Yak Herder

Varsity Scouting (Boy Scouts of America)

You made substantial additions to Varsity Scouting (Boy Scouts of America). The material has no references and quite overwhelms the rest of the article. We need to work on cutting this down and adding reliable sources. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:40, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

As you have figured out by now, interviews you have made are original research. The only way we can include content based on interviews is to have it published by a reliable source, then we can summarize it here. There really is no way around this. Without citations, I can't tell how much is based on interviews, nor can I tell how the material holds together without that content. I recommend that we move that content to a subpage on your account such as User:Yak Herder/History of Varsity Scouting. You can then work on the references and do other cleanup and polishing without a lot of interference. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:48, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Did I do the indent-thing correctly? Everything is new.

This line break thing is a pain in the neck. Why doesn't "enter" suffice?

Here's what I could establish with sources other than interviews:
Origins
1. Dr. Mortensen's biographical information, Deseret Morning News, Sunday, June 12, 2005
2. Information on the Aaronic Priesthood (which probably should be deleted), a plethora of LDS publications Program Development
1. Some biographical information, BSA records?
2. Five Fields (which are listed later in the Wiki and should be deleted), Varsity Scout Guidebook, Boy Scouts of America, 2000, ISBN 0-8395-4827-3 (I have every version, even a draft copy of the 1st Varsity Scout Handbook)
3. Operation On Target, http://www.ontargetbsa.org/history.htm (I know, weak source, but...)
Pre-Pilot
1. LDS Church's General Scouting Committee action, Internal memorandum from Young Men General Presidency to Elder Marion D. Hanks dated October 3rd, 1977.
2. Participating Councils, BSA records?
3. Catherall Dissertation, published and available as noted (just not properly footnoted) Pilot Program
1. Participating Councils, Varsity Scouting Leader's Guidebook, Boy Scouts of America, 1978, ISBN 0-8395-7811-3
2. Uniform stuff, same and current Guidebook noted above
Official Program
1. Adoption by LDS Church, Internal memorandum from President Benson to local leaders dated September 23, 1983 and Ensign Magazine as noted (again, not properly footnoted)
Program Evolution and Decline
1. Everything other than the information on the Church's use of Exploring can be tied back to the current BSA material. The rest could be found in Church literature. I have a good collection covering that subject, but not what would be needed.

BTW, I looked over your User:page and your Scouting library. Very nice. I saw old Boy Scout Handbooks, but not so many Scoutmaster's Handbooks. Dude, you gotta check them out. The stuff from the 30's through the 50's was really excellent. Especially the 2-volume edition from 1936 (Vol 1) and 1937 (Vol 2). Fire up your eBay account. They're still relatively inexpensive and worth reading.

You have the indents correct. You do not need the breaks: just use enter twice to separate paragraphs. For bullets, start the line with "*" and they will automatically break; for number lists, use "#". See WP:CHEAT for more.

In addition to all of the standard guidelines listed in that big welcome at the top, we have guidelines for writing Scouting articles; see WP:SCOUTMOS. A tutorial on references is at WP:S-REF. My Scouting library list started as a way to list everything in citation template format so I could copy and paste them into articles. We share our library lists at WP:S-RES (these short links are handy shortcuts that redirect to the full page).

If you use FireFox as your browser, let me know and I will key you into all the handy add-ons that make editing easier. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:54, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I worked through what I could. It's a little shorter and now shows some references.

I looked through the tutorial information. It was very helpful. Thanks for the tips. Let me know where to go next.

I do use Firefox and I'm interested in the add-ons you mentioned.

--Yak Herder (talk) 22:52, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Go to Special:Preferences → Gadgets. You can turn on all sorts of nifty tools here. refTools adds a cite button to the toolbar above the edit window. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:10, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I see the format change to the reference. Shouldn't it say "(1978)" rather than "(1984)"? At that point in time, the only edition that existed was the "Draft Copy" for piloting the program.--Yak Herder (talk) 15:44, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Check my user page. I added some of my Scouting library. How do I use it to make citations more quickly? Also, do we still need the tag on the Varsity Article indicating it needs references? What's the next step? --Yak Herder (talk) 01:31, 18 October 2008 (UTC)