Just wanting to check — is the Kearney article right in saying that it's Central Time? My job has me on the phone a lot; I called a place today in Kearney (Ramada Inn, if I remember rightly), and my computer's database said that it was Mountain Time. Nyttend (talk) 18:35, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Central Time is correct. In southern Nebraska, the dividing line cuts off the westernmost counties; so Dundy, Chase, and Perkins counties are on Mountain Time, and everything to the east is on Central Time.
Thanks! The map I have must be wrong, because it shows the dividing line going through the central part of the state (if I remember rightly, significantly farther east than it shows the dividing line through Kansas), and never having been to Nebraska, I couldn't know from experience. Nyttend (talk) 21:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see that you're going through the Commons categories for Nebraska buildings and replacing "Category:Built in the United States in (year)" with "Category:Built in Nebraska in (year)".
Is this something you'd like help with? If so, and if there's a useful way to split the work, let me know.
Sure thing, if you want! It's not just Nebraska — I've gradually been putting all images from "Category:Built in the United States in (year)" into state-level categories: when I'm done with it, each year's "Built in the United States" category will have only four types of subcategories: bridges built in that year, churches built in that year, houses built in that year, and state-level categories. I'd give you an example, but for some reason I can't access Commons tonight. If you want to create one or more year categories, please note that they are created with a template: most of them are {{StatenameArc|###|#}}, where the # characters are the year — e.g. Nebraska in 1987 would be {{NebraskaArc|198|7}}. A few states have less capable templates (Alabama and New York come to mind), so if you create any categories and find that they don't look complete, you'll do well to check other years' categories for that state. Nyttend (talk) 04:08, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Will work on that. Unfortunately, in the last hour or so I've found a new problem to deal with. Back in December and January, Commons:User:AnRo0002 decided to start recategorizing Commons:Category:Bridges in Nebraska; then he apparently got bored with that, and is now recategorizing German paintings. I am, frankly, somewhat miffed—and I apologize for venting at you, but my German is much too weak to unload on the real culprit. Anyhow: will be working on straightening out that mess, and in the course of so doing will include Category:Built in Nebraska in (year). If you run into any Nebraska bridges in the course of your efforts, you might leave them for me, since I'll have to go through the entire category bridge by bridge anyhow. Once I'm done with the bridges, I'll try to help out with the Nebraska buildings.
Have worked through all of the "(decade) architecture in Nebraska" categories, and think I've taken care of them all. That's 2% less work for you... --Ammodramus (talk) 23:54, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delighted to see you at WikiProject Nebraska. The project's been awfully inactive lately; it'd be nice to see it re-activated.
I see that one of your interests is family-history research. Is this on your family specifically, or genealogies generally? If the latter, I wonder if I could ask you for advice.
I've just written an article on A. T. Hill, a Nebraska archaeologist. In the course of it, I've run into a couple of minor problems. The first is that I've got two sources that conflict on the number of Hill's siblings: one says that he was one of four children, the other that he was one of six. The second is that I've got the name of Hill's wife, but I can't find the date of their marriage.
Could you by chance direct me to an online genealogy site that doesn't require registration, payment, etc., and that might help me answer these? They're not critical for the article, but I'd like to include them, and to include them accurately. Thanks—
Thanks for the friendly greeting! (I've received a few less-than-friendly ones so far, but that's water under the bridge.) It's true, I live in Omaha and have plenty to write about Nebraska. Specifically, I've been, and still am, involved in the Mid-America Council of Boy Scouts. The scout camp articles could do with some improvement, though finding sources to match the campfire stories will be fun... But it's worth it.
It's true, genealogy is a passion. I've been researching my own ancestors with some moderate success using a combination of http://records.ancestry.com and http://familysearch.org . The first has some nice information if you can provide a name for what you're looking for, cobbled, I presume, from the trees on the site. I love the site just for the ease it provides me when organizing all that data. Familysearch, if you haven't heard of it, is run by the LDS family history center. I've never found a more generally helpful site for free.
Last, I recommend the almighty google search. searching: +"A T Hill" +Nebraska +birth, or something of that variety might yield some names and numbers. I found a few surprising tidbits, presuming that I wanted info on noteworthy relatives. Come to think of it, there are a few ancestors who could stand their own article. A fine idea! Thank you, sir Mr. Kent (talk) 23:58, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply. Familysearch has yielded some useful results, which I've incorporated into the Hill article.
I spent a little time on websites for the Mid-America Council not too long ago, while writing the article on Pahuk. Eventually, I decided that the Pahuk Pride event was named after "pahuk", the general Pawnee word for "bluff", and not for Pahuk, the specific bluff near Cedar Bluffs, Nebraska.
If you're working on articles about Nebraska, I've got a camera and have taken and uploaded a lot of photos to illustrate Nebraska articles. (I'm not a great photographer, but I can generally get something acceptable to illustrate a town or a building or the like.) If there's something in particular that you'd like photographed, drop me a note and I'll try to get it. I can't promise quick results; but I do a lot of travelling, so I hit most parts of the state at least once a year.
This is the part where most of my knowledge comes from stories that need some digging to sort out. From what I've been told, Pahuk (alternately spelled "pohawk") is a sacred Indian area, located near the platte river. Pahuk Pride, the leadership camp of which i am a staff member, is indeed named for the legend of Pahuk. The legend is incorporated in several ways. It consists of a comingofage warrior who meets spirits in a cave in the shapes of a bear and snake. These symbols are incorporated into the Logo for Pahuk Pride. Also, the legend of Pahuk is central to Kit-Ke-Hak-O-Kut, lodge 97 of the BSA national honor society, Order of the Arrow. Lodge 97 was originally named the Pahuk Lodge, for these very same legends. As such, there is a place named Pohawk Point at Camp Cedars near Cedar Bluffs, NE. The OA buildings for the Camp are located here. This is all off the top of my head, I may do a little research on the subject. Mr. Kent (talk) 04:30, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(To EnglishTea4me) Have been following with interest your edits to Willa Cather. It looks as though you've improved the article considerably. Before you started on it, it wasn't especially well-organized, and had a number of significant holes. You've already done a great deal to remedy those.
Unfortunately, I know too little about Cather to make useful contributions to the article. However, should you find yourself wanting to illustrate it or other Cather-related articles, I might be able to help. I am based in Nebraska and own a camera, and took most of the pictures at Commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places in Webster County, Nebraska. If there are specific photos you'd like taken in the Red Cloud area, please feel free to leave a note at my talk page and I'll try to oblige.
Hello Ammodramus, and thank you for your remarks and offer to provide photographs. I've seen some beautiful photos of the Cather Memorial Prairie, but unfortunately they're copyright protected; in any case, I do not know how to upload them. I can edit text, but I'm lost when it comes to uploading photos. Setting is such an integral part of Cather's writing that photos of the Nebraska prairie near Red Cloud would be a wonderful addition. I've also started editing the article on Cather's story "Neighbour Rosicky" -- it needs a lot of work, too -- and a photo of the Nebraska prairie would go nicely with that as well. I look forward to seeing your work, at your convenience, of course -- and thank you again. (This is the first message I've answered on Wikipedia, so I hope I'm doing it correctly). EnglishTea4me 01:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by EnglishTea4me (talk • contribs) [reply]
I've only been editing for about a year and a half, so I have no business acting like an old WP hand, but...
Your response came through nicely. If you won't take it amiss, though, I'll make a couple of suggestions. First, if you place a colon at the beginning of a paragraph, it indents the paragraph. Each additional colon indents it a bit more. This makes it easier to see who's writing what on a talk page, especially in situations where a number of people are chiming in. Second, it looks as if you typed out your username and the date and time by hand. You don't have to do this: just type a string of four tildes, and it will produce your signature automatically. (If you forget to sign, Wikipedia will automatically add your signature, but with a snippy little remark to the effect that your comment was unsigned—which is why I think you didn't use the four-tildes trick.)
Cather Memorial Prairie, south of Red Cloud
Photos. Pictures at Wikimedia Commons are available for use on all the Wikipedias. Commons is arranged in categories and subcategories. If you'll follow the link in my original message, it'll take you to a category of NRHP sites in Webster County, Nebraska, many of which are Cather-related. Click on any subcategory that interests you; click on pictures or on the filenames under them to see them in a larger size. If you want to leave a category, its parent categories are listed below; click on any one of them to return to that parent.
Once you've found a photo that you think you want to use, you can insert it into the article. The method's described at WP:IMAGES. I've inserted a photo into this comment, so you could see how it's done:; the code was inserted right before the previous paragraph. If you click "Edit" for this page or subsection, you should be able to see it. Two square brackets, followed by the name of the Commons file (including the initial "File:" and the final extension, e.g. ".jpg". Follow that with a pipe ("|") and "thumb" (very important, since otherwise the picture will appear full-sized), then another pipe. After that, I like to put "alt=" and then a short description for those who can't see the photo; this isn't required, but it's a good idea. One more pipe, followed by the caption; and then a pair of close-square-brackets.
It usually takes me a bit of trial and error to place the photo. I think you've got to put the code between two paragraphs.
If you're interested, by the way, the Nebraska State Historical Society's "Nebraska National Register Sites in Webster County" site has a short account for each site; if a site's Cather-connected, it generally explains what the connection is. (I see that the Pavelka farmstead, which I haven't photographed yet, is connected to "Neighbor Rosicky"; I'll try to shoot that and upload it in the near future.)
Hope that this is useful to you; please feel free to drop me a line if you've got a question that you think I might be able to answer. I apologize for the length of this comment, and hope that the content is worth it—
As a newbie, I appreciate all suggestions, advice, etc. I did sign my message with four tildes, but for some reason my signature came out as if I had typed it instead of as a blue link. I must have done something wrong, but what that is I don't know. We'll see what happens this time.
I have two questions that you can probably answer: 1)When you respond to a message, do you write it on the other user's page? That's what I'm doing? 2)Do you respond in Edit mode? I can see no other way of responding. I'm assuming that if I clicked on the New Section tab at the top (between Edit and View History) it would be to introduce a new topic.
Photos of the Pavelka farmstead will work beautifully with "Neighbour Rosicky" and for the My Antonia article since Cather based Antonia, at least in part, on Annie Pavelka.
Thanks so much for your help and advice.EnglishTea4me 15:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by EnglishTea4me (talk • contribs)
Happy to be of assistance. My own career as an editor was greatly helped along by a more experienced Wikipedian, who displayed immense quantities of patience and forbearance in answering my questions and correcting my errors.
I'm perplexed by your signature problem. The four-tildes trick has never failed for me. I assume that you're getting your tildes straight off the keyboard and not using some kind of insert-symbol thing. For what it's worth, what would happen if you copy-and-pasted this string of tildes? ~~~~ (I kept them from turning into a signature here by bracketing them with the "nowiki" command; but when I copy-and-pasted them and then looked at the preview, they turned into my signature.) If that doesn't work for you, then I'm stumped—something weird with your browser?)
Regarding user talk pages, you're going about things in the usual fashion. Editing the talk page is the correct way to leave a message. (It's a Wikisolecism to remove or alter content from another person's talk page, even if you originally put it there. You can do what you like on your own, including deleting or archiving material.) Talk-page dialogue usually proceeds in the way that we're conducting it: I leave a message on your talk page; you respond on mine; I reply on yours; &c. If I'm writing someone else, I'll often put a copy of my message on my own talk page, so that I can see the whole conversation in one place; but that's a matter of choice.
I'll be in south-central Nebraska before too long, and will try to get the Pavelka place. Will leave you a note when I do. For now, please let me know if there's anything in particular that you'd like photographed (or re-photographed). This isn't the best time of year for landscapes, since the snow's mostly melted and the new green hasn't come in yet; but it's good for buildings, since they aren't hidden by foliage.
I tried copying-and-pasting the four tildes you provided, but that didn't work. Thank you, though, for the trouble you went to. And, yes, I am using the tildes straight off the keyboard. Now I bet you're wondering how I corrected the problem. I entered my signature in wiki code. That gives me the sig. and a link to my talk page. I followed that with five tildes, and that gives me the time stamp. Nice to have that problem out of the way. Now I can concentrate on more interesting things. If I ever find out what the problem is, I'll let you know.
Re: photos. It occurred to me, too, that it might be too early in the year to photograph landscapes. Photos of the Pavelka farmstead will work well with several articles. Also, have you photographed the Red Cloud Opera House? It's featured in several Cather novels and is currently home to the Willa Cather Foundation (another article I plan to work on eventually). Photos of the Opera House could come in handy.
I think I've got photos of the opera house, in a folder full of downtown-Red-Cloud photos waiting to be edited and described and uploaded. I'll try to expedite the process and get them up soon. Ammodramus (talk) 00:52, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at the editing history of the Willa Cather Foundation article, and there was a photo of the opera house at one time, but it was taken down, no doubt due to copyright issues. I think a photo of the opera house would work well on that page, too, especially since that's where the Cather Foundation is housed. EnglishTea4me (talk)17:30, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've got a photo of the opera house edited and ready to go; but for some reason, I'm not able to get photos to upload on this computer at this time. I'll try to get it up tomorrow, and will drop you a line when it's available. Ammodramus (talk) 01:15, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I wanted to make sure you got my message. I replied to your question in "Talk:Fairfield,_Nebraska#Photo", and wanted to make sure you were aware of this. Thank you.
Silverojo (talk) 14:02, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Got your message. Thanks for the note; as it happens, I have the Fairfield article on my watchlist, so I'd have seen your comments and edits anyhow. (If you're not familiar with the watchlist, it's a good way to monitor pages for changes; you can add and remove pages from it manually, or you can set "My preferences" so that every page you edit is automatically added to it.)
And, while I'm dispensing advice: Notice how this comment is indented from the one above it. That's done by putting a colon at the beginning of each paragraph (you can see it in this case if you switch into edit mode). Additional colons produce additional indentation, and that makes it easier to keep track of who's saying what in a talk-page discussion. (I've edited the talk page for Fairfield to indent your response from my original comment; if I add something further, I'll put two colons in front of it to indent it even further.)
Now, to your remarks re. the Fairfield photos. I'm afraid I have to chide you a bit on your assumption that I was vandalizing the article. One of the core tenets of Wikipedia is "Assume good faith". Of course, there are situations that're clearly vandalism, but if there's any room for doubt, WP:FAITH. That goes double if the editor in question has a record of non-vandalism. If you'd checked my user contributions (click on "Ammodramus", then find "User contributions" under "Toolbox" at left), you'd have seen that I've contributed a great deal of non-vandalizing content to articles on Nebraska, including adding photos to the articles on several hundred Nebraska towns. Moreover, from my first reversion of your edit, I added an edit summary, which isn't the usual practice among vandals. When I saw your removal of the photo without an edit summary, I was inclined to suspect vandalism on your part; however, when I checked your user contributions, I saw that you'd made useful contributions in the past, so were probably not engaging in deliberate vandalism this time.
I have to disagree with "it is not good etiquette to remove someone else's photo and replace it with your own. ADDING a photo to the page is one thing, but removing my photo was inappropriate. In the future, please refrain from removing other people's images from Wikipedia entries." From the standpoint of Wikietiquette, changing or removing a photo is no different than changing or removing text. As with text edits, one should add an edit summary, and the change is of course subject to discussion, reversion, further changes, etc.; but there's no presumption that the original photo is necessarily the best one.
I'll justify my photo change at the article's talk page. Thanks again for the note letting me know about your comment there. I hope you don't mind my offering you advice; my hope was to help and encourage you, since we need more editors working on Nebraska, especially outstate Nebraska, subjects.
(To User:Ken Gallager) I see that you've recently been adding lengths to rivers in Nebraska. If it wouldn't be too much trouble, could I ask you for a few river lengths?
I've tried in vain to find a source for the length of the Keya Paha River, which is a tributary of the Niobrara.
The current article on the Loup River only treats of a short length, below the junction of the North and Middle Loup; it has redlinks for the three branches, North Loup River, Middle Loup River, and South Loup River. I think this is a mistake: that the whole system should be treated in a single article. That expansion of the article is on my to-do-one-day list; it would help very much if I knew the lengths of the three branches, as well as having a source for the length below the junction.
I'd very much appreciate your calculating these lengths and, in the case of the unwritten articles, leaving them in a note at my talk page. If this'd be a lot of work, please feel free to decline my request. I've tried to figure out how to use the Nat'l Hydrography Dataset for myself, after reading the discussion earlier on this page; but it apparently calls for more GIS skills than I've got (which are approximately none). Thanks--
Hi - Here are the lengths I've gotten for the Loup River and its branches. The National Hydrography Dataset (I source it as "U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map, accessed March 30, 2011") gives 111.4 kilometres (69.2 mi) for the main stem of the Loup River, close enough to the figure in the article that it's not worth changing. The North Loup is 435.8 kilometres (270.8 mi) long, the Middle Loup is 351.8 kilometres (218.6 mi) long, and the South Loup is 356.2 kilometres (221.3 mi). You would think the South Loup would be quite a bit shorter, but it appears to do the most winding of the three rivers. Also, here are the three branches of the Middle Loup River: North Branch Middle Loup = 91.1 kilometres (56.6 mi), Middle Branch Middle Loup = 86.4 kilometres (53.7 mi), and South Branch Middle Loup = 77.3 kilometres (48.0 mi). I'll send another message (maybe tomorrow) with the lengths of the other rivers. --Ken Gallager (talk) 19:59, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you remember last summer I took a trip from Philly to Denver and got a few NRHP photos in Nebraska. This year I'm doing the same trip again, but will basically be following US 30 the whole way (maybe as far as Cheyenne, WY if I have the time). I'll be in Nebraska either the 2nd and 3rd, or the 3rd and 4th. If there are sights along the way that you would especially like me to snap, please let me know. It's a long shot, but if you wanted to meet somewhere along the way ... In any case, I'll do my best to make sure that all the NE nrhp lists are not completely Ammodramus photographed. Smallbones (talk) 00:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the nice comments. I really enjoyed Nebraska, both west-bound and east-bound. Timing of course was more up to making progress down the road than to getting the sun in the right place. I guess you've probably realized that I'm really more into playing the game of a scavenger hunter, rather than being a real photographer, so I have no objection whatsoever to you taking good photos and replacing mine :-) It's the thrill of hunting down the wild Buffalo County that keeps me going! I think I'm done with my Nebraska uploads, but only 40% done with all the uploads from the trip. You never know, I might find another Nebraska city or town hidden in the files! I haven't gotten close to cleaning out and organizing all the literature (brochures, etc.) from the trip. I know that I should write up or at least start a few articles, but that's a lot harder than just taking a few snaps.
A couple of potential articles that do have my interest however are Deadwood Draw (near Sidney) which actually does have an article on it started - something like "Sidney to Deadwood pack trail." I hadn't really run into wagon ruts before and couldn't figure out if I really wanted to photograph them (or how to ...) Another involves Harmon Park in Kearney. Just by accident I ran into the lady who wrote up the NRHP application who is now chairperson of Kearney Area Preservation Society. I may have even promised that I'd write up the Park article. If you e-mail me I can provide contact details. It seems to me that the entire county list should be fixed up, de-red linked, etc. and made into a featured list. I'm sure that we (I'm being optimistic) would have her full cooperation.
Any help or more compliments are always appreciated. All the best. 19:20, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Regarding photos: I'm based in Kearney and do a lot of photography to illustrate articles on Nebraska, particularly outstate, and to get pictures of NRHP sites for Commons. If there are sites you'd like photographed, please let me know at my talk page and I'll keep them in mind for my next trip to Sheridan County. I don't get up there as often as I'd like, but hope to be up that way sometime this spring. Ammodramus (talk) 17:09, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for taking so long to reply. If you are ever in the Ellsworth area make sure to let me know and it can be easily arranged to photograph the historic sites in the surrounding counties. - Westhistmatt —Preceding unsigned comment added by Westhistmatt (talk • contribs) 12:03, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I went through southern Sheridan County a few weeks ago, and got photos of the Antioch potash plants and Lakeside, among other things. I wanted a photo of the District #119 North School in Ellsworth, which is a fairly recent addition to the National Register of Historic Places; but I didn't know what it looked like, and nothing had a "District 119" sign on it. I'm pretty sure I drove right past it but didn't recognize it.
Is the Loosveldt Bridge on private property? I got the impression somewhere that it was. If so, and if you can get me permission to photograph it, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Do you know if the Colclesser Bridge is still there? I looked at Google satellite photos, and didn't see a bridge at what I think is the right location.
I'll be in touch before I return to Sheridan County; unfortunately, that probably won't be before July at the very earliest.
I am very new at Wiki. I would like to email or contact Ammodramus. How may I do so? I have information pertinent to his/her photographs and areas of interest.
Greetings, o Equinedistraction--
Got your two messages at my talk page. That's an excellent way to contact me; just leave further messages in the section that you began at the end of the page.
Since you're new at WP, I'll offer you some suggestions re. talk pages. First, if you prefix a paragraph with a colon (:), it'll indent that paragraph slightly. More colons indent it more. That makes it easier to see who's saying what in a lengthy discussion. Second, at the end of your comment on a talk page, type four tildes (~~~~). That will automatically fill in your username and some date-and-time information.
Ammodramus, thank you for the guidance. Your grammar peeves left me rolling on the floor. My list is almost identical, with the addition of the following: "When a person approaches you, THEY should always greet you with kindness." They. Everything is they. Who is they, anyway? Anyhoo, that drives me nuts, which is a pretty short drive.
I and my merry band of artisans are moving to parts north of Kearney. We are somewhat trepidatious about a dearth of wit and wisdom out on the prairie. Because we are language and photography-o-philes, and because I have been heavily involved with historic preservation and restorations of NHR and NHR candidate properties, we would love to get to know you and learn about your projects, past and present. I have not gone through the talk page guidelines yet, so I hope I am not offending any rule. I will study and become aware of the guidelines.
Goodness. Doubt very much that I can provide a great deal of wit and wisdom; my WP style is more about chasing down sources and inserting fussy footnotes. Also not sure about the "merry band" business: will my making personal contact lead to a score of Ken Kesey-channelers showing up at my doorstep and demanding that I host a revel?
Will chance it, though. To avoid putting personal information out in public, could you e-mail me? If you'll go to my user page or talk page, you'll find "Toolbox" in the left margin. Click on that to expand it, and you'll find "E-mail this user" about halfway down the list. I've got e-mail enabled, so you should be able to use that to send me contact information.
Since you're new to WP, I hope you won't mind my calling your attention to WP:OUTING. While it probably wouldn't take a great deal of work to discover my meatspace identity, I prefer to maintain at least a soupçon of anonymity. Please don't mention my real-world name, e-mail address, or personal details on talk pages or in other situations that might tend to identify--
I just wanted to give you a great big thanks for helping on the Milly Bernard article, I am one of her great grand children (by marriage) and I have been meaning to add all that information but just could never find the time. It was difficult sometimes due to her marriages/divorces and the change in her last name to find information. You have done a great job and I appreciate it tremendously. She was a pioneer in women being elected to the Utah legislature and her achievements should be noted.
jlechem@gmail.com 16:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlechem (talk • contribs)
Noted with interest your addition of Template:Native Americans in Nebraska to several articles I've worked on. It's a nice template, and I think it'll be useful for navigating among such sites.
A couple of suggestions, however; and I'll make them to you rather than changing the template, since it appears that you've done most of the work on it, and may very well have considered these already. First, should it include Kitzawitzuk, which is in Kansas and not in Nebraska? Second, would it be useful to add Pike-Pawnee Village Site, which is in Webster County (and was the site of an event whose location was the subject of some dispute between the historical societies of KS and NE in the 1920s)?
I'm not doing any research in that direction right now, but it's possible that in the future I'll be writing more articles on Native American archaeological sites in Nebraska. If so, should they be added to the template?
Oh, and I just looked at the article more carefully. In the major reference cited, should it be "Escapte" or is that your typo? (Since the source isn't online, I can't check it and correct it or [Sic] it myself.) --Ammodramus (talk) 23:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Unlikely that I'll be back in Wallace in the near (or even not-so-near) future. This summer, I had to drive to Spokane, and Wallace was the spot I randomly chose for a birding break. --Ammodramus (talk) 17:45, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Pleased to report that I got to Linoma Lighthouse yesterday with my camera; with luck, will have photos uploaded in a day or two.
I'm thinking of doing an expansion of the article. The National Register nom form for Linoma Beach is now available online via the Nebraska State Historical Society, and it's got a lot of information that probably wasn't available when the article was originally written.
In the course of expanding the article, I'd like to move it from "Linoma Lighthouse" to "Linoma Beach", with a redirect from "Linoma Lighthouse". The NRHP lists the entire property, not just the lighthouse; and even the article as it now stands discusses the whole resort and not just the one structure. As the original author and the principal contributor to date, would you object to my doing that?
Thanks for asking Ammodramus, I appreciate that. Please, have at it and let me know if I can be of use. I originally created the article because I wanted to learn about an artifact on the Platte I drove by all the time when I was in college. Sounds like it's better situated at Linoma Beach. Have fun! • Freechildtalk21:39, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Again, many thanks for doing the GA review. I'm still following up one of your points (the one about the post-Barsetshire works), and will try to clarify that a bit. I assumed too much familiarity with Trollope on the part of the general reader. Ammodramus (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Might try for the greatest-distance-between-photos thing. I won't be going back to SC, but will be spending T'giving in eastern Penna., and am also contemplating a run out to the Nebraska Panhandle. With any luck, that'll give me photos across three time zones... Ammodramus (talk) 23:32, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You know of course I'm in eastern Penna. So I'll try to get all the sites there before Thanksgiving :-) Just slightly more seriously (I know T'giving is not a good time for it), drop me an e-mail if I can buy you a beer while you're here. Smallbones (talk) 23:55, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We'll get that beer drunk sooner or later, whether in Nebraska or Pennsylvania or somewhere more exotic. I'll be staying in Pike County, near Dingman's Ferry; will have my car, so I should be able to travel to wherever you want to meet. No idea about schedule yet—it'll depend on the plans made by various relatives, but I should be around long enough to have a certain amount of free time. Will e-mail you when I get there. Ammodramus (talk) 01:54, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like you're going to have a far longer trip that I've had lately; since the spring, the farthest I've gotten from southwestern Indiana is the Pittsburgh metro area. Enjoy! Nyttend (talk) 02:00, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In response to something I said to Smallbones, he suggested asking you to get a photo of the Minisink Archeological Site, an NHL in Pike County; it's the state's only unillustrated NHL outside of the southeastern corner. The rest of this comment is essentially the same as what I copied to his talk page. The coords that I got for the Pike County list have part of the site in the woods just off U.S. Route 209; I dropped the Street View icon onto a random spot near the coords and found a pulloff spot. You might not get a wonderful picture, but it wouldn't be worse than the one I took at Swan's Landing. As well, the NHL nomination form speaks of farmers ploughing artifacts out of fields; very close to the pulloff spot is an area of open countryside overlooking the river. Nyttend (talk) 22:17, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like I did volunteer you for something. As I read the map, it's 8 miles north of Dingman's Ferry, or 2 miles south of Milford on the main drag. The main drag being as lonely a piece of road as there is on the East Coast. When I drove through with my wife, I thought I'd need waders and a portable shower to get the photo, by Nyttend doesn't think so. Sorry! Smallbones (talk) 22:28, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a birder, so wet socks and mild hypothermia are business-as-usual for me. The place isn't far from where I'll be staying, so I'll do what I can to get it. Unless there's a historical marker, I doubt that I'll get a very impressive photo. The article speaks of "remains of fish and fruit"; maybe I can find a banana peel or a Long John Silver's box in the ditch by the road to illustrate it... Ammodramus (talk) 01:01, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A preliminary Google hunt indicates that the district includes Minisink Island. If I can establish that it includes the whole island, or the whole up- or downstream end, then I can try for a shot of the island with the river dividing around it. That'd be at least a little more interesting than the Dobytown photos, especially if I can get a shot from a high bank looking obliquely downward.
