Talk:Charles L. Thompson and associates

List of works

I'm moving the list of works to this page until it can be verified which of them were actually designed by Arkansas' Charles L. Thompson.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:33, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

What do we do once a work is verified? I don't think this list belongs in this format on Thompson's page. Maybe a List of NRHP listings designed by Charles L. Thompson? Brandonrush Woo pig sooie 18:20, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe Charles L. Thompson Design Collection Thematic Group, which would dodge the question of whether he personally designed each of the listed buildings? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:38, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

There is no specific question raised about any one item that justifies it being removed from the page, much less all of the items. Please discuss issues with any item here. I restored the article and will continue to develop it. It is about an architect and his firms, now stated more explicitly in article (although the use of bolding already should have made that clear). An alternate name for the article, like Charles L. Thompson and associated architectural firms could possibly be argued for. If someone wants that, make a proper RM proposal. Otherwise, please just help develop the article positively. --doncram 18:04, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Further, there is no necessity for a Wikipedia article that contains a list, to be named List of..., and some/many editors dislike such naming. In my view such a name should not be used for this article. The article is not too large that a list of works needs to be split out, and it would not make sense to split such a list away from an article about the architects and their collection of work, either, IMO.

SarekOfVulcan's suggestion above, that an article could be named "Charles L. Thompson Design Collection Thematic Group" could be argued for. After some initial interest in starting articles about National Register MPS/TR (Multiple Property Submission/Thematic Resource) collections, I personally have avoided that, because an article focused on one document seems too artificially limited. It is one Proper Noun study. We don't start an article about every book about architecture. Often an article could be about the topic of the MPS/TR however. So some broader wording could work, I think, as long as it would allow for inclusion of more than just the originally named components in one study. --doncram 18:33, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

questioned items

(I removed a longer list that had been pasted here, as no reason suggested to question their association was given) The following C.L. Thompson items from outside of Arkansas, i am removing from article temporarily until this C.L. Thompson can be confirmed same or not.

• Buffalo Hotel, 111-117 Grant Ave., Garden City, KS (Stevens, J.H.; Thompson, C.L.) NRHP-listed, built 1886 in Italianate style
• Windsor Hotel, 421 N. Main St., Garden City, KS (Stevens,J.H.; Thompson,C.L.) NRHP-listed, built 1887 in Renassance style
• Old Main, Utah State University, Utah State University campus, Logan, UT (Thompson,C.L.; Schaub,Carl S.) NRHP-listed, Campus Gothic style built in 1889

I read the NRHP nomination for the Utah State one which, unfortunately, does not give info to determine same or not. --doncram 18:43, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Considering that Charles L. Thompson was just 18 in 1886, and newly arrived in Little Rock (from Illinois), I think it highly unlikely that he was designing significant buildings in Garden City, Kansas, at that time. --Orlady (talk) 19:51, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Long verbatim quotation removed from article

Once again, I have "commented out" the long verbatim quotation from the National Register document as inappropriate in the context of WP:Quotations -- and essentially a copyvio. Consensus on the inappropriateness of that kind of quotation was established recently at WP:AN.

Additionally, I removed the sentence from the lead paragraph that started "This article is about him..." That kind of self-referential writing is inappropriate for an encyclopedia. It should be possible to establish the article scope without that kind of statement. --Orlady (talk) 20:19, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I'll respond here because Orlady, at the wp:AN discussion she started, complained that I had not responded here. As i said below and at the wp:AN discussion, I actually agree that overly self-referential statements should not be permanently left in a good article. I explained that I make the heavy-handed statement "This article is about..." in order to explain what this article is about. Another editor had been disputing what this article is about, by edits removing the bulk of the article. Sometimes it helps to spell out what an article is about, to help settle down the article.

