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Thousand Island Park Historic District

Hi everyone. A historian at the Thousand Island Park Historic District in upstate New York wants to donate historical images of the historic area. I don't have the volunteer capacity to help her at this time. It should be an easy enough project - and I think she'll probably upload the images herself if given the proper support. Please contact me if you can help, I'd be grateful. Thank you. SarahStierch (talk) 13:45, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

New York State Parks, Recreation & Preservation site doesn't work

Maybe it's just my PC, but none of the Java links owned by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation work for me. I updated my Java program, and it didn't do a damn thing. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 04:24, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

It must be your box. I've not been having any problems. Daniel Case (talk) 03:47, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

NRHP Wikipedia mapping table

Does some maintains a table, that maps NRHP-IDs to Wikipedia entries? I know, that I can use Templatetiger therefore, but maybe someone already have a ready to use table. --Arch2all (talk) 09:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

What is Templatetiger, can you explain what that is? Is there any possible use for this WikiProject NRHP? Based on your question, i imagine you are wanting to extract Wikipedia data for some outside purpose. I am personally more interested in helping people who want to develop Wikipedia proper, but for what it is worth, here's a response:
There is a nearly complete correspondence between wikipedia article titles and NRHP reference numbers contained within the system of 2,000+ county- and city- list-articles, indexed from List of RHPs. Or accessed also by Category:List-Class National Register of Historic Places articles. The NRHP reference numbers are not displayed, but they are present within the list-articles, you can see by hitting Edit on any one of them. However some of the article titles given are really redirects to actual article titles. The list-article system is a complete index to all of the NRHP-listed places, updated to with a week or two or three of current, recent NRHP listings. But note we haven't started Wikipedia articles for about 40,000 of the 87,000 NRHP-listed places, so about 40,000 of the article titles are redlinks, i.e. the unique names for all intended articles are set already. Hope this helps. --doncram 22:50, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
I think Arch2all means this project -- looks interesting. de:Wikipedia:WikiProjekt Vorlagenauswertung/en --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 23:00, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
It should also be noted that there is not a straight one-to-one correspondence between NRHP reference numbers and articles (or potential articles). Some articles cover more than one reference number, and reference numbers may appear in more than one article (true for properties that contribute to districts but have their own articles, and some other probably rare cases). Magic♪piano 00:42, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for all the responses. Seems that Templatetiger(indeed it's the same as de:Wikipedia:WikiProjekt Vorlagenauswertung/en ) is the best way for creating such a relation table. SarekOfVulcan's suggestion is interesting, but I think it's much more complex to extract the data this way. Because a relation table is maybe for someone else helpful (and I could help people to develop Wikipedia proper ;) I show here how this could be done withe Templatetiger: All WP lemmas about a NRHP object should contain a "Infobox NRHP" template. This template contains a row with the NRHP reference ("refnum"). With Templatetiger it's now possible to find all lemmas with such a template and show WP page name and NRHP reference:

There are still some problems:

  • A lot of refnum entries contains unwanted extra information, especially source references. You have to remove this stuff manually by editing the result file.
  • The Templatetiger output is limited to a certain amount of rows (some thousands). To get all results, You have to split up the requests in smaller portions by using a limiting query parameter: "&where=refnum&is=^[0].*&regexp=yes", "&where=refnum&is=^[1].*&regexp=yes", "&where=refnum&is=^[2].*&regexp=yes", ...

--Arch2all (talk) 10:35, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Privacy rights of property owners

Please see User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 127#Privacy rights of property owners (version of 17:57, 3 March 2013).
—Wavelength (talk) 18:03, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Deletion nomination for National Register Information System

Could parties knowledgeable about the NRIS database please consider commenting at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/National Register Information System. --doncram 23:09, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Now at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/National Register Information System (2nd nomination). Nyttend (talk) 13:25, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

13 new National Historic Landmarks

"Harriet Beecher Stowe House Named a National Landmark".[1] Thundersnow (talk) 08:57, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Here's the Department of Interior press release for all thirteen. Magic♪piano 12:27, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
All of which have been discussed at meetings in the last year or so. No surprises there. Good. Daniel Case (talk) 06:04, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
In adding Edmund Pettus Bridge to a variety of NHL and NRHP lists, I've noticed that the counts in National Register of Historic Places listings in Alabama seem to be discrepant with listing counts in county articles (at least for the Dallas County list). Can someone look at this? Magic♪piano 14:09, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

3 new NHL noms

The next NHL meeting is next month, at which only three new nominations will be discussed. It seems we have articles about two and nothing on the other.

Daniel Case (talk) 06:04, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Created, working on it now.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
I can probably get a picture in the next week or two. Teemu08 (talk) 17:47, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Would be great, it is unlikely I can get to Illinois this year.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:49, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Help with infoboxes

I've recently created a merged article, Riverside and Avondale that needs Historic District templates. Two former articles that had the templates were merged into it: Riverside, Jacksonville and Avondale (Jacksonville). I wanted to include them in the relevant sections of the new article (Riverside and Avondale#Riverside and Riverside and Avondale#Avondale), but I can't get them to display correctly. Instead I just included the pictures that accompanied the templates. Can someone assist with this?--Cúchullain t/c 21:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Can anyone help with this?--Cúchullain t/c 12:59, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
To be honest, I think it looks fine without NRHP infoboxes in it. I would just add to each district's section the fact that it was listed on the NRHP in whichever year, using the {{NRISref}} citation. What exactly are you looking to do with the infoboxes?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:56, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Seconded, I think it's fine without infoboxes, as long as the year and perhaps the reference number are incorporated in to the text.. Acroterion (talk) 18:06, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
That would be fine with me. I brought it up here because another contributor wanted them; I figured we could just add them to the individual sections but I couldn't get it to format right. I appreciate the help, I'll add in the cites.--Cúchullain t/c 18:45, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

New Resource

FYI - a relatively new online resource for article writers which has limited but expanding coverage of various US structures, particularly re architectural history is at [2]. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:20, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Two articles, one NRHP listing

How do we handle the case when two notable properties are part of the same NRHP listing?

