I noticed an error in totaling up camping nights using scoutbook. To be eligible you need 15 nights of camping over two years. Scoutbook OA report excludes all long term nights except the first 5 in its camping total. For instance, if you attended two summer camps but 5 nights each, it only includes one, ignores the other. Why doesn’t it include the second one at a max two nights? Seems like it should be able to count. It’s still a camping event. Anyone else see this or have a thought on this? I’ve had scouts go to a second week of summer camp as provisional (not with our troop). Even if you went in 2018, and 2019 shouldn’t you still get credit for 2 nights in 2018 and 5 nights in 2019?
" * Have experienced 15 nights of Scout camping while registered with a troop, crew, or ship within the two years immediately prior to the election. The 15 nights must include one, but no more than one, long-term camp consisting of at least five consecutive nights of overnight camping, approved and under the auspices and standards of the Boy Scouts of America. Only five nights of the long-term camp may be credited toward the 15-night camping requirement; the balance of the camping (10 nights) must be overnight, weekend, or other short-term camps of, at most, three nights each. Ship nights may be counted as camping for Sea Scouts." Membership | Order of the Arrow, Boy Scouts of America
Only 5 nights of long term count - SB is correctly programmed
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Thanks for the quick response, I understand but seems strange that you can’t even count it As one night or max two. I guess the rules are the rules… thanks for answering the question.
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Long term camping and short term camping can be significantly different experiences. I assume the goal is to make sure they have some of the latter.
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The rules state that you can only count the nights from one long term camping trip for eligibility. everything else must be 3 or less nights each to be eligible to count towards those nights.
The rationale that I was given when I asked our lodge adviser many years ago was that the idea is to encourage a variety of camping experiences, not just all short term or all long term, as @jacobfetzer suggested.
Two days of something like summer camp are much the same as any other days at summer camp (in a broad-brush-stroke way), so limiting the count to five nights from one long-term camp to encourage more short-term camping wouldn’t make sense if you permitted counting up to two nights of additional long-term camping. Consider the boundary case of a scout who only ever goes to summer camp (i.e. long-term campouts). 5 nights from one long-term + 2 nights from each successive summer camp would mean a scout could attend 6 summer camps in two years (1 x 5 nights + 5 x 2 nights) or maybe a mix of summer and winter camps (if such existed), and never go on a weekend outing. That would undermine the goal of requiring both long and short-term camping.
The OA used to have a clarification regarding how a 4-night campout could be counted (count 3 of the 4 nights), which I can no longer find at the OA’s official website. Currently, there is a gap in the algorthim as defined at the link provided by @DonovanMcNeil:
FUNCTION nightCounting (nights)
IF (nights ≤ 3) THEN short_term
ELSEIF (nights ≥ 5) THEN long_term
ENDIF
RETURN
END
nightCounting(4) → ERROR
Hopefully the clarification of 4-nights is “short-term” but you can only count 3 nights comes back soon. It is possible, however, that the OA considers 4 nights “long-term”, and since you can only count one long-term camp but need 5 long-term nights, then the 4 night case is intentionally handled as a no-credit situation.
ETA: Yes, yes I know my syntax is full of errors.
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OA Membership Requirements
Have experienced 15 nights of Scout camping while registered with a troop, crew, or ship within the two years immediately prior to the election. The 15 nights must include one, but no more than one, long-term camp consisting of at least five consecutive nights of overnight camping, approved and under the auspices and standards of the Boy Scouts of America. Only five nights of the long-term camp may be credited toward the 15-night camping requirement; the balance of the camping (10 nights) must be overnight, weekend, or other short-term camps of, at most, three nights each. Ship nights may be counted as camping for Sea Scouts.
Q/A: Camping Requirement Interpretation
A "long-term camp is one consisting of at least six consecutive days and five nights of resident camping. A “short-term camp” is anything less than that.
Read together, a short-term camp is four nights or less, but, a four-night campout can only count as three nights. We asked the OA folks and got confirmation.
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Thanks, @JenniferOlinger. I could see that interpretation, but also the contrary one.
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That’s why we asked for confirmation. 
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Yeah - if y’all had seen the time SUAC spent on this………………… yeah it took a while to understand
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