About quotes, I have commented at the wp:AN and perhaps elsewhere, that explicit quotes about why a place or set of places are NRHP-listed is often extremely appropriate. Other editor(s) at the previous wp:AN discussion that Orlady refers to, agree with me. Quotes are used often in Wikipedia. I don't particularly agree that there was any problem of wp:plagiarism as Orlady has previously alleged, here. It was an explicit quote, giving full credit. Rewriting quotes into paraphrased language introduces possibility of plagiarism though. I have done some rephrasing in the last version of article i edited (which has since been destroyed by removal of entire article body again), which is different, not better. I don't believe that there is any issue of copyvio either. How about we restore the article, then discuss any particular quote you like. --doncram 18:17, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for giving me the courtesy of a reply.

If you are half as smart and creative as I think you probably are, you should be able to write about Mr. Thompson's life and work without resorting to the kind of lazy and plagiarist "writing" exemplified by:

The authors wrote: "The 143 structures selected for nomination exemplify the firm's remarkable versatility and productivity from 1896 through 1931", and "Charles L. Thompson was the constant motivating force behind the firm's immense productivity and influence upon the state's built environment. Today the firm he established continues this legacy."

That is an absolutely false accusation of plagiarism. Take that back! Since full attribution to the writers is given by explicit quoting, it cannot be plagiarism. This has been discussed before. Repetition of such false assertions recklessly seems wp:disruptive, wp:NPA and worse. --doncram 19:18, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I stand by my "lazy and plagiaristic" comment. --Orlady (talk) 19:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

An additional point regarding that particular quotation is that there were 31 other works by Thompson and partners already listed on the NR when that nomination was made, and the survey team reviewed over 2000 other designs as part of their project. In my humble opinion, an article about an architect should be about the totality of that architect's work, not merely about the surviving buildings that had the good fortune of being included in a particular NR nomination document in 1982.

Furthermore, you ought to know that when the wording of the source is "the most prolific architectural firm practicing in Arkansas in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century", you are on thin ice when you write about the "most prolific architectural firm" practicing in Arkansas in the late 1800s and early 1900s without saying who called it "most prolific." If you insist on using the wording from the source, you would be on much less shaky ground if you wrote: what the multiple authors of a 1982 National Register of Historic Places nomination called "the most prolific architectural firm practicing in Arkansas in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century." However, due to the awkwardness of citing that source and the fact there is a substantial volume of detail available that should allow you to use other words to describe Thompson's importance, I think that it makes more sense to avoid the quotation entirely. --Orlady (talk) 19:06, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I think using the explicit quotation was best. Rewording simply to avoid use of quotation, as done by Orlady and/or SarekOfVulcan in some other cases where I think they sought to demonstrate something to me, worked badly. Orlady, go ahead and reword that to be a bit further different from the quotation, if you like. --doncram 19:18, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Doncram, I continue to remind myself that I can find far more productive uses for my time than serving as your personal editor. If you think these topics are important ones to write articles about, then you should care enough to write decent articles that do not infringe on the intellectual property of others. If you don't care to do so, my preference is to delete the offending content (as I have already done repeatedly in this case) or userfy the entire article. Note that your use of quotations was determined to be inappropriate and that selective deletion/userfication were determined to be appropriate responses back at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive224#Doncram NHRP stubs. --Orlady (talk) 19:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous

Edit warring has not improved this article. The version I found this morning was full of contortions, apparently intended to prove that (1) it's possible to write an article about all the architectural works somehow directly or indirectly associated with Mr. Thompson and (2) that the real topic/scope of this article is not Mr. Thompson but rather all firms in some way connected with him over a 120-year period, plus all of their works. That article version was a mess of self-referential statements and direct quotations of simple declarative factual sentences in the sources (not appropriate per WP:Quotations. I don't like to see the determined efforts to WP:OWN this article and disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point. See you all soon over at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. --Orlady (talk) 12:48, 31 July 2011 (UTC) The WP:AN discussion that I started is at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Disruptive behavior at Charles L. Thompson --Orlady (talk) 19:46, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I am disappointed about the determined efforts to strip the article, which should be a non-controversial topic of an architectural group important in Arkansas' history. It seems to me that reasonable editors could discuss the article's focus here at the Talk page, reasonably. --doncram 13:04, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