Specifically, Maplewood Park and Seneca Park (Rochester, New York) were once known as Seneca Park West and East, respectively, and that's how they're listed on the NRHP. (The latter doesn't have an article yet, but it should.)

This is probably less complicated than I'm envisioning.

-- Powers T 15:53, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Same for El Paseo and Casa de la Guerra: we have two articles, Paseo de la Guerra and Casa de la Guerra. At some point I thought about writing a stub which would mention that the listing exists and then refer to the two articles, but I did not find more than that, and was not really keen on adding a two-line stub.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:04, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
In both of these instances, the notable topics are the two distinct entities (for example, Maplewood Park and Seneca Park (Rochester, New York)). These entities should have separate articles. The fact that they are listed together on the National Register should be documented in both articles. Unless there is some additional significance to the combination (something beyond the fact that were combined in a single National Register listing), it's not a good idea to create a third article about the National Register listing. The National Register listing is not the notable topic; it's the buildings or parks that are notable.
Both articles could include the National Register infobox. Lists of National Register listings could be crafted so as to link to all of the articles. For example, the list entry for Ymblanter's example could be formatted as [[Paseo de la Guerra|El Paseo]] and [[Casa de la Guerra]] and LtPowers' example could be formatted [[Seneca Park (Rochester, New York)|Seneca Park East]] and [[Maplewood Park|West]]. --Orlady (talk) 17:08, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, a good suggestion.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:14, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
I used the same infobox for Chota (Cherokee town) and Tanasi. Bms4880 (talk) 18:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
In some cases I would make a combined article, but I think in this case they are clearly two distinct entities which would be notable anyway even without the NRHP listing. Mangoe (talk) 23:15, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Category issues with bungalow styles

Vegaswikian put in two category discussions for architectural categories about bungalows. The renaming/merging issues revolve around distinctions between supposedly different kinds of bungalows, with California bungalow at the center. After some discussion we aren't sure which way these should go, with the main issue being how much the various supposed subtypes of bungalow should be reflected in the categories. It's clear that the main driver for this is going to be the NRHP, which is how most of these houses are going to (a) gain notability, and (b) be assigned a particular style, so I've come here to solicit more input. The discussions in question are the following:

Thanks in advance. Mangoe (talk) 23:23, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Using an Alternate Citation to Allow Users to Search for a Historic Place on the NRHP Site

For the Pulaski Skyway article, I would like to replace the current standard source citation for National Register of Historic Places:

"National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.

with the alternate source citation below:

"Search Form for U.S. Registered Historic Places". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. Retrieved March 10, 2013. Search by the cited Reference Number, 05000880. Pulaski Skyway is listed as part of “Route 1 Extension”.

I was told that I cannot use the alternate source citation because it is different than the standard citation that is used everywhere else in Wikipedia and it is not regular practice to provide users with instructions on how to search for an item on the NRHP page.

The alternate source citation lets users go to the correct National Register of Historic places page where they can enter the reference number to go immediately to the correct source, “Route 1 Extension”. Pulaski Skyway is NOT listed as a separate historic place.

If users try to search on "Pulaski Skyway", they will not find it.

Please advise if I can use the alternate source citation.

In addition, please let me know if the current standard Wikipedia source citation for National Register of Historic Places can be changed to:

"Search Form for U.S. Registered Historic Places". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. Retrieved March 10, 2013. Search by the cited NRHP Reference Number, if available.

It should be changed to make it much easier for all Wikipedia users to find a historic place based on the following reasons.

1. It takes users directly to National Register of Historic Places advanced search page that they need to use if they are going to search for an item.

Using the National Register of Historic Places' reference number takes a user directly to the source for the historic place.
It is best to use the reference number, when available, since I found that if you try to type in the name of the historic place, you get a list of hundreds, if not more than a thousand, of results. In addition, if you do not type in the name of the historic place exactly the way it has been listed in the NRHP data base, you will either not find the cited place or you will get hundreds, if not more than a thousand, of results.

2. Current standard Wikipedia source citation takes a user to a National Register of Historic page that is NOT immediately useful. If a user tries typing in various search terms, including the NRHP reference number, in the General Search box in the upper left, they get a result "Search page not found".

User then needs to go to the Advanced Search page link on the left, which is where my alternate search takes the user.
If they type in the full name of the historic place, they will most likely get hundreds, if not more than a thousand, of search results without immediately seeing the site they are interested in.
If they do not type in the name of the historic place exactly the way it has been listed in the NRHP data base, they will either not find the cited place or they will get hundreds, if not more than a thousand, of results.
They may finally get to the cited historic place if they finally figure out to use the cited NRHP reference number, if available.
Users will waste a lot of time and have a lot of frustration finally figuring out how to get to the cited historic place, if they are able to, or just give up in frustration.

It should be noted that my alternate source citation, needs to be bracketed at beginning and end with "ref" and "/ref" (each of those quoted items need to enclosed in brackets < >) for posting on an actual Wikipedia article site so that it can appear as I have shown it above. For some reason, when I bracket it here on the Talk page, it is not correct, as shown below. You need to go the Edit page to see how I have typed it in with the brackets.

