00, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

• Strong support It's even better than the last time!Sumoeagle179 (talk) 21:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose - A lot of my points on the previous FAC have not been addressed. Besides that, the final comment about their being a large amount of literature on the BSA not being included needs to be remedied. A lot of the references are primary, which isn't the best. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:25, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Would you mind listing what concerns are still outstanding? I think there is some confusion over that. The BSA refs are mostly about internal organization on the BSA and BSA is pretty much the sole source for that info. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)