- Hardware: Desktop web
- OS: Windows 10
- Chrome Version 98.0.4758.82 (Official Build) (64-bit)
- Browser cache has been cleared
- Every merit badge counselor with more than 256 characters of merit badge names in every council
You’re welcome
This bug exists both in the my.scouting “council merit badge counselor list” report AND in Scoutbook’s “download current mbcdetails.csv” function.
For the council MBC list:
my.scouting | menu | (council) | roster > reports | council merit badge counselor listing | run > export to CSV
For scoutbook:
scoutbook.com | my dashboard > Administration | manage approved merit badge counselor list > download the current mbcdetails.csv file
The problem exists because we have merit badges (one at the moment) with commas in the name. In particular Signs, Signals, and Codes.
For example, given this list of MBs from either of the above reports, how many merit badges are listed:
Theater, Signs, Signals, and Codes, Safety
If you go by the commas, you’d say 5:
- Theater
- Signs
- Signals
- and Codes
- Safety
If you happen to know the names of the merit badges and go out of your way to process the data and try to band-aid fix the bug, you’d say 3:
- Theater
- Signs, Signals, and Codes
- Safety
Best practice in computer science, data processing, or, in fact, just in plain old English grammar, is NOT to use a separator that also occurs in the list. In elementary school English class we were taught that if your list contains a comma you use a semicolon between list elements.
The proper solution, in my opinion, is to fix BOTH reports to use a separator that is not included in the data. For example, the pipe character (|) is a common choice. You could also use semicolon (
or any other character that is not included in the data itself.
This problem has been reported previously and never fixed.