[1]Wondering55 (talk) 07:17, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm having a little trouble understanding what the issue is, but it should be noted that the NRIS citation, in its current format, is a reference to the NRIS database, which can be downloaded through the NPS website. The website also provides some online access to that database, although (unfortunately, as you found out), the ease of querying through the website leaves something to be desired. It looks like "Pulaski Skyway" appears in the database as an "other name" for the Route 1 Extension, so were you to actually download and query the database yourself, you'd find it (admittedly, not a simple task).
Also, I'm a little uncertain as to the relationship between the Pulaski Skyway and the Route 1 Extension. The NRHP listing is for the whole Route 1 Extension, which I gather is the Pulaski Skyway plus some additional miles of roadway. So the Pulaski Skyway is definitely listed on the NRHP, but as part of a larger listing? In the past, for Historic Districts that include multiple buildings, the project has used a "contributing property" designation on the article, noting that "Building X" is listed as a Contributing Property in "Historic District Y" (as an example, see the Penobscot Building). Calling the Pulaski Skyway a Contributing Property would perhaps solve the root issue in this case, and effectively be more correct (although the Route 1 Extension is not a "Historic District," so I guess it's technically less correct) by explicitly noting that the "Pulaski Skyway" contributes to the "Route 1 Extension." Andrew Jameson (talk) 12:46, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
The issue is what citation source can be used in a Wikipedia article to make it as quick and easy for a Wikipedia user to find the referenced NRHP site in the article. My proposed NRHP source below for the Wikipedia article makes it quick, easy, and very simple for any Wikipedia user to immediately find the NRHP info on the Pulaski Highway, which is part of the Route 1 Extension listing. First, I would like the project team to say it is OK for me to use this source for the Pulaski Skyway.
"Search Form for U.S. Registered Historic Places". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. Retrieved March 10, 2013. Search by the cited Reference Number, 05000880. Pulaski Skyway is listed as part of “Route 1 Extension”.
The current NRHP source in Wikipedia articles makes it very difficult, if next to impossible, for a general Wikipedia user to find a referenced NRHP site, inluding the Pulaski Skyway.
Second, I would like the project team to consider using my proposed NRHP source below in future revisions of Wikipedia articles in order to make it quicker, easier, and simpler for general Wikipedia users to find the historical place they are using it for.
"Search Form for U.S. Registered Historic Places". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. Retrieved March 10, 2013. Search by the cited NRHP Reference Number, if available.
instead of the current NRHP source:
"National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
The current NRHP source takes a Wikipedia user to a secondary NRHP page that is not the practical NRHP page that will make it easy for a Wikipedia user to find what they are looking for, as I noted in my original Talk above.
The ordinary Wikipedia user is not going to download NRHP database to find what they are looking for. They are going to try and do a search query on the Internet page that they are directed to. My proposed NRHP sources will make it easier for them to find what they are looking for. As you indicated, based on using the current Wikipedia source for the NRHP, the "ease of querying through the website leaves something to be desired" and downloading their database "admittedly, not a simple task".
In answer to your question, the Pulaski Skyway is part of a larger listing for the Route 1 Extension. In fact, Wikipedia's cited NRHP reference number 05000880 will take a user to the Route 1 Extension listing. I can change the instruction in my proposed source for the Pulaski Skyway to:
Search by the cited Reference Number, 05000880. Pulaski Skyway is listed as a contributing part of “Route 1 Extension”.Wondering55 (talk) 14:11, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
(ec) Complications about the Skyway vs. the Route 1 Extension notwithstanding, Wondering55 has a good point. The standard NRIS reference serves readers poorly by giving a link to a downloadable database which is of no use to them. Linking to a search screen would be better, but can also be misleading. The search screen is inadequate as a link usually because the search screen was not the source for information provided; the search screen cannot get you to some information that actually came from the database and is being reported in the typical NRHP article.
I think the standard NRIS reference should be changed centrally (at {{NRISref}}), and my first choice would be that it should be changed to include no link at all, but rather be presented as an off-line source. The complete information in NRIS is not completely available on-line, not in any search screen, not by any acceptable-to-link online access, besides by downloading the entire database. It is absurd to suggest that readers download that. However, the reference can include a link to a Wikipedia article on the National Register Information System, which would provide more explanations (and present the search screen and also the downloadable database in proper context). --doncram 14:12, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Revisions to the standard NRIS reference have been requested and discussed somewhat at Template talk:NRISref, but have not led to improvement needed. I did just now start the National Register Information System article as a High importance, very much needed article. --doncram 14:21, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
[Edit conflict; I've not read the edits I conflicted with] I agree with Andrew Jameson that the cited source should be the NRIS database, as it provides somewhat more information than is available from the NRHP search page. As for how to cite it, rather than creating a nonstandard citation or falsely claiming this to be a contributing property, it seems to me that the reference citation can be clarified by two fairly simple changes:
1. Supplement the templated citation with an indication of the property name: <ref name="nris">{{NRISref|2009a|mdy}} Listed name is Route 1 Extension.</ref>
2. In the article text, indicate that the National Register listing is as part of the Route 1 Extension. --Orlady (talk) 14:15, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Partial response to Wondering55: The primary purpose of the reference citation is to tell the reader where the information came from, not to provide them with weblinks that will allow them to replicate the research. (The latter purpose is laudable, but secondary.) --Orlady (talk) 14:21, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
I can add to the Pulaski Skyway article next to the listed reference number "(for "Route 1 Extension", which includes Pulaski Skyway)".
I can leave in the current standard NRHP citation. However, I would still like to also add a search query link so that users can easily find the data source for Pulaski Skyway. I would like to do this in the interim while your project team is working out a solution for updated NRHP citations. This search query citation can then be revised or deleted anytime the project team comes up with an updated solution. I would appreciate if the project team can let me know if this is an acceptable interim solution for the Pulaski Skyway article.
"Search Query for U.S. Registered Historic Places". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. Retrieved March 10, 2013. Search by the cited Reference Number, 05000880. Pulaski Skyway is listed as a contributing part of “Route 1 Extension”.
I see I have sparked discussions on a long time issue that still needs additional time for resolution. I now understand the original citation is to identify where the information came from. As the discussions have noted, the current NRHP source citation may still need to be revised as either a "hard text source, similar to a hard copy book, without any links, or directing the user to National Register Information System, which now is only in early stages of development.
Whatever resolution is reached, it would be best to provide both the original database source citation, plus a search query option that allows regular Wikipedia users to more easily find the information.Wondering55 (talk) 16:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