Ammodramus on a holiday outing on the Delaware River
The NPS's Delaware Water Gap website discusses the district, and says that visitors "can hike the Minisink Historic District while on the Joseph M. McDade Recreational Trail". Unfortunately, the trail map at their link doesn't say anything in particular about the MHD. I'll see what I can learn at the visitor center once I get there. (The website also suggests canoeing or kayaking to the island, but that sounds like a good way to wind up in [[Category:Drowned Wikipedians]].) Ammodramus (talk) 15:21, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your image of the Old Kaskaskia Village! As the Illinois River is very close but outside the image, can you revise your caption to indicate an estimated distance from the river, in order to orient people who see the image. (I know the river is very close). Thanks again, Bigturtle (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Have revised the caption, and also the description at Commons. It's possible (though far from certain) that I'll pass through the area again in a few weeks; if you're particularly interested in the site or the article, is there anything that you think especially ought to be photographed? I know very little about the site: mostly, I was trying to hit some of the unillustrated National Historic Landmarks in Illinois while travelling cross-country. I'd happily try to act on suggestions for better photos, if you'd care to make some and if my path takes me that way again. Ammodramus (talk) 22:41, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your interest in the site. Unfortunately as you have noticed the State does not mark the site, presumably because they lack the means to guard and interpret it, and nobody wants free-lancers digging for artifacts. So your relatively anonymous-looking scene is perfect. Would it be possible for you to find and image the Farm Creek Section in nearby East Peoria, Illinois? Bigturtle (talk) 22:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ouch. Before I went to Old Kaskaskia Village, I spent the morning tramping along Farm Creek through Farmdale Recreation Area, looking for F.C. Section. Found what I thought was it and shot a bunch of photos. That night, miles and miles down the road, I studied the photos and description in the nom form, and realized that the place I'd shot definitely wasn't it. Re-checked the Google map; I suspect that if I'd gone another quarter-mile upstream, I'd have found the right place. I will definitely try for it on my way back west, weather permitting. "Weather permitting" is a big if: the recreation area is closed during rains and for 24 hours after. Ammodramus (talk) 01:06, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the Libbey House photos! I've accumulated a big backlog of photos, due to spending a disproportionately large amount of free time on photo trips (i.e. not enough time for uploading), and one of the locations is Ohio's last unillustrated NHL. Nyttend (talk) 04:53, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We lucked out. After I'd shot the Marie Webster House in Marion, IN, I had to decide whether to go northeast to Toledo or southeast to Kettering. The coin came up heads, so to Toledo I went. If you've got Kettering, I won't try to hit it on my way back westward. Ammodramus (talk) 11:00, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How nice :-) I'd not checked the Indiana list, so I wasn't aware that you'd finished it. As soon as I finish typing this message, I'll complete my packing to leave Pennsylvania for the west; if I have time, I may try to go back to Kettering, because the current photo is absolutely horrible. The house is only slightly visible from the road when the leaves are on the trees, and I was there in early September; what's more, it's on the western side, and I was there in the late afternoon of a sunny day. Hope you enjoy the rest of your time in Pennsylvania! Nyttend (talk) 12:59, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Didn't get time to go to Kettering, but I finished up two other Ohio county lists, including one site that's of national significance. I'll upload the old photo and let you decide if it's horrible enough that you want to replace it soon. It will definitely need to be replaced eventually. Nyttend (talk) 03:20, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I recognize the Kettering photo; I've taken it in a few places myself. If my route back to Nebraska takes me through southern Ohio, I'll see if I can get something better. Ammodramus (talk) 16:14, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Drove I-70 across Ohio today. It rained all the way, and was coming down fairly hard when I passed Dayton, so I didn't try for the Kettering house. Next time... Ammodramus (talk) 01:14, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, no problem. I spent much of my day getting sites of more local interest, and although I've been inside for several hours straight, the hood of my sweatshirt is still drenched. If you go to the "Not visited" section of User:Nyttend/Ohio NRHP/Montgomery, you'll see that I have about seventy different reasons to go back to the area, and since I typically have an easier time getting to Ohio than you do, I expect that I'll be able to get over there at some point. Finally, I hope your visit to Ohio didn't leave you with too sour of a taste — remember that days like this also occur in the Buckeye State :-) Nyttend (talk) 02:32, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm OK with Ohio: had an enjoyable hike in Cuyahoga Valley NP on the way out, and would've liked to spend more time in Toledo, which I suspect has lots of great buildings to photograph. Had high hopes for Kettering, since it was overcast but not raining in Wheeling, and from your description of the site, an overcast winter day would be the best time to shoot it. But it wasn't to be...
As far as weather events go, I had to delete a bunch of photos from Monroe County, NY, because the falling snow left conspicuous streaks across them. Ammodramus (talk) 02:57, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Winter would definitely be the best time of year for the Kettering House, but even better than an overcast day might be a sunny morning. However, I can't imagine why I'd be in the area in the morning, so I'll likely have to settle for the overcast day...There's definitely room to go in the Toledo area. I've never visited that part of the state very much, and except for a single trip (which got all of the northwestern counties fully illustrated, except for one pesky site), which yielded only the Fallen Timbers battlefield image, I've not been to Lucas County since I started doing NR photographs. Thanks for the Ohio County work; the Panhandle is the only part of the state I've been to in recent years (thanks to trips to my metro-Pittsburgh alma mater), and I've concentrated most of my photo time from my trips either on eastern Ohio or on Brooke County, next north of Ohio County — essentially all that I have for Ohio County is the NHLs, and other people already got better images of them anyway. Nyttend (talk) 05:39, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I saw that there were no entries for the West Virginia contest, so concluded that the state must be under-photographed and hit a couple of quick sites in Wheeling on my way westward from Pittsburgh. I'd have done more there, but hoped to make it to Kettering while there was still lots of daylight; had I known that the weather in Ohio state would be so inclement, I'd have spent some time on Ohio County. I suspect, although I haven't actually looked at the county lists, that the counties that really need to be worked are the ones that don't lie along Interstates. Ammodramus (talk) 13:19, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure your final comment is right. Ohio isn't that way, since the two most active photographers (Roseohioresident and I) have both been active with travelling to more isolated counties, but I'm sure it's that way in many other states. Once we start talking about counties west of Illinois' eastern edge, I've not gotten any photos in counties without interstates, except for one in Ford County, Kansas: the Dodge City Downtown HD. West Virginia hasn't gotten a ton of attention; Bitmapped, formerly Bmpowell, has done his best, but he hasn't travelled a ton or gotten as dense a concentration as you, Smallbones, or I have tried to do. Nyttend (talk) 13:32, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In Pike County. Got what I think are some acceptable pictures for Minisink Archeological Site; it turns out that the Manna site, referred to in the article, is easily located, and that the bank erosion can be photographed reasonably well from across Raymondskill Creek. Will upload shortly.
While I was in that area, ran up to Milford and got some photos in the Jervis Gordon Grist Mill Historic District. I'm sure that one of the buildings I photographed is in the district (the mill building itself). However, the nom form for Milford Historic District Boundary Increase tells me that there are three contributing buildings and a contributing structure in the JGGMHD. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell me what they are; and I can't find a nom form for the JGGMHD itself. Since you've presumably got some experience tracking down this sort of thing in Penna., do you know of a place where I might be able to find the nom form or something else that'd tell me what buildings are and aren't in the HD? Thanks. Ammodramus (talk) 01:31, 27 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've just done some editing of your article Jeevana Mukthi: mostly adding Wikilinks and touching up the English idiom. However, there were two things that I was unable to do.
In the article, the king's mother is going to perform a cheppula nomu. I'm afraid that I don't know what this is, and a Google search for the phrase gained me nothing. We ought to have a Wikilink or a brief parenthetical note telling readers what this is.
Does the title have an English translation? The "Jeevana" is similar enough to the name "Jeevudu" that I suspect it's a form of it. If the title can be translated into English, that translation should be included.
My answer
Jeevan/Jeevan or Jeevudu or Jeevi are all related to the Life in biological term. Jeevi or Jeevudu means all living beings. Jeevan or Jeevana means the life itself.
Mukti or Moksha is a sanskrit word explained in its wikipage.
Combining the two words it means Mukti for Jeevi, that is according to Ancient Hindu scripts many Mukti while living is the ultimate goal for the priests and yogis. As a cobbler Jeevudu got this by wholehearted faithfulness towards Vishnu in this film.
Am I clear and got some clarity about the film title and names.Dr. Rajasekhar A. 06:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the correction. I may be peculiar, but have not (to my knowledge) been characterized as "odd". Just an attempt at humor there. The proper name of this historic organization was unknown to me, and its good to get it right. 7&6=thirteen (☎)16:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd probably count as "odd", but only because I haven't yet got even... Easy to get the adjective wrong; I only know it from the number of times I've tried to Wikilink the name, and come up with a redlink for "International...". Happily, no one's created a redirect from the wrong I-word. Ammodramus (talk) 23:56, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like it's going to be a tie, unless somebody's sitting on a bunch of NHL photos elsewhere. I'll be in western New York and Pittsburgh through the weekend, and there'll be no NHLs within easy reach. I'm hoping to hit at least one on the way back to Nebraska, but by then the contest will be over.
The shots of Minisink Island from above were taken from a trail on the Penna. side. Took them somewhat early in the morning, and had to wait an hour or so for the fog over the river to burn off so that the island would be visible. According to Google Earth, the island itself is in NJ; as I recall, I used photos of it to illustrate the NJ lists, and photos of the Manna site (OK, but late-morning light would've been better) for the Penna. lists. --Ammodramus (talk) 11:52, 3 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Per your question to Smallbones — go to the CRGIS and follow the directions. If you have Adobe's SVG viewer (admittedly, out of date, but you can still download it from the Adobe website), you can find non-archaeologicla sites on a map (note that the vast majority of features on the map aren't NR-listed), or you can do a text-based search that doesn't require the SVG viewer. Nyttend (talk) 17:56, 3 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the comment on my courthouse image in the best-photo contest. I didn't crop it — as far as I know, Windows Paint is the only software on this computer that's capable of editing images at all. By the way, where were the broken bridges on which you're complimented farther down this page? Nyttend (talk) 06:23, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fallen Elkhorn River bridge on Cowboy Trail near Norfolk, Nebraska
I use Microsoft Office Picture Manager to rotate and crop my photos before I upload them, but that's all the image manipulation I can do. However, it's useful, because for some reason I list slightly to port when I take pictures, even when I'm trying to compensate for that tendency to tilt. Also, since I can crop, I can take main-street shots from a considerable distance to reduce the perspective difference between the near and the far buildings, then cut out the big patch of sky that I get by doing that.
Ah, okay: I figured that these were some NR-listed bridges that you'd visited over Thanksgiving, but I was confused because I couldn't find them in your recent edits to NR lists. I have to say that I'm amused by one image: in File:Cowboy Trail Norfolk Elkhorn River xing damaged 1.JPG, the "Cowboy Trail CLOSED Until Further Notice" sign seems to be slightly unneeded :-) I didn't know that Picture Manager was able to rotate or crop things; I'll see what I can do with it. Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 14:25, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not a big deal at all. I'm not particularly interested in the NSHS right now. Because of Hill's intricate connection to the org I thought See also-ing NSHS would be a good connect for readers, but I don't really care. Thanks for the heads-up though- I appreciate the courtesy. • Freechildtalk23:53, 3 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Too bad that google maps was too inaccurate to give a definitive winner. Both of you had traveled about the same distance so you earned your award! Royalbroil01:20, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sharing an award with a great photographer is an honor. Your photos of the broken bridges are especially tranquil, with nary a sign of the storm but that the bridges are ruined. I also loved the Midwestern Theater. I am going to use your categorizing as an inspiration to do a better job categorizing my own pictures (someone has recently been scolding me about it on Wikimedia Commons). See you at the next contest. Visitor7 (talk) 04:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am pretty much lost after I wrote the article as to formatting sources, references, footnotes etc. Glad that you and 7&6=13 are taking care of this. Broken Bow, Nebraska (not Broken Arrow) is correct. I found the error over the summer when I make a display for the museum in Marble showing where the marble is used but I did not update my list. The building was an IOOF building and I had a telephone talk with one of the two surviving members. The building today is a movie theater own by the president of a bank in Broken Bow and he said the marble is on the interior. I know my telephone conversations are not Wiki verify. Can something be added to correct the location? OneHistoryGuy (talk) 06:51, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The photos are in the categories "Curtiss Robin" and "Museum of Flight, Seattle." The storyboards are included as background info if it would be useful. We happened to be outside looking at the prototype Boeing 747 (built in 1969) when one of the brand new 747-8 jets took off from Boeing Field. Those pics will go up in a day or so. Visitor7 (talk) 07:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the excellent photos. I've placed one of them in the McCook Daily Gazette article.
The storyboards are interesting—I hadn't known about the car-giveaway promotion—but I'd be cautious about uploading photos of things like that, because I'm not sure if the text or images on them is covered by copyright.
I greatly appreciate your getting the photos. One thing that I haven't found on WP is a way to contact local photographers with requests for specific pictures. I've put a note up at WP:WikiProject Nebraska indicating that I'd be willing to try and photograph specific sites in the state; but it'd be a good thing if WP had a more organized way for editors seeking photos to get in touch with photographers who might be willing and able to take them. Ammodramus (talk) 14:28, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Would you happen to, by any small chance, be planning a trip to Wyoming any time soon? I've been trying to develop some of the Natrona County NRHP articles, most of which remain photo-less.
Also, thank you for doing so much photography of landmarks in rural Nebraska. It was quite a nice surprise to learn that the NRHP structures in my community have nice photos on Wikimedia of them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chevsapher (talk • contribs) 04:42, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry, I only have a very crude idea of what a neo-Renaissance corbelled balustrade would look like too. My high school has no Architecture classes; it's just a little thing I do some reading on since I've always been fascinated with historic structures. Anyway, the majority of these places need photographed. I might be able to get some relatives to get a few photos there this week, but that's it. I'm smacking myself for not getting photos of all these places when I lived in Casper, but it's too late now. Chevsapher (talk) 16:09, 18 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's been a while since I've bugged you with a newbie problem, so I hope that you'll let me abuse your kindness again—
I've just started going through the AfD process with ESS Drum & Bugle Corps, which I strongly suspect of being a high-school prank or the like. Everything went swimmingly until I reached the step where I edited Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2012 January 4. The subclusion process seems to have done everything it should, and my suggestion appears to be in the same format as everyone else's in the edit window; but the article's title, history-link, etc., don't show up.
I experimented by moving my proposal below the top one in the list, but that didn't help at all. The only thing I can think of is that the ampersand in the title interacts strangely with the template. However, I see that an ampersand isn't on the list of forbidden characters in article titles.
Any thoughts? Guidance would be appreciated; if nothing else, could you suggest an appropriate venue at which to ask this question? Thanks (and thanks again for all the questions you've answered in the past). --Ammodramus (talk) 16:49, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure what happened here. Did you use the template that appears at the bottom of the AFD tag? When you subst the afd1 template onto an article, it gives you some instructions, including a preloaded template for creating the deletion discussion page; you can see these lines at the bottom of {{Article for deletion/dated}}. I'm not quite sure how to fix an already-created nomination, so I simply deleted your original nomination, created a new one with your text, and restored your original nomination. Everything looks good now. Nyttend (talk) 17:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks. I think you've hit on what I did wrong. Instead of clicking on the "Preloaded debate", I clicked the redlink for "this article's entry". Will try to remember that next time; maybe I should try to find some deletion-worthy articles for practice... Ammodramus (talk) 17:28, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... Strayboots looks like it might have verifiable notability from the Times story (which badly wants formatting). EDEX Careers looks like it got its may-not-meet-notability-guidelines template this month; would it be appropriate to propose it for deletion before giving the editor a chance to respond? I'm thinking about StealTheDeal, which looks promotional and which only cites a couple of press releases from the company itself. A Google search doesn't turn up any evidence that they've been covered by reputable media. Beside, they use "everyday" as an adverb; thus their deletion will make the world a slightly better place. Ammodramus (talk) 00:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Tried it with StealTheDeal. It worked much better when I actually followed the directions... To boot, when I notified the editor who'd created the article that it'd was up at AfD, I found that it'd been deleted before and that the editor had apparently re-created it. Ammodramus (talk) 01:17, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like you did everything right; glad to be of aid. Sorry that I've taken a long time to respond; I spent much of today finishing the uploads for a photo trip from a week ago that yielded more than 125 hitherto-unphotographed sites. Nyttend (talk) 02:33, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nice article. I've made some minor tweaks to it, and uprated it from stub to start: it's near the border, but I think it's more toward the start side, since you've got multiple references and have clearly put some effort into it—in sharp contrast with all too many NRHP stubs, which are more like this.
In the article, you mention a ghost sign for a hardware store. Is that currently visible, and, if so, does it want to be photographed? I don't expect to get to Crawford in the next month or two, but if you think a photo would help, I'll put it on my to-do list.
Thanks for the nice comment on my talk page! The ghost sign is indeed visible; it was painted over years ago and is now showing up again. Although I must thank you for volunteering to take a photo, I feel that would be pure laziness on my part, as I live a whopping four blocks from the structure. :*
And yes, I'm already working on another article. I'm very surprised that more Dawes County building are NRHP-listed; I can think of more than a few that should be shoe-ins. Chevsapher (talk) 16:50, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If you can get a good photo of the ghost sign, it might not be a bad idea to include it as a citation. You can link to a Commons file without making it show up as a picture by putting a colon in front of the word "File", so you can produce a footnote that looks like: "See photo". As I understand, taking a photo doesn't count as original research, so you won't be scolded for WP:NOR.
Have you seen the Nebraska Historic Buildings Survey for Dawes County? You might find it useful if you're looking for information on county history, and specifically on historic buildings that aren't on the NRHP. The Nebraska State Historical Society has one for most (though not all) counties in the state; I usually find them by Googling (countyname historic building survey nebraska), but you can probably find them through the NSHS website as well. There might be a hard copy of it in the Crawford library, but it's nice to have an online version that you can link to in footnotes.
Look forward to the forthcoming articles—and maybe they'll pressure me into working on some of the ones that have been sitting on my to-do list for a long time. Ammodramus (talk) 18:12, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've used that document several times! I'm glad they put it together; it's very useful. The NSHS also has put all the NRHP Nebraska nomination forms on their website, most of which aren't on FOCUS. If I remember correctly, there are also some Nebraska History articles on their website that could come in handy as sources.
I can't remember if the Crawford Library has the aforementioned document on file; they have a rather paltry local history section. However, I have access to the Crawford Historical Museum's collection of books, photos, and documents, which is a huge source for local information. Again, thanks for all the helpful suggestions! Chevsapher (talk) 19:00, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The January 2012 issue of the WikiProject United States newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.
Hello, Ammodramus. I'm stopping by to let you know that this line is in the source. It's on Page 2. It's easy to overlook that an article has more than one page, so I can understand how you missed it. I never miss them anymore because I'm very aware that they might exist, but I know that others may not be as aware. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that I restored the line, and toned down the duplicate referencing. Feel free to tweak this line or anything else in the article of course. It could probably use a good copyedit, especially since it was written at a time when my Wikipedia-article-writing skills weren't as improved as they are now. That goes for grammar aspects too. Flyer22 (talk) 15:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Just found and read with great interest this article. I'll have to look for it the next time I get out to the northern Panhandle.
A couple of things that I didn't find in the article, and that should perhaps be in it. First, what kind of material does the tunnel run through? Is it cut through rock, or is it primarily dug through earth? Since it's described as a major engineering feat for its time, I assume that there's something peculiar about the local geology to make the construction difficult. Second, why was the Nat'l Guard there to prevent sabotage? Was there some kind of controversy involving the railroad or the tunnel? Think readers would like to know more about both of these—I certainly would. Ammodramus (talk) 05:17, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to know more about these issues too, unfortunately. My sources were rather vague, but they were the only ones I could find. First, I'm not sure whether the tunnel is cut through rock or dirt; in fact, different sources say differently. Second, I have no idea. Third, I have no idea either, although I've been wondering how reliable the source I stated on this statement is, judging from what I know about the gal who wrote it.
I would love to add more info to the article, but until I find more sources, it just isn't happening. Even the article as it is cites a rural kid's 4H paper! Chevsapher (talk) 15:17, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Too bad you can't find out more; it sounds like a great subject. Would it help to ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains? A railroad enthusiast might have sources on the CB&Q that might shed some light on these, especially if the concern about sabotage was due to some kind of labor unrest that affected the whole company. Also, should I put this on my list of things to photograph the next time I'm in Dawes Co.? Ammodramus (talk) 16:57, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ideas! There has to be more information out there.
And sure! I live so close to the tunnel that it isn't funny, but I don't have a driver's license. Hopefully I can get out there this summer, but who knows. If I can get a picture, then I'll tell you. Again, thanks for the help. Chevsapher (talk) 00:19, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No trouble for me to try to get pictures: I'll certainly be in Dawes County in the next few months, and I want to check the tunnel out anyhow—until I saw the article, I had no inkling that it existed. Good luck with the further research— Ammodramus (talk) 00:30, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Just passing through re:ruts, but I got some very small refs searching Google books - a source many folks ignore. I put the refs on the talk page. BTW, please get pix of the graffiti I just found out that Commons has a special dispensation for graffiti (even though it is theoretically copyrighted). Wikipedia needs more graffiti! (As always) Smallbones (talk) 01:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(To User:Smallbones). Back in October, you complimented me on some pictures of ruts at O'Fallon's Bluff in Lincoln County, Nebraska. I recently hit California Hill in Keith County, and couldn't have asked for better rut-photography conditions: unmelted snow in the ruts, bare ground around them. The photos are at Commons:Category:California Hill (Keith County, Nebraska), if you'd like to admire them. Hoping to hit two more rut sites (in Butler and Lancaster counties) this week; hope that I'll find conditions half as good there. Ammodramus (talk) 18:24, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Very, very nice ruts. I'm just mad that I pulled off the interstate there, looked at the sign and thought "I'll never make it to .... if I go looking for those ruts!" If I ever find a "Ruts Barnstar" you'll be the first to get it. Smallbones (talk) 01:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I see no reason not to add the J. Schmuck Block listing to the Gage County list. I went ahead and added it, but it's really pretty easy to add new entries. I just cut and paste the NRHP row template info from another listing and replace the data for each parameter with the info for the listing you're adding. Renumbering the rows of a large table is a bit of a hassle, but I've got a method that involves copying the raw table text out to a spreadsheet, manipulating the data there and then pasting it back into the edit window in Wikipedia. It only takes about 20 or 30 seconds no matter how large the table is. For future reference, if you work on a long table that you'd like me to renumber, just post a message on my talk page.
It seems to me that I've come across other sites that were listed around that same time that are missing from the tables. I think I'll go back and look at the announcements from that period to see if we're missing others. I hope this isn't a can of worms! --sanfranman59 (talk) 17:13, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sure enough, I found another listing that's missing from the Burt County list from that same NPS new listings announcement. Oddly, there were also 4 listings announced in Douglas County (Omaha) and 1 in Hall County at that time, but they're all included in the current tables. So it's not like we just failed to record the listings in that NPS announcement. --sanfranman59 (talk) 17:32, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(To User:Chevsapher) Just saw File:Crawford, Nebraska 2nd St from Main.JPG pop up on my Commons watchlist, for your addition of image notes. Wow! I had no idea that such a trick was possible. I'm going to have to read up on it—it'd be a lot easier than descriptions like "The third building from the left, partly obscured by the billboard, is the..."
Also saw the new photos you added for the Crawford post office. I agree that the article is better for an illustration of the mural, since that was the reason for the building's addition to the NRHP. However, I think we'd have copyright problems with photos showing the entire mural at a fairly high resolution: see this USPS page. While the use of the photos in a WP article would probably be OK, photos on Commons are supposed to be free-use, without, for example, the USPS's restrictions on commercial use. For that reason, when I photograph interiors of post offices with New Deal murals, I try to make the mural a fairly small (and low-resolution) part of the total scene, and to make sure that a non-trivial portion of the mural is obscured by foreground objects. Ammodramus (talk) 22:07, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Just saw File:Crawford, Nebraska 2nd St from Main.JPG pop up on my Commons watchlist, for your addition of image notes. Wow! I had no idea that such a trick was possible. I'm going to have to read up on it—it'd be a lot easier than descriptions like "The third building from the left, partly obscured by the billboard, is the..."
Also saw the new photos you added for the Crawford post office. I agree that the article is better for an illustration of the mural, since that was the reason for the building's addition to the NRHP. However, I think we'd have copyright problems with photos showing the entire mural at a fairly high resolution: see this USPS page. While the use of the photos in a WP article would probably be OK, photos on Commons are supposed to be free-use, without, for example, the USPS's restrictions on commercial use. For that reason, when I photograph interiors of post offices with New Deal murals, I try to make the mural a fairly small (and low-resolution) part of the total scene, and to make sure that a non-trivial portion of the mural is obscured by foreground objects. Ammodramus (talk) 22:07, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't know that the trick was possible either until last Sunday. And, better yet, the notes don't need sourced!
Anyway, thanks for the notice about the photos. I never would have guessed, especially since the murals were commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts and not the USPS. I'll get around to making the image(s) smaller when I can; but please feel free to do that yourself if you want to. Chevsapher (talk) 01:11, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"What a great new section..." You'll feel otherwise when you've got a few hundred towns on your watchlist. The notable-residents section is a major magnet for vandalism: "John Smith internatoinally known STUD!!", and that kind of thing. The only place it's worse is at articles about high schools... Ammodramus (talk) 21:33, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That really must be a pain! But that's why I don't have a ton of pages on my watchlist. I think it's a nice addition to the Crawford article specifically because I didn't know that anyone from Crawford ever reached "notability" status.
I'm glad you care about Nebraska as much as you do, though. It's nice to know that someone else appreciates what's commonly known as a really boring stretch of land between Iowa and Wyoming. Chevsapher (talk) 02:39, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's how it usually goes, learning after repeated mistakes... On an unrelated subject, I've nominated my article George Crabbe for GA. I hope it does as well as The Vicar. Someone I asked for advice raised an issue with the older public domain refs I used, but, as that's all I've got and can't afford the newest bio, I'll have to wait and see if they hold up. Wish me luck! INeverCry22:59, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I had to pull in another source, but I was able to add all the needed family details, to the lead and the early life section. INeverCry00:48, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also, in the case of George Crabbe I found a chronological mistake from one of my old sources, and there's a new 2004 bio of Crabbe, so I've un-GANed it until I can get a hold of the newer source. INeverCry00:03, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(To User:WilliamJE.) I notice that you've recently made a number of edits to articles about Nebraska municipalities, most of which appear to be insertions of notable residents.
Could I ask you to add edit summaries when you make such edits? I have a great many Nebraska articles on my watchlist, and when I find an edit without a summary, I have to check up on it and make sure it's not vandalism, spam, editorializing, etc. This is particularly true in the notable-residents section, which is a magnet for vandalism—"John Smith world famuos STUD!!!" and the like. If you'll add edit summaries, that'll save me and other page-watchers the necessity of following your edits to make sure they're legit. Thanks. Ammodramus (talk) 19:38, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
First of all not 'most of which appear to be insertions of notable residents', but 'all of which appear to be insertions of notable residents'. You won't find one person I added to a Nebraska, or another state article, that isn't a notable person aka has their own independent wikipedia article.
In fact if you did even a cursory check of my 15,000+ edit history, you'll frequently see this edit summary 'Needs either a wikipedia article or some references to back up their notability'. I edit non notable people out of articles on a regular basis. Among my last 100 edits is this one[1] I did yesterday. 13 of my last 500 contain that edit summary. My last 500 edits go back to May 20th 2012.
Edit summaries take time, especially if I have to write a brand new explanation every time I add a person. I don't use automation for my edits. The persons I add mostly are athletes and politicians but I'll do anyone I stumble across while surfing WP and I like adding notable people sections to small town articles. Steve Glimp played 18 games for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1923 and he was born in Cornwell Nebraska population of 48. Glimp wasn't famous but he has an article and an article is all that is needed to establish notability. BTW the Glimp explanation is fictional.
I see a link to a article(not a redlink), I WP:AGF unless something is fishy and makes me check further. Like I did with Curt Kaufman a baseball player who was mentioned in not one but two Iowa town articles all based on WP:OR aka a personal interview[2] by a fly by editor[3] who hasn't contributed to WP in 6.5 years.
Try AGF when a experienced editor adds a notable person with a dedicated wikipedia article. We're not IP editors or fly bys....William22:41, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your reply. I'm glad that someone else is excising non-notable notables from articles. I personally think that the "Notable residents" section is a curse and an affliction, but that's one man's opinion: I recognize that it's entrenched in WP, and that I have to live with it as best I can.
I don't think that WP:AGF is a valid argument in this situation. AGF has to do with the motives of an editor, not with the appropriateness of an edit. I'm sure you've encountered situations aplenty in which a registered editor has made changes that've had to be reverted, not because of deliberate vandalism, but because they're pushing a POV, inserting irrelevancies—or adding the high-school quarterback to the notables section, on the strength of a write-up in the local paper.
You describe yourself as "an experienced editor". Unfortunately, there are too many Wikipedians out there for me to know who's experienced and who's not. Because of WP:FIES, most experienced editors add edit summaries; so the absence of one is a warning that an edit may have been made by an inexperienced editor, or at least one who doesn't have a terribly firm grasp of WP principles and etiquette. When I'm checking my watchlist, the lack of an edit summary is a red flag, indicating that this is an edit that needs to be checked up on.
"Edit summaries take time" strikes me as a rather bad argument. The time that you save yourself by omitting the summary is probably much less than the time that it costs your brother editors to check up on those suspicious no-summary edits. Considered in that light, the argument boils down to: "My time is more valuable than yours." This, I think is why we have WP:FIES; and why we have Template:Uw-editsummary for those who disregard it. Ammodramus (talk) 15:19, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I do not like your threatening attitude. Put up one instance of me putting one non notable into an article or get off my back...William15:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Where, exactly, am I threatening you, and with what? The strongest "threat" I can see is the implication that I can put an embarrassing template on your talk page, a template that you can promptly remove. Moreover, I'm not actually threatening to put the template there; I'm pointing out its existence as supporting my contention that WP etiquette calls for you to leave an edit summary.