That's why I have asked for an uninvolved administrator to strip the article back to a version that will not horrify any of us, then full-protect the article while discussion ensues. --Orlady (talk) 13:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I personally would not care terribly about exact wording in the lede/intro to the article, as long as it did not tear out the purpose of the article, which is to explicate the importance and works of an architectural group, as some edits did. I agree, Orlady, that very explicit statement within the article about what the article is about, can seem heavy-handed, and I would prefer for that not to be done. I included some such statement only in order to be clear, given some dispute implicit in removal of the entire list of works of the group. If the basic purpose for the article is clear, such statement can be removed or modified as part of decent, normal editing. I would object principally to removal of the entire list of works of the architectural group. There has been no reasonable objection explained at all here on the talk page. Removal of that, and strict protection of the article, is not warranted and would obviously interfere with reasonable development of the article. Orlady, do you have, yourself, any reason to oppose including the list of works of the group in the article about the group? --doncram 13:37, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Um, because it isn't about the group.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:32, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what to say, really. The article as I developed it is about the architectural group. I suppose that S's insistence here, might best be interpreted as an implicit request to split out a separate article about Charles L. Thompson alone? Is that what you want, S? --doncram 18:17, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Then...why does it have a guy's name as the title of the article? Write about the entity that has the name of the article, or change the name of the article, but don't create an article under one title and then insist that it's about something else. Nyttend (talk) 04:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

The article should not be renamed to "Charles L. Thompson architectural group" because there is no indication that there ever was a "Charles L. Thompson architectural group" (just as there never was a "U.S. Forest Service Architecture Group", but that's another topic). Rather, there was a variety of different sole proprietorships and partnerships during Thompson's career and after his retirement and death, including but probably not limited to Bartlett and Thompson; Thompson and Harding Architects; Cromwell Architects Engineers, Inc.; Thompson, Sanders and Ginocchio; and Cromwell, Neyland, Truemper, Levy, and Gatchell. The list of "works" in the article has at various times included independent works by the partners, as well as works credited to various partnerships, not to mention some works apparently by entirely different people.
I believe it makes sense to restrict the Charles L. Thompson article to his life, work, and influence, which does include some discussion of the work of his partners and successors. However, discussions of topics like the lives and independent works of his partners and the history of his firm in the 70+ years since he retired belong in separate articles -- and those other articles should not be created unless and until somebody has an actual solid basis for writing the articles. Prose descriptions of NRIS database output are not valid articles. --Orlady (talk) 11:24, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Here we go again!

Imagine my disappointment to see this article pop up on my watchlist again. The new name does not cure the problems identified earlier.

1. "Charles L. Thompson and associates"(which, by the way, looks like a mistyped rendition of a proper name) is not and never was the name of a firm or architecture group -- and I am confident that most or all of the current members of the firm never once "associated" with Charles L. Thompson. Regardless, the title of the article is made-up (the polite term would be "original research").
2. The "prose" portion of the article is an assemblage of disconnnected factoids and includes excessive verbatim quotations from sources.
3. Notwithstanding the absence of a definite article, if you want to say The firm was "most prolific architectural firm" practicing in Arkansas in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the statement needs to be attributed. Who characterized it as "most prolific"?
4. Considering that the scope of the article is indicated to include the current firm, it would seem obvious that "many works by Thompson and the associated firms as a whole survive," but that's a fairly minor nitpick.
5. Sentence-length direct quotations that consist largely of factual information (as in The authors wrote: "The 143 structures selected for nomination exemplify the firm's remarkable versatility and productivity from 1896 through 1931", and "Charles L. Thompson was the constant motivating force behind the firm's immense productivity and influence upon the state's built environment. Today the firm he established continues this legacy.") do not belong in an encyclopedia article. This is at best lazy; fundamentally it's plagiaristic.
6. The ~25,000 bytes of slightly edited data dumps from the NRIS database are unbecoming to the encyclopedia, but I suppose credit is due for the slight editing that has been done.