The search page is not a valid reference citation. The reference citation should identify the source of the information in the article. The source for information in the NRHP infobox is NRIS, not the search page. Some of the information about the National Register listing is NOT available from the search page you want to cite. --Orlady (talk) 16:26, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

The nomination form is online. Why not just cite it? That document clearly says Pulaski Skyway is part of the listing. In fact, it has tons of information about the skyway that may be used to expand the article. To include the reference, use the standard citation for NRHP nomination forms found here.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:36, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Hey, let the developing editor do what he/she wants. Some good points have been made, some good questions asked, above. But the bottom-line is that there is an editor whom I think is relatively new to NRHP articles, trying to do good work, and politely asking here for "permission" to use a better-in-his/her-view version of an NRIS reference. It is acknowledged by me, and has been acknowledged by others, that the current standard NRIS reference is deficient (for pointing readers to a database download page that provides confusion and negative value rather than positive value for readers). And this editor suggests an alternative and wants to use that.

It is the job of WikiProject NRHP members to support reasonable development of articles about NRHP places, not to stand in the way. So, the simple answer to this request has to be: YES, please go ahead and use your version in the article that you are improving. And, thank you for politely raising the matter, and for bringing general attention back to the already-known problem of deficiency of the standard NRIS reference.

Towards that end, in this edit at the Pulaski Skyway article, I implemented what i think is the edit that Wondering55 wishes. In the edit history of the article and its Talk page, I don't see the controversy suggested in the request above, i.e. i don't immediately see where anyone was insisting the standard form of NRIS reference must be used.

To be clear, among good points mentioned are that the actual NRHP nomination document specific to the topic should be cited and used where possible. The NRHP nomination document usually is not a good source for some facts, such as when a place was actually, subsequently, NRHP-listed, however. And Wondering55 should use a reference to NRIS wherever NRIS is actually the source used. And a version of NRIS pointing to a search screen should probably only be used when the NRIS information provided is actually available from the search screen. At the article Talk page, i may question whether certain information is actually supported by the search screen or by NRIS at all. But, i wholly support this editor using reasonable judgement in choice of a NRIS reference. --doncram 22:20, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Let's hope the changes don't adversely affect the featured article status of that article. --Orlady (talk) 23:48, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
The nomination forms do include the date of listing, as they are signed by the Keeper (or designee). Failing that, the Weekly list also includes the date of listing. Einbierbitte (talk) 20:36, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
I believe that it would be thoroughly unhelpful to use different citations to the same document; let's continue using the {{NRISref|version=2010a}} citations. If we think that Wondering55 has a good idea, we should adopt the idea by modifying the template so that all of our citations follow his pattern. Nyttend (talk) 06:33, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

suggesting that the current default citation is inadequate We really should be citing what we find on NRIS, not simply link to the search page. If what we provide doesn't point to the information found, then it's not an adequate citation. Therefore the citation should always contain what info was used to search NRIS, which I would assume by default should be the property reference number and maybe also title. Mangoe (talk) 16:15, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