I haven't suggested that any of your edits have been inappropriate (and, as best I can remember, I haven't reverted any of them). My point is that however unexceptionable the edits may be, if they show up on my watchlist with no edit summary, then I have to check up on them and make sure they're OK. This wastes time that I could be spending on more productive uses (like the article I'm developing at a rate of about two paragraphs a day); and this waste of time could be avoided if you'd leave edit summaries. Your response to this seems to be "Yes, but leaving an edit summary wastes my time, and I'd rather waste your time than mine." To this I reply, "However, Wikiquette, as embodied in WP:FIES and supported by Template:Uw-editsummary, supports my position rather than yours."
I see no element of threat in any of this. I'm trying to point out, with supporting arguments, that you're committing a Wikisolecism by not leaving edit summaries, and to ask that you change this behavior out of consideration for your fellow editors. Ammodramus (talk) 16:27, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
One more post to my talk page and I will report you to the proper wikipedia authorities for WP:Harassment. If you're so worried about wasting your time, you wouldn't be bothering me who has repeatedly asked you to prove one time I put something wrong into one of your watchlist articles. Instead I get threatened with to quote you a 'embarrassing template'. Why don't you look into the arbcom and try seeing if you can join it. They're on a witch hunt right now for Rich Farmbrough and you'd fit in perfectly. In the meantime Get off my back and page....William16:51, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've just read through WP:HA, and am confident that I'm not committing it. Indeed, I'd ask that you read WP:HA#NOT, which states in part, "[I]t must be emphasized that one editor warning another for disruption or incivility is not harassment if the claims are presented civilly, made in good faith and in an attempt to resolve a dispute instead of escalating one." I think that describes the situation here. I'm asking you to abide by the WP guideline in WP:FIES, and explaining why your failure to do so causes inconvenience to your fellow editors; you're declining to do so, and responding with accusations of threats and harassment.
How would you suggest that I handle this matter in a non-harassing way, short of resigning myself to continuing to put up with your breaches of the edit-summary policy? I reiterate that this isn't just Wikifussiness on my part: these un-summaried edits cost me and other editors time and inconvenience. Ammodramus (talk) 20:05, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not in Good faith at all. Threats, Failure to WP:AGF, Failure to comply with multiple requests to both put up or not posting to my talk page, failure to read the notice at the top of my talk page that says to reply at your talk page. That's harassment because its certainly clear you know how to read. See you at the etiquette boards....William20:22, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'd rather not pester the overworked dispute-resolution people with this, the more so since it seems like an issue that we could resolve so easily by discussion. Again, let me ask: if you were being subjected to inconvenience and loss of time because of what you had excellent reason to believe was another editor's failure to observe WP policy, what would you do? If that editor refused to acknowledge the validity of your complaint or to change his behavior, failed to make arguments supporting his own position, and then demanded that you cease all contact, how would you respond? Throughout this discussion, I've been trying to conduct myself as I'd want someone to act toward me if the roles were reversed. I'd willingly hear your argument that I'm misapplying WP:FIES, but as far as I can see you've made no such argument. Ammodramus (talk) 20:52, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hoping that Saturday was an especially rough day for you, and that your life's now a considerably more pleasant place, I'll renew my recent request, in hopes of a more favorable reception.
Could you please add edit summaries when you add notable residents to articles on communities? As I said recently, the lack of a summary on an edit complicates my task of going through my watchlist and checking for inappropriate edits. Since most experienced editors use them, the absence of one is a red flag on my watchlist.
An additional use of edit summaries that didn't occur to me when I was writing you Saturday, but that's struck me since then, is that they make it easier to go through an article's history. If an editor's trying to find when and by whom a questionable edit was made, the edit summaries in the history page help greatly.
Please note that I'm in no way questioning the legitimacy of any of your edits. The problems created by the lack of an edit summary arise when I'm going through my watchlist and deciding which of the recent edits need to be followed up; or when I'm going through an article history trying to find a particular edit, and have to check edits individually because there's no summary to tell me whether it might be the one I'm looking for or not.
To your point that writing edit summaries takes time, I'll repeat: the time that it saves you now is offset by the time that it costs other editors later. This seems to come down to a question of whose time and convenience come first. To me, WP:FIES resolves that question; and the existence of a reminder template for editors who don't include summaries strongly suggests that Wikiquette calls for including them.
And once again don't ever reply to my talk page again till you can produce one edit where I put a non notable person into a town article....William18:15, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if this helps, but every time I edit a section, say "Notable residents", the software automatically adds a an edit summary of the section name. I looked through "My preferences" (between "My sandbox" and "My watchlist" at the top of the page) to see if I set it up this way, but I'm not sure I found anything. It might be following the tabs "My preferences" "editing" then mark the 3rd box under Advanced options:
"Advanced options
Edit area font style:
Show preview before edit box
Show preview on first edit
Enable section editing via [edit] links"
If that's not it I'm sure I can find out somewhere.
In summary Reset My preferences ==> automatic edit comment ==> no argument
(To User:Frankie Rae.) There's a good chance that within the next two or three weeks, I'll be up in the vicinity of Lake Andes, South Dakota. If so, I'll try to hit the Chas. Mix County courthouse in the early morning or late evening, when there's some sunlight on the north side. If I should make it there, are there any photos that you'd particularly like me to try to get? (If I can, I'll go on a weekday and try for some interior shots as well.) Ammodramus (talk) 00:42, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Perfect timing for north facade shots! You've taken superb photos, but consider these four ideas:
The terra cotta panels to either side of the main entrance (you already have views of the windows with matching trim just below them)
The stone coping and fancy brickwork immediately below roofline, either straight on or at a corner other than the southwest (you have a great photo of the chimney corner already)
The interior lobby and dome are thought to be quite something. As you may know by now, Steele really liked domes.
Two observers talk about an interior water fountain covered with a mosaic, perhaps in the same lobby.
If you get truly ambitious, Armour, South Dakota is nearby. If you end up there:
Armour Carnegie Library (part of the Armour Historic District)
As you know by now, this is one of Steele’s early Prairie School buildings. Here’s a photo: [[6]] The hip roof and overhanging eaves are classic Prairie Style. The brickwork is likely important, and might still show the original red mortar between tan bricks. It appears to have a water table just over the basement foundation level, which originally was of limestone ashlar and might still be. It should match the panel over the entrance with the name engraved. The main windows in front were once larger, and photos showing their partially filled reduced size could be important. Interior trim is quarter sawn oak, if you can get inside.
The library appears to be at one edge (Third and Main) of an extensive historic district (30 buildings or so) from the brief span of years when Armour was the second biggest town in South Dakota. You might photograph some of them for completeness, if you like, but it could be an overwhelming quantity of work. If you decide to pursue them, six of the more interesting structures might include:
Perry’s Studio, 901 Main, Built 1895, mixed commercial and residence, one-story, flat-topped, stamped metal facing
L.H. Boylon House, 920 Main, Built 1918, American Craftsman Bungalow
William Moore House, 921 Main, Built 1904, designed by Glenn L. Saxton in Colonial Revival style
EP Wanzer House, 1203 Main, Built 1895, Queen Anne with a 2-story Victorian tower
Scholes-Chesley House, 1209 Main, Built circa 1900, Colonial Revival style
Dr. Sam Carney House, 1301 Main, Built circa 1894, Queen Anne style with cross-gable roof, probably the oldest of the district
Steele designed a concrete dairy barn for the Yankton State Hospital, but that's quite a ways east.
Beautiful interior—and I've got 100 photos of it to go through (not all distinct: I took a lot of repeats, to ensure that at least one of my low-light shots wouldn't be blurred). It'll probably be a while before I get them uploaded. Will let you know when I do.
Didn't make it to Armour: it was another 22 miles. Moreover, I was having a bit of trouble with the light: at about the time that the sun moved far enough north of west to light the courthouse's north face well, a bank of clouds slid over it and put the building in shade again. Eventually got my north-face shots, but spent a lot of time waiting and hoping for little gaps in the cloud. Ammodramus (talk) 12:25, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Three months later, the interior photos are finally up. I apologize for the delay; it's been a somewhat busy three months, and the number of photos made this project somewhat intimidating, which brought out my natural tendency to procrastinate.
The interior, particularly on the first floor, wasn't easy to shoot. The lighting was somewhat dim, which made hand-held shots difficult; and if an exterior window is in the frame, it tends to glare. Unfortunately, using flash wasn't a good option either: the only one I have is the flash that's part of my camera, and that tended to wash out the detail of the terra-cotta.
Note that on the interior of the building, the mortar in the horizontal joints in the brickwork is recessed, as it was on the exterior of the Woodbury County courthouse and the Sioux City First Cong'l Church. The depth of the raking is similar: about half the diameter of a quarter, or about half an inch. When I found this, I took another look at the mortar on the exterior of the building. Although I've got no eye for it, the exterior mortar looked somewhat new. I wonder whether the exterior mortar has been replaced or re-pointed, and whether the people who did it didn't realize that the deep raking was intentional.
At your request, got several shots of the drinking fountain. It doesn't have a mosaic behind it, as your sources suggested, but terra-cotta ornamentation. Ammodramus (talk) 02:56, 12 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry it's been so busy, but I recognize the feeling. I have some sense of the difficulty of photographing in dim indoor spaces, but these images are lovely! I'm particularly impressed (and pleased) with the images of the dome, which must have been quite difficult to capture against the glare.
Your observations on the mortar are tantalizing. I had previously noticed that the water table and foundation appeared to have been recently painted. I wonder if they did some general work on the exterior without the knowledge or perhaps the funding to restore the original raking?
Dennis Utter is a former town resident. In fact he's a past Mayor and City Council member. A google search[7] produces this[8] at the very top of the page. Your mistake. In the future, if I add someone and you're not sure why I did, drop me a note on my talk page. I'm here almost every day(But next Jun 15-17 I will be around very little. My wife is having a outpatient medical procedure done on the 15th) and will get back to you promptly without blowing your head off.
Ralph Brooks. His listing at Political Graveyard, an excellent source for background on state legislators and one of my first choices for info, made no mention of McCook. I didn't know about this.[9]. My mistake so we're even.
The prose. First I felt listing the governors one by one was better, baseball player or athlete entries usually just say what sport they played. Norris was influential but where do you draw what to say or not to say? Nelson is a past Governor, I'm sure he has some worthy accomplishments. If you allow summaries, people are also going to edit in bad things about these people and if they're true, it would be hard to justify taking them down. The bit about the Norris home might be better off in the cultural part of the article.
Some state legislator articles. I had to remove copyrighted material from DiAnna Schimek and [[David I. Maurstad].
What would you think if I added politicians(or other notable people. Former Miss Nebraskas for example) who don't have a article to town articles but with a reference from a reliable source(Political graveyard, Miss Nebraska website, etc) to backup their notability?
With a few articles I changed the way they're ordered. See Also comes before References, which comes before External Links. Cultural mentions(Smithville was a filming location for the movie 'The Monster that ate Kansas'. That kind of stuff.) and notable people come on top of those. Misordering doesn't arise too often but what do you think?
Per WP:EL there really shouldn't be external links in the text of a article. I try changing these into IC. Sometimes I eliminate See Also stuff. Especially if they're two links in the article already to the SA topic.
Why does there have to be a 'People from Bassett Nebraska' category? Population is 619 and the category has one entry and more entries are likely to be long in coming.(County categories even if there is only 1 person, are fine with me. I recently created People from category pages for Garfield, Pierce, Fillmore, Dixon, Hamilton, Morrill, and Kimball Counties) There are towns in Nebraska more worthy of its own category, McCook for one. I created a People from Hastings Nebraska category recently.
Thanks for the note. You've raised a number of points, and I'll have to think about some of them before I respond. For now, though, let me wish your wife the best on her medical procedure. Ammodramus (talk) 17:53, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't had the chance to think through all the points you brought up; but will mention a few things.
Re. "People from..." categories: My opinion's probably not very useful on that. I've had little to do with the category system in WP (as opposed to Commons, where I find myself creating a lot of categories and not infrequently getting involved in recategorization efforts). I'd be inclined to say that "People from..." categories should be fairly large, running to states and to large cities. On a smaller scale, I'd say that the "Notable people" sections in articles would be a better way of presenting that information than the category system.
One problem with "People from..." categories is that people move; sometimes, move a lot. For example, a few months back I was involved in a discussion regarding the author Willa Cather, who was born in Virginia, moved to Nebraska in her childhood and grew up there, lived in Pittsburgh for some years, then moved to New York, but also (if I remember correctly) had a summer home in the Canadian Maritimes. For that matter, Dennis Utter, according to the Omaha World-Herald obituary cited in the article, grew up in Wyoming and held political office while living in both McCook, Nebraska and Hastings, Nebraska. If someone's moved fairly often, then their article could wind up in a long stack of "People from" categories.
Re. external links: I agree 100%. I try to do that myself; or, not infrequently, I eliminate the link altogether, since a great many of them tend to be promotional. I agree with you on the overuse of "See also", as well. If the article's Wikilinked in the appropriate section, there's no need for a see-also; and I've run into cases where people have added see-alsos that lead to very minimal stubs, with no additional information to speak of.
Re. ordering of sections: I generally try to follow the order laid out at WP:WikiProject Cities/US Guideline, although I think there've been cases where it seemed more logical to place "Infrastructure" immediately after "Geography" or "Economy". Ordering is a perennial problem—we get lots of good-faith edits, especially by IP editors, who seem to toss their information onto the page and leave it wherever it may happen to land. They also tend not to use the preview button... but I feel a rant coming on, and I'd better choke it off.
Re. copyvio: That's another thing I spend a lot of time tracking down on my watchlist. It's common enough that if an IP editor introduces a long passage with reasonably good writing and no footnotes, I routinely Google a distinctive-looking phrase to see if it's cut-and-pasted from a copyrighted source. Glad that you caught it in the Schimek and Maurstad articles.
I need to do some further thinking about some of the other points in your post, and will try to respond to them later. Again, thanks for bringing them up; and again, good luck to your wife on the forthcoming procedure. Ammodramus (talk) 23:58, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's taken me forever to get back to this, for which I apologize. I've been trying to organize my thoughts on some of your points, and my thoughts have resisted organization.
First, an easy point: I'm sorry about the deletion of Dennis Utter from the McCook article. I looked at the DU article, and at least at that time it didn't mention McCook; moreover, he was elected in a legislative district that wasn't particularly close to McCook. After your note above, I checked the World-Herald obituary cited in the article, and found that he'd actually been mayor in McCook before moving to Hastings.
Re. addition of notable-people with citations, even if no WP article: I have no problem whatsoever with this. Indeed, I'd rather that all such additions had citations, whether or not there was a WP article. For one thing, someone might add a person to the list based on an error in the person's article (for example, the Loup County/Loup City problem you ran down in the Edward L. Thrasher article—and, by the way, when I next get to Loup City, I'll see if I can find an old yearbook or something in the library to help resolve that). To me, this comes perilously close to using WP as a source.
Re. prose, I strongly prefer it to bullet lists, although the problem you mentioned certainly exists: that the brief descriptions will get expanded into mini-articles on the people. One thing I like about prose is that it gives us a way to organize the people by their areas of notability, with a new paragraph for each area. "Notable political figures from Jonesville include..." (new paragraph) "Several Jonesville residents have achieved some prominence in the sphere of arts and literature, including..." (new paragraph) "Professional athletes who have lived in Jonesville include..."
Another thing I like about prose accounts of notables, or rather that I dislike about bullet lists, is that the lists offer an easy template for inappropriate edits: both for the high-school wag who decides to add one of his friends as a billionaire industrialist, and for the good-faith editor who thinks that the wrestling coach should be on the list because he's taken the team to the state tournament twice. A great many people seem to be intimidated by the thought of writing an English sentence; and they tend to be the sort of people whose contributions take a lot of reverting or fixing. I suspect that they're much more likely to cut, paste, and modify an entry in a list than to generate actual English prose.
Think that these cover all the points you raised. Again, I apologize for taking so long to respond (and for responding at such inordinate length when I did). Look forward to your reply, when you're able to make one; and again, if it's not too much repetition, I hope that all goes well for your wife tomorrow. Ammodramus (talk) 18:53, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Since you've been all over the state, it's my guess that you've been to the capitol in Lincoln. I just noticed that the building was built before the House got abolished, and I'm curious — do you know what they do with the old House chambers? The article on the capitol building doesn't even discuss the House. Nyttend (talk) 23:28, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Ammodramus. Thanks for fixing the Wikilink in Incident at Hawk's Hill. I should have been more careful, since I'm the daughter of a birder and from NE CO, I am aware that there's more than one type of Prairie Chicken. I don't know how you noticed the mistake, but I appreciate your getting it right. Tlqk56 (talk) 19:09, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks—I happened to be editing to correct an adverbial "everyday", and my eye fell on the "Tympanuchus" in the edit window. As a birder myself, I had to check up on that, and then to see if I couldn't refine it. Ammodramus (talk) 19:17, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, this is just to let you know that I have granted you the "autopatrolled" permission. This won't affect your editing, it just automatically marks any page you create as patrolled, benefiting new page patrollers. You seem to have a solid grasp of our notability, verifiability, copyright, and (although you've dealt with these less, so far as I noticed) biography of living persons policies. I came to this conclusion based on a review of several of your article creations, a review of your user talk page, a few of the very small number of deleted contributions you have and some examples of your participation at AfD. I noticed your account because of a recent comment you made at AfD, it impressed me enough to look farther. If for any reason you'd prefer not to be flagged this way, please let me know and I'll gladly hit "undo". Anyway, cheers! --j⚛e deckertalk03:03, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your flattering vote of confidence in giving me "autopatrolled" status. You mentioned that your attention was drawn by a comment I'd made at AfD; if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you let me know which one? I'm relatively new to the AfD process, and it'd help me to know when I've done it right, in the view of more experienced editors. (I'll also try to respond appropriately to criticism, but I much prefer compliments.) Thanks. Ammodramus (talk) 03:21, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, it was your "embarrassed comment" at Clint Coley, which I felt a proactive and responsible response to a minor (and apparently rare) mistake. In looking through others where your !vote ended up different than consensus, I saw things like this one, and again, clue seemed evidenced. (I didn't focus on AfD, so this shouldn't be considered a strong review of all that work, but the few examples I looked at confirmed the general impression I got from the rest of the edits I observed.)--j⚛e deckertalk03:28, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply. I'm glad some good came out of my Coley screw-up. (Since I've created an average of less than ten articles a year, I don't suppose that the autopatrolled status is saving the new-page patrollers a lot of work; but every little bit helps.) Ammodramus (talk) 03:35, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If that's what you call a screw-up, you're doing a lot better than most of us. And yeah, it doesn't make much of a difference individually, but over a couple thousand people it definitely adds up. --j⚛e deckertalk03:40, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Some copy-edits would probably help quite a bit. Anything you can do would be very much appreciated. I figured I'd roll the old dice, especially seeing that the worst that can happen is a fail. I've taken care of the refs, switching the primary ones over to sfn temps and making sure everything is properly cited. As TTT said, the review might get picked up quick because of the drive. INeverCry17:09, 1 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your cleanup work. I've re-named the critical section "poetry", taking Emily Dickenson for the example. As for breaking it up, this is the kind of thing I'm not at all good with; I don't read much criticism myself, and I really had to push myself to put together what's there now... INeverCry04:50, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've withdrawn the GAN. The idea of having to deal with that critical mess is just too distasteful for me. Thanks for your help, though. Atleast it's a "pretty good" article. INeverCry06:14, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A comprehensive critical section for Trollope sounds like a horribly complex and difficult undertaking to me. Speaking of Trollope, my friend Antiquary recently did an article on The Three Clerks. INeverCry17:39, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(To User:Nyttend.) I notice that you've reverted a number of recent changes in which User:Jamo2008 added a percent sign to the demographics section of articles on Nebraska communites (for example, this diff). Any reason for this? The percent sign seemed quite appropriate to me; and your reversion has removed a space, producing "0.1Pacific Islander".
On some other reversions of Jamo2008's edits, you've restored the old phrasing for the third paragraph of the "Demographics" section, including the rather awful "In the village the population was spread out..." phrasing. For what it's worth, Jamo2008 and I mooted a change to this phrasing at WikiProject Cities; we got disappointingly little response, but the single not-us person who responded to us favored the change. Is there a good Wikireason for keeping the old phrasing, or another reason why you reverted Jamo2008's edits?
Finally, I note that you added a "minor edit" tag to these reversions, even when they involved striking >200 characters and reverting to the old boilerplate. Is this appropriate? I ask not to score a point, but in ignorance: I'd always thought that the minor-edit tag was reserved for uncontroversial edits, e.g. corrections of indisputable spelling and grammar errors. —Ammodramus (talk) 00:42, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This user was running an unauthorised bot to delete large amounts of sourced content against consensus (we had a discussion about this some time back, and consensus was to keep 2000 data and just add 2010), as well as removing the sourcing for the chunk of 2000 that was kept, and also randomly changing area figures away from what was stated in the provided source. Many of the edits that added percentage signs were immediately preceded by other edits by him that were the ones I was trying to revert; I'm sorry that I reverted some that only added the percentages, but we're talking a few thousand bad edits, and I only began to use rollback on all of these after checking several and finding that rollback wouldn't revert just the percent signs. As for the minor-edit marker: this is automatic when you use rollback — it's not something that I could add or remove. Nyttend (talk) 02:19, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply; I hadn't known that there'd been discussion on this. Do you happen to recall where it took place? If possible, I'd still like to push for a change in the boilerplate—that "spread out" really sticks in my craw. Ammodramus (talk) 02:26, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Don't remember; sorry. It would have been substantially better if years ago we'd just made a template with a bunch of parsers so that a single edit would change the wording for everything. Nyttend (talk) 02:35, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why is the Municipalities and communities template in Nebraska Populated Places in (name the county) category pages? Here[10] is Adams County for one example. The category page should be sufficient for navigation. Please reply back here....William14:05, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid I don't know. I've had very little to do with either templates or categories in WP. I see that in the case of Adams County, the template was added by User:Jllm06, whose talk page suggests a history of working on templates and categories; you might want to direct the question there. Ammodramus (talk) 14:22, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've separated the critical stuff into "poetry" and "criticism" sections. Can you take a quick look and tell me what you think of it? INeverCry17:55, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You were correct in your assumption. When I typed in the name of the article in WP, it came up on my MacBook screen (using Safari) with the word Edit on the right side of each section of the article. Signing in was NOT necessary to make changes to the article.
I then use used Google Search to find the above article on my MacBook, my Dell PC (using Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers), and my iPad (using iPad Safari browser). Each time, the article came up #1 on the search list and, when I clicked on the name, each time the article appeared on the screen with the ability to edit each section without me having to sign in.
Who can I go to to ask how to stop the article from appearing in the Edit mode even when not signing in to edit the document?
Must I delete the entire article and start a "new" article to correct the problem?
Could there be a cause and effect relationship between the Notability Flag you added to the article and the article staying in the Edit mode?
Regarding your NOTABILITY COMMENTS. Have I satisfied all your issues? CAN I DELETE YOUR NOTABILITY CODING at the beginning of the article?
Hi and thanks for the note ... actually, I did intentionally put the boundary increase information in the Location column. It seems to me that makes better sense to put it there than in the Summary column since it's related to the location. I've been doing this the last month or so as I've updated the lists. If you feel that it doesn't belong there, why don't we kick it around a bit at WT:NRHP? I'm happy to go with the consensus. --sanfranman59 (talk) 02:50, 16 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Do you upload photos of pending listings, and/or do you know of others who do? I'm considering creating a Commons category as a holding pen for such images, and I'd like your opinion on whether it would be useful. Please reply at my talk page, since I've also asked for input from Ebyabe and Smallbones. Nyttend (talk) 13:18, 11 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Might I ask you to take a look at this article? The old Post Office building is NRHP (which isn't noted in the article), the museum deserves lots of space too. Have you ever thought of doing a GLAM project? Any help appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk)20:11, 12 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nightscream (talk) is wishing you a MerryChristmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Don't eat yellow snow!
Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:Flaming/MC2008}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
Thanks for the edits on Central City! Thanks for the pictures of historical places too! I'll continue to add to its history. Over the next year or so, I might just fill history of towns, historical locations, and history of Merrick county as a whole. It might serve as a model of how others might build on the great work you have already done.--I am One of Many (talk) 19:30, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There is two pages to Mr Mohr's New York Times Obituary. Please click "Page 2" for reference to birthplace in Loup City by the New York Times, which is the foundation of the article at this time so I can keep the Loup City post going before you continuously delete it.
Octave192 (talk) 22:12, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think the image of the marker is ok or should that be removed too? I could just keep the paragraph with a link to Lone Tree. Whatever you think is best, since I'm new at this.--I am One of Many (talk) 22:34, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a problem with the photo of the Mormon Trail marker. The thing I fixed with my edit was the Wikilink to a page that didn't exist and was unlikely ever to be created (since we've got a Mormon Trail article already, and since the historical marker near Central City doesn't itself meet notability standards). There's a policy concerning that at WP:REDLINK that states, in effect: it's OK to insert a redlink if the article's likely to be created (thus all the redlinks, for instance, on the NRHP lists); but if the article's not likely to be created, it shouldn't be Wikilinked. Ammodramus (talk) 02:48, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the removal of the peripheral content on the Nike page, but I am going to reinstate the Nike-specific content. let me know what you think.--Soulparadox (talk) 00:14, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that I know almost nothing about skateboarding, so I don't know how notable Lewis Marnell is, although I see that his name is redlinked. At the Nike Skateboarding article, he appears as one of a list of 22 professional members of the team, only three of whom are bluelinked. This leads me to question his notability. That being the case, it doesn't seem appropriate to devote so much emphasis to him in the Nike article.
The tone of the subsection on Marnell also seems entirely wrong, like a violation of WP:NOTMEMORIAL. Phrasing like "passed away" and "global skateboard community was shocked by the news", the rather extraneous detail about his recent marriage, and the blockquote from Nike's tribute site all make the subsection read more like a eulogy for Marnell than an encyclopedia entry.
If Marnell played a particularly significant role on the team (as opposed to being 1/22nd of it), it'd be appropriate to include a bit about his part on the team. If his death had a serious impact beyond the emotional on Nike—for instance, if it forced the cancellation of a major promotional tour, or occurred just when a Lewis Marnell shoe was about to hit the market—then it'd be appropriate to include a well-sourced passage on that.
I'll let you consider this and edit the page accordingly, since I assume that you're far more familiar with the skateboarding world than I. I'll watch the page, and will only stick my oar in again if it looks like it still fails WP:NOTMEMORIAL, or if there's something obvious that needs fixing. Ammodramus (talk) 02:28, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the help with this, as I sincerely appreciate it. I am still relatively new to Wikipedia and needed to become aware of this information.--Soulparadox (talk) 02:36, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I was looking at Towns No Longer in Existence in Merrick County and I was surprised to see three. There are two others that are or are near ghost towns (Worms and Havens). That suggests to me that there may be many ghost towns (locations) in Nebraska. Do you think an interesting long-long-term project would be to document these ghost towns and their locations? Even if there were only one per county on average, that would be a lot of ghost towns. Some I'll bet with interesting histories.--I am One of Many (talk) 08:32, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting idea, but it might be difficult to come up with adequate documentation for an article. The Historic Building Surveys (like the one you cite for Merrick Co) would be one place to start. You might also check the county entries at Andreas's History of the State of Nebraska: it was written in 1882, when many of the now-ghost towns were still going concerns. However, I suspect that for many, you'd have little more than a name and a location.
You mention near-ghost towns like Worms and Havens. It might be better to try to work on some articles on unincorporated communities like that, where there's still have some population, rather than pure ghost towns whose sites are now cornfields. I've done a few of those—Berea, Lindy, and Tamora—but there are plenty left. There might well be census data for some of them, they're more likely to show up in the historic-building surveys, and if nothing else you might be able to find an explanation of the name in something like Perkey's Nebraska Place Names or Lilian Linder Fitzpatrick's 1925 "Nebraska Place-Names".
If you launch an article and don't have a photo for it, add the template {{reqphoto|in=Nebraska}} on the talk page, and it'll show up in Category:Wikipedia_requested_photographs_in_Nebraska. You might also leave a note at my talk page; I'll try to get photos when I'm next in the right part of the state.
Also, if you start a new article on an unincorporated community, you might want to add it to the county template (the "Municipalities and communities of X County, Nebraska" business that appears near the bottom of articles on towns).
Let me know if you launch any articles like this; I'd be interested in reading them, and will put them on my watchlist. 03:36, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm sorry about not getting back to you sooner, but family issues intervened in the meantime. Anyway, I basically agree your suggestions. I have traveled from California to Nebraska these last two weekends and I had a chance to drive around and look at some unincorporated towns. The first thing that struck me is that some are or are rapidly becoming ghost towns. I found Havens, but it is now a ghost town. There is one almost fallen old brick buildings left. There are two close-by houses, but it is only the remaining trees that provide a layout of what this town may have once looked like. That led me to wonder whether there may still be trees left for some ghost towns, which, at least, provide some indication of the layout of the town. No doubt many old ghost towns are just corn fields now, but are still remnants of some old ghost towns worth photographing?