I expected to see better quality work after a 3-month forced sabbatical. --Orlady (talk) 02:55, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. It is clear that there is an edit dispute about what the content should be. That needs to be resolved before a name for the article can really be determined. There is also a question about this being one or two articles. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Charles L. Thompson and associates → Charles L. Thompson – Current name appears to be the name of a business, but is in fact a name made up for convenience by a Wikipedia contributor, with the intention of vaguely and generally referring to Mr. Thompson, his business partners, his son-in-law and/or descendants who were or are also architects, and miscellaneous other people that these people worked with or may have worked with over 120 years. Some of these people could not possibly have been "associates" of Thompson, as they weren't born yet when he died in 1959, much less when he retired in 1938. That is not a meaningful scope, and anyway there is very little content about these "associates". Retitle the article and trim its scope so that its scope is clearly defined -- specifically, it should be about Mr. Thompson and his work. Orlady (talk) 05:24, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Support move as proposed -- either this is an article about Thompson, or a list of properties in a particular NRHP collection. The current title serves neither purpose. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 06:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not an article about just Thompson; it's an article about a prolific architectural firm and its works. So what alternative title do you suggest? It is not necessary to use "List of " in the title of an article, for an article to include a list, by the way. --doncram 06:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. Moving the article about the firm, with works by many partners other than Charles L. Thompson himself, to an article about just Charles L. Thompson, is inappropriate. Perhaps the proposal intended should be made as an AFD, not as a requested Move, to draw proper attention for the purpose intended (if that is to eliminate development of the topic of the architectural firm having many names over the years). If the proposer wishes to split out a separate biography article on just Charles L. Thompson alone, he could do that. I think it is well enough established that the firm, having many names, is a bona fide wikipedia topic; if you disagree, open an AFD. --doncram 06:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Comment-Transcluded the individual categories, which need to be replaced if this is kept as a group business article, or returned if made a biography. The individual and business are separately notable, so I see AfD as wholely inappropriate for a discussion of title until both are articles. Dru of Id (talk) 08:07, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Comment: I have no intention of taking this to AfD. The topic of Mr. Thompson and his work is notable. As for the suggestion that "the proposer" could split out a separate biography article on Thompson, I hasten to point out that this article formerly was a perfectly reasonable stub about Thompson, but Doncram has made it abundantly clear (on more than one occasion: previous revert diff) that he didn't like that article. The problem with the article is its inclusion of an indiscriminate list of NRIS database entries that are included because the database entries have annotations that may or may not relate to Mr. Thompson or one of the various other people who have now been incorporated into the scope of "associates" because of their association with the database entries. I prefer an encyclopedia that documents notable topics, not one that republishes database dumps. --Orlady (talk) 14:26, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Dru of Id for agreeing that the firm and the individual are separately notable. I think that is the consensus. Orlady, however, wants to co-opt the firm article and make it be about just the one architect. However, this article in particular was conceived and developed as the article about the firm. There are now about 10 redirects and about 70 mainspace wikipedia articles which link to this article about the firm. Of which at least about 20 links in, and maybe many more, would not be appropriately linked to an article just about Charles L. Thompson separately.

The version Orlady believes was best was an intermediate version, stripped down from an article clearly about the firm, and before the article about the firm was better developed (by various improvements in the list of the firms works and in other ways). If your interest is in writing a nice section giving biographical information about Charles L. Thompson the individual, by all means go ahead. I don't think any of your text was lost from the current article, but if any good text was lost then it can be added back.

Orlady, you have abundantly communicated previously that you dislike architecture, you dislike NRHP, you dislike me personally. I don't see why you would be interested in actually developing this article about the firm or in splitting out a different article about CLThompson alone. But if you really are, the way is open to you: open a separate article about the person. It would be unnecessarily disruptive to coopt the article developed for the firm, for that purpose. Frankly, I don't think there is reason yet to split out an article about Charles L. Thompson alone, given that there is a firm article. I think it would serve readers less well than having just one article about the firm of Charles L. Thompson and associates, but I probably won't open an AFD about it if you do start a separate article.