For the record, the current default citation doesn't link to a search page. It links to http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html , which describes NRIS. In addition, it identifies the version of the downloaded NRIS database that was consulted. That's in many respects similar to providing a link to a published book. The user who started this discussion apparently wanted to link to a search page instead. --Orlady (talk) 18:42, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
I had a goal to use an acceptable alternate format, which would link directly to the NRHP source details for the Pulaski Skyway, that could also be used for other NRHP designations in other Wikipedia articles. This would make it easier for users to directly access various cited NRHP source details.
The current default source format, "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009., did not provide that direct link for the Pulaski Skyway, which it turned out is actually part of the NRHP listing for "Route 1 Extension". That default source format links to a general source for all NRHP databases. In addition, trying to search for any NRHP designated location from that default web page is frustrating, if not next to impossible, due to inefficiencies in NRHP's search set-up. That default source format link is more like providing a user with a link to a newspaper's home page rather than to a specific cited article from the newspaper or providing a user with a link to a publisher's home page, rather than to a specific cited book, and then letting them forage around on those home page sites to figure out how to find the specific cited article or book.
Rather than using the Search Query format, which was a temporary fix that I developed, it turns out your team has already developed various templates for linking directly to specific NRHP sources for each cited NRHP location. These templates can be found at NRHP Nomination Form Details. I would suggest these templates be used rather than the current default source format,"National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009., so that users can easily find and reference details about each cited NRHP location rather than go to an NRHP general database page.
I believe this should satisfy both users and your Wiki Project Team for the Pulaski Skyway article, as well as other Wiki articles. If anyone has any comments or if this seems like a reasonable solution, please advise.
For NRHP sources, where there are separate documents for the submitted NRHP application and for the submitted photos, the template is noted below. I would suggest all of the NRHP templates also allow for an optional note at the end of the source citation (just before </ref>) when the cited NRHP location is a contributing property to the designated NRHP listing, as is the case with the Pulaski Skyway. The optional template note could be as shown below.
____Name of Property____ is a contributing property to the "______Nominated Name of NRHP Property______".
<ref name="nrhpnom">{{cite document
|url=http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/_____Reference number_____.pdf
|format=pdf
|title=National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: _____Name_____
|author=_____Author_____
|date=_____Date published_____
|publisher=National Park Service}}
{{cite document
|url=http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Photos/_____Reference number_____.pdf 
|format=pdf
|title=Accompanying _____# of photos_____ photos, from _____year(s)_____.
|work=National Register of Historic Places Inventory}}</ref>
For the NRHP source citation for the Pulaski Skyway, I would plan to revise it, as shown below, unless anyone has any objections or comments.
McCahon, Mary and Johnston, Sandra (August 12, 2005). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Route 1 Extension" (Document). National Park Service. {{cite document}}: Unknown parameter |format= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |url= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
"Accompanying 25 photos, from 1929 to 2003" (Document). {{cite document}}: Cite document requires |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |format= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |url= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |work= ignored (help) Pulaski Skyway is a contributing property to the “Route 1 Extension”.Wondering55 (talk) 01:23, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
That's a good reference citation format for article content based on the 2005 nomination document. It is not a good reference, however, for content such as date of listing. A citation to NRIS itself (not to a search page or a nomination form) is needed to support content such as listing dates, acreage of the listing, and other details that aren't part of the nomination. Remember, the purpose of a Wikipedia reference citation is to tell the reader where you got the information. The purpose is not to give them a directory of weblinks for doing their own research. --Orlady (talk) 03:45, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

(clearing any previous references)

  1. ^ "Search Form for U.S. Registered Historic Places". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. Retrieved March 10, 2013. Search by the cited NRHP Reference Number, if available.

(end clearing)

That's pretty much what I suggested back on March 10th, at Talk:Pulaski Skyway#NRIS and NRHP references, which I don't think you've seen. However I then noted the front page of the document is not an original "Inventory/Nomination" doc, nor is it a "Registration" doc, but rather it is a "Supplementary Listing" doc. So I suggested calling it that. But now I see the 2nd page and continuing is in fact a Registration document.
And, the date of the document is December 2003, that is the date of preparation by the authors, that is the usual date we use. Rather than the NRHP listing date of August 12, 2005, which is NOT the date of the Registration document (really an application). So here it is again, just a bit further refined:

[1]

  1. ^ McCahon, Mary E. and Sandra G. Johnston (December, 2003). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: Route 1 Extension" (PDF). National Park Service. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) and accompanying 25 photos from 1929 to 2003. Pulaski Skyway is a contributing property to the “Route 1 Extension”.
I suggest you use that. The NRHP nomination or registration document, when available as here, is a fine source for acreage and other information that appears also in NRIS (simply because it is entered into NRIS from this very form). And in this unusual case, with a Supplementary Listing page included in the NRHP document, even the NRIS reference number and the NRHP listing date are also included there. So this is an unusual case but I think you can dispense with any mention of NRIS at all; I am pretty sure the document has everything, that the NRIS source gave you no other information at all. Go with the wind!
Leave it to the NRHP wikiproject to fix up the standard NRIS reference to be improved, probably by linking to new Wikipedia article National Register Information System instead of providing the unhelpful external link to where a person can download the database. Your exact suggestion won't work generally, but feel free to comment at Template talk:NRISref. --doncram 05:46, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Doncram. I would also like to add in the original bold highlighted note above in your updated citation, if that is OK, for the reasons I previously stated.
The updated citation does provide the NRHP listing date and acreage of the listing. Readers can be assured that this updated citation has been used to get the cited information in the Pulaski Skyway article. It also gives readers a direct source for additional information about the Pulaski Skyway.Wondering55 (talk) 13:38, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

NRIS public domain question

At Talk:National Register Information System, a Wikiproject NRHP editor disbelieves that the NRIS database is in the public domain which interferes with sensible development of the National Register Information System article (for example, how explain that there are multiple private copies of NRIS published on the internet, if it is not PD?). The person has a fair point that the article does not include an explicit reference to the fact of PDness. The PDness of NRIS is not a controversial fact, so can/should be included in the article, and I don't think one person's disbelief of a basic fact is enough to make it "controversial". Still it would be nice to point that out with a reference if possible.

  • Does anyone have a citable reference that could be included in the article?
  • Or does anyone have old correspondence or other non-citable information to provide at the Talk page, towards simply convincing the editor that we have not violated copyright 40,000 or more times?