I probably won't get started on this project till summer, but I'll take advantage of your willingness to take photographs!
I think it is important to photograph these small unincorporated towns now, because they are disappearing so fast not so much because of hard times, but the opposite. I saw so much new construction, which I think is due to good grain prices. Ironically, agricultural prices may hastening the end of these small communities.--I am One of Many (talk) 21:03, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've just encountered the Rowland Brown article, to which you've made major additions. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that many of those additions appear to contravene one of Wikipedia's core policies: no original research.
Your userpage declares that you've done extensive research on Brown. From my reading of the article, it appears that you've incorporated a great deal of this research into it, including your own conclusions about the truth or falsehood of various rumors about Brown. Unfortunately, this is just what the NOR policy is intended to prevent. It's appropriate to quote rumors and the conclusions of others about them, but not to include your own conclusions, however well-founded they might be.
There is an out, however. If you've published your work in a reliable source (e.g. a refereed, or at least a reputable, journal), it's perfectly all right to cite it, using yourself in third person.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with Wikipolicy; if you're not acquainted with NOR, I'd strongly encourage you to read it and modify the Brown article to bring it into conformity therewith. Please feel free to leave a note at my talk page if you've got any questions about this, or if there's any help I can give you. Ammodramus (talk) 21:05, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The whole notion of avoiding "original research" is ambiguous in itself, when one is necessarily bound to secondary sources. I have done an enormous amount of research for this article and have thought I should actually have published it in a journal instead of on Wikipedia. That would involve reducing the entire thing, to the stub that it was. (I am as interested as you are in making Wikipedia a reliable source, something that few academics consider it to be.) BrownPearl (talk) 00:27, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again and thank you. I think you know some of what is below and I do understand the need to verify. I just think it is too bad that relying on the printed word is the only standard, It all makes me very sad. I was hoping when Wikipedia started its brave and wonderful venture that it would be more reliable than the Bible, that its founders were aware that "truth" is soon buried by assumption.
I've been stewing all night about this. It is enormously important to me. I am working on a book with the Working Title: The Loss of History, I am the illegitimate daughter of Rowland Brown. Everyone in the family knew about me and I existed, but I am not included on the family tree. All i knew of him was the rumors, some of which matched, and some that didn't. For the last several years I have been working on a family history . . . my mother's. I use original sources, letters, journals and old News papers. The discrepancies are enormous. What gets into print and is therefore taken as the truth has often been written in order to sell either a Newspaper or a book. Most often, whatever is meant for a general public is written pretty much without thinking about its impact. The big thing I am writing is about that impact. I had not intended to write about my father at all until I saw the stub. As i wrote it, I realized that trying to tell something that was more accurate on Wikipedia would make whatever I wrote subsequently appear to have been plagiarized. I am more than happy to remove the whole thing, or to alter it sufficiently to both meet your standards and my own.
I can't handle this. I just took out everything that I wanted to say about what happened to Rowland Brown. When I went ti save it. I got the message that someone else had made changes (for the third time this week) and had to wipe out all of my work. (also "free reign" was exactly what i wanted to say, as (being the boss). Just wipe it out if you like. Whatever. I really don't have time, but do leave the birthday correction even though I suppose is that is "original research." I determined it by looking at the US Census Sheets for 1900 and 1910 and at the registration for the Navy, because I got tired of seeing it given as 1897 in virtually every source. All the sources I have used and those that I haven't put in yet are reliable.
The more I think about this whole thing, the more upset ai get. THE ENTIRE REASON I AM DOING THIS IS TO CLARIFY AND CORRECT MISINFORMATION AND ITS SOURCES THAT WERE CONTAINED IN TE ORIGINAL STUB. MY method may seem awkward and my familiarity with Wikipedia's markup language lacking, but I believe that I have the right if not the responsibility to present evidence for consideration.I thought that was the concept behind Wikipedia's existence. The original stub was well documented and "verifiable" by your standards but it was wrong. The primary sourcee was Stemple
It has the wrong dates and the comment by the much revered Philip Dunne (founder of the screenwriters' guild) concerning drinking. My father was a tea-totaler, as confirmed by Gene Fowler in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette article that I site a number of times. Why Fowler? Because Fowler was a lifelong friend of my father's and a contemporary of Dunne. You say in your comments concerning my article that my sources are used to justify my opinions. The opinions I present, ro at least mean to present are topic sentences meant to help the reader understand some of the conflicting, but "verifiable" evidence upon which Brown's reputation was built. To me, it seems important because his story is emblematic of the average experience, not just of screenwriters but of artists in general, and therein lies its truth.
Again, I have trouble with the markup language and the examples proffered for techies.
I would really like it if the people who monitor my work were less like police and more like good editors, whose only purpose was to help me say what I think needs saying, rather than denying me the right on the grounds that I cannot provide sources. There is not anything that I assert in the article that is not based on a reliable source. Please help me.
Thanks for the note. I see some guy from India really got upset about something I did. I found that my user page had to be protected. I decided to put a vandalism count on my page. I think it tells future vandals that their work is in vain.--I am One of Many (talk) 21:10, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct, it is already in National Register of Historic Places. When I went back to Central City two weeks ago, I decided to go see the inside of the Martha Ellen Auditorium and the owner had completely remodeled the inside. The balcony was converted into a second small theater. There is no published record of this modification that I could find and I just cannot report what I saw, so I thought the note was a good idea, but since it is stated in the main article, I could remove the notes and link private to the relevant section in the National Register of Historic Places: National_Register_of_Historic_Places#Properties_listed:private?--I am One of Many (talk) 06:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed that you were about the only contributor to the
A R Maharaj AfD discussion, who knows something about the
rigid rules postal authorities, in democratic countries,
apply when issuing commemorative stamps to honour notable national or international figures. If some of the other
dissenters only knew something about the status of experts
consulted, who usually have to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, they might have refrained from dismissing the stamp.
It is a laborious and time-consuming process. Newspaper atuff written by hacks to earn their living is actually quite insignificant compared to such commemorative stamps, because of the expertise of the consultants involved in the process. The stamp's notability is, for those in the know, worth more than a thousand such newspaper items, which are supposed to be independent third-party sources for many AfDs. As an aside, anything emanating from the Vatican about papal affairs seems to be acceptable, but one had to ignore all those Jain sites on this occasion, as they are not considered independent. I think, when it comes to religion, religious bodies and their sites themselves are, indeed, the best sources. Thanks for your message on the AfD page. I would have added this note there, but thought I had already said enough, and someone, cpnversant with Indian newspapers and Marathi, would respond to your query with a translation from a Marathi newspaper, but we are back to square one: how does that beat the commemorative stamp issued by noted and notable invisible experts on such subjects, many of whom actually have WP articles about them. The mind boggles!--Zananiri (talk) 15:19, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You made some good points here. I'm not commenting on the matter because of the recently concluded Arbcom case. However, I will tell you that I don't believe it is accurate to say the database is in the public domain. That is because there is no affirmative indication of its licensing status. It can be presumed PD-US, but no source confirms that. --Orlady (talk) 04:11, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see that you're fairly new at this editing business, and you're probably still struggling to absorb all kinds of details of Wikipolicy and Wikiquette. If you don't mind, I'll point out one more.
Your most recent commentat Talk:Roman Catholic Diocese of Lincoln wasn't in keeping with WP's talk page guidelines. Talk pages should be used to discuss the article, not the article's subject. In other words, we shouldn't be using the talk pages to air our personal opinions about Margaret Thatcher or Hugo Chavez or the Affordable Care Act—or Bruskewitz's excommunications.
This is all discussed at considerable length at WP:TPG. I hope you don't mind my calling it to your attention. I realize that there are lots of things to learn when you start editing, and the learning curve can be a bit formidable at times. Keep at it, though, and you'll be surprised at how quickly you learn it. Ammodramus (talk) 03:57, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So, in Talk pages you can't address another editor's concern about his/her article and make a comment about some other issue that has been jogged in your mind by the editor's comment??? Why don't we just have robots edit this thing??? If you think that I am going over this whole encyclopedia and learn every rule in it, Ammodramus, you got another thing coming. I just wanted to spend two, maybe, three hours a week helping out. I have a life and it isn't totally consumed by Wikipedia.
Why do we live in a sin/blame society? It didn't work before Immanuel was offered up by God as the Anointed Savior and it doesn't work now. This particular issue is with Wikipedia itself. And we have discussed this: It does not have a universally accepted, systemic editor training program in place. Instead of picking each other apart, competency tests should be developed by the Wikimedia Foundation and, after those tests are administered, both the individual and the Foundation can determine where the individual's strengths are and assign him accordingly. For instance, one person may be skilled at layout and design, another at fact checking, and so forth. Don't keep cursing the darkness, light a candle, For Jesus Christ's sake.johncheverly 12:49, 14 April 20
Solomon Butcher just passed its GA review. The photos you provided did a great deal for it, and I probably wouldn't have thought to nominate it had it not been for your suggestion. Thanks on both accounts! Ammodramus (talk) 22:44, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the fix; I was using USGS topos and apparently misinterpreted what I saw. Thinking that I had the correct quarter-section, I looked everywhere and observed that there weren't any other buildings there, so I assumed that it was the correct spot. And yes, I'll be happy to let you know when I find something; the problem is that my university library doesn't subscribe to anything Nebraska-specific as it does for several states closer. I'll see what I can find through consulting the archives of the Plains Anthropologist via JSTOR. If you've not already, look for anything by Waldo Wedel; I see his name appear more often on Kansas topics than Nebraska, but both states appear often in his publications. Nyttend (talk) 02:18, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Found something related to the Walker Gilmore Site, so I've added it to the county list. I don't have time to check the map, but you may be able to find more with page 281 of the Federal Writers Project's Guide to Nebraska. Nyttend (talk) 22:04, 22 April 2013 (UTC) Never mind; I did one more quick Google search and found something from a PD-US (and thus freely accessible without subscription) journal article on JSTOR, so I've now added the precise location. Nyttend (talk) 22:14, 22 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Uhh...oops. Thanks for calling my attention to it; you were correct in saying that it was the absence of a negative sign. Definitely they go in the article, but I didn't have time yet to put them there. Nyttend (talk) 23:10, 22 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Look at the index for the Nebraska Magazine of History and see if you can find Volume 17 Issue 1 and Volume 18 Issue 2; they're all or almost-all relevant. Nyttend (talk) 04:18, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry to keep piling on the comments...I left this message after checking my university library, of which the oldest holding of the title is volume 19. However, after I left the message I discovered that they have older issues under a different title, so next time I have a chance I'll try to consult these volumes myself. Nyttend (talk) 05:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
When I was in the Missouri Bootheel a couple of weeks ago, it was really really weird to think I was just one state away from the Nebraska Panhandle; I've never visited Nebraska, and (other than passing through Cheyenne, Wyoming) have never even been close to the state. Pike-Pawnee's location isn't obscure; I found it in five minutes of Google searching in an online M.A. thesis (the one that's already cited in the article, but I noticed that it was cited after I found it through Google), and when I checked the location with online USGS topo maps (mapper.acme.com), I found that the USGS labels the site even more precisely than the thesis does. Nyttend (talk) 12:47, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I use Acme frequently; it's one of the options from {{GeoTemplate}}, which is what you get when you click coords on an article. The first Google hits were the Kansas site, but I'm definitely talking about the one in Nebraska: I used the TRS location (I *just* figured out what you meant by "TRS"!) mentioned on the map shown in Asher, together with the comment on page 15 (PDF page 23) regarding its direction from Red Cloud. Using the topo map feature of Acme, I found a label "Pawnee Village" before I found the section number; it's just south of what satellite view shows to be a winding dirt road. Meanwhile, see this GNIS entry. Nyttend (talk) 13:27, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Found less information than I expected; somehow we're missing the issue that discusses Pike-Pawnee and Leary, and all of the sites in the other issues were in Douglas County and points southward along the Missouri River. I noted a couple of blufftop sites on the Douglas/Sarpy border (bizarrely, they're a single NR listing, not two separate ones), plus the Ashland site in Cass County, which should be easy to get — it's within a state park, and Google satellite makes me think that there are roads to the edge of and/or into the site. To my surprise, I found the Leary nomination by searching Google. Enjoy the Sandhills! Nyttend (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry that I edited a Wikipedia draft without asking permission from the author--I'd never seen one of those before, and didn't realize it was a work in progress.
This is the third time I've tried to draft a response to you--my ancient computer keeps freezing on me and destroying my text. So let me just explain that I'm involved in an enormous election-returns project and I'm currently working on Nebraska. Rontrigger (talk) 08:32, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, as you know i've been proceeding developing articles for Cherry County NE nrhps. I've just drafted Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Dry Valley Church and Cemetery and found a bunch of commons pics by you. I think i have found and added all of the pics to a gallery in the article, but may have missed some. Not sure whether all should be included or not, but they should be linked somehow, perhaps by their being in a commons category created specially for the place, and then have that commons category linked from the article. Perhaps with fewer pics included directly in the article. I wonder how many other Nebraska places you've obtained a bunch of pics for. Sure seems that creating the article is worthwhile to enable inclusion or linking in the pics. I'd welcome your views on how to proceed with this and others though.... will watch here or discuss at talk page of the list article. Either way, thanks for visiting the place and taking a great series of pics. Cheers, --doncram17:27, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of a gallery, I'd suggest that we just link to Commons:Category:Dry Valley Church (Cherry County, Nebraska) in an "External links" section. I don't much care for Template:Commons, since I suspect that the phrase "media related to X" doesn't convey all that much meaning to the average WP reader. Instead of using that template, I'd use something like:
I'm not always sure what the truly important features of a site are, so try to get lots of photos in hopes of hitting the critical thing by chance. This doesn't mean that all of the pictures should be used; I just wanted to make sure that editors working on articles had as many illustration options as possible, especially if they were going for a longer article and had room for lots of images, or if they were going to focus heavily on the architecture and wanted to illustrate specific points of it.
I expect to return to Cherry County before the year's end; if there's a particular aspect of a site that wants illustrating and that I haven't yet photographed, let me know and I'll try to catch it the next time I'm up there. Ammodramus (talk) 21:10, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh good, i didn't see that there was a commons category defined, i mistakenly thot they were just all disconnected pics there. I'm trying the link as you suggest, have yet to prune back any photos out of the 20. I don't have strong opinions about commons link approaches, happy for any such approach.
About what to focus upon when visiting a site, do you have a smartphone? (And would you get coverage way out in a place like Dry Valley?) I would think what is best is to have the NRHP nom docs conveniently available, by being linked from a starter article, so you can read on the spot about what was of particular interest in the NRHP nom anyhow. I've only recently had an iphone and found it helpful to know what to look for at a few pic-less NRHP places i've visited recently. In fact hugely helpful... i was really glad to find out there were 3 buildings to get pics of, not just one, say. Or to focus on some kind of detail to get, like concrete blocks formed in rustic-stone fashion, that i wouldn't have known to look for otherwise.
Also, i meant to say i really like your getting big-scale pics showing the church and cemetery's setting...too often NRHP articles have just one plan view of a building and no context. Even if the context is that the building is now almost hidden by encroaching modern buildings, we should show that, by a secondary pic in an article, IMO. Many of us do know to get some interesting detail pics, also important. Cheers, --doncram01:24, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I almost always take multiple photos of a site when I can, so there'll generally be a Commons category for the site. If nothing else, I'm afraid that a single photo might wind up blurred, or with some important detail hidden by something in the foreground. Also, if I think of it, I try to take at least one photo to put the place in its context. Unfortunately, sometimes I forget that when I'm editing the photos before uploading them, and crop out the background... Ammodramus (talk) 17:15, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, i am kinda shocked to find huge amounts of pics by you available at commons, where only one photo appears in the wikipedia page, with no indication of commons pics being available. For example, commons category for Lewis Bridge (Keya Paha River) corresponding to the one-pic Lewis Bridge (Keya Paha River) stub wikipedia article. (That's a stub article that i had started to stabilize Lewis Bridge as a disambiguation topic, which served its purpose in that the Lewis Bridge (Keya Paha River) topic is properly labelled and you used that in your commons category). The stub article is not much developed since i started it as a stub, and could obviously now benefit from addition of the NRHP nomination document that should now be available, plus should get some development from that document. I observe that for me to find the commons category i need to click through on the pic a couple times, going all the way back to the Commons version (the category doesn't show at the Wikipedia copy of the pic). It's great that there are these collections of pics, and that you have set up commons categories to handle them. It seems of great importance to (a) get wikipedia articles started for all these NE NRHPs where pics are available and where there is not yet an article (more so than for picless NE NRHPs), and (b) to include the commons category linkage, and (c) include the NRHP nom doc that oughta be available). b and c oughta be done for all existing NE nrhp articles. Your work oughta be made available. IMO your work is not findable, is not really available, from just being in commons; it needs to be linked from a wikipedia article.
Anyhow, i'll plug along in those northwestern NE counties doing all that for awhile, but all this oughta be done everywhere throughout NE, IMO, and to do it everywhere in NE goes beyond what i am willing to take on right now. (I will see any reply you make here, no need to ping talkback to me). --doncram18:04, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm surprised that you found the pictures difficult to find. Perhaps I shouldn't be—very early in my WP career, I was recruited to take photos and upload them to Commons, so I tend to think of WP and Commons together. It may be that an editor who hasn't done much on the photography end of things would be less likely to think of checking out Commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places and its subcategories. If that's the case, then perhaps we need to give the Commons category, and Commons in general, a more prominent place at WP:NRHPHELP. We've got a short paragraph on Commons under the "Images" head, but it may be that it's not conspicuous enough.
I didn't know to look for them at all. There's no indication in wikipedia, except the fact of one pic being chosen by you to be in the county list-articles, and it takes multiple clicks to get back to a commons version to see that there is a category defined. For your pics, I now will anticipate there may be multiple others in a category, but my experience otherwise is that there is usually nothing more than one pic. For example, one of the main pic contributors in Utah seems to contribute just one pic. And I recall my own initial experiences with Commons categories as negative, and I pretty much didn't/don't support the parallel construction in Commons of category structures. I was then using in a Wikipedia article every pic that i uploaded, and saw no merit in getting involved in commons category structures. (I pretty much dislike/disregard categories in Wikipedia, too; they seem to involve far more trouble in terms of number of edits, silly contention than they're worth...I doubt many readers navigate much by categories, though I believe readers do browse in lists). I do, however, see the clear value of grouping any set of commons pics of one place into a place-specific category, if that allows them to be linked from a Wikipedia article. In the 2012 WLM drive, I came to see the importance of setting up categories for sets of historic district pics, which wasn't always done, so many contributed pics were immediately "lost", IMO. And, if the categories aren't linked from a Wikipedia article, they may as well not exist, has been my impression. And if someone crazily deletes usage of a pic in Wikipedia, without ensuring the pic is put into a commons category and linked somehow, then it seems to me they're completely destructive. That is indeed where I am coming from -- I pretty much don't think of commons and WP together, quite different than you; i am acknowledging your point there can be different types of editors.
So, then, since you're demonstrating there exist untapped categories of pics in Commons created by you, at least, and maybe others, now, then yes I agree the wp:NRHPHELP system oughta cover this topic a lot more. I wouldn't have imagined that browsing Commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places and its subcategories, as you suggest, would be worthwhile at all. --doncram21:52, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've added Nebraska-specific Commons category info to Wikipedia:WikiProject_National_Register_of_Historic_Places/Resources#Nebraska, to advise future editors of the Nebraska pics you've uploaded. In general, I don't yet see it beneficial to direct editors to Commons. For example, I browsed in corresponding Utah and Nevada categories of Commons photos and think there's NOT much additional to find, beyond the one pic per NRHP site already included in the NRHP county list-articles. But, are there other states where you've added a lot of pics in Commons categories not yet linked from NRHP articles? If so, please feel free to edit wp:NRHPhelp.... --doncram20:10, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's a good idea to launch stubs just because we've got photos; and more photos doesn't necessarily make for a better article. (Indeed, it might make it worse: well-meaning editors might be inclined to add galleries containing all the photos of a particular site, regardless of the quality of the photos and whether they actually illustrate separate aspects of the site.) As you've observed in the case of the Lewis Bridge article, many NRHP stubs tend to be developed at a fairly glacial pace; and during their prolonged period of stubhood, they're of little use to the non-editing WP reader. I see no problem with letting the photos wait in Commons until an editor comes along who's genuinely interested in the subject. Indeed, I can think of a number of Nebraska NRHP sites that should probably not be articled at all: HDs that encompass an entire downtown; separate stretches of the Lincoln or other historic highways; houses that're notable only because of their association with a historic figure, and that'd be better handled as sections in that person's article; etc. Ammodramus (talk) 20:59, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for sharing your view, at least partly different than where i am coming from on these points, too. I'll comment later. --doncram21:52, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree about being selective in adding photos when many photos are available. I think the way to model that is to create the article, include one pic in the infobox, and optionally perhaps some other thumb pic in the text, and optionally perhaps a small gallery, but leaving the remainder in Commons unused but linked by an External Link. That does leave the development of the article to a future editor "who's genuinely interested in the subject", and gives xhe what xhe needs...knowledge of the availability of pics to draw from.
About articling or not in Nebraska, in northwest NE I haven't yet seen any specific example where any one is best "not articled".
About the special case of houses notable for association with a historic figure, I cannot think of a single case where I would agree the house is best treated as a section in the bio article. Any amount of descriptive info about the house is too much for the bio article, which should simply include brief mention like, in the poet Ezra Pound article, the sentence "The Homer Pound House, Ezra's birthplace in Hailey, Idaho, survives and is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places." I'd be interested if you could point to any example in Nebraska or elsewhere.
Sure, I'll agree that if a historic district encompasses an entire village or town, if the bounds are pretty much the same, then one article makes sense. Are there any specific cases in northwest NE where you actually know there is a case of this? I would be glad to set up a redirect from the NRHP article name and put an NRHP infobox and some development into the village/town article. But, where it is not yet known what is the extent of overlap, there is no harm in creating a separate HD article. It would advance the state of wikipedia-public knowledge, including by making the NRHP nom doc readily available. Then if someone can interpret the HD info and has local knowledge of the village/town and can see they should be merged, then that future editor can/should indeed merge, leaving a redirect. In another state, I had a pretty horrible long experience with an editor bent on forcing mergers, without knowledge of extent of overlap, without developing public knowledge. It turned out later that many, perhaps most, of the assumed-valid mergers were nonsensical, and it was pointy and contentious all along to try to force the mergers. From my experience, it really seems best to go ahead and develop the HD articles, and then later consider mergers from a position of greater understanding and following due process of merger proposals wherever there is disagreement possible. --doncram20:10, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry that it's taking me so long to reply to your latest. I'm enjoying a cold right now, and my brain is definitely not in top form. I'm not ignoring your latest, and will respond to it once my sinuses stop pushing quite so hard on my cerebrum. Ammodramus (talk) 20:27, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No problem! There's no urgency here. I do hope that you consider/intend this, as I do, as a friendly exchange. I did see your comment at my Talk page about the commons category-inline template. Thanks. --doncram21:53, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we can agree to disagree on something to do with coverage of NRHP-listed battlefield sites? In National Register of Historic Places listings in Morrill County, Nebraska, there were two bluelinks for battlefield sites, that redirected to Battle of Rush Creek and to Battle of Mud Springs, which i changed to show redlinks instead, in these edits. At the battle articles there was/is no coverage of the current historic site or NRHP listing. The way i would proceed is to start articles on the current, NRHP-listed historic sites at Rush Creek Battlefield and at Mud Springs Station Archeological District (both currently are redlinks), and to build up info there. I tend to think anything beyond brief mention/link, in the battle article, is too much; I am guessing you might be more inclined than me to merge the site coverage into the battle articles. Anyhow, i'd like to proceed by trying on separate articles, and will be open to the topics being merged. Do let's see how much material there is, first, but please do feel free to discuss, here or maybe best at the Talk pages of the site articles after they're created. Maybe there are more battlefield site items in Nebraska, too. The separate articles for battlefield sites vs. the battles was discussed at wt:NRHP last year i think, focussing on the National Historic Landmark ones, by the way. There's clearly room for disagreement, and i am alert to possibilities here. :) Cheers, --doncram21:53, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I'd recommend two different approaches for Mud Springs and Rush Creek (and to compound the confusion, the eponymous watercourse for the latter is now known as Cedar Creek). There was a Pony Express and stage station at Mud Springs, so it's got significant history apart from the battle, and eventually might merit a separate article on the site. However, the Rush Creek site doesn't appear to have any such separate history: the significance of the archaeological site arises from its connection to the battle and nothing else. As with Massacre Canyon, I think that the site and the battle should be kept in the same article.
Although I think we ultimately need separate articles for the Mud Springs site and battle, I think we'd be better off with a single article for now. In that way, all the information on the site is being gathered in one place. When enough material has accumulated to make a single article unwieldy, and to allow for two fairly solid separate articles, the original article can be split.
Getting back to our earlier discussion, this is how I feel about many HDs and Category B sites like the Pound house or the Susan LaFlesche Picotte house: rather than launching a one- or two-paragraph article on the site, we should start it as a section within the article on the HD's city or village, or on the cat-B site's notable person, with a mention of the site's NRHP status and a citation to the nom form. As material gradually accumulates on the site, or when an editor takes a particular interest in it and decides to expand the section, a new article can be created. Meanwhile, a couple of paragraphs won't unduly prolong the parent article or represent a serious digression; it'll keep all the material on the subject in one place, rather than distributing it somewhat haphazardly over two articles; and we won't be setting readers up for disappointment with a Wikilink that leads to a short and not-particularly-informative article. Ammodramus (talk) 02:07, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I followed up at Talk:Battle of Rush Creek and agree with your proposal there to merge. On all these things above, i think we do have to agree that a) we have different tendencies and b) the decisions merge vs. split have to be made on a case by case basis. Thanks. p.s. Also I did start the Valentine post office article, the last remaining article in National Register of Historic Places listings in Cherry County, Nebraska. You might want to add/develop more; i didn't do too much especially knowing your intentions to develop that and related post-offices-with-New-Deal-artwork articles. By keeping it short, you should still be able to achieve a 5X expansion without going much beyond regular DYK article size, for example, at any later time, if you don't care to go for a DYK within the new article clock window. Actually i don't know if you are much interested in DYKs; i am myself very much less interested in such than i once was. Thanks, --doncram17:34, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that my work on the Nebraska post offices has been pushed to the back burner. Blame Dudemanfellabra—since he came out with the progress page, I've been pushing hard to get Nebraska up to 90% illustrated. Did an expedition through southeastern Nebraska that'll get it quite close, though not quite over the line; but only after I've processed several hundred photos. Lots of the unillustrated sites are HDs, which generally take several score photos, each of which requires a certain amount of individual work (looking up dates and architectural styles in the nom forms for categorization at Commons, for instance).
The good news is that in passing through Lincoln, I bought myself a copy of the Puschendorf book on the post offices, so I'm not relying on the library's copy any more. This means that once I get to work on the POs, I should be able to proceed somewhat efficiently. Ammodramus (talk) 02:08, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(To User:Frankie Rae) Just returned from a swing through northeast and north-central Nebraska, in the course of which I photographed the NRHP-listed St. Rose of Lima complex in Crofton, Nebraska. When I got back home and started editing and uploading the photos, I discovered that, according to the NRHP nominating form, the 1911 school building was designed by William L. Steele. I don't recall your mentioning it, so I'll call it to your attention on the chance that it's a new Steele building for you.
Since I didn't know it was by Steele when I was there, I only took a few photos, which are in Commons:Category:St. Rose of Lima School (Crofton, Nebraska). When I'm in Crofton again, I'll try to shoot more, including a patch-of-plain-brickwork photo. Let me know if there are any particular details that you'd like me to try to get.
Excellent! I discovered this one only in February, and hadn't yet let you know. What a treat to have images without even requesting them! Notice how strikingly similar it is to his Saints Peter and Paul Catholic School (Butte, 1909).
My life has been quite chaotic the past nine months, but I am hopeful that it might settle down at least somewhat. In the meantime, I have been slowly working on a list of all of Steele's completed works that I can find enough information on to include. Take a look at where I am so far. Thanks! --Frankie Rae (talk) 22:32, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm impressed by your list of Steele buildings; and I've made a note to myself to shoot the Elgin school the next time I'm there.
Unfortunately, it might be a while before I get to Sioux City again: I'm concentrating on NRHP sites in Nebraska right now. User:Dudemanfellabra has developed a nifty WikiProject NRHP progress page, and looking at the percent-illustrated map has spurred me to try to get photos for 90% of the Nebraska sites. My other projects are languishing while I focus on that; and in addition, I have to do things like working. Ammodramus (talk) 00:52, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's a nice compilation. Good luck with your goal! Well, this is a marathon rather than a sprint. When you're ready, there's more to do here. In the meantime, notice that there are a number of Nebraska buildings as you zip around the state, and I'll be adding several more that I've found in the past few months, all in Nebraska. And yes, working has a tendency to get in the way of soooo many things! --Frankie Rae (talk) 02:20, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just returned from an afternoon's photography jaunt that took in Elgin, Nebraska; so I should have photos of St. Boniface School up soon.