Bottomline about the requested move: No. If an article about Charles L. Thompson is to be split out, it should be done to a separate article, and this current article should remain about the firm. --doncram 17:46, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

What I have told you is (in a nutshell) that I am not particularly interested in most of the topics about which you create crappy articles, so I am not inclined to devote myself to cleaning up after you -- but I have sought to expunge Wikipedia of these pages because I am offended by poor quality work. As for my opinion of you, what I have told you is (in nutshell form) that you were successful in your assiduous efforts to cause me to dislike you. --Orlady (talk) 18:13, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Editors interested here might also wish to comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shopbell & Company, a current AFD about another architecture firm article that i created, AFD opened by SarekOfVulcan. There exist many articles about architecture firms; see Category:Architecture firms of the United States. --doncram 17:46, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

You still haven't established that Shopbell article is about a single architecture firm. Do that, and my last objection to the existence of the article goes away.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:49, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Umm, the article is not about just one firm. It is about Charles L. Thompson and various entities that he was part of. And about predecessor firms that were absorbed into versions of the firm with him. Which are documented as being highly associated by the MPS document by Jean Sizemore, Sandra Taylor Smith, Mary D. Thomas, and staff of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, dated October 29, 1982, and titled "Charles L. Thompson Design Collection Thematic Resources". CLThompson is the central party in many firms. See Shopbell & Company, another architecture firm article about a set of related firms and persons. This is standard enough for articles about architecture firms. I suppose it is not as neat and tidy as you would like, that architects would join up and split up and rejoin and rename their firms. We don't necessarily want a separate article about each version. There is good reason, here, to have an article about the whole constellation of Charles L. Thompson-associated ones. --doncram 18:23, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

That's not what I was talking about -- I was referring to your canvassing attempt above. I probably explicitly added "Shopbell" above after you started your reply, though. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:31, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I think you did add "Shopbell" to your note that I was replying to. The Shopbell article is not about just one firm, it is also about several versions of related firms and their architects. This is pretty normal and reasonable. --doncram 20:20, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

"This article was conceived... as the article about the firm" -- O RLY? The first diff from last December, which you created, states "Charles L. Thompson was an American architect." The edit summary for the very next diff states "(tag UC for this new article on a prolific architect with many NRHP-listed works)". As late as May 16 it stated "Charles L. Thompson was an American architect active in Arkansas."Gee, wonder how we possibly could have gotten the idea it was an article about Thompson. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:54, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

This version of Dec 30, 2010 was clearly about more than just the one architect. By this version, just before Orlady stripped it down, it had taken pretty good shape and was clearly about the firm as a whole and its predecessors and all variations in its naming. The very first version of Dec 10, 2010, which you link, already included many works by other architects of the firm, or by the firm without specific attribution to any one architect. You have kindly pointed out that out, repeatedly, already. (See many discussion sections above and elsewhere.) SarekOfVulcan, are you claiming you are now being misled by edits of December 2010? Anyhow, whether you believe it or not, this article was conceived and developed to be about the firm. This argument is pointless. Do you seriously want to argue whether the article was developed to be about the firm, or exactly when it was adequately clarified? Do you seriously want to dispute whether it was eventually, if not originally, conceived and developed to be about the firm (and why would you?!)? --doncram 18:15, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Doncram doesn't want to be reminded that he started the article (as an NRIS database dump) before he had done even the minimal research needed to realize that Charles L. Thompson was not actually the architect of all of the properties included in his list. --Orlady (talk) 18:59, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

There is plenty of vitriol in all the above discussion sections. You have gotten in many nasty digs, whether or not the first draft version was perfect. Subsequent edits. mostly by me, have cleaned it up, and that is fine. It would have been nice if you or Sarek would have helped with specific improvements, rather than complaining and refusing to identify any specific error that you noticed. There is no relevant point to the Requested Move in this tangent, however. --doncram 20:20, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