I am sorry, it seems to me to be a basic tenet of our Wikipedia work, that we have been using the PD NRIS database, as well as other sources, to identify and write about historic sites that are NRHP-listed. Help would be appreciated. --doncram 13:10, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Space Shuttle Enterprise help

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Space_Shuttle_Enterprise#Enterprise_is_on_the_National_Register_of_Historic_Places_.28as_of_3.13.2013.29 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.11.130.247 (talk) 15:24, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

More states added to NPS Focus

Status of NRHP nominations

According to the status page, NPS Focus has added the NRHP nomination documents for listings in Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Jersey, and West Virginia. Just thought I'd let everyone know, since a few of these states had nothing before in terms of statewide resources (Kentucky in particular has a ton of listings and no resources). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 06:01, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. I've updated the infobox generator so it will list links for the nomination forms and photo PDFs for those properties. --Elkman (Elkspeak) 13:01, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, and special thanks to Elkman for updating the infobox generator. I'll note that most sites in New Jersey had almost nothing from the state or NRHP available online, except 3 line summaries from the county. Thus there are a ton of stubs in NJ, see e.g. Andrew Snable House, that could be easily updated now. I'll likely start in Cape May County and work my way to the NW until I hit Sussex County, then work my way back to the SE until it's completed. Any help appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks as well! I've now updated the status image, shown to the right (key on image description page). If anyone knows of any other state level sources, please add them to the Resources page, and the image can be updated further.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:08, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Call for organizers: WLM US 2013 needs you

Hi, I wanted to invite you to help organize the 2013 Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest in the United States. Last year, over 22,000 files were uploaded (90% by new Wikipedia users) to illustrate articles about historic places in the United States. We need all the help we can get, so if you're interested in organizing the contest, please add your username at this page. If you have any questions, please don't post them here - place a new message on User talk:Mono. Thanks, Mono 15:24, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I'll add my encouragement here. Since August 31 we've increased our photographic coverage of all NRHP sites from about 43% to over 53%, with the majority of that happening during the contest, and (a bit of a guess here) the majority of the new sites covered since Sept. 30 coming from photographers who started during the contest (special thanks to ROY!).
I will be unable to put in anywhere near as much time this year - and I hope to spend much of it taking photos! But 3 or 4 people willing to spend 10 or more hours during September will make this run smoothly. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:25, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Louisiana State Capitol

Louisiana State Capitol

I've just finished a massive expansion of the Louisiana State Capitol, but feel like I've hit a wall in actually completing the article, and can't see having nearly enough time to devote to it in the near future. I'm hoping somebody would like to continue with it (it's unbelievably close to a 5× expansion for DYK, it that's incentive). If need be, I can provide some the sources I have on hand to assist in any further expansion. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 18:03, 28 March 2013 (UTC)


Creating an article

I am working on creating an article about an NRHP listed subject. I created such an article once before months ago (Rosecroft (San Diego), and in the process I somehow hit upon a link that created the infobox and fully populated it with details like the NRHP number and the lat/long coordinates. Now I'm working on an article about the South San Francisco Hillside Sign (draft here User:MelanieN/sandbox) and I can't remember where I found that magical link to create the infobox. Anybody know what I am talking about?

Second question: I was going to call the article Sign Hill or Sign Hill Park, after the place where it is located; is that OK or should it be titled South San Francisco Hillside Sign because that is how it is listed on the NRHP?

Thanks for any help! --MelanieN (talk) 09:10, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

For general help creating an NRHP article, see WP:NRHPMOS. That talks about both of these questions and many others.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 12:22, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Thank you both very much for your prompt replies! I'll make a note of the inbox generator link so I'll know next time. --MelanieN (talk) 14:48, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Methodist Episcopal churches ?

In the context of Commons, what's the best category to assign for Methodist Episcopal churches, e.g. First Methodist Episcopal Church of [Place]? Is it a Methodist church or an Episcopal church? Secularly, Jeffrey Beall (talk) 01:18, 3 April 2013 (UTC).

  • More Methodist than Episcopal, but not United Methodist. Methodically yours,--GrapedApe (talk) 01:24, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
    • "Episcopal" means "with bishops" - so this is just a group of Methodist churches that have an organization with bishops in it. African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches are a separate group of Methodists, also with bishops. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:37, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
        • Not at all correct. Not one bit. The old Methodist Episcopal Church denomination was called that because of Methodism's historical ties to Church of England/Episcopal Church (United States). The M.E. churches are now part of the broader United Methodist denomination. You are right that AME churches are altogether different. Though this sectarian argument has no relevant to the naming question originally presented.--GrapedApe (talk) 04:38, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
          • Going back to old church history and schisms is likely not going to be too productive, but I'll just say that the Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in 1784, five years before the Episcopal Church in the United States, so it seems unlikely that the older church was named after the younger. The Church of England or Anglican Church was not known as the Episcopal Church as far as I can tell. The MEs did have bishops starting in 1784, but the former Anglicans in the US didn't have bishops until a few years later, with one very strange exception - an Anglican bishop ordained in 1783 by the Church of Scotland. Let's just say that the "Episcopal" in ME strongly suggests that it is an organization with bishops. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:25, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
      • As long as the church is still around, it's United Methodist. See Methodist Episcopal Church — it was the old name for what's now the UMC. Per COMMONNAME, I'd say that "First Methodist Episcopal Church of Place" isn't a good article title for extant churches, since current churches will be "Place Methodist Church/Methodist Church of Place" or "Place United Methodist Church/United Methodist Church of Place". Nyttend (talk) 01:40, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
        • Not exactly. The M.E. denomination merged with a few other denominations to form the UMC, not that UMC is just a modern name for M.E. denomination. However, you're right that the modern name, if it is [Place] United Methodist Church, should override the historic name. However, if it is defunct, the old Methodist Episcopal Church of [Place] holds.--GrapedApe (talk) 04:41, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
          • Well do I know that, but the UMC is the organic continuation of the MEC, and neither the ME Church South nor the MP Church are particularly relevant here. Nyttend (talk) 07:33, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
              • Having labored in the vineyards of categories for Christianity in the United States, I suggest that all "Methodist Episcopal" churches can be accurately categorized as "Methodist churches", but I would hesitate to identify them as "United Methodist" unless there is some explicit indication of their belonging to that organized denomination. The paired words "Methodist Episcopal" do not necessarily denote the denomination that morphed into "United Methodist" -- the African Methodist Episcopal, Christian Methodist Episcopal (often abbreviated as "CME"), and African Methodist Episcopal Zion denominations, all of which are considered part of Methodism, are active American denominations that still include "Methodist Episcopal" in their names. --Orlady (talk) 20:10, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
  • As far as I can tell (also not being religious), Methodism is a particular type of religious practice, while Episcopacy is an organizational governance structure for churches (referring, as others have mentioned, to bishops as part of a hierarchy). This means that a particular church can meaningfully be both, since the words refer to different aspects of the religion. If these terms are being used in an categorizing sense at Commons where one excludes the other, then the categories may be broken. (I know this gets complicated because there is a church group generally called "the Episcopal Church", but you get the idea.) Magic♪piano 14:12, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
  • If we're talking commons, images would go somewhere in the "Methodist churches in the United States by state" structure (unless we're talking a former church), as they do not split out the UMC from the other Methodist bodies. In Wikipedia the current affiliation would generally apply, but I imagine there are overall Methodist categories here too for former churches. Mangoe (talk) 14:25, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