That's a very flattering suggestion, for which many thanks. However, I don't think I'm ready yet: there are a number of areas of Wikipolicy with which I'm too little familiar.
Moreover, as an administrator I'd feel obligated to set a good example for others. I'm not often sarcastic in my edit summaries, but there are times when entering a summary like "Translated into English" gives me great spiritual relief after hacking my way through a dense thicket of semiliteracy. Administrators presumably have to forgo yielding to these impulses... Ammodramus (talk) 12:09, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, understood. You appear to have a higher view than I do of the importance of neutral edit summaries; I don't have any objection to sarcasm in sarcasm-deserving situations or with other things that don't violate WP:CIVIL or WP:NPA, and I don't see other admins objecting to it or forcing themselves to forgo yielding. Nyttend (talk) 13:36, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've begun the GA review for Solomon Butcher, and it looks great. It's more or less set as a GA, save for a few images that need their copyright notices tweaked to cover the US instead of/in addition to the EU. Once those are updated, I'll be glad to pass the article. Thanks for all your work on it. -- Khazar2 (talk) 22:59, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your willingness to do GA review for the Solomon Butcher article. I've gone through the photos in the article. Some of them already had PD-USA status. I was able to find pre-1923 publication information for another of them, and have added that to the file at Commons. For two others, I wasn't able to find evidence of pre-1923 publication; so I replaced them with two other photos for which I had such evidence. This actually improved the article: for the final photo, I found one of someone demolishing a sod house, which went well with the vanishing-era theme.
Just looked at your userpage, and saw your goal of doing 365 GA reviews in 2013. Very impressive, and it shows considerable dedication to working for the good of WP. Your efforts are greatly appreciated. Ammodramus (talk) 21:41, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the GA and the barnstar; it's only my second GA. I realize that the one-GA-per-day schedule doesn't give you a lot of time; but if you have any suggestions on how I could improve my article-writing, I'd welcome them. Ammodramus (talk) 22:39, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're very welcome. You know, I thought this would be a bit of chore when I set it as a goal, but it's really been quite fun; I've been learning a lot about a number of off-beat topics, like this one.
As for your article-writing, this was an absolute slam-dunk of a GA--thoroughly copy-edited, well-sourced, and with next to no significant MOS issues. If it hadn't been for trivial issues with the image tags, this would have passed without any further work, which is something I've only done in 5 or 6 of my 200+ reviews.
So I'm being honest when I say that my only advice is to nominate more articles for GA! If this is a typical example of your work, it should continue to breeze through. Clicking randomly on several articles where you were a/the main contributor--Rachel Ray (novel), Hastings Tribune, Tamora, Nebraska--all look like they could reach GA with minimal work. (The leads of the latter two might be slightly expanded to better summarize the articles, and try to replace "presently" or current statistics with "as of" per WP:REALTIME, which falls under criterion 1b. But these are minor points.) The short lengths aren't an issue as long as it can be demonstrated that the article covers the "main aspects" of the subject--real comprehensiveness isn't required, nor is there a minimum length.
As a side note, we're always on the lookout for more GA reviewers as well, so if you're ever interested in that, feel free to ping me if you'd like somebody to look over your shoulder.
Thanks for the advice and encouragement. I'll look through my articles and think about GANs for them.
If I start nominating articles, then I should also start doing GARs for other people's articles. I'm thinking about watching two or three more articles of mine go through the process, then trying to review some. In that case, I'll probably take you up on your offer to provide some supervision. Thanks for that, as well. Ammodramus (talk) 01:22, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No problem. A good place to start if you do a review is this essay, which helps sort out what to look for and what to let slide; for example, a surprising amount of the MOS isn't covered by the GA criteria, dead links are ok, and the sourcing requirements are more generous than most reviewers would expect. Anyway, just ping me if I can ever lend a hand, I'll be very glad to. Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:41, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nice article! You are following in Solomon Butcher's footsteps, documenting Nebraska....for fame and fortune... he failed in other ways then sold out editions of books of local history!? :) I added mention of Butcher to the Sod house article, perhaps you could check/modify that. Cheers, --doncram21:38, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ammodramus, hope all's going well. Since you mentioned in the past that you might be interested in GA reviewing, I thought I'd drop a note to link you to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Recruitment Centre. It's a new project designed to ease users into GA reviewing by matching them with a mentor. It's not mandatory, of course--you're still welcome to just dive right in, too--but if you're interested in having a helping hand for your first reviews, that's a good place to go to find one. Enjoy the weekend! -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the heads-up on that. I'll definitely bear it in mind, since I'll want someone looking over my shoulder when I try reviewing.
Before I start, I'd like to watch a few more of my own articles go through the process. I've only been through it twice so far, and would like to get a bit more of a feel for how different reviewers handle it. Ammodramus (talk) 01:05, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ammodramus, your pics are serving well for articles ranging outside of NE, too, I notice. Happen to be working on User:Doncram/Plum Bush Creek Bridge, in CO right now. Could you possibly please fix, or arrange for fixing of "Category:East Plum Bush Creek Bridge (Washintgon County, Colorado)", to fix the typo "Washintgon" vs. "Washington", for all 8 pics? I don't edit much over at Commons, not sure how to arrange to fix. Not sure why/if it matters really, but i sorta think you/we'd want to fix it before linking from wikipedia mainspace. --doncram13:50, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Embarrassment is mine. I've fixed things: files are now in Commons:Category:East Plum Bush Creek Bridge (Washington County, Colorado). I've marked the "Washintgon" category for deletion. (Commons doesn't have a "Move" function for categories like the one for WP articles, so the misspelled category will be around until an administrator deletes it, which usually happens pretty quickly.) Thanks for catching and letting me know about the error—good eye! Ammodramus (talk) 16:25, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Idly curious, are you familiar with the Hub? I'd never heard of it until recently, when I learned from a longtime friend that he's starting a job there next week as a sports reporter. Nyttend (talk) 22:58, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to be using WP:IAR on one aspect of the rules here: Technically, there might be a little original research here, but it's of the "describe how sources were evaluated in footnotes" sort, which I think is fully justified in a case where there's a lot of ambiguity in the sources. If there's any sources that back your arguments, mentioning them would strengthen this aspect, and really help you out if you intend to go for featured article.
So, I'm giving this a pass on well-referenced. In fact, it uses extra references and checks to make sure that it's as accurate as possible. Other than those couple footnotes, everything is fine on that point.
So.
It's comprehensive, seems to us all relevant sources, and provides loads of extremely interesting background.
I think this is an excellent article, and think it deserves to be GA.
The only real issue that could be improved is that the historical significance of the house isn't fully described. I mean, a homestead sod house is almost certainly significant, but it'd be good to summarise the arguments that got it onto the National Register of Historic Places, because, you know, why not?
Thanks for doing the GA review. I appreciate your efforts. For what it's worth, I'm plannning to try to do some GA reviews myself once I've been through the process a time or two more with articles of my own—I want to get a feel for how various reviewers handle it before I try it.
I was a little worried about the OR thing myself, especially the date on the tornado. Note that I used "early 1940s" in the article, which is consistent with sources. I thought it important to put a footnote in, lest someone notice the (possible incorrect) 1941 date in some sources and insert that, thinking that they're being more precise: the footnote is there to warn editors about that.
I'll take your suggestion and move some of the statements regarding the historic significance of the house to the lead. I've got them in the very last paragraph, but it'd probably be good to put them in a more conspicuous position as well.
No worries. If in doubt, what you could do is just put the facts forwards without drawing conclusions, which is ample for what the text cites. You can, for example, cite the tree being destroyed by tornado, and just leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Adam Cuerden(talk)16:14, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week, for tireless contributions to tedious tasks. Thank you for the great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)
"I nominate Editor Ammodramus for their remarkable work on Nebraska-related topics. Ammodramus' primary work is as a photographer, donating over 11,000 pictures of Nebraska landmarks to WikiCommons, including many of National Register of Historic Places sites. They've even gone to photograph sites on behalf of other users. Ammodramus is active in content generation—contributing several Good Articles as well as quality content on Anthony Trollope novels and Nebraska topics—and in "The War of Error", patrolling Wikipedia for common mistakes. Their exceptional, generous contributions are a model of what a Wikipedian should be."
You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week:
{{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Editor of the Week/Recipient user box}}
Ammodramus has significantly and substantially improved Wikipedia's coverage of the U.S. state of Nebraska. Contributing not only Good Article-level text, but also their own high-quality images, Ammodramus brings our readers articles that are both visually and textually informative. With over 14,300 edits to en-wiki (65% in article-space), and an amazing 11,000 image uploads to Commons, this editor gives both quantity and quality to their subject area of choice.
I've submitted a rotation request for the file. This is the first time I've done it, so we'll both be learning something new...
Unfortunately, I don't know any other way of editing a file that's already uploaded to Commons. I'd like to know—I once uploaded a batch of photos, and then realized that I'd forgotten to crop them. I think it's possible, but I'm afraid I don't know how. Ammodramus (talk) 16:55, 30 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to have worked. That was straightforward: I just used the "Request rotation" button under the photo and above the summary. Ammodramus (talk) 11:57, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, now i see that "Request rotation" link. I've added that pic to the drafted article. I expect the article will go to mainspace soon, and its creation will turn out to be a good experience overall for this new editor (whose first effort was simply rejected). Thanks much for helping! :) --doncram18:31, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
De nada. Would that all of our problems were so easily resolved-- I've just discovered that I inadvertently uploaded some more pictures that I hadn't cropped. Worse yet, one of them was the Queen Anne house that I'd planned to use to illustrate its HD in the NRHP list article; and the thumbnail illustrations in list articles really need to involve fairly large blocks of color, or they just look like blotches. But I kvetch... Ammodramus (talk) 20:04, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding wisecrack within this edit, had you been at all interested in actually developing wikipedia, ... why not add a source rather than just unsourced info? To respond to your question, though, the article was created so that it could be included into a White House (disambiguation) page, where a White-House-focused editor was deleting every redlink item. (Alternative being to fight it out some how with that editor / it was easier better just to start the article.) It had to be created, to get the disambiguation set up, which is part of the background work of developing wikipedia coverage of NRHP places. Which you benefit from, having nicely set up, disambiguated NE and AZ article lists. Yep, the AZ nomination forms were not then online. Now, they are. Please do feel free to add info to articles, in addition to adding your nice pics. It would be nice if you would do some of the work of adding proper sources, too. :) --doncram20:36, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that you've misread WP:AGF, the essence of which is: don't assume that a fellow editor is intentionally vandalizing or sabotaging the encyclopedia when there's room for reasonable doubt. My edit summary did not allege any such thing; it merely called attention to what I'm sure was an unintentional English-language solecism. Ammodramus (talk) 02:12, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your promptly spotting my upload of the Cliff Theater photos was impressive-- but it was a little disconcerting to find out that you'd already illustrated the NRHP list article. It's selfish of me, I know, but I'd really rather have put in the illustration myself; the diff would've been my reward for the half-tank of gas I burned detouring to Wray to get the photo. You've left me with a rather coitus-interruptus sensation... Ammodramus (talk) 21:10, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about that - I know how it feels, though. (Happened to me a couple of times with local NRHP sites.) A propos of very little, I've been having fun watching the autoupdating page of new files on Commons today, which is how I found your shot. (Nice work, by the way.)
I admit that the article calls for a world of expanding-- it's one of those that Doncram created as a two-sentence stub, in the belief that it'd attract scores of edits and additions and cruise to GA status in no time flat. However, somebody else is going to have to do the expanding-- I've got enough work to do in Cornhuskerstan. Ammodramus (talk) 21:27, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, based on my experience with things out here in...Cavalier-stan? (Sounds horrid.), a lot of that expansion will come, slowly. I've seen an impressive amount of work on Virginia-based NRHP sites of late, which has been a long time coming. I've not had the time to expand them nearly as much as I wish, so I'm glad to see them being filled out slowly. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa.13:45, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just a heads-up in case this hasn't come to your attention: the Omaha Park and Boulevard System is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, under that name. There's a short summary at [11]; the nominating form is at [12]. I've put a note to that effect in the article Boulevards in Omaha, Nebraska, which you created; don't know if you'd want to revisit the article, particularly in light of the inclusion of parks and golf courses in the NRHP nomination. Ammodramus (talk) 02:40, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Ammodramus, thanks for the heads-up. I'll definitely work something out, but I'm not sure how yet. Can the boulevard system maintain its own article, with a separate one for the designated areas? We surely wouldn't merge the parks into the article, right? Hmmm. I'm going to research Chicago and a few others, but tell me what you think? Thanks. • Freechildtalk14:17, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't really given it much thought-- I'm more of an outstate person. Thinking at the keyboard, my first inclination would be to rename the existing article to include parks, and to include material on the particular parks that're considered part of the parks-and-boulevards system. I wouldn't suggest a merge with Parks in Omaha, Nebraska, which also covers lots of parks that don't appear to be included in the P&B system; nor would I exclude non-NRHP boulevards (e.g. Sorenson Pkwy) from the boulevards article. Mostly, I think I'd be disposed to expand the boulevards article with a little more material on the parks that Cleveland designed as part of the system. Will think about this some more and get back to you on it... Ammodramus (talk) 19:54, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just from what you've written and what I've been able to find so far, I'm thinking about a separate article. The nomination cited the specific work of HWS Cleveland, which is comprised of "18 contributing parks, six noncontributing parks, and approximately 19 boulevards that span approximately 26.5 miles and link approximately 1,650 acres of park land." The City of Omaha, however, claims it has a total of "over 250 parks covering approximately 10,000 acres of parkland", and doesn't really say how many miles of boulevards there are citywide - but the number is greater than the nomination, because they've added new boulevards as recently as a few years ago.
Thanks, and good luck with the article development.
I'm still doing photography in Nebraska; drop me a line if there's anything specific you'd like photographed for the article (or if there's something else that you're trying to push toward GA or FA). I've got a few NRHP sites left to shoot in Omaha; unfortunately, most of them are historic districts, and it takes a lot of work to photograph them right. The boulevards-and-parks one will be especially time-consuming, since I won't be able to do it on foot like I can in most HDs.
Don't know if you've been paying any attention to WikiProject NRHP, but one of the members recently put together a dandy progress page, with maps of the US showing the fraction of NRHP sites in each county that've been illustrated, that have articles, and that have articles rated Start or better. The last of those maps might interest you: only two Nebraska counties have reached 50% Start+. One of those was Arthur County, where I wrote a C-class article on one of the two sites. The other is Douglas County-- and the reason it's got such a high percentage of Start+ articles is all the work that you've done there. Too bad it's not a bigger county geographically-- it'd be nice to have it show up more conspicuously on the map. Ammodramus (talk) 21:16, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that heads-up, and for your ongoing offer for the pics. I'll admit to you that I've grown weary of the WP project in general. I've spent so much time and energy digging up info on places and people and events that wasn't compiled anywhere else before, and now I find it all over the Internet, relatively speaking, with people taking credit for the finds and whatnot. Its discouraging. So I started a blog to put my finds on and break away from the encyclopedic formula, and that's been a bit better. I still contribute here occasionally though, especially when I'm goaded on by other serious editors like you! It's good to be seen, you know? • Freechildtalk01:00, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the link to the blog. I don't have the time to go through it in detail right now-- I've got to spend some time struggling with spreadsheets today-- but it's up on my bookmark bar, awaiting a chunk of leisure time.
Have to pick someone up at Eppley in the early afternoon of Oct. 14, so if the weather's good, I'll take my camera and try to spend the morning a-photographing. I've got plenty of NRHP sites to hit, including several HD's; but if you've got a place that particularly wants photographing, feel free to ask. (I think all photos at Commons are free-use-- I release all of mine into public domain-- so if you find something there that you can use for the blog, by all means do so.) Ammodramus (talk) 16:26, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
NRHP Fall 2013 Photo Contest barnstar - Multi-state Traveler
I hereby award you this barnstar for photographing the most new sites within a single state. You accomplished 109 new sites in Arizona, which is impressive considering how the cities are widespread throughout the state. Royalbroil02:11, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Honorable Mention in the State traveler category in the NRHP Fall 2013 Photo Contest
I hereby award this barnstar to you for photographing two very distant sites within one state during the NRHP Fall 2013 Photo Contest. You photographed two sites in Nebraska that are 478 miles apart. Many states don't even have two buildings that far apart! Royalbroil04:46, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Winner for Most Sites added in a Single County/Community List
I hereby award this barnstar to you for photographing the most new sites on a specific county/community during the NRHP Fall 2013 Photo Contest. You photographed a whopping 66 sites in Pinal County, Arizona. Your impressive total almost doubled everyone else's maximum. Royalbroil02:00, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Those were some nice edits on the Cherry article. I have also just filed a short stub on Fort Niobrara, which will probably show up with you, since you are monitoring Cherry County. NoAmGeogSoc (talk) 20:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comments on my edits. I didn't know about the Ft. N. article until you pointed it out, but I've put it on my watchlist.
A question about the article: Why'd you add the parenthetical "(Nebraska)" in the article title? As far as I know, it's the only actual Ft. Niobrara that ever existed (although I'm not exactly a fount of information on the subject). My inclination would be to change the name to just plain "Fort Niobrara", with a hatnote to point to Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge and to Fort Niobrara Wilderness (and I'm also inclined to think that the latter should be merged into the former, but that's getting outside of your area of interest). That seems to be the usage in other cases-- even Fort Kearney, which was actually one of several posts with that name. Would you object to my doing so? Among other things, that'd clear up the redlinks to Fort Niobrara in the Cherry County and possibly other articles. The alternative would be to keep your article title and create a disambiguation page at "Fort Niobrara"; but I'd say that Ft. N. is the primary topic in this case, so the article-with-hatnotes approach would be better. Ammodramus (talk) 00:13, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your suggestion on the article title of Ft. Niobrara is a good one. Please feel free make the changes you suggest.
Well, as you can see Fort Niobrara has gotten a little out of hand. It is no longer a stub (obviously). Its now a work in progress. It is on its way to being a full article. I am still working on it, I can see I will need one of those Ft. Tables, like I noticed in "Ft. Robinson" where I see you have made some editing entries. It seems you know a lot more about the fine points of editing than I do, but your comments have been extending my education.
Do you have any comments about references when most of the reference sources (at least at this early stage) are mainly one article, as it is in Ft. Niobrara.
I'll go ahead and do the page move. I'll probably wait till tomorrow-- my Internet time is drawing to a close, and since I haven't done hatnotes very often, I'll want some time to read up on them and correct any mistakes that I make.
Regarding references, I don't think you need to include a citation after every sentence, as long as they're not direct or indirect quotes, and/or potentially controversial in any way. This is especially true if a whole paragraph comes from a single source-- in that case, I just put a single citation marker at the end of the paragraph. If I use multiple sources in a paragraph, but I don't quote anybody or include anything that might come into dispute, I usually stick a string of citations at the end of the paragraph. To me, that makes the text a little more readable.
Also regarding citations, you can save yourself a few keystrokes on repeated citations where you're using a name. Once you've created a citation with a name, you don't have to type "<ref name=cherry></ref>"; you can just use "<ref name=cherry/>", with the slash at the end of the tag. That'll give you a tiny bit less keyboarding to do, and it also makes it a little easier to edit when there's a string of citations-- less risk of losing the closing "</ref>" tag. I've done this with the Lt. Cherry article, if you'd like to check it out.
If you want to get a little fancier, I like to use list-defined references, which is what I did with Lt. Cherry's article. Basically, that involves putting the citation information inside the {{Reflist}} in the references section. That way, it doesn't get eliminated by accident if somebody edits out a passage including citation information and doesn't check the edit summary to make sure that they're not orphaning a "<ref name=cherry/>" tag. It's also easier to read the text in the edit window if you don't have to wade through tangles of citation details.
By the "Ft. Table", did you mean the boxed business in the upper right? In Wikiparlance, that's known as an infobox, and you put them in using templates. The one you'd probably want to use for Ft. Niobrara is Template:Infobox military installation. If you'll follow that Wikilink, you can see how it works. You don't have to fill in all the parameters on an infobox-- if some of them aren't applicable or if you don't have the information, you can leave them blank.
Good luck with the Ft. N. article; leave me a note if I can be of help. I'll keep it on my watchlist and render what assistance I can. Ammodramus (talk) 01:29, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see you have added a note as to the origin of the name of "Keya Paha", just as I was also trying to sort it out, using a reference to the Lillian L. Pitzpatrick book. If I were looking up Keya Paha county I would want to know what that strange name meant. Are you the northern Nebraska guy. Am I tresspassing on your turf. I hope not.
I am still working on Ft. Niobrara. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NoAmGeogSoc (talk • contribs) 19:28, 16 October 2013
I switched your citation to an online version of the LLF work, since that'd allow people to check the source more easily. In doing so, I noticed that LLF discusses the name both in the introduction (from which you got the quote) and in the section on KP County. I melded information from both, in preference to using a direct quote from LLF.
I pulled the etymology out of the lead, since the article's fairly short and the etymology section in the body text comes so quickly. It just seemed a bit redundant to have the same information occurring twice in such a short space.
No such thing as trespassing on another editor's turf (outside of their userpage): see WP:OWN. I sometimes like to give someone a heads-up before I make major changes to an article on which they've done the vast majority of the work, especially if I think that they're something of an authority on the subject area; but it's definitely not required. In fact, WP:BRD supports: edit first, then discuss. Ammodramus (talk) 00:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article McCook Daily Gazette you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Khazar2 -- Khazar2(talk)14:54, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(To User:Khazar2) Thanks for doing the GAR for McCook Daily Gazette. I apologize for taking so long to respond; I've been travelling in remote corners of Nebraska, and my Internet access has been sporadic and limited.
Assuming that the Gazette gets GA status, it'll be my fourth; and now that I've been through the process four times, it's about time that I started paying back by doing GARs for other people's articles. Some time ago, you mentioned that you might be willing to give me some oversight and feedback on that. If you're still interested in doing so, and if it wouldn't overload your current schedule, could you please drop me a line and let me know? Thanks. Ammodramus (talk) 04:54, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'd be really happy to. The work you've submitted shows you already know your way around GA guidelines, and I think you'd be terrific. I'll set up a recruiter page in a minute so we have a centralized discussion point, and then put the link here. Thanks for your interest in this--it's a big help to keeping things running, and I've always found it to be a lot of fun, too. -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:55, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for setting up the mentorship page. I'm currently working through the GA guidelines and other links you've given me, making sure that I've got a good handle on them. I don't really know the guidelines that well-- I've just tried to write the best articles that I could, and used the GA process as a means of finding out how they needed to be improved. Before I start doing GARs, I want to make sure that what I do is well grounded in policy. Once I've familiarized myself with those, I'll try the quiz at the mentorship page and then get back to you; that'll probably be within a few days. Ammodramus (talk) 14:13, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, have you ever thought about rallying a few other WikiProject Nebraska members to try to get the main Nebraska article to GA? You seem well-qualified to do it if you're interested, and it gets something like 780,000 readers a year, so it'd net you all half million award as well. -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:58, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Greetings, Ammodramus. Like everyone in the GA community, I'm sad to see Khazar gone. Before he left, he indicated that you have a good grasp on the intricacies of GA reviewing, and I'm glad to hear that. Welcome aboard. If you have further questions or would like second opinions on any of your reviews, I am an experienced GA reviewer, and I'd be willing to assist. All the best, – Quadell(talk)16:07, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much for your offer. I'll almost certainly take advantage of it; I'm not as confident as Khazar2 that I really understand the fine points of GAR, and I'd be very hesitant to embark on another review (only the second of my career) without an experienced reviewer to call upon for advice.
I haven't picked a new article to review yet. Since I'm probably going to ask for your input, are there any topics that you're allergic to? For example, I don't think I could do a good review of an article concerning sports, or TV shows, or manga, among others; similarly, there might well be subjects that you'd rather avoid.
As with my first GAR, I'll probably do my scratchwork at the mentorship page. Will you be watching that, or should I reach you directly through your talk page?
Thanks again for your offer of help; I hope that once I acquire a little better understanding of the process, I can start reviewing solo, and can make up for some of the time and effort that you and Khazar2 put into making me a better reviewer. - Ammodramus (talk) 17:08, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your note at my talk page. I'm working on the review-- a little slowly, I'm afraid, since I have to do it in parallel with real-world work. We'd get so much more editing done if it weren't for things like that...
It's an interesting article, and I'm glad that the GA process brought me to it. My impression thus far is that we'll be able to get it up to GA level with a little more work. Thanks for your patience while I'm working on the review; I'll try to get it up as soon as I can. Ammodramus (talk) 06:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, I was thinking the same thing while I was at work yesterday--if I had every day of the week dedicated to my Wikipedia contributions, I'd have several completed featured articles by now! I definitely understand, and there is certainly no rush. I'm just very grateful that the article is under review, and I appreciate you taking the time for your busy schedule to do so. Thanks again! -- Caponer (talk) 13:22, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, thank you for your comments and suggestions. I'll try and complete these within seven days for your re-review. Thank you again for taking the time to thoughtfully improve the article to Good Article status! -- Caponer (talk) 17:53, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, I've incorporated most of your suggestions and I'm still working on tightening up some wording. The only piece of your review that I have not yet addressed is further expounding upon the Jacob Green affair. I'd like to be as succinct as possible because I feel the Jacob Green affair could merit its own article after I finish updating this one, and I'd like to avoid too much duplication of information. If you'd like to check out the rest of the article minus the Jacob Green affair, please do and share your comments on the progress thus far. Thank you again for your very thoughtful and thorough review--I really appreciate and value your input. I wish I had made your acquaintance on Wikipedia sooner so that I could have had your comprehensive reviews of some of my past articles! I'm a one man team attempting to document my county's history one article at a time (in my spare time mind you), so I'd like to make everyone worthwhile, broad, and informative. -- Caponer (talk) 19:29, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Looks very good indeed. I've just gone through and made a hatful of changes, mostly cosmetic and none GA-critical; if you opt to revert any or all of them, it won't affect the rating. I think that they make the prose flow a little more smoothly, but none of them corrected an egregious error or was necessary for a sentence to make sense.
I sympathize with your wanting to hold something back for a Jacob Green article. However, we want to give readers the necessary information without making them chase a see-also link, and I don't think we're there yet. At WP:LINKSTYLE, it's noted that readers might not be able to follow links: if, for instance, they've only got a printed copy of the article.
Once the Green section has been expanded a bit, I think it's ready for a pass. I'll tempt fate by offering you advance congratulations, and thanks for all the work that you've put into this. Thanks, too, for putting up with my shortcomings as a reviewer. I'll get better with time and practice; you've been very patient with my initial halting efforts. Ammodramus (talk) 21:46, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, I've finished expanding the section on Jacob Green. Please feel free to pare down as needed, as it is a bit lengthy! -- Caponer (talk) 05:42, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For your comprehensive and thoughtful Good Article review of Virginia Argus and Hampshire Advertiser and for the valuable guidance you provided along the way. Because of your thorough attention to detail, this article far exceeds the Good Article requirements. It was certainly a privilege and pleasure working with you throughout this process! Job well done! -- Caponer (talk) 01:32, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Very nice! I'm up to my ears in another GA review right now, so I don't have time to give the expanded article the attention it deserves, but I'm looking forward to reading it in detail when I've got some time.
I'm having a little trouble letting go of my role as reviewer, so I hope you won't mind a few suggestions. First, why not put the Green affair in its chronological position-- that is, before the Civil War? Second, I'd mention the national attention that the affair received in the lead section. As currently written, it reads as though it's chiefly notable as an incident in the life of notable person Faulkner..
I put a map in the infobox, based on the coordinates that were there: like many people who know just a little about the Civil War, I think of WV as having been the non-slaveholding part of VA, so it seems just a little odd to read about slaveowners there. A map that shows how close Romney is to still-Virginia (and makes it clear that it's not way out in the mountains) helps me reconcile that. You might want to look at the coordinates, incidentally: when I checked them on Google Maps, I hit what looked like a patch of trees with no dwellings especially nearby. That doesn't affect the location-in-WV map, of course, but it's good to have accurate coordinates. (I spend a lot of time travelling and photographing NRHP sites along the way, and good coordinates can be critical when I'm trying to find a site.)
Thanks for the heads-up on the expansion; if you're agreeable, I might get back to you with more suggestions once I've had a chance to give it a good thorough reading. Ammodramus (talk) 18:19, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, I definitely understand that you're swamped in other GA reviews at this point, so it's no problem! I really trust and value your judgment and I welcome your suggestions, and there is no rush on when you'll be able to take an in-depth look at the article. Thank you for adding the map! I had kept coordinates added into the article from a previous editor, so I've amended the coordinates so that they are now accurate. I'd be definitely agreeable to you getting back with me whenever you're free to give it a thorough reading! Thanks again, sir! -- Caponer (talk) 01:56, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(To Nyttend) I'm afraid that I have to disagree with your restoration of the adjective "historic" in First United Presbyterian Church (Madison, Nebraska). The use of the adjective in the article (and in the rest of Swampyank's NRIS-only church substubs) strikes me as the very essence of peacockery: it proclaims the subject's significance without giving the reader any reason for it. In its fourth and final sentence, the article states that the building's been listed in the NRHP; it seems unnecessary to pre-iterate that in the first sentence.