See WP:Competence is required. If you title and set the lead of an article as one thing, and then develop it as something else for 7 months, that's nobody's problem but your own -- and everyone who has to read it and figure out what the heck you're actually talking about. It sounds like what you're arguing for here is a rename to Cromwell Architects Engineers. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:19, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, at least you are coming along a bit, to see that this is an article about an architecture firm. I happen to think that an article title reflecting the "Charles L. Thompson" name is more appropriate than jumping to the current name of the successor firm. The significance for wikipedia, so far developed, is more about the historical impact of Charles L. Thompson and associated architects. In particular, I believe that no buildings designed by "Cromwell Architects Engineers", per se, are NRHP-listed (and wikipedia notable for that reason), while hundreds of the firm's designs are credited explicitly to "Thompson" and variations. It is consistent with article naming policy to use the common name having wide significance, and we are not required to follow every corporate name-change. I would welcome some improvement on the current "Charles L. Thompson and associates" title, as long as it includes "Charles L. Thompson" and conveys that the article will be about the firm or constellation of firms. --doncram 18:37, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

And no, that version is not "clearly about more than the one architect". Except for the datadump, the article reads "Charles L. Thompson was an American architect active in Arkansas. He worked on his own and as part of Thompson & Harding and of Thompson, Sanders and Ginocchio. Works by Thompson which survive and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places include:"--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:29, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

It gave, in bold, multiple firm names, which redirected to the one article. You do seriously want to argue whether the article eventually, if not originally, was conceived and developed to be about the firm? This is tedious. Yes, Wp:Competence begins to enter here. --doncram 18:37, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

[EC] I have found no basis for identifying this collection as the work of one architecture firm. According to sources, Charles L. Thompson had a series of partners, including (but not necessarily limited to) Fred Rickon, Thomas Harding Jr., Frank Ginocchio, and Theodore “Theo” Sanders. That's not one firm, but a series of business partnerships. According to this Arkansas Encyclopedia article and the firm's own website, the firm Cromwell Architects Engineers traces its history to 1885, when the guy who later gave Thompson his first job (Benjamin Bartlett) first went into business. However, the connections in that lineage seem very tenuous; for example, Cromwell (Thompson's son-in-law) didn't join the firm that bears his name until after Thompson, Ginocchio, and Sanders had all retired. Although the one National Register nomination that Doncram focuses on in the current article included 143 properties designed by Thompson and some of the others, Charles Thompson is himself credited with 137 National Register listings, including many that were listed prior to that nomination. That unifying feature of the 143 properties in that one National Register nomination seems to be that the drawings were all contained in the archives of the Cromwell firm circa 1980; some of the buildings had been designed by others (for example, by Sanders or Ginocchio before they became associated with Thompson).

Charles L. Thompson clearly was a prolific and notable architect whose story deserves to be told in an encyclopedia article. The same is likely true of several of the other architects mentioned in this article. It seems to me that mashing them all together into one disjointed article that pretends that they were a single architecture firm does dishonor to their memories. Furthermore, notwithstanding the various cleanups that have helped make the list of properties in this article read something like a valid list that might possibly belong in article space, it's still an indiscriminate database dump. --Orlady (talk) 18:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