RFC on bot run to implement "start date" into NRHP infoboxes

Please see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Start date in NRHP articles, about running a bot to implement "start date" and "end date" microformatting into NRHP infoboxes. --doncram 01:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Category:National Register of Historic Places listings in Imperial County, California

Category:National Register of Historic Places listings in Imperial County, California, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. --Mercurywoodrose (talk) 15:52, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

missing photo leads to better question re Womens National Republican Club in NYC

I was a bit dismayed we only needed ONE photo to get Manhattan to 100% illustrated. The Women's National Republican Club in MIDTOWN somehow has been overlooked. Then I grew concerned, the article is a redirect to a different organization, Elkman's nrhp tool cant find it, there's no reference number. GRRR. Wait, it turns out it was added six weeks ago to the NRHP. Ok, now I'm not so worried. Photo will be up by tomorrow along with a new article I think. Thought others would find this amusing. dm (talk) 02:03, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Photo added - 100% in NYC again! dm (talk) 05:13, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Problems with para's KML tool?

When using para's kmlexport tool on toolserver to generate a map from National Register of Historic Places listings in northern New Castle County, Delaware, the listings for Newark Opera House and Newport National Bank are omitted. They show up fine in the listings generated by the microformat tool. Anyone experienced something like this? Choess (talk) 03:04, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Have you tried looking here? (Note that I didn't actually check the file, but this link has a solution that may work.)--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:22, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Many Wikipedia pages have duplicate coordinates, so the tool weeds them out. In the list article, Newark Opera House and Green Mansion (Newark, Delaware), and Newport National Bank and Armstrong Lodge No. 26, A.F. & A.M. are in the same coordinates. I think the feature was added after Template talk:GeoGroup/Archive 1#Coordinate duplicated. Would removing the feature make a mess elsewhere? I don't know. --Para (talk) 17:25, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Ah, that must be it. No, I don't think anyone needs to change on your side; they are different, albeit adjacent, sites, so I probably just need to go out with the Garmin and tack a little more precision on the coordinates so they're not duplicates. Thanks for your help. Choess (talk) 18:04, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Coordinates have been refined and problem is fixed. Thanks again. Choess (talk) 07:42, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

A. T. Stewart Era Buildings; Contributing sites

I just found two sites in Garden City, New York that were incorrectly listed as being NRHP sites that are in fact contributing properties to the A. T. Stewart Era Buildings. I fixed two of the infoboxes, as well as the Apostle Houses, which I know User:Smallbones has wanted to merge with the Stewart era buildings article for nearly three years. Can anybody think of any other work that can be done with these articles? -------User:DanTD (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Swannanoa (mansion)

This property is currently listed on both Augusta and Nelson counties lists, and in addition both lists say it is in Waynesboro, Virginia, which is an independent city. There is some discussion at the talk page, but it does not help me to figure out what is going on. Could somebody please take care of the issue? Thanks in advance.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:03, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

As documented in its NRHP nomination included in the article, the property spans the Augusta and Nelson county border. The nearest town is Waynesboro, which indeed is an "independent city", not in any county. County list-articles often fail to distinguish between "vicinity of" or "near", vs. "located in", when mentioning town/city. Indeed I think some editors are going around removing "vicinity of" qualifying-type information from list-articles. Similar to editors preferring to make bold assertions of fact, when ambiguous but accurate statements are all that are supported by sources. But, as to the facts of Swannoa, the facts are known. What's to figure out? --doncram 09:13, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
So should we just keep it on both lists but not in Waynesboro?--Ymblanter (talk) 09:19, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes. And it is listed in Augusta RHPs and Nelson RHPs, but not in Waynesboro's RHPs. It does remain a possible issue, about how these county list-articles mention a city that is not included within the county, and not including the property, currently without any clarification. --doncram 09:39, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Great, thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:45, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Fully articled lists

A while back, User:Doncram added a section to the project page title "Fully articled lists", which was supposed to showcase the work done by this project to create articles for geographical areas. Doncram originally created the section to show all lists with more than 25 NRHP listings that had been fully articled. There was also a section underneath showing the top list in each state that was more than 90% articled. I edited this list a few days ago to make it function more like our fully illustrated lists. My changes were to move some of the lists which had fewer than 25 total listings from the 90%+ section to the 100% section because they were fully illustrated and not just 90%+. I also tried to move away from the "by state" system and just included any list that was more than 90% articled, even if two or more were from the same state, basically mirroring the system we have in place for fully illustrated lists. Doncram later reverted some of my changes and we had a discussion on my talk page about the system. Doncram has not responded to my latest comment there, so I decided to bring the conversation to the project at large.