My objection to the adjective only applies in cases like this one, where no explanation of the historic significance is given. In a real article, it wouldn't be at all inappropriate to describe the subject as "historic" in the lead section, as a one-word summary of a reasonably detailed explanation in the article's body. Ammodramus (talk) 16:56, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply. Sorry for the misunderstanding; an edit summary doesn't give one much room to explain one's reasoning.
For what it's worth, the photo at the Presbyterian-church article is the first one that I ever took expressly for Commons, and was taken after you suggested to me that it'd be nice to have some pictures of NRHP sites in Madison County or elsewhere in Nebraska. Obviously, I uploaded it before I learned that it was possible to edit photos to correct camera tilt... Ammodramus (talk) 17:25, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for agreeing to take a few pictures :-) And you're well ahead of me; I've never yet learned how to do the photo editing. Do you save your photos on your computer, or are they deleted once you've uploaded them? Since I save everything (there are tons I don't upload), I recently put in some time to figure out which photos were oldest, so I've been able to determine what my first NR photo in each state was. Of all those used here, File:St. Joseph's Old Cathedral from the Oklahoma City National Memorial.jpg was the first (taken months before I registered my account), although obviously not the first uploaded, and File:Urbana Roundabout.jpg was the first taken for Wikipedia, although I'd not yet heard of the NR. Nyttend (talk) 19:25, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't generally save my WP photos; I assume that I can go back to Commons and download something that I've uploaded. I do lots of switching between two different computers, and trying to keep identical records on both is plenty of work without the photos. I remembered that the Madison Presbyterian photos were among the first that I took, and checked my contribution history at Commons to verify it. Actually, the first NRHP photos that I uploaded were some that I'd taken earlier at the Gosper County courthouse, and saved to show to a fellow Art Deco enthusiast; the First Presby shots were the first for which I went out with the express intent of photographing something for WP.
I don't do much in the way of editing; I use Microsoft Office Picture Manager, which allows tilting and cropping and not much else. The only other editing I've done involved using the program that came with my camera to eliminate red eyes on some Nebraska politicians. Ammodramus (talk) 21:23, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I clarified the terrace-builder bit in the article (Lautner Jr), and I'll probably add a little more (from your suggestions). I do have a copy of the nom form :) Andrew Jameson (talk) 22:32, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the kudos. It helps that Michigan has an online database of ~85% of the NRHP properties which contains a summary description; the description usually is about equivalent to a high-Start / low-C article. That's a pretty good base to start an article from. (Also no one's cleared out the unassessed articles cat for like 6-8 months, so you're seeing most of a year's worth of work.) Andrew Jameson (talk) 08:29, 25 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Twin" = "Divide in two" (to make two screens in this case). That was the verb used in the nom form, although the additional information contained in the form made the meaning clearer. Andrew Jameson (talk) 16:04, 26 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The information in the nomination form on the Braumart Theater isn't much more extensive than what's reproduced in the article. I infer that the building was used as a movie theatre from its opening until the 1996 closing, but that's only an inference. I infer it's being used as a live performance space now, but again only an inference. Andrew Jameson (talk) 00:17, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies for not getting back to you sooner for I was away for Christmas. I probably marked the article by mistake as being a National Register of Historic Places property. Sometimes, this happens. I take responsibility for the edit but there was no vandalism, etc., I just made a mistake. My apologies-21:50, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Happy Holidays Ammodramus! I've created an article for Col. Isaac Parsons' grandfather Isaac Parsons (one of today's DYKs), and I'm currently working on building an article for Col. Isaac Parsons, too. The fact that you're busy reviewing other articles in the meantime is actually perfect, as I'd like you to review both the Wappocomo and Col. Isaac Parsons articles together to make sure they jive well together and with Virginia Argus and Hampshire Advertiser. Again, I'd especially like you to review these articles and quality control them, as you're somewhat familiar now with the subjects :) I hope you won't mind holding off on reviewing Wappocomo until I've finished Col. Isaac Parsons, but as you'd expect, I'll be editing them together in tandem. Thank you again for all your latest hard work and efforts to improve Wikipedia's quality every day! -- Caponer (talk) 00:43, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Happy New Year Ammodramus! I've completed the article for Col. Isaac Parsons. Whenever you get a chance, I'd like you to take a look at this article and Wappocomo and provide any guidance for how they can be improved. Thanks again for all your thoughtful advice! -- Caponer (talk) 15:54, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, please feel free to make any necessary changes as you see fit. I trust your judgment, and value your input. Please feel free to let me know as you have questions! I value your contributions, and I'm honored you're taking the time from your schedule to review these! -- Caponer (talk) 17:56, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your encouraging note and Happy 2014! I had planned to start the review on Sat so no worries with any edits in the meantime. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:55, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, also for your situational awareness, I wanted to let you know that I'm working on an article for the neighboring Valley View plantation (also owned by the Parsons family). I'm still early in the writing process for this article, so a review is not necessary, but some of its historical background overlaps with that of Wappocomo, and I felt it may assist you and Rosiestep as you review the Wappocomo article. Thanks again! -- Caponer (talk) 19:18, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, I've incorporated your suggestions and I've cleaned up the Geography section. Please feel free to look over the current version and provide further comment on the GA nomination page. I'm sure some of the paragraphs could use some tightening up, as I have a habit of being verbose (as you most likely already know). Thank you again for your contributions to this article! -- Caponer (talk) 16:26, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Rosiestep, Dr. Blofeld, and Ammodramus: may I humbly seek your thoughts/suggestions on a possible DYK hook for this article? There's so much content, I find myself drawing a blank after making the final edits. Since it is not a 5x expansion, it will only be eligible following the completion of its passing. Thanks again for all your extraordinary efforts in getting this up to Good article status! -- Caponer (talk) 17:32, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! When you edited Talk:E. Janssen Building you left a comment about prose needing cleanup. Could you be more specific? Do you mean on the talk page or on the article page, and please provide examples? I made one small change to the article page since you saw it last, but I would like it to be the best it possibly can. Thank you! Ellin Beltz (talk) 21:20, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed you moved an image out of the paragraph to which it related and stuck it at the bottom of the article. Could you explain the move please? It seems to contravene the material in the link in the edit summary to take it out of the area to which it relates and put it elsewhere. They say "Multiple images in the same article can be staggered right-and-left.... Articles that use more than one image should present a variety of material near relevant text. " Therefore I think the image was in a good place before and has been moved to a perhaps not so good place right now. What do you think? Ellin Beltz (talk) 01:34, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your notes re. the Janssen building. Regarding the image, I agree that it'd be better if we could put it with the Buhne text. However, that contravenes a couple of guidelines at MOS:IMAGELOCATION. First, it puts the image on the left side at the beginning of a section; per the guidelines, "Avoid placing images on the left at the start of any section or subsection, because it makes it harder for readers to find the beginning of the text." Second, it squeezes text into a narrow lane between the image and the infobox; per the guidelines, we should "avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other, or between an image and infobox, navigation template, or similar".
Regarding the prose, some of the sentences are difficult to parse. I see that you've fixed the extra verb in the lead sentence. I still had to look at that sentence several times before I figured out the grammatical function of the final "and currently serves as an art gallery". It'd be much easier to figure out what was meant if it were split off as a separate sentence, or as a clause following a semicolon.
I have similar problems with the first sentence in the "Janssen's" section: on first reading, it looks as though the "built in 1875..." phrase modifies "store front", but then "as a hardware and general merchandise store" doesn't make sense; one has to re-read the sentence to realize that "built in 1875" modifies "loft-type building". In the same sentence, it's hard to figure out the place of "and exterior cast iron and glass storefront": my guess is that it's the third item in a list, following "brick walls on a brick foundation" and "wood framing", but without a comma after "wood framing", it's confusing.
The next sentence ("The cast iron facade...") looks like a comma splice.
In the sentence after that, it looks like the object of "have" is "deeply recessed windows and a signboard...", but then we hit that "is" and do a double-take; we have to go back and re-read to discover that the "and a signboard" begins a new independent clause.
This was the kind of trouble I had with the prose: sentences that were grammatically legal, but where I had to go back and re-read them to discover what they were really trying to say. Splitting up some of the more complex sentences, either as separate sentences or with semicolons, would make them clearer. Ammodramus (talk) 15:27, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(To KudzuVine) I see that you've been completing the Elkman infobox in a number of NRHP articles. Could I urge some caution on that? One of the articles where you've done it was Botany Bay Plantation Wildlife Management Area, which I recently expanded. Of the four items that you added, one was just plain wrong, one was inaccurate, and one was unnecessary and potentially misleading.
The wrong datum was "Governing body: Private". As indicated in the article, the property has been owned by the state of South Carolina since 1977, and managed by the state's Department of Natural Resources as a Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area since at least 2008.
The inaccurate item was "Built: 1840". Per the article, sourced to the nom form, the best we can say is "thought to date from the 1840s".
Potentially misleading is "Area: 5 acres". This may be true of the NRHP site, but it's definitely not the case with the HP/WMA, which is the subject of the article. I left this datum out to avoid any confusion on this. I also regard the area as a fairly minor detail for most NRHP sites. Per MOS:INFOBOX,
“
When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize key facts in the article in which it appears. The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content.
”
In this case, I don't think the area of the NRHP property is a "key fact": most NRHP articles that I've read don't include it in the body text, which suggests that it's less than essential information. I'd include the area in articles on extensive NRHP sites, e.g. HDs, battlefields, and large archaeological sites; but would default to leaving it out for single buildings and structures.
I can't recall whether you participated in WikiProject NRHP's somewhat spirited discussion of writing articles based primarily or entirely on the NRIS; but this example illustrates why many of us NRIS-skeptics are that way. There's just too much outdated, inaccurate, misleading, and otherwise flawed information in the database to justify using it without cross-checking against more detailed sources. Ammodramus (talk) 14:16, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know why it was delisted? It still exits, virtually unchanged from when it was listed. In Merrick County, the only one that should be delisted for not really existing anymore is Martha Ellen Auditorium. The building is closed and the interior was entirely replaced with a makeshift two-level movie theater until it closed. I am One of Many (talk) 05:18, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know—I just found out about the delisting this evening, and the Federal Register source that I cited is the only thing I've found that sheds any light on it. It might be necessary to contact the Nebraska State Historical Society and ask (and, unfortunately, we can't cite "personal communication" in an article). My best guess is that the north-side addition makes too radical a change from the original appearance of the building; but that's only a guess. Ammodramus (talk) 05:25, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, all I saw is the Federal Register delisting you cited. I then tried to find out why and about all I found out is that in most cases it is because the site no longer exists. It probably would be a good idea to track down the reason just in case the delisted the wrong site in Merrick County. Thanks and cheers. I am One of Many (talk) 05:34, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think that a site doesn't have to be altogether demolished to be delisted; it's enough for it to lose "historical integrity" (if I'm remembering the phrase correctly). A lot of NRHP nominations talk about the recent alterations that've been made and stress that they're minor and don't affect the overall appearance; in a lot of historic districts, buildings are mentioned as non-contributing properties because their appearance has been altered, even if the building itself is old. With the Central City courthouse, the original building is still there, but (as I recall) the one-story addition on the front (north) side is pretty conspicuous, and doesn't really attempt to blend in with the rest of the architecture. Ammodramus (talk) 05:50, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I just used Google maps to take a look, and by the way, I can't believe how it has improved–-the street view is unreal! It looks like the addition is on the east side, but three sides are nicely intact. It would be interesting to find out if they made a mistake, because the building with the Martha Ellen Auditorium closed in 2013 with nothing left of the original structure inside. I'll let you know if I find anything out. I am One of Many (talk) 06:03, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
2009: view from northwest
Take a look at the description and the photos in the NRHP nominating form. In the description (section 7, p. 1), it describes the building as rectangular, and speaks of "the four colossal stone columns ranged along the principal (north) facade and the massive stone steps leading up to them and the main entrance". From the Google satellite photo, the building is no longer rectangular: there's a large gable-roofed projection to the north. Compare the 2009 photo taken from the northwest with the first of the three photos at the end of the nom form, which isn't labelled but which appears to be from the north. The older photo doesn't show a projection to the north, and the wide flight of steps in that photo are missing from the more recent one. Ammodramus (talk) 17:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I was a little dense last night, but that addition is a disaster. I travel quite often to Central City to visit my father, but I never noticed this change. No wonder they delisted it, it should have been. I did send an email off to the office of planning and zoning for Merrick County to see if I could get an official reason, but there is little doubt that it was due to the horrible modification. I am One of Many (talk) 17:11, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree: it's pretty nasty. It doesn't look so awful in the head-on street view photo.
You might know better than I, but I suspect that the planning-and-zoning office might not be the place to ask about an NRHP delisting. I'd be inclined, myself, to try either the local historical society or the Nebraska State Historical Society. There's somebody at the NSHS who's specifically in charge of NRHP; e-mailing them might be the way to go. Of course, the real trick is going to be finding a published source that explains why it was delisted. Unfortunately, the NSHS doesn't do that with their website when properties are delisted: they just quietly remove them. Ammodramus (talk) 17:43, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is a very strange situation. So, I got a reply to my email the the person pointed out that it looks like it is being considered for listing here, which certainly appears to be the case. But, this makes no sense either since it is already listed. Do you think this is just some error? Cheers. I am One of Many (talk) 23:13, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Read about ten lines down from the top of that column, right above the boldfaced "Indiana": "A request for removal has been made for the following resources". That's consistent with the other Nebraska sites in that list: the Brownson Viaduct and the Olive Branch Bridge were no longer there when I went to photograph them, and the Ehlers Round Barn collapsed under a heavy snowfall in February 2012 (note, with citation, at article). Ammodramus (talk) 04:04, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't see that before. That explains why it is still listed, but likely removed later. There is a longer version of this PDF, which produced the confusion because the paragraph on the page before explains at length that a list of places with requests to be added follows. Should we put proposed for removal until it is officially removed? I am One of Many (talk) 04:25, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure when a listing or delisting becomes official. The people who maintain Wikipedia's NRHP-by-county-and-state lists have already added the latest batch of new sites and removed the deleted ones, including the Merrick Co. courthouse. I'm not sure if the NRHP Focus site is kept up to date; it appears to be broken this morning, so I can't test it by querying for somewhat recent additions. If you think the delisting might not be complete yet, you might raise the question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places; there are probably editors who know a lot more about the process than I do. Ammodramus (talk) 12:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, I hope all is well with you! I know you're probably knee-deep in Good Article reviews, and in the drafting of your own Good Articles, but I recently finished the article for Valley View (Romney, West Virginia) and I wanted to humbly ask if you could use your powers of succinctness to review it when you have a spare moment. As always, if you have suggestions, please let me know and I'll incorporate them post haste. The article has already passed a DYK review, and I've nominated it for GA review. Thanks again! -- Caponer (talk) 01:38, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I could certainly do that. Could I propose a tit-for-tat? While I'm revisiting the land of Col. Parsons and Robert Byrd, could I ask you to spend some time in William Jennings Bryan country? I'm almost finished drafting an article on an NRHP-listed church, but something about it doesn't feel quite right to me. I can't put my finger on what I don't like about it, but a new pair of eyes might be able to spot what I'm missing. Could you look at User:Ammodramus/Draft6 and make any suggestions that occur to you? Thanks, and looking forward to checking out the VV article — Ammodramus (talk) 05:03, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Ammodramus! It would be a privilege for me to spend time in William Jennings Bryan country. He was, after all, very popular in Hampshire County during his three bids for the U.S. Presidency! In the meantime, I'll take a look at Saint Leonard Catholic Church--what strikes me first is how grand and ornate this structure is for a small city like Madison! -- Caponer (talk) 09:53, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, as I stated in the GA review discussion, I've been in transit and away for the past 24 hours, so I apologize for not intervening sooner and I hope I didn't cause you too much undue burden. I will begin reviewing User:Ammodramus/Draft6 and I will provide any guidance or questions that I may have. So far, it looks like you've crafted a comprehensive article on this edifice, and it is very lucky to have its history being shared by you on Wikipedia. I can't say it enough--you're a one of a kind, and I appreciate all you do here. -- Caponer (talk) 18:10, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Ammo! I have a snow day here in D.C. so I went ahead and utilized your suggestions in making changes to the article. I look forward to receiving the rest of your suggestions and getting them incorporated into the article. As always, your suggestions are spot on and just what the article needed. -- Caponer (talk) 21:54, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Ammo! I've removed the quotes from the titles of the land tracts. I noticed that you didn't check off the next to last of your suggested edits--is there anything else that needs to be done to check this one off? Thanks again--you're the man! -- Caponer (talk) 23:20, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Alright Ammo, I've responded to and acted upon your suggestions in the second tranche! Please take a look at these in your spare time, and let me know if these edits work. The text definitely flows more smoothly with the appropriate chronology of events now displayed. For the record, I think we should somehow title a section "Proto-Caseys." j/k I think, at this point, you and I could effortlessly draft a Casey/Parsons book. ;) -- Caponer (talk) 01:39, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ammo, please continue with the review. Rosie has stated she doesn't want to do the review so please restore your comments and state you're reviewing it and continue in your own time. You've already extensively edited it anyway so it is only right for you to continue. No need to feel bad about it but I doubt it'll happen again, so no worries. Thanks!♦ Dr. Blofeld12:42, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I appreciate you continuing the review. I'm happy to review the Nebraska article for you when you nom it. At first glance though some of the sources need filling out with publisher info and it isn't convention to also external link publisher as well as title, refs 29-31 for example.♦ Dr. Blofeld19:10, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Dr. Blofeld Thanks for the time and effort you've expended to straighten this situation out. I'll certainly try to avoid creating such a mess in the future...
Is it considered appropriate to solicit specific GA reviewers for specific articles? I don't see anything for or against it at the GA pages, but it seems like it'd be fraught with potential problems: line-jumping, as more aggressive editors push ahead of those whose articles have been waiting longer in the queue; tit-for-tat GA awards, where I pass your article because you've passed mine; editors shopping for easy-GA reviewers... In general, it seems like a thing to be avoided; it'd be better to submit one's candidate and then wait. Ammodramus (talk) 19:49, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There was a discussion like this recently at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 20#Quid pro quo reviews. Yes it's fine so long as reviewers remain neutral and try to conduct a fair review. If there's a speedy pass, I'll speedy pass yours without a proper review type of thing going on then it's a problem. If you leave it in the queue you'll often find that it either takes over a month before somebody reviews it, or a poor/annoying reviewer claims it and creates an unnecessarily difficult review. It makes more sense to mutually review I think but try to remain as neutral as possible and be constructive with your suggestions.♦ Dr. Blofeld19:54, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again Ammodramus: Some time ago, another editor made substantial changes to 1992 Cape Mendocino earthquakes. I am concerned about the edits and I expressed my concern on the talk page when the edits were made and was brusquely told "pfft" despite several of my concerns being matters of fact that were lost. Besides that, the text reads poorly, but after the "pfft" I'm not sure I wish to change it personally. I give only two sentences as example, the entire article is now written something like this: "And in this case, the strongest waves came ashore in Crescent City 3 to 4 hours after the initial surge, but it is possible to be just the opposite where the first waves could be the strongest. Also detailed from this event was that the wave hazard can be of long duration, with wave action lingering for more than 8 hours." I really don't even know where to start. As stated on the talk page, a really good reference was utterly cut and replaced with a lot of material from a single thesis which isn't available online. I know that offline sources are just as good as online ones, but with the information in the thesis being so different to other published sources that the latter had to be deleted ... it makes me wonder. And with continued apologies for my utter lack of good English and punctuation, I am sincerely, your comma-tose friend, Ellin Beltz (talk) 03:08, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, I hereby award you the Epic Barnstar for yet another meticulous Good Article review of a significant historic landmark in West Virginia! Thank you for your exceptional contributions to improving the quality of Wikipedia's history articles, with both prose and photography! -- Caponer (talk) 23:39, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, I just finished my review of your article for Saint Leonard Catholic Church (Madison, Nebraska). You've done a brilliant job and I only had a few minor comments and suggestions, and I made a few minor tweaks. Please take a look at your leisure and let me know if you have any questions or concerns in the meantime! -- Caponer (talk) 19:47, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus, if you get a chance good sir, could you please take a quick look at the Old Pine Church article? I'm in the midst of looking for additional sources, but I wanted you to take a look at it in the meantime and provide any guidance or suggestions! I know it's a departure from the Parsons family and their plantations, but I thought you'd enjoy it all the same! -- Caponer (talk) 04:28, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
DYK for Saint Leonard Catholic Church (Madison, Nebraska)
Ammodramus, congratulations on your DYK! Your beautiful image of Saint Leonard Catholic Church is currently featured on the front page, too. I'm excited that even more Wikipedia users will be introduced to your extraordinary work here on Wikipedia! -- Caponer (talk) 11:45, 27 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Battery White you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Sturmvogel 66 -- Sturmvogel 66(talk)09:31, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(Original comment by Doncram at AfD) I don't grok how "the medium must be non-local as well as widely read" applies; it comes down to whether you think Omaha region is big enough to count as a region for purposes of wp:AUD or not. Point taken about coverage of purely local coverage being included in OWH...but also if the OWH region is big enough then the coverage could be viewed as transformative in a way. Like for example a human interest type story in the New York Times about a local restaurant owner making good, or whatever, seems to bring some real importance to the subject. Since few New Yorkers will ever pass by that local business, it must be the case that the New York Times coverage is establishing some higher importance. Truly local coverage which should not be viewed as establishing notability is the small-town newspaper type coverage merely serving role of providing publicity for local businesses and advertisers. You can, and do, have a different view on whether OWH coverage of Dundee Community Garden is significant enough; i think it is truly of interest, not mere publicity serving the group. --doncram16:02, 24 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(At Doncram's talk page) Doncram, I suspect that your knowledge of small towns derives almost entirely from reading Main Street in freshman English. Based on that conjecture, and on the general principle of AGF, I'm going to assume that you weren't deliberately insulting small-town journalists in your recent comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dundee Community Garden. Nevertheless, insulting them you were. Journalistic integrity isn't an exclusive possession of major metropolitan papers, and most publishers of small-town weeklies are every bit as committed to producing thorough, honest, and impartial coverage as are their professional brethren at larger and more prestigious papers. The idea that such weeklies operate chiefly by repackaging their advertisers' press releases, or by writing fawning puff pieces about local businesses, is utterly false; if I didn't think you'd expressed it out of ignorance rather than malice, I'd call it calumnious as well. Ammodramus (talk) 23:35, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(Doncram, at AfD) I further don't get some distinctions that Ammodramus is trying to make, but Ammodramus takes offense on behalf of small town journalists by my comment above. Umm... i agreed with Ammodramus that some local coverage, of the type merely serving role of providing publicity, doesn't count as much for Wikipedia-notability. I observe that small town newspapers have different kinds of articles, some being sort of puff pieces as Ammodramus says. But I did not say all small town newspaper coverage was of that type, and in particular I said the OWH coverage of Dundee rose above that. The coverage is of interest and not simply publicity (and a community garden is not a business and does not need publicity particularly). I think he projected that I implied a generalization that i did not, but anyhow i strike the comment. Whatever. --doncram04:00, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
[end quotes from elsewhere]
Hi Ammodramus, do you want to discuss something with me? By the way I meant to link to this diff of your taking offense at my Talk page rather than the diff i actually linked to. And at my Talk page i removed your comment, but noted in edit summary that I had read your comment. I responded more fully to what I thought you were concerned about by going to the AFD and striking the comment you objected to. I didn't mean to imply I wouldn't discuss anything with you, by my removing your comment. Rather, the projection about me that you made and some words used seemed insulting to me, in fact to meet terms "Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence" of wp:NPA, and I judged it best to simply remove it, per wp:RPA. I didn't want to complain about that to you though, before and now. I am just explaining why I removed it. Your opening this section here on your Talk suggests to me that you might want to further discuss something about newspapers, and I am open to that. In the past we have had exchanges of views that seemed productive, like I think you may recall about linking to commons photos and about when there should be separate articles about historic battle sites vs. battles, or not. Could you explain what you want from this section? I'll watch here. --doncram16:05, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Truly local coverage which should not be viewed as establishing notability is the small-town newspaper type coverage merely serving role of providing publicity for local businesses and advertisers." I find it hard to read "small-town newspaper type coverage" other than as a generalization about small-town newspapers, and an inaccurate and derogatory generalization at that.
This is not the first time that you've expressed casual disdain for rural America. In a discussion at WikiProject NRHP, you airily referred to "some dumb Queen Anne style house in a remote rural area" (see diff; discussion archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 56). Several participants in that discussion took you to task for the remark, so it wasn't just one hypersensitive editor who perceived it as insulting. -- Ammodramus (talk) 00:55, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I saw that you reverted my edit here. I probably should have put in a clearer edit summary, so for that, I apologize. I was redirecting and merging a stub that was up for speedy deletion about this town's former high school. Therefore, I inserted one sentence about the topic, which was a summary of the old stub. I shall find reliable sourcing before putting the matter back in. I think that the fact a town formerly had a high school is not trivia; rather, as long as not too much information is included, it goes far in explaining the educational opportunities currently available in the locality. Thank you in advance for your patience with me. Bearian (talk) 19:18, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that I wouldn't call it B-class, for the same reasons that I couldn't give it a GA. Looking at the rating criteria at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Quality_scale, I see that in a B article, "[r]eaders are not left wanting", and that a C article is "still missing important content". In my opinion, the lack of background material on the monarchy-szlachta power balance and on the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Poland is critical: I think that most casual English-language readers would be "left wanting". — Ammodramus (talk) 12:28, 2 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you SO much for the great pics of the Okay Church near Monroe, NE. I just found it over the weekend after a multi-year search for a record of where my Great-Grandfather was buried. I had done a number of searches when I first got into genealaogy around 20 years ago but wasn't able to find any information. For some reason, I decided to try again this past weekend and happened to find a link to a transcript of an obituary. So I ended up tracking down the location and looking for more information, and found the pictures you had taken of the church. It was so interesting to see. My Great-Grandfather died before my Grandmother was born, when my Great-Grandmother was 2 months pregnant with her, so she never got to know her father. My Great-Grandmother remarried a few years later when her half-sister passed away and her BIL had three children under 5 to raise while trying to farm. Since my Great-Grandmother had three children, 2 of them under 3, they married. Whether it began as a love match or not, I am not sure, but I do know that they were happily married for 57 years when my Great-Grandfather died. They were a Brady-Bunch long before the Brady-Bunch came about, except they each had 2 younger daughters with an older son. Then they had two sons of their own, and raised 8 children with 14 yrs between the oldest and the youngest. It made for an odd family tree when she married her sister's widower, how do you explain that the woman you call "Mom" is your Aunt but you call her Mom because she is the only Mom you've had. Or then for my Grandmother to explain that the only Dad she knew was her step-dad/uncle (albeit by marriage) and then as an adult, she gained a third relationship to him when she married his nephew. I only wish we could have found this information while my Grandmother was still living. I am just so glad to have the pictures to be able to show my Mom. Thanks again for the great pictures.
WayneyP (talk) 08:54, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your note re. the photos of the Okay Church. If it'd help advance your geneological research, the church is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The NRHP nominating form, with a description of the church and cemetery and a brief history, is available online through the Nebraska State Historical Society.