That is not reasoning for a move. --doncram 18:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is. The current title and scope of the article are based on original research. Pruning the article back to the content about Charles L. Thompson (a topic that could, by the way, be developed extensively -- there's a lot of good material about him out there) and retitling it is the cleanest way to resolve the problem. The fact that you have built an extensive house of cards in the form of backlinks to the current title should not protect your mess from being dismantled -- before it grows even larger. --Orlady (talk) 18:55, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think your negative comments about the current state of the firm article have relevance about the validity of the topic. I do believe that the topic is well enough established. The one editor commenting here who is not involved in long controversy about this article and others, agreed that the firm is a valid topic. Do you want to argue whether the article was conceived and developed to be about the firm, eventually if not originally? This is tedious. --doncram 19:11, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Orlady and I developed it about Thompson. Therefore, I suggest getting a consensus that your way to develop it is the correct way, instead of just asserting it from on high. It doesn't particularly matter how it was initially conceived. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:19, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Sarek, could you please clarify whether you agree now that the firm is a valid topic, or not. There is adequate support in the article and the linked sources already establishing its notability, I believe. Do you seriously disagree, or not? --doncram 20:13, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Otherwise, the argument seems to be just about "I don't like it". Is this a tug-of-war game about who gets to have the edit history? Orlady and you developed it to be about Thompson alone in some versions, by stripping it down, eliminating all the works by the firm that were not specifically attributed to Thompson. I in good faith started this article long ago, and I conceived and developed it to be about the firm, and I started many of the linked articles, and I linked them to the firm article. There are many wikipedia articles about architecture firms. It would not be efficient, and would not make sense to move the firm article to be about just the one person, and to have to start a separate new article about the firm and change all the links. It would obscure the editing history if an administrator had to try to split out two versions showing mangled history relating to each one. The simple thing to do, if you really feel a split-out of the individual person is now justified and you want to develop that, is for you to start that at Charles L. Thompson, currently a redirect to here, "Charles L. Thompson and associates", which is about the constellation of firms. The Requested Move would be unhelpful. I am going to reply less here, will wait for others to comment some. This is tedious. --doncram 20:13, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

• Questions -- Does the firm still exist? If so what is it called? In my experience historically partenrships changed theri name every time a new partner joined, but more recently, they have tended to adopt a fixed name that had become their brand. If the firm still exists, it should have the corporate name. If that is ambiguous, as either referring to the firm or its founder. The article about the firm should have the suffix "(firm)". I note that a lot of the buildings are redlinks. UNless it is clear these are notable buildings that need an article, they should be delinked. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:33, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
  • The firm still exists, as Cromwell Architects Engineers. If I remember correctly, most of the redlinks are National Register of Historic Places listings, which can be presumed to be notable because of the documentation required to get on the NHRP in the first place. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:07, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

    (ec) Thanks for asking. About the current firm name: There is a current firm named Cromwell Architects Engineers (which redirects to this article, and the name appears in bold in the article as an alternative). But by wikipedia naming policy, we do not have to use a modern, current name of the firm. We can use a name that is the historical common name. Since the so-far-developed importance of the firm is its historical impact on Arkansas, using a historical name is appropriate. Note that "Charles L. Thompson" does not appear in current firm name, while using Thompson in the name for this article seems good. Some other descriptive title besides the current descriptive title "Charles L. Thompson and associates" is possible. Any suggestion? (N.B. the move nominator is not proposing a different name for the firm.)

    About the redlinks in the article, I agree that the redlinks appear jarring. However, I think those are all for NRHP-listed places, which are presumably wikipedia-notable topics, and can be left as redlinks, per wikipedia policy for redlinks (redlinks help grow the wikipedia). Each NRHP-listed redlink place is also linked from corresponding county-organized lists of NRHP places in Arkansas, by the way. Or I or we could create short stub articles for each one of them right now. I started articles for a lot of the links already, working mostly alphabetically. It would be far better to create articles quickly, or leave the redlinks as they are, than to delink them. Thanks. --doncram 18:09, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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"Thompson, Sanford, & Ginnochio" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Thompson, Sanford, & Ginnochio. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 30#Thompson, Sanford, & Ginnochio until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. MB 18:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Works and suggestions

I've organized the list of works so that they appear chronologically for each iteration of the firm. However, and I hate to reopen a decade-old issue that was apparently never resolved, this article has a lot of problems. It seems like this could be solved through its division into several articles. Tentatively, I think that separate biographical articles on Thompson, Sanders and Cromwell (which I have a rough draft for), plus a "List of works by..." article for the larger firm could help resolve what is a very messy situation. Thompson & Co have a significant place in Arkansas' architectural history, and I think they deserve better than this. JPRiley (talk) 21:58, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Since there is no dissent, I'll go ahead and start this. I now have drafts for both Theodore M. Sanders and Edwin B. Cromwell. Sanders will move into mainspace first, and I'll limit Sanders-related content on this page. After I do the same for Cromwell this page can be moved to Charles L. Thompson. JPRiley (talk) JPRiley (talk) 03:43, 9 August 2024 (UTC)