A quick story:
When I was a freshman on the team, I got really involved during build season, so I had never even been to an off-season competition or gone to kick-off. At Drexel, my first regional, is was given the job of "scout" along with some little sheets of categories. Other than that, i had free reign. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing; at one point, I even asked a few teams, "Do you have a human player?" (Add that to your terrible questions list) As I went along, I got angry or exasperated looks from some people and helpful hints from others, and by the end of Thursday I understood what exactly I was supposed to be doing. On Friday and Saturday, I was able to be a (semi) good scout.
Now, it could be said that it was terrible of my team to leave me, poor freshman, on my own to figure out scouting. But I disagree. I made a lot of great friends and contacts, regardless of my embarrassment as I realized the stupidity of some of the questions I had asked, and I had a lot of fun. The freedom I was given made me fall in love with robotics. I learned through experience, which is exactly what FIRST is about.
I'm not saying that giving scouts a book and nothing else is the way to go. On my team, we have small "squads" of scouts, who all have different topics to talk about with other teams, some of which aren't even robot related. However, they don't have specific questions. We recognize that it really isn't important to know how many wheels a robot has, or what their exact speed in feet per second is. What is important is that our girls, especially the rookies, are out there learning as they go and having fun.
"Bad" scouts don't deserve all this. Most likely, they are new and learning. Just because they don't know exactly what they're talking about does NOT mean they are not spirited or passionate. If someone berates them for not knowing, though, it's likely they won't become passionate. Perhaps it is just a job to keep people busy, but I personally can't think of a better job to give people just standing around than to go out and learn.
Plus, look at me. I went from a clueless scout my first day of competition to President and 1st driver of my team. I'd call that an improvement through experience.
(Sorry for the long post, didn't realize I had that much to say.)