I wish I had some information to contribute. Unfortunately, all I know about the church is what I've learned since 23 Aug., and that is not a whole lot. The NRHP documents were great, thank you! I am trying to find more information such as if it is still active as it was in 1990 when the NRHP form was done.. I need to make some calls today to try to track down some information, or hopefully to do so. I don't even have a picture of the grave of my Great-Grandfather. My usual sources have turned up dry. In fact, the Find A Grave listing for the cemetery there didn't have a listing for him until I added it on Saturday. I zoomed in on the pictures you have to see if I could by some stroke of luck, be able to see a stone with his name on it. Of the ones where a name is visible, none of them are his. I am hoping to find where the church's records might be in hopes of finding a plot number or any other information. But, even if I were to find out some general church information, it is not as if I could add something to the effect of "Church membership rose and fell over the years and by YYYY, the church closed its doors." and be able to properly source it. I almost added a year to my made up sentence but thought better of it as I didn't want it to appear as a fact, I just know that was the fate of many small country churches. If I find out anything that can be sourced, I will gladly add it. Local knowledge is something I do not have of that area since at some point after my Great-Grandfather died in Feb.& she gave birth to my Grandmother in Sept. 1912, my Great-Grandmother moved back to Indiana. I'm unsure of exactly when she moved but know that by Nov 1914 she had definitely returned to IN. It was in Nov. 1914 that she remarried. Her half-sister, Grace, passed away in Feb 1914 and in Nov. Grace's husband and my Great-Grandmother married. Thanks again! WayneyP (talk) 00:55, 28 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'll probably be in the Platte County area in a month or so. If you'll give me your great-grandfather's name and dates, I'll see if I can get a photo of the gravestone. — Ammodramus (talk) 03:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh I would appreciate that so much. I have been so excited to find even the information that I have found. I have gotten nowhere in calling various places in Platte Co. to find out if the church is still active. I noticed the address on the NRHP nominating form listed a name of the secretary of the New Hope Cem. Friends Assn. But neither a search of the assn. name, the secretary's nor a reverse look up on the address resulted in finding the assn. or the woman, not surprising since it is nearly 25 yrs old. Some of the people I spoke to in calling places in Platte Co. were polite but quite simply unsure of anything of use, down to being unable to say if the church was still active as it appeared to be in the nominating form. I am used to counties where a library that is a county library has info on the whole county but it seemed as if it was not in Columbus, then they had no clue. And it was not just the library! It was a bit disappointing. So you're offer is a huge one for me after the afternoon of calls I made. I am not easily discouraged (I wouldn't have searched off and on for 20 yrs for one person if I were) but that was enough to make me ask if it was worth the frustration to have a picture of a grave site. Then I read your message. I cannot explain what that did after the lack of results I had that afternoon. Ok info.... my Great-Grandfather's name was William Joseph Pickett. DOB 13 Nov. 1878 DOD: 22 Feb. 1912 (a Thursday) Burial: 25 Feb 1912 New Hope Cemetery after the funeral services were held at Congregational Church (per his obit) by G. W. Philips of Monroe. That might have confused me if not for the clue that listed O'Kay as the town he lived, which led me to find your pictures listing that it was known by both names. If there are any other Pickett's there I'd be surprised, unless he and Sarah had children who died as infants or his brother and SIL had infants who died. Thank you again so very much!! WayneyP (talk) 08:51, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Will see what I can do. I won't be up that way until after mid-September, and can't make any rash promises re. getting a photo—stones of that age are sometimes worn to illegibility—but will do the best I can. I'll leave a note at your talk page if I can get a photo (or if I have to report failure). — Ammodramus (talk) 13:14, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just followed up on an idea that struck me right after I'd hit the "Save" button. I searched the website of Platte County's principal newspaper, the Columbus Telegram, for (okay church), and found a 2013 obituary with burial taking place at "New Hope/Okay Cemetery north of Monroe, Nebraska". If you haven't tried something like this already, perhaps the funeral home involved could give you contact information for the people in charge of the church/cemetery. — Ammodramus (talk) 13:26, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's funny you thought of that! I had searched New Hope Cemetery at Find A Gravefor any recent burials and found at least one from 2014. I thought I'd seen a couple but the only one I saw today was from Feb 2014. Interestingly, the funeral home that handled the funeral and burial you linked to was the same one (Gass Haney) that had handled the one I had found. So I was planning on contacting them. I just gave up temporarily on Thursday out of frustration. I am glad you also thought of it because I was debating with myself, with one part of me thinking it was crazy to be calling a funeral home and another thinking they likely get calls often about stuff like this, I've found genealogists will go to great lengths when trying to break down any "brick walls" they encounter. I had written down the funeral home's contact information on my list of calls to make. I may check for an email address and go about it that way rather than calling. I wish you luck in finding the grave and that it is still legible. I know time and the elements take their toll on stones though. If you find the grave and the stone is legible and you get the picture, would you mind if I share it on the Find A Grave memorial I created for Willie? It's weird, in doing research, I've gotten to where I seldom use a title for older relatives that I've never met. And when I'm discussing family member's with my mom or sister, I have learned to use the person's name, rather than saying Grandma or Grandpa etc can be confusing. We've found a tangled tree in our families, with a number of intermarriages. I have researched the Pickett, Runion, Merritt, McCloud, Tatum, Morphew & Eggers families as well as others associated with them. And they tended to intermingle quite a bit.
If the funeral home doesn't have the information you need, you might ask them for a contact number for Columbus Monument, which I think is the major purveyor of tombstones and the like in the area. I assume that the funeral home wouldn't bury somebody in a cemetery, and the tombstone company wouldn't set up a monument, without some kind of assurance from the cemetery's owners/caretakers that it's OK to do so there.— Ammodramus (talk) 07:38, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
O'Kay Church cemetery
Got to the church a few days ago. A man was mowing there, and he had the register, so we were able to look up the Pickett grave. Unfortunately, there's no stone. The photo shows the vicinity of the grave. At right, close to the camera, is a stone for Mike and Catherine Nansel. Immediately to the left (north) of that is a small purplish stone facing upward (so its inscription can't be read). To the north of that is a gap, then there's a reddish stone with the name Smith (the two given names are illegible in the photo). The William Pickett grave is in that grassy gap, immediately to the south of the Smith stone.
Unfortunately, I didn't think to get contact information from the man with the register. I don't know how much he'd know, though: the register didn't have the birth date for Wm. Pickett, had 2/25/1912 as the death date, and had no burial date. I gave him the birth and death dates you'd given me, and, per your information, told him that Feb. 25 was the burial date.
Not sure if this'll be any use for your proposed FindAGrave page, but you (or anyone else) are welcome to use it. I upload my files with a public-domain license, so anyone who wants is free to copy them, edit them, reproduce them elsewhere...
Thank you so very much! Even without a stone, knowing the location is so wonderful. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this. It is the solving of a family mystery really. I am amazed at what a few people on the internet can accomplish to be honest. If not for the person who added the obituary to a genealogy site, I'd not have found your pictures. That would not have led to your awesome offer. And even with no stone there, we now have a location. Who knows, this could lead to a stone? Although if I accomplish that, it would be amazing! I truly do appreciate all that you did. It was wonderful that theere was a man mowing when you got there and that he had a register. My family will be so excited when I tell them this news.
I am wondering if I have this correct from your description? I kinda borrowed the Nansel's gravestone to give an approximate location. I did not want to upload this to Commons as I mainly did this for my own records. I have the original and then this copy that I added the faked stone on. The only one I will share is yours of course with the description of location. So, I will just add the link to my file on Picasa.
You've Photoshopped the imaginary tombstone in about the right place (though perhaps it should be back just a bit, so it's in a row with the Smith and the Nansel stones).
Sorry, again, that there wasn't a stone to be photographed. I don't know Frau Pickett's financial situation, but it may well be that the cost of a tombstone was beyond her means at the time.
Incidentally, I didn't think to look specifically, but I'm pretty sure that there weren't any other Picketts in the alphabetical register. That's consistent with what you speculated earlier: there wouldn't be any others, unless a child had been buried there. Ammodramus (talk) 21:04, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad there didn't seem to be any other Picketts there, as that would have added to the mysteries about the family. With your work, we have solved a mystery that was 102 years old and was one that I'd been working on for 20 years. I am guessing their financial situation was not well off but not destitute either. He was a farmer, his father and her father were both farmers as well. They were actually first cousins, with his father, Jason and her mother, Lydia being siblings. They were both born in central Indiana. But his family then moved to Danville, IL. At some point they fell in love and married in 1898 I believe.If I remember right, she was from July to Nov. older than he was. I know she was 9 years older than her second husband Charles, who was her half-sister's widower. Yet she outlived both of them, and was 10 months shy of turning 100. I do not think I could have handled all that she did. She had two husbands, raised 8 children, 4 of whom were not her's but were related to her other than as her step-kids/adopted child. Russell was William's nephew but being that she was his cousin, she would have been his brother's cousin as well. So Russell became her son just as much as the other kids. Then the 3 children of Charles's were her half-sister's children so they were her nieces & nephews/step-kids. Then she and William had the two girl and she and Charles had two boys. I assume the reason she never put a marker on William's grave was money. I am surprised no one had tried over the years. But the story I was told was that no one knew for sure where he was buried. It seems that was because no one discussed the subject much. I will move the faked marker to be in line with the others and then be done with it. I would SO love to go to NE to visit that grave but I don't know that I will do that. Long trips and my body do not get along. The grounds are well-enough cared for from your pics that I could easily get over the terrain in my wheelchair I think. I am tossing an idea around about how we can get his grave marked. Incidentally, from what I am seeing, Sarah's sister Grace's grave does not appear to be marked either. Which makes sense really. Sarah and Charles would have had a hard enough time raising all 8 kids during those years. I cannot imagine going from parents of 3 to 8 within 5 years. I do know that even though Sarah and Charles were the step-parents of each other's children, the kids referred to them as Mom and Dad, or Ma and Pa for all I know. I know in later years it was always Mom and Dad.
Oh I do not want to forget this!
The Photographer's Barnstar
is awarded to Ammodramus in general for your tireless efforts to take pictures of historic places all over the country; and specifically in this case for your help in solving a 102 year old family mystery and a 20 plus year personal quest for me! WayneyP (talk) 10:43, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The WP:NRHP Fall 2014 Photo Contest will kick off at midnight eastern time on Monday September 1! This is an opportunity for all folks with a camera (or a sketchpad and scanner, doncha know) and an interest in the National Register of Historic Places to just have some low-key fun and maybe get some barnstars. Come submit some photos or pose a challenge to your fellow editors. And maybe, just maybe, along the line we'll improve the encyclopedia... (Note that while this contest is intentionally concurrent with Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 and the Wikipedia Summer of Monuments, there ain't gonna be no cash prizes or press releases here. But compete in 'em all if you like - we won't be jealous.) — Ipoellet (talk) 22:55, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The headshot that you deleted for Governor-elect Pete Ricketts is his public headshot that is distributed by his office for public use. His campaign office has verified this. May you undelete the photo? Arw99akjkjkj (talk) 20:26, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your recent edit on Women in Nazi Germany and for changing the phrase to something with better clarity. Ironically, I encountered this faux pas sort of post-facto when you made the correction. It's an easy error to make to be sure and one over which I am now more cognizant. Growing up speaking German and English, these type of errors are typical of me as is pedantry (although not deliberately). Had it been written correctly as "free rein" I am curious whether you would have made the same adjustment. It amazes me at times, the level of nuance buried within languages. Likewise, I am pleased when somebody educates others and makes corrections for the sake of Wikipedia's edification vice those who belittle others to serve their own ego. Bravo for being the former. --Obenritter (talk) 01:53, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For the pix in Sussex County. It's been while since we've interacted (I've been much busier than usual). But I wanted to say you're still one of the best editors around.
Hello, Ammodramus. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
I disagree with your deletion of a sentence I added to the lead paragraph of the Willa Cather article, which stated that many of Cather's works deal with the immigrant experience in the US. Lead, or introductory, paragraphs typically contain general summaries of important main points that the article develops in greater detail. That is precisely the function of that sentence -- it very briefly summarizes a significant point regarding one of Cather's principal thematic concerns. It belongs there. This article still needs a great deal of work, and I plan to get back to it. My method of working is to add content where it is needed. This is only one sentence, but it is necessary. Please restore it. Thank you. EnglishTea4me (talk) 04:01, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You're free to revert my reversion and restore the sentence. However, I hope you'll consider my argument against it, at least as originally written.
As you note, the lead section should be a brief summary of the most salient points in the article. I question whether the immigrant-experience theme is sufficiently critical to rate a place there. Certainly, many Cather characters were immigrants or children of immigrants; but to the best of my limited recollection, their status as immigrants wasn't ordinarily all that critical. Apart from a brief passage in One of Ours in which German immigrants are taken to court for insufficient displays of anti-German sentiment during WWI, I don't recall all that much about xenophobia, language difficulties, parents trying to raise their children with old-country values, or the like.
Stylistically, I find that the sentence under discussion fits awkwardly into the rest of the paragraph. It reads as though it was randomly tacked onto the end, with little regard for what the rest of the paragraph had to say. This is why, in my edit summary, I suggested that if it were retained, it be made part of a separate short paragraph about Cather's themes. Then the lead section would consist of three paragraphs: (1) Cather was somebody who wrote stuff, including...; (2) Cather was born and lived in places; (3) Cather's works tended to treat the following themes... If we followed this plan, I'd suggest moving the "frontier life on the Great Plains" information from the first paragraph to the third.
My thoughts. Again, I certainly won't accuse you of edit-warring if you revert my edit. I'm not Cather scholar enough to rewrite the lead according to the three-paragraph scheme that I've described (indeed, I'm no Cather scholar at all). However, I hope that combining your knowledge of Cather with my thoughts on the organization of the lead will produce something better than either of could have written solo. Ammodramus (talk) 01:28, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Editors can use either date format if there's consensus, and articles have to be consistent. You've left the article with one format and the refs with another. Please revert yourself and start a discussion on talk. Sarah (SV)(talk)03:51, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your note at my talk page re. date formats in Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight). I've brought the topic up at the article talk page. However, I don't believe that autoreversion is indicated at this point: Wikipolicy in the form of WP:DATETIES seems to be fairly unequivocal in support of MDY format in the article body, and DMY was introduced fairly late in the article's history, well after it'd attained a considerable length. But that's all at the talk page... Ammodramus (talk) 04:03, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't make much sense to arrive at an article you otherwise have no involvement in, change the date formats that other people have to work with, leave the article inconsistent, then refuse to revert yourself. Please reconsider. All you're doing is creating work for someone else. Or, no one else will do the work and the page will be left in a mess. Sarah (SV)(talk)04:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I rather like your slow-motion crusade on free reign > rein. I would love to discuss something about this with you but I am about to go on holiday so I can't right now! Why, then, am I leaving you this note now? Seems stupid, I know. Well, I'm hoping that the guilt of unfinished business will inspire me to write again when I am back and have some time to do so - probably around the start of September or within a week or two of then. So this is just advance notice: Slightly Boring Discussion Ahead! (DV). Till then, happy editing and all good wishes DBaK (talk) 12:15, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Eagerly awaiting the onset of slightly boring discussion. Hope that I haven't inadvertently led you into thinking that I was some kind of equestrian: while I can be extremely pedantic about English usage, especially for someone who regularly has to look up whether it's an A or an I in "feasible", I wouldn't have the first idea what to do if someone actually handed me a set of reins with a horse at the other end. Ammodramus (talk) 23:57, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello - FYI, the link I added earlier contained a typo and thus did not work - I have re-added the link using the proper spelling and it works fine. Please let me know if I can comment on this, and thank you for your diligence. KConWiki (talk) 04:12, 17 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Greetings, ExecutiveWashington! I notice that you've been adding mayors and their party affiliations to a number of articles on US cities. Good work, and useful information; but if you don't mind, I'll make some suggestions on how it could be improved.
First, we should have citations for this information. Some of your edit summaries make it clear that you've done a certain amount of research to find things like party registrations; it'd be good to show readers where you found the information so that they can verify it or check for changes. You can find out how to add footnotes at WP:REFBEGIN; if things are unclear, feel free to leave a note at my talk page and I'll try to talk you through any problems you might have.
Second, mayors don't always remain in office for very long, so the information's likely to become outdated. This isn't a big problem for articles on major cities, with lots of interested local editors who'll update the article when an old mayor goes out and a new one comes in. However, lots of smaller cities and towns don't have that many editors watching the articles, so outdated information is likely to remain for a long time. I'd suggest that instead of putting the mayor in the infobox, you add a sentence to the body text like "As of 2015, the mayor was Jordan Jones." That statement will remain true even if Jones is later replaced by somebody else; and the date will let interested readers know that the information might need to be updated.
Feel free to contact me if you've got questions or comments about any of this. The best way to do that is to start a new section at my talk page: just click on the "talk" after my username and edit the page. Good luck! — Ammodramus (talk) 12:13, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, I would like to say, thank you for visiting my talk page. I don't get a lot of users visiting my talk page. Anyway, I knew that someone was eventually going to be interested in where I am getting the information about mayors and their party affiliations from. Anyway, I'll start off with Connecticut, where I edited most of the municipalities to include mayors, first selectmen and other selectmen.
Surprisingly, it appears that Connecticut local elections are partisan in most cases. Some of the municipalities' websites actually include party affiliations to their local politicians, like for example, Waterford, CT's official website lists the First Selectmen and other Selectmen, along with other members under their Elected Officials page.
There are some websites that don't do this, so my next source of information is from Connecticut's Secretary of State website because they have municipal election results, as shown here. If you click on most municipalities election results, it usually shows the candidates and their party affiliation, as seen here.
If it doesn't display that, then I would look at the local party committees (both Democrat and Republican) and see if they have their elected officials in there.
For Rhode Island, I looked at this, and by selecting the municipality in question to get their party affiliations.
For San Diego County, I looked at the endorsements (or Elected officials) of both parties. Here is the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party, to look for the party affiliations of mayors in San Diego County (not all of them though, because some of them are either not part of those two parties or unlisted).
For both Sarpy County and Douglas County in Nebraska, I got the information from the two websites. The Sarpy County GOP provides the mayors and their party affiliation in Sarpy County, under their Elected Officials page, and by clicking on the "City Officials" and clicking on a city from that drop-down menu. I manage to get Douglas County's city mayors and their party affiliation by going to this website, and taking a look at their Elected Officials. If one of them doesn't have a Democratic mayor, I fill in the blanks and put a Republican mayor there.
Finally, for Pennsylvania (only did Monroe County and a few towns in Allegheny County), I took a look at this page for the mayors and their party affiliation in Monroe County, PA, and for the few towns in Allegheny County, I took a look at the Smart Voter page for Allegheny County and took a look at the Municipal election results. But, I don't really know if it's a good source or not.
As for Arizona, it took some guesswork. I don't actually know if the Goodyear, Arizona mayor is actually a Republican or not, but from reading a few news articles about the mayor in question, they describe her as conservative. I may or may not remove the party affiliation of the mayor from the Goodyear, AZ article. Fountain Valley, AZ is pretty easy because the husband of the mayor of Fountain Valley, AZ is currently a Republican in the Arizona State Legislature, and from what news articles say about her (say that she's a conservative), it doesn't take much figuring out to figure that this person is a Republican.
Anyway, I will add the sources for it.
Thanks for asking about how I managed to do the research and get the party affiliations for the mayors of the articles I edited, because I am happy to clarify and give out the sources that I have looked at. I was worried that people would think I'm a vandal, when I'm really not.
Thanks for your detailed reply. I see that you've added a source for the party affiliation of the mayor of Bellevue, Nebraska. However, I've removed the mayor from the infobox, as likely to become outdated. We've got a sentence in the body text identifying the mayor "[a]s of 2015", and I've added the party affiliation to that. I think that's the model we should follow.
I think that some of your edits are likely to run afoul of Wikipedia's "No original research" policy. Basically, we shouldn't say "X is a Republican" unless we've got a reliable source that expressly states that X is a Republican. Stating that X is a Republican because she's described as conservative, or because her husband's a Republican, or because she's not on a list of Democratic elected officials, seems to be going beyond what this policy allows. Moreover, if we can't find a reliable media source that says that X is a Republican, then her party affiliation might not be all that significant. I'd remove the party from the Fountain Valley and Goodyear articles, and from the Douglas County, Nebraska articles where we've concluded that someone's an R because they're not listed as a D.
Incidentally, there's a set of article guidelines for US cities at WP:USCITIES. Going by that, I'd say that the best place to put the mayor in a city article is in a "Government" section, placed after "Demographics" but before "Notable people". That will allows us to include the as-of information, which we can't do in the infobox. — Ammodramus (talk) 23:51, 1 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello again! I'm very sorry about the long gap - I was overtaken by events a bit. My question was simply this: concerning your admirable campaign to change "free reign" to "free rein", I wondered if it is always necessary to use a "sic" when it's in quoted material. I know that purists would, because you are changing the er er urtext, but at MOS:QUOTE it also says: " If there is a significant error in the original statement, use [sic] or the template {{sic}} to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia. However, trivial spelling and typographic errors should simply be corrected without comment (for example, correct basicly to basically and harasssment to harassment), unless the slip is textually important." My feeling is that in these cases it is not usually of any significance; it would only gain it if the point were to prove that someone who should be clued-up isn't. Otherwise, I feel a "sic" just says "look what a twit this person is, as they don't know the difference" when we might as well just correct it to what they meant. I know this is a big proposition in some ways but I'd be very interested to hear your views. With thanks and all good wishes, DBaK (talk) 13:05, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
that the comment that you removed from John Paulding (sculptor) was mine and now I am going to have to go looking for a citation about his issues with Viquesney. Have you looked at the two statues? Which is, I suppose, beside the point. Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 17:41, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No problem. I have some experience with reviewing articles at AfC, and if you have the helper script it's not very hard at all. The hardest part is usually figuring out what to do with the draft, but you figured that out for me in this case. TheCatalyst31Reaction•Creation14:35, 26 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ammodramus: Thank you so much for all your help with the article on the Morton-James Public Library. I do work at the library, and this was my first attempt at an article for Wikipedia. I appreciate all the effort you put into this article. Thanks again.
I try to do a good job but not be scrupulous, or waste time. I appreciate your comment that I should give more complete explanations of my edits, but I find it very tedious to explain every one: I could preview more but with the flipping between screens I'm afraid to lose past edits. Your given reason for explaining edits puzzles me now: if people are trying to mess up an article on Creighton Prep, wouldn't they add to it a comment that diverts you from finding it? Just a thought.Jzsj (talk) 00:41, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(To Nyttend) I'm currently working up a non-NRHP article (1990 gubernatorial election in Nebraska), and would like to include a few maps: which candidates won which counties in the four-way Democratic primary, and how the two candidates compared in the two-way Republican primary and the general election. As I recall, you had some suggestions as to how the NRHP progress maps could be made maximally legible for color-blind readers. Could you make some similar suggestions for my case? I assume that for the two-candidate maps, shades of red and blue like those used on the NRHP maps would work. However, for the four-candidate map, I'd like to use four distinct colors, since using two shades of red and two of blue might imply some kind of political alignment. One of the colors can be white; but I don't want to use, say, blue, red, green, and white if two of the colors are identical to the color-blind eye. If it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you leave me a note with suggestions, or point me to a good four-color map that I can use as an example? Thanks. — Ammodramus (talk) 20:39, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for considering us colorblind people :-) For this four-color map, I'd suggest white, yellow, bright green, and deep red. Personally, I don't have trouble between strong reds and greens, so on my maps of where-I've-gotten-pictures, I use white, yellow (Red-255/Green-255/Blue-0*), grey (R-127/G-127/B-127), green (R-0/G-255/B-0), purple (R-255/G-0/B-255), blue (R-0/G-0/B-255), and red (R-255/G-0/B-0). If you used those, it would be easy for me, but maybe not for others; blue & purple and red & green are both potential problems. When dealing with the colorblind, you should take advantage of factors other than color, such as darkness. Even the severely red-green colorblind person, such as my grandfather who went when the traffic light was at the bottom and stopped when it was at the top, can easily separate dark-bland from light-bland. We tend to see yellow quite brightly, and of course white is easy. The blue-yellow colorblind will see white as different from yellow (because it's darker), and the other colors won't cause problems. If all colors are of different darknesses, even the monochromat can distinguish between them. Just please be careful to include a key in the image or in the description page, because someone can match colors easily without knowing what name goes with what splotch. Not sure if it's the same for other people, but I at least find it easier with bigger areas of solid color: a square of 40x40 red pixels is far easier than Red: Smith.
* I use Windows Paint for all my graphics needs; if you're not familiar with it, I can try to figure out how else to explain my meaning.
Thanks for the reply. I'm going to try to produce these from an existing Commons map using Inkscape, so I'll come up with SVG files. Right now, I'm trying to find a good Nebraska-counties map that I can modify with minimal effort. Not sure if I'll find this; might have to spend some time outlining all 93 counties. Happily, most of them are rectangular, or pretty close.
You suggested white, yellow, bright green, and "deep red". Is the last R-255/G-0/B-0, or is it more like R-128/G-0/B-0? You mention that for some people, red/green is a problem, so I don't know if R-0/G-255/B-0 and R-255/G-0/B-0 would work for them. — Ammodramus (talk) 03:49, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've only used Inkscape once before, to produce a map for Battery White in May 2014. Unfortunately, I've completely forgotten it since then. As I recall, though, it wasn't terribly hard to learn. The advantage of using it is that SVG maps scale nicely, so can be blown up for readers with poor vision, or those who want to check out a fine detail.
I was playing with a cousin of the Buffalo-County-highlighted map that you suggested. I'll have to study it in more detail, but it looks as though the creator started with a map of Nebraska with all the counties, then imposed a red box on the county they wanted to highlight. I was really hoping for something where each county was defined as a separate box, so that I could click a county, tweak its color fill, then move on to the next. — Ammodramus (talk) 04:05, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm helpless by now; I don't know a thing about SVG editing. Dudemanfellabra having done all that SVG work for NRHPPROGRESS, I thought he might have an idea how to help, so I sent him an off-wiki note with the diffs of your notes, saying basically "Ammodramus is trying to make these maps; could you help him when you have some wikiminutes?" Nyttend (talk) 04:20, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You might try using File:NRHP Nebraska Map.svg as a template. It's not easily editable by hand (which is how I make the Progress maps), but if you are using Inkscape, this map appears to separate each county individually. I actually prefer the older versions where the counties from other states don't appear.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:21, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Nyttend, Dudemanfellabra: Thanks to both of you. I've downloaded the map that DMFB recommended, and my initial experiments with Inkscape suggest that it's what I'm looking for. Of course, that's one fewer excuse for me not to work on the article in earnest... Ammodramus (talk) 00:48, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Don't know if you've been watching my talk page, but I put in a quick note thanking you and DMFB for your suggestions. The map that he recommended looked like it was just what I needed to work with.
I've been playing with the color scheme a bit, and am now disinclined to use white as one of my colors. I don't like the way that white states on the border look when there's a white background. I'm thinking, instead, of using a light gray: either 239-239-239 or 247-247-247. Do you think that would that work, or would either or both of those be too similar in brightness to yellow (0-255-255)? — Ammodramus (talk) 19:20, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Let me try to get around the issue instead. (1) Is it possible to strengthen the borders so that there's no risk of confusion between white Nebraska counties and white areas in other states? (2) Or perhaps you mean that it's merely an aesthetic issue. I assume that the answer is "yes", but do all four color areas include at least one county on the edge of the state? If not, couldn't you just assign white to the area that's only in the interior? Nyttend (talk) 19:31, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, now I wonder if I misunderstood you completely. If you don't like other-state areas being white, why does the use of white for in-state areas matter? I don't think I can give you a proper answer until I understand you correctly. Nyttend (talk) 19:32, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Third attempt to answer...if you merely use 247-247-247 or 239-239-239 when you otherwise would have been using 255-255-255, I'm sure that everything will be fine. I get the impression that the blue-yellow colorblind person won't have difficulty distinguishing bright yellow from a very light grey, if for no other reason than that these greys are so pale that they're almost as far from yellow as white is. Distinguishing pink and grey is difficult for me (the only difference being the presence or absence of a pale red influence), but even if the blue-yellow person sees yellow as grey, the bold yellow will be a grey significantly different from the grey of 247etc or 239etc. Nyttend (talk) 19:42, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is an aesthetic thing on my part. I'm using white for the area outside the state boundaries, and when one of the border counties is also white, it looks as though the state has a bite taken out of it. I've been trying to make the state's border a little heavier, which might remedy the problem, but my lack of skill with Inkscape is hindering me there; and it's possible that I can't change the state border alone, but would have to do the internal county boundaries as well, which might look nasty.
I'm going to see if I can use dots or diagonal hash-marks on white counties. That'd distinguish them from other-state space. However, chapter 1 of the Netscape tutorial hasn't covered that yet... Ammodramus (talk) 19:51, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your latest. 239-239-239 works OK for me: it's enough different from 255-255-255 to separate in-state from out-of-state space. Ammodramus (talk) 19:55, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Got the maps done last night, and launched the article this morning. For the four-color map, I threw a touch of red into the light gray; I also lightened up the deep red, since (128-0-0) tended to obscure the county lines. Could you let me know how it works for you? If it's problematic, I can try to fix it and upload a new version; if it's OK, but less than ideal, I'll try to do better should I find myself map-making in the future. Thanks; and thanks again for all the advice leading up to this. — Ammodramus (talk) 14:53, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This map is easy. Yellow versus green and yellow versus cream or super-light grey shouldn't be a problem for anyone, and the darkness of the red makes it stand out easily from everything else. How bizarre that you'd end up with a tie, although I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that a tie would have happened in such a sparsely populated area. (I'd love to visit the Sandhills; I've never been to Nebraska, although I've been to all surrounding states except South Dakota). So yes, the mix of color and darkness makes this, I believe, a colorblind-proof map. Nyttend (talk) 15:09, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Just now reading the election article, and I'd suggest two improvements, but best to let you figure out how to write them: I misunderstood the intro to mean that Orr lost because a greater-than-expected share of the vote went to Ben Nelson, the perennial candidate (didn't realise my mistake until you described Mort Sullivan), and in #Other votes, it looks like you're using "support" both for supporters of the repeal (Orr) and supporters of the law itself (the majority), and I'm left wondering whether rural areas dominated and Omaha's opposition was the biggest effort for the losing side, or the other way around. Nyttend (talk) 15:23, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply. Glad that the map works well: I'll keep it as a template should I need to generate maps in the future. Of course, by then I'll have forgotten all the things I've learned about Inkscape in the past 48 hours, and will have to start over again...
