Talk:Exploring (Learning for Life)

Name

Currently the article title is Exploring (Boy Scouts of America), but Exploring is under Learning for Life, not BSA. Should we:

1. Change it to Exploring (Learning for Life) and change the catgory from BSA to LFL
2. Leave it be
3. Split it into two articles, pre- and post-LFL

1 is my recommendation. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 04:57, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

3 is my recommendation, more or less -- Exploring was around long before LFL and has many aspects besides what is now part of LFL (Air Scouts, Sea Scouts, pre-Venturing Exlorers, career posts, etc). I'm not sure what you mean by LFL category--we don't have one that I see and how many articles would go into such a cat? We could make an Exploring cat and put all such articles in it. If we have a LFL cat, what would it encompass besides Exploring and an LFL article? The modern Venturing program is nothing other than a re-named Exploring program (part of the mass confusion of all this) as many pre-Venturing Explorer Posts were high-adventure oriented. In short, I think LFL should mention Exploring as a summary, but the large Explorering article split off from there. Rlevse 12:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

PS We still don't even have a LFL article. It's been on our todo list since the beginning. Rlevse 12:29, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I've been looking at this off and on. We should create at least a stub. It does beg the question: should LFL be under the BSA cat?

I'd say yes because LFL is a BSA program (national), but not part of the pack/troop/crew/team realm. Rlevse 14:16, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I propose that the name of the article be changed to Learning for Life. Exploring and the school based programs can then be made sections of that article.[1] --Jagz 16:13, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I have some questions before I know how I feel about this. Does "Exploring" still exist as an entity within BSA? I cannot tell from the article. Are posts still extant? If so, are they for Exploring or Learning for Life or both? Is Learning for Life part of BSA? It seems so, from what I read, but I am uncertain. Unschool 16:36, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there are still explorer posts, mostly career oriented ones.Rlevse 16:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

2. OPPOSE change - Exploring has enough tenure and size to stand alone as a subject area. New Wikipedia users would have a more difficult time finding the subject area.Patchbook 01:30, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Logo

Since Exploring is not a traditional membership program, it does not use use any Scouting emblems. The "Big E" with the Scout universal emblem is the logo used prior to 1998; current logos use the same emblems, but without the Scout logo. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 10:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

News articles

• Steinhauer, Jennifer (2008-05-13). "Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More". The New York Times. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

Sources

The article has two sources:

• http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Falls/8826/explorerscouts.html&date=2009-10-25+11:51:16
• http://www.scouting.org/media/mediakit/ataglance.aspx

The first one appears to be a self-published source. The second one only gives membership numbers. While iot isn't cited, this link would qualify as a reliable source:

• http://www.learningforlife.org/exploring/

However its contents are quite different from this article. The NYT article above would also abe a good source for new material. I'm going to move the Geocities site to an external link (it hardly qualifies even there but it's a stop-gap). Then I'll mark the history section as unsourced. If it isn't sourced after a decent interval anyone may delete it.   Will Beback  talk  08:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

You're correct that the program described at that learningforlife.org site is not really what this article is about, but see Learning for Life, which is. I never knew we had both articles until I stumbled across your comment. They overlap quite a bit, and probably should either be merged, or the material re-allocated between the two different articles, one on Exploring (including the history of the pre-1998 Exploring program as well as what Exploring is today) and another on Learning for Life. Unfortunately, the histories themselves overlap. I also notice that the History section at Learning for Life seems pretty light on sources itself. Unfortunately, the whole subject is pretty confusing, resulting partly from the BSA's own less-than-perfectly-consistent use of terminology in this area. Neutron (talk) 15:29, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

http://www.learningforlife.org/exploring/ is already included in the infobox, and can be used as a primary source for certain facts. The article has a fair overview of Exploring history, but needs a lot on the current program. We split this out some time back as Exploring does have a history separate from LfL. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Emblems

• Flight Attendant, Ground Support, Mechanic [2]

recent changes

Recent changes to names and titles must be sourced. Exploring has existed since the 1940s and it has often been commonly referred to as Explorer Scouts--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 09:14, 4 February 2018 (UTC)