Basically there are two visions for this list:

  1. Keep the system as Doncram had it. Every state has its top list--and only its top list--shown in the "by state" section. Only fully articled lists with more than 25 NRHP listings are included in the 100% section. It is possible, I believe, to have more than one list from each state in the 100% section but not in the 90% section.
  2. Include all fully articled lists in the first section, regardless of how many listings are in the area, even if there are more than two in the same state. In the 90%+ section, include all lists where more than 90% of the sites have articles, even if more than one appears in the same state. This option is how the fully illustrated articles work now.

I support the second one, and Doncram has expressed support for the first one. Our respective rationales can be seen at my talk. What do other members think?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing it up here, and for your good summary. Here is the version that was in place, to compare to the current version. I was going for an easy lookup list, where anyone could look up their state(s) and see how they are doing. In which an empty state having not a single 90%-articled list looks poor, and having the whole state at 90%-articled looks great. Or where one person knows their 20-article list is the best so far in the state, subject to someone else trying to beat them by tackling a bigger county. And I was trying to avoid potential tedium of a list of 2,000 counties or cities; just one list or group of lists (e.g. 3 adjacent counties could be one group) which is the biggest-so-far collection of 90% articled, in the state.
This could be largely replaced by a visual, by a map showing percent done in each state, that is also an easy-lookup communication tool. Like the map of available NRHP docs, but shaded by percent articled, and another by percent illustrated. --doncram 02:08, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
Can not we have both?--Ymblanter (talk) 09:20, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
Maybe I'm missing something, but how could we do that? Dudemanfellabra says "Show more" and Doncram says "Show fewer"; how could we do both? Nyttend (talk) 04:12, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Just make two lists, one after another, arranged differently?--Ymblanter (talk) 07:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
I never could figure exactly what GrapedApe was suggesting with that! Tho i appreciate the point that any solution should be simple. But anyhow this whole discussion section is mostly resolved by the great creation of the nation-wide maps showing percent articled and percent illustrated by county. Which gives visual credit pretty clearly to states having good vs. bad levels of progress so far. State-wide credit is pretty fairly presented visually. Plus for NYC and some smaller level areas that don't get adequate visual credit in the map, there's the 90%+ list to give credit. All is good, i think. --doncram 16:08, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Small fully illustrated lists

Dudemanfellabra has once again deleted all the lists with fewer than 10 listings from the fully illustrated list. The last time he did that he said it was to save space on the main project page, so I put the list inside a scrollbox. So that's not his reason this time. Personally, I like having Piute County, Utah and Rich County, Utah on the list. But what's the consensus? Do we want to leave the lists with only a few listings off of the fully illustrated list? Ntsimp (talk) 17:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

The reason I deleted them has to do with the section above this one--Fully articled lists. I think the two sections should function alike (and I'm fine with including all fully illustrated/articled lists), and other editors think differently. We should get a consensus as to how the two sections should work, and I figured by deleting these, I'd get someone who watched that page but hasn't commented here about the fully articled list to join the conversation.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:05, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
I have no opinion about the arrangement of the fully-articled lists, but since space isn't a problem, all fully-illustrated lists should be included, even when there's just one site. Nyttend (talk) 21:04, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Attention garnered. Actually the 100% fully articled list goes down all the way to 1-article lists, so for consistency the fully illustrated one should too. It's the 90% articled that runs down only to lists of size 10 or more. I think the scrolling set up by Ntsimp does address the display problem, except the 90% illustrated ones should not be scrolled out of sight, should be in another scrollbox, easily enough fixed. Assuming no objections, will restore the small fully illustrated lists to the list. --doncram 04:18, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
I think that the fully illustrated list should include all of them, including those with less than 10 listings. Royalbroil 04:44, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Update: Nyttend restored those down to 1; I split out the 90+ ones from the fully illustrated ones so that 2 scroll-boxes can be used on the main page wp:NRHP, and I edited the main page to display that. Some further refinements of display on the main page are possible, but I think this fully (>90% ?) resolves this discussion. Thanks. --doncram 15:32, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

P.S. Oh, i changed the criteria for listing within the 90% illustrated and 90% articled to limit to lists having 20 or more. There are so many smaller lists of size 10-19 that IMO it is not worth mentioning them. The achievement of 90% is also given visual credit now in the map displays, so it is less important to mention in an explicit list. Let's avoid edits and keep these shorter. Hope this is okay. --doncram 15:34, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

New Progress Page

Percent articled
Percent illustrated

Sparked by the recent conversation on fully articled and fully illustrated lists, I have created a project subpage at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress (if that's a redlink, the page has not yet been moved and is still at User:Dudemanfellabra/Sandbox). On this page are tables listing out all the counties of every state, as well as blank cells for number of total listings, number illustrated, number articled, and percentages for both of the latter. I have already filled in several of the smaller states–Hawaii, Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, and North Dakota–along with my home state of Mississippi. User:Altairisfar has already found the page and added data for Alabama, and User:Chris857 has added data for a single county in Michigan. I invite other project members to add data for their own states or any other states. I am using this data to create a map similar to this one, scaled from red (bad coverage) to green (good coverage), based on the progress we have made for that county. The map can be seen to the right.

Some notes on adding data: Pay attention to duplicates. Just about every state has at least one listing that crosses county boundaries, and some counties that are large enough to be split into multiple lists have duplicates in them as well. When tallying up pictures/articles, be aware that these duplicates not only affect the total number of listings in the state but also the total number of pictures/articles. If a duplicated listing has an article/picture, the sum of all the