Regarding the tie, the Sandhills are not only sparsely populated, but what population there is is overwhelmingly Republican. In 1990, Grant County had 106 registered Democrats and 389 Republicans. 67 of the D's voted in the primary, but 9 apparently didn't vote for a gubernatorial candidate. Of the 58 who voted, 19 each voted for Boyle and Nelson, 12 chose Harris, 7 went for Hoppner, and 1 for Nimic (the pauper theologian-philosopher).
Thanks for your comments on the article. Good to have a critique from someone who's new to the subject: I've been close to it for so long that I miss omissions and misimpressions like those that you noted. I'll try to fix them soon. — Ammodramus (talk) 16:14, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Think the two issues are fixed now. Thanks, especially, for pointing out the support-oppose thing on LB1059: when I re-read it, I could see how a reader could easily become confused. I made the phrasing more explicit, and also standardized "support" and "oppose" in the paragraph.
Incidentally, there was confusion back in 1990, too. The measure was placed on the ballot by a pro-repeal petition; but a "For" vote meant "Keep 1059", while an "Against" vote meant "Repeal it". The World-Herald, in an editorial on the subject, called attention to this and warned readers to make sure that they were voting the way they thought they were voting. It looks like we'll have a similar situation in November, when a referendum is held on the Legislature's decision to end capital punishment in Nebraska: a vote for "Retain" will retain the Legislature's measure, and eliminate capital punishment; a vote for "Repeal" will repeal the measure and keep the death penalty.([13]) I look forward to lots of confusion and anger in the letters columns in the paper... Ammodramus (talk) 16:50, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Solution: petition your senator to sponsor a constitutional amendment to define "support" and "oppose". Then, petition the same senator to sponsor another amendment dealing with gambling, and have the gambling industry ask people to vote "Yes" on all amendments, just to ensure that their amendment passes. You might throw in a third amendment dealing with the state house of representatives while you're at it; this approach worked the last time, after all :-) Nyttend (talk) 22:16, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Your free one-year account with Newspapers.com will end on March 5 2016. Newspapers.com has offered to extend existing accounts by another year. If you wish to keep your account until March 5 2017, please add your name to the Account Renewal list here. I'll let Newspapers.com customer support know, and they will extend your subscription. If you don't want to keep your account for another year, you don't have to do anything. Your account will expire unless I hear from you that you want to keep it. HazelAB (talk) 18:18, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Here it is: Miss Mackenzie. The article may not be quite as polished as your own efforts, but at least I beat you to one finally (I was going to see what I could do for The Claverings, which I read last week, but you'd already been and gone. If you haven't read this, it's well worth it. I liked Miss Margaret Mackenzie and John Ball a good deal better than John Eames and Lily Dale. What's next? Maybe The Bertrams, John Caldigate, Is He Popenjoy?, Marion Fay (the Oxford paperback cost me 24$ + shipping!), Mr. Scarborough's Family, The Landleaguers, or An Old Man's Love... Anyways, I hope you're well old friend. INeverCry05:19, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
all comments welcomed. The money is very likely available and my goal is mainly to make this available to young photogs, e.g. college students. I think it would work, but it would need some supervision or at least input from experienced editors. Smallbones(smalltalk)18:00, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, thanks for your edit about Glenvil vs. Glenville on the Glenvil, Nebraska article. I just revised it to use "formerly known as Glenville" phrasing, and to describe its population as having peaked in 1920s, as well as to add about the NRHP-listed Glenville School (Glenvil, Nebraska). The NRHP document refers to Glenville as being a town in 1873 and in 1903, but I just used the term settlement in my edit. I hope you might please refine or correct that?
Just a note to let you know my revert of your edit to Lincoln, Nebraska was not intentional. Using an iPad I had intended to click on diff to see what was changed out of curiosity, and I accidentally clicked on the undo link - as using an iPad the link slides underneath diff uncomfortably close. I then clicked cancel - however your edit was undone anyway. Maybe this is a software glitch as clicking on cancel should have left no change. If this happens again to me I will check the history to make sure no edit occurred. Thank you for catching my error. Cheers Gmcbjames (talk) 04:43, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Greetings! I noted your recent edit to Whiteclay, Nebraska (diff). The edit includes the statement that the Census Bureau "erroneously" applied the name "Pine Ridge" to the CDP. A statement like this needs a source; can you provide one? If not, I'm afraid I'll have to remove the statement.
If you're not sure how to handle citations, feel free to drop me a note at my talk page, and I'll be glad to help you with it. Just click on the "talk" after my username, then start a new section (with the "New section" tab at the top of the page) to begin the new discussion. I'll reply here at your talk page. — Ammodramus (talk) 02:54, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the note on Whiteclay. Honestly I have no clue how to create a citation...would be happy to learn how. I should as I've been dabbling in Wikipedia updates for some time. I'm familiar hard coding html (so not a complete tagging idiot) but the whole citation thing is a mystery.
A bit of background, I'm a Geographer with the US Census Bureau in the Denver office. My staff created the CDP in NE called 'Pine Ridge' for the 2000 Census and the statement about the error is based on my review of Census records in my office. We discovered the naming error after performing our decennial review of geographic areas before 2010. The name 'Pine Ridge' was poor choice made by an IL-informed geographic technician and it escaped detection until 2009. Because anything related to census geography in 12 western states (including NE) is part of my job, I often review Wikipedia articles for information. Every now and then, I find a Wikipedia reference with information that is incorrect. Usually I let it go unless it's a significant error. In this case, we no longer refer to White Pine CDP as 'Pine Ridge' CDP in our data.
I would be happy to e-mail the noms to you, but I don't have an e-mail address for you. If you'd like them, send me a Wikiemail. That will give me your address, and I'll reply with the nominations attached.
I had made a correction that, unbeknownst to me, ran contrary to the Wikipedia MOS. Though it had already been corrected, you still let me know and in a way that was helpful and kind. Your actions demonstrate the best kind of inter-editor interaction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Czrisher (talk • contribs) 23:21, 16 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there! You recently re–fixed "panhandle" to "Panhandle" on the site for Nebraska. I just wanted to say THANK YOU for doing so. As you may have seen & noticed, I'm still new. I know there are plenty of rules I need to follow, and I am trying my best to do so. That one was done at a strange hour for me, I'm guessing, and it was more of just a slip. I wanted to thank you for fixing it back, though! Hope you are doing well! ~jddecf Jddecf (talk) 00:35, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking the same thing as you said. I tried to provide a segue from the prehistory to the events of 1806, intending to write and even more lengthy digression for the Pawnee people article. The trick is where to put it in; yes, there is a limited time scope within which the separation occurred, but after that, the Republican Pawnee were reported traveling and camping next to the Grand and Loup.
I have wondered about the Republican name for a while, but I had only recently learned of the Pawnee Republic while studying the crucial, but unreported, role the Wyandot had in Kansas Statehood. Two points besides the naming are salient on the Pawnee Republic. (1) For a time, the "Republic" event loomed mythically large in Kansas. (2) For a similar time, ethnographers noted the Republicans were to be seen at the fringes of Pawnee camps throughout the range (a segregated "unclean" group or a religious sect? (Levites?) ) Does Hyde say anything?
The split story (1) fits into the 1720 to 1806 gap of the Pawnee people article history, but the rest of the story of the Kitkehahki (2) does not fit anywhere in the Pawnee people article. I have thought of making a main article for the Republican, good or bad idea?
You seem an knowledge source for Nebraska, when I add the Republican, is there anything interesting about the Loup that you think should be covered?
Personal, I have frequented the entirety of the Kansas stretch of I-70 since it was built, and I have a camera. Hope you don't mind hearing from me again. IveGoneAway (talk) 02:02, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
As with you, it took a while before I learned about the origin of the Republican River's name. I'd assumed that it had something to do with the Republican Party; I think it was only when I read Hyde that I found out about the Republican Pawnees.
If you've got enough material to launch a Kitkehahki article, I'd say: Go for it. We've already got Skidi. I'd suggest using the name "Kitkehahki", with "Republican Pawnee" as a redirect, in keeping with the usage of the Pawnee Nation.
It'd also be very good to add something on prehistory to the Pawnee people article. I notice that the "History" section of that article doesn't really go into the movements of the Pawnees between Kansas and Nebraska, nor does it mention that the Skidis and the southern bands arrived in Nebraska at different times. I tried to improve the article a few years ago, but couldn't find any sources other than Hyde. I talked to a ranger-type person at Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site, who said that he thought that Hyde's account was still considered valid; but I'd have wanted to augment it with some more recent scholarship, and I didn't have access to that. If you've got access to JSTOR or the like, you could probably come up with something good. — Ammodramus (talk) 04:19, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"If you've got access to JSTOR ..." No, no JSTOR access, but come to think of it I have access to the archaeologist that is working my father's Pawnee village south of Hays, I wonder if he might help me, here.
I hesitate to work much on the Pawnee people or Kitkehahki as it is outside my academic or ethnic interest. My interest really is only answering the Pawnee Republic question, which really is more of a Kansas question than a Pawnee question. But you are absolutely right, the Republic answer is best put in as aside in a Kitkehahki article, but the best I could do for the Kitkehahki is a stub (all I have on the Kitkehahki is a (recent) curiosity of what their relationship was to the rest of the Pawnee in the 1830s). But the Republic naming narrative is a Caucasian settlement narrative, separate or parallel to (and relatively trivial to?) the Pawnee cultural narrative. There are two "Republics", the actual band and the 20th Century Kansas myth (Nebraska, too?).
OK, now that I actually read the Skidi article, maybe I have "got enough material"; the first paragraph is a template, and I probably already have more than what is in the second paragraph, even so, I would be tempted to tag it a stub. "The Kitkehahki are notable for their separation from the Chawi(uncertain to me at this time) and subsequent segregation in villages." (or something like that).
Good that you're reluctant to launch a Kitkehahki article as a stub. I personally disagree with Wikipedia's idea that articles should begin as stubs, then slowly accrete their way to GA status. I think it's much better to research a subject hard, and to try to write as good an article as possible before putting it in mainspace.
You might want to expand the "History" section of Republican River. Right now, there's a single sentence on the name, and it doesn't go at all into why the Kitkehahki were known as the Republican Pawnees. A brief explanation of that would be of interest to the reader, and wouldn't represent a digression from the subject of the article.
I envy you your access to a Pawnee archaeologist. If you get the chance and inclination, could you ask him/her to recommend some good general sources on Pawnee prehistory? Hyde's book seems excellent, but it's over 50 years old, and I'd like to be sure that more recent work hasn't disproven some of the major facts therein.
They are literally just scratching the surface, I figure there is feet of layers of pre-Pawnee settlement. And more unmapped teepee rings on my brother's place on the west. A year ago, I found a cannonball in the creek, and I never find anything.
No need for the talkback notices, yours are the first I ever seen, per WP, I watch where I write.
Can I ask why you reverted my edits to John Wightman? The man is deceased and I added the citation. Granted, it wasn't in my original markup, but it was something I added later and it is also referenced in January 2017 deaths unless this an entirely different person.
So, I am reading Guide Rock (hill) and get to the second paragraph under Description and see:
'[USGS] classifies it as a "pillar"'
and
"vast rocky bluff".
So, I am thinking Niobrara Chalk or Dakota Sandstone, right? Especially, when I then read
"The difference might be due to human action:"
Consider the fates of these natural monuments: The Dakota Sandstone was quarried off of Pawnee Rock for railroad ballast. The Cottonwood Limestone (and an indian cemetery) was quarried off of Bluemont Hill in Manhattan for building stone. The Fort Hays Limestone was quarried off of the Ellis County Hogback for Cement (and a possible indian cemetery). Each one was shortened by "human action". A Fort Hays bluff on the Saline is called Custer Hill because he used it as a guide rock to find his way back to Fort Hays.
So, I try to look up Guide Rock. The USGS topo tags the bluff over the Rankin Creek as The Guide Rock. I know the Fort Hays is there and underlies the marked Guide Rock. But there is absolutely no sign of human action on the marked Guide Rock, the site has every appearance of undisturbed incised plain (reminds me of small scale version of the Niobrara bluffs at Lewis and Clark Lake).
The marked Guide Rock is elevation 1703ft, while the prominent bump 1/2 mile south of the Pawnee village site is 1780ft. The topo shows the latter is a cemetery, but certainly not a presently visible one (a typical Pawnee/Kanza hilltop burial?). A geology text explicitly notes no buildings of Fort Hays limestone are seen in Weber County, but there are two quarries north and south of the 1780ft hill, (possibly silicified Niobrara Chalk?).
About halfway between the Pawnee village and the marked Guide Rock is a broad "rocky bluff" of Fort Hays (Tree-covered now, but would have been exposed rock 200 years ago (like the Ellis County Hogback)).
I've seen a pioneer-era drawing of Pa-hur, a.k.a. Guide Rock, and it was tolerably impressive: certainly, more than just another bluff in the Republican cliffs. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I found the drawing.
A few years ago, I talked to the staff member on duty at the Pawnee village site just outside Republic, Kansas. Toward the end of our conversation, he mentioned that Pa-hur had been degraded in the course of the construction of the Courtland Canal. I'm not sure when that was, but uglybridges.com dates a couple of bridges over the canal at 1935, so the canal's presumably at least that old.
IMO, nothing like that is suggested by the present topography; if anything, the north face of the hill was steepened (See further comments below). IveGoneAway (talk) 04:40, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The sign for Pa-hur is right by where a siphon carries the canal under Rankin Creek. Getting deep into the realm of hypothesis, might it be that the steep-sided pillar was cut by the creek, and that the whole thing was demolished in order to allow construction of the siphon?
For what it's worth, a set of chalk cliffs further up the Republican in Webster County is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, for its connection to Willa Cather's writing. Unfortunately, the NRHP nom form doesn't go into the geology at all. — Ammodramus (talk) 02:32, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, those chalk bluffs are Niobrara, the blue cast at the base of the hillclimb park suggests Blue Hill shale that underlies the Fort Hays (Hey, there's the Type Locality, Blue Hill, Nebraska!).
Miller 1964 refers to it as Fort Hays (lower member of the Niobrara), IMO the topography fits that. Now, if you want to talk pillars, talk Smokey Hill Chalk, however, those chalk pillars form only under wind erosion. Mind you, at Lewis and Clark BSA campground, the white bluffs are Smokey Hill, and next to the campfire as a pillar halfway up the slope of a valley cut into a bluff. Now, there could have been such a pillar at Pa-hur, and it could have been undercut by the canal, but any such pillar would be a fraction of the height of the present bluff, nothing much more than a very unusual, large boulder.
Such a picture as you mentioned belongs in the article.
[Guide Rock on a 1900 atlas.] OK, this indicates that the Republican was blasting right at the base (the north face I mentioned above) back then, like Big Creek cutting into the Blue Hill shale under the Hogback (ah, irony), but the rock at Pa-hur is white so the bluff would stand out for miles.
This is the Ellis County analog to Guide Rock; same geology and geography, only 30 ft higher. 1873. A clear landmark visible from miles away. The photo shows how treeless Guide rock would have been. A mile left and to the rear of the camera, my brother found a rare, very old indian village that was excavated two years ago. Note the two fishermen and the rifleman at the lower left. IveGoneAway (talk) 00:39, 10 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Good evening Ammodramus! I wanted to touch base with you regarding the article for Valley View (Romney, West Virginia). I had previously nominated this article as a candidate for FA, but it failed its first attempt. One of the editors is now retired, and I incorporated his suggestion that more detailed information about the Northern Neck Proprietary should be included. I have made those changes, but wanted your eye for detail regarding the flow and content. Would you be able to take a look at the Royal land grant and Collins family ownership subsection of the History section? Any suggestions you could provide would be very appreciated and helpful. I will be modifying the Northern Neck Proprietary section of the rest of the Hampshire County landmark articles accordingly since this would affect them all. Thank you again! -- West Virginian (talk)23:34, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I am an avid reader, but just a once-in-a-while page editor, of Wikipedia. Moreover, German is my native language. But I felt the need to add the repair bill section to the Brasch article because:
1) The article is yet a stub. As I understand the concept behind Wikipedia, the way from a stub to a full-blown article must happen over adding content, revising, adding etc. It is cooler if someone with profound knowledge inserts huge chunks of content to a stub article, but for Mrs Brasch, this had obviously not been the case. IMHO the second-best way of expanding a stub article is to add content gradually, albeit this may lead to a patchy (patchy/unbalanced, NOT: biased!) look of the article, at times. In my humble opinion, adding this repair bill section is adding real and concise, albeit not ground-rocking, information and is "better than nothing".
2) As I do see it, this "repair bill" controversy is an important current topic in economy / society. It is linked with topics like consumer lock-in, sustainability etc. - Those wars are not only fought by and over WTO and National states, but also in the parliament houses of Nebraska and other U. S. states. Hence, Lydia Brasch is linked to a real, interesting controvery of our time.
3) The Business tactics of Apple Inc - from marketing to lobbying - in all its details are always well worth mentioning. My edit was mentioning a shady little lobbying action of Apple which contradicts, in a way, the sustainability pledges of the same company that they are so keen to see published all over. But light should also be shed on those actions of the world's most valuable company (by some rankings) for a balanced picture, don't you think?
Hello Ammodramus... I noticed your revert on Ben Sasse. I didn't realize currently is taboo per WP guidelines. Something about the original sentence seemed awkward to me which was why I tweaked it. Anyway, this is good to know. One learns something new every day! Foreignshore (talk) 04:17, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, i just created an article for Burwell Bridge, including one of your 2010 photos and a link to the commons category. However, upon comparison to the photo with the NRHP nomination, I think the original bridge has been completely replaced, though I am not positive. Could you possibly please take a look at it? --doncram20:33, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Doncram, I'm afraid that I'm rather tied up right now, and won't be able to do much with WP for at least the next week or so. You might want to have a look at uglybridges.com's page on that particular bridge. According to them, the bridge was built in 1940, and reconstructed in 2007. I'm not sure what this reconstruction might have involved, or whether it would affect the bridge's eligibility to remain on the NRHP. Ammodramus (talk) 04:06, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your helpful reply! I added reference to the UglyBridges.Com page, and added the item to the "demolished but still listed" section of wp:NRIS info issues NE. I am now sure it was demolished and replaced: it didn't just get a new deck or anything; the new deck is 44 ft wide vs 24 ft originally, and the piers are different, and there are no wingwalls in sight. It would be fine if you'd refine at the article when you have time, and perhaps update descriptions in the photos in commons, but the article is roughly okay now I think. You or I or someone oughta begin to get in contact with the Nebraska SHPO to address the numerous demolished but still listed cases, and other data issues. Thanks. --doncram23:49, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. Or, is there still a small chance the original piers (visible in NRHP photo)are still there, but were lengthened going upstream and downstream? I can't imagine such a major reconstruction would still leave it NRHP-eligible, so it should be delisted, but it would be interesting to know if the original bridge is still in there in some sense.
If/when you get a chance, it would be great if you could take a look at Athletic Park Band Shell, where i tried to create a gallery using your photos, and perhaps fix it up. There is some display problem currently. The park benches and the water fountain and the light posts are actually contributing structures, so having multiple photos in this article is appropriate. Also if you could comment on how you want photos to appear, that would help me perhaps be better able to defer to your wishes. When I added left-justified photo thumbs in some other Nebraska NRHP articles, I noticed that you came by and deleted them, with comment that the text was not long enough to justify having them. My view is that right-justified photos in short NRHP articles are not helpful, because they appear only below the NRHP infobox, out of sight to readers. Of course having a longer text would make the whole article better probably and then there wouldn't be a photo spacing issue, but in my view some odd spacing is better than not having the photos. But perhaps {{Gallery}} presentations are okay by you, so I have been trying those recently, but obviously there's something I don't have figured out about how to get them to display properly. Also I have been using {{Commons category-inline}}, which I think is how you prefer. As always, i greatly appreciate your cumulatively huge number of high quality photos and am enjoying the fact that they enrich the writing experience for me, as well as serving readers. --doncram17:56, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Any better idea on how to warn wiki readers about the risk of confusing Salem Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church in Axtell, Nebraska, with the (originally Swedish) Salem Lutheran Church in Axtell, Kansas? I figure, wether a wiki page for the latter church exists or not, there's a considerable risk visitors misinterpret the former article. -- Lejman (talk) 17:07, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Lejman: Since the first sentence of the article states that the church is located in Axtell, Nebraska, it seems unnecessary to inclue a hatnote saying that it's not in Kansas. Moreover, if I type "salem lutheran church axtell" into the Wikipedia search box, the results don't include a link to this article. I doubt that many people will land here by mistake, and those who do will quickly discover their error. — Ammodramus (talk) 03:03, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Except for one city I should get this weekend, mostly thanks to your efforts, I believe that Nebraska is effectively complete in photos for communities. I don't have any info to back this up but on quick spot searches of other states, I believe Nebraska to be one of the most complete regarding photos for communities, especially considering the size of the state and number of total communities. Thank you, Paltron (talk) 12:26, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Swampyank still creating stubs (with errors aplenty)
A - I came across your plea to S and the reply. It's not churches now. There is an adequate article about my home town (to which I have contributed). Within the last month, S has created six new articles about aspects of the town (one for each (non-historic) school, the library, etc.). With errors and inappropriate references. Plus continuing to add content to the town article, which I then feel obligated to correct. I just sent a merge proposal to S, but given past history, I suspect that will be opposed. My only hope is that this article-creating obsession will move on to some other town. David notMD (talk) 21:28, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I messaged Swampyank directly with a request to consider merging these start/stub articles into the town article. I got the same reply you got - people interested enough to search on these specific topics would rather see a Wikipedia article on each topic rather than the website for the topic or the Wikipedia article for the town. I am not going to get into a merge/delete debate. My only recourse is to make sure that S does not start deleting content from the town article because said content is covered elsewhere. THAT, I will revert. Best to you in your continuing efforts to improve Wikipedia. David notMD (talk) 10:29, 31 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I don't know about Maynard, Massachusetts, but I see that Ammodramus posted at User talk:Swampyank#NRHP church substubs in 2013, and I commented in disagreement then. Now, I think A's statement was polite and well-put and constructive; I wouldn't comment, now, the way i did then, and I apologize for being dismissive. The upshot anyhow was that the editor did stop creating new church stub articles, sometime around then. And I and others have developed a lot of the church substubs, though there remain more to develop. And I have come around myself as far as nominating Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bert and Fay Havens House, where comments from either of you would be welcome. There's no easy answer on short stub articles on probably-notable topics, where local editors prefer development differently, but I think some minimum standard can be expressed. I don't know of any essay on the issue and am considering starting one. --doncram18:35, 5 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
(To User:Kennethaw88) I've just uploaded some photos of an Italianate NRHP house in South Dakota to Commons. In the course of categorizing them, I discovered that last year, you moved the category "Italianate architecture in South Dakota" from "Architecture of South Dakota by style" to "Victorian architecture in South Dakota"; see diff.
I wonder whether this move was a good idea. It seems to me that it's making it more difficult for users to find the Italianate-architecture categories. In my case, at least, I looked at the architecture-by-style category, and was surprised not to see Italianate among the subcategories; I checked "Architecture of Nebraska by style", where I knew I'd populated an Italianate category, and didn't find it there either. It was only by typing "Italiante architecture..." into the search box that I discovered where it'd gone.
It also seems to me that "Victorian architecture" is more a temporal category than a stylistic one. Granted, certain styles were chiefly in vogue while Queen V was wielding the orb and scepter. However, should I win the lottery tomorrow and celebrate by commissioning myself an Italianate mansion, would it really be appropriate to call it Victorian?
I'd suggest restoring the Italianate categories directly to the by-style categories, without the intermediate Victorian category, both on grounds of user-friendliness and because the current arrangement seems to mix temporal and stylistic classifications. However, I assume that you had a good reason for your change, and it'd probably save work for both of us if we discuss it before I embark on a mass-revert campaign. Ammodramus (talk) 13:13, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. I can't actually say why I did that. I wanted to say that the reason was because I saw that several Italianate categories were already in the Victorian categories, and I was trying to harmonize all the state categories. But it turns out they aren't harmonized, and all of the state categories are different. Some are below the Victorian, some are not, and some are both. At some point, I must have seen some Italianate category put under the Victorian category and then the idea stuck in my head. (Actually, as I typed this and checked some page histories, I realize I fell for Look2See1's nonsense) So really, I don't have any actual objection to removing the Victorian layer. But I think ultimately, each state category should be the same.
And I think your point about Victorian architecture being a temporal category is probably true. The Victorian architecture article is mostly a list of more specific styles that overlapped in time. So probably some of the other styles: Queen Anne, Stick style, (and even some Gothic categories), could be moved up to the by-style categories.
Thanks for looking at these carefully and critically. Sometimes I get annoyed at editors who just copy and paste things sloppily, but I have clearly done the same thing. Oops. kennethaw88 • talk08:02, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Much of my photography for Commons involves getting shots of National Register of Historic Places sites; and in reading the NRHP nomination forms to get dates and architectural styles for houses, it seems like "Victorian" and "Queen Anne" are used somewhat interchangeably. The nom forms are often prepared by local historical societies, and I suspect that there's considerable variance in the background architectural knowledge of the preparers.
Howdy. Do you really want to start an argument, to make 2 articles different from hundreds of others? Would you really want to spend your time on that? GoodDay (talk) 04:02, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
All due respect, but since Ricketts does own a piece of the team, he gets a piece of the ring.
It's like when 10 people chip in to buy Mega Millions tickets, and win the big jackpot...they all share in the winnings.
The team is a family owned entity, thus they all share in any accolades the team gets...they pay the bills, thus they get whatever benefit that comes from it.
George Meisner House is more troublesome than other NE NRHPs. I was trying to remove it from "NRIS-only" and otherwise improve it but can't find the NRHP nomination document which apparently was once available at Nebraska Historical Society, but is not findable through their map-based index. And their county-based lists are gone? Perhaps relatedly, it is identified as "address restricted" in National Register of Historic Places listings in Buffalo County, Nebraska, although it does not look like the kind of property which should be address restricted, and I don't see anything else indicating it should be. You must have known where it is. Can you ethically add coordinates to the article, or anything else, I wonder? Cheers, --Doncram (talk) 16:44, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As I recall, there was no usable address for the house, but I was able to find it from the general description "approximately one mile north of the town of Shelton", which general area I searched until I found a place that matched the photos. At the time, there were a carriage barn and garage with distinctive cupola'd roofs, which were part of the listing; when I photographed the place in 2010, they were in pretty bad shape (see photos at Commons), and I think they've since been removed. The circular drive, mentioned in the nom form, is still visible in the satellite photo. Lat-long coords from Google Maps are (40.797277, -98.740031).
Unfortunately, the Nebraska State Historical Society recently changed its name to "History Nebraska", and I'm afraid that a lot of the nebraskahistory.org URLs may no longer be valid. Reference 2 in the current version of the Meisner-house article is among them; if you're working on the article, you might want to fix that. (I've been almost completely inactive at Wikipedia for several years now, so haven't taken on the URL-cleanup task—this is not me trying to stick you with a major piece of drudgery so that I can do more entertaining Wikithings!) — Ammodramus (talk) 22:16, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I am the Editor for the Burlington Route Historical Society's Burlington Bulletin and we are featuring Grand Island in our next issue. I would like to use your 2015 image of the Express building and depot, and even though you've made this a public domain image, I would like to give you credit for the image. You mail contact me directly at Editor@BurlingtonRoute.org. Thanks!
BRHSEditor (talk) 18:39, 26 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Looking through the history of a number of Nebraska-related articles (which I am interested in), I see that you are a long-time and valuable editor. I appreciate the content you're adding, so thank you. I notice on your talk page that you mention going through microfilm... are you aware of the Nebraska newspaper project? Not very helpful for more recent things, such as the 1990 governor election, but certainly for late 1800s/early 1900s, I've found it very helpful. It's especially helpful because they have put most (all?) entries through OCR, so it's searchable rather than entirely manual, as with microfilm. Also, you might consider getting newspaper access through WP:LIBRARY, if you so desire. Anyway, thank you! (Side note: I noticed that you contributed often to Willa Cather in the past; I've nominated it for GA, which I think it deserves. Thought you might enjoy that.) Urve (talk) 22:24, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shelley Adler until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
Hello! I'm attempting to revive WikiProject Nebraska and you are on the list of active participants (which I recently went through and removed inactive participants) and you have stated that you live in Kearney, travel a lot within the state, and have a camera. Don't know if you're still interested in it or not. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654520:01, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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Please remember to assume good faith when dealing with other editors, which you did not do on Willa Cather. Thank you. Richard Apple (talk) 01:29, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Khazar2 -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:54, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
. The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needed to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass, otherwise it will fail. See Talk:McCook Daily Gazette for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Khazar2 -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:54, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
; see Talk:McCook Daily Gazette for comments about the article. Well done! Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Khazar2 -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:52, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Pike-Pawnee Village Site at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! I am One of Many (talk) 04:09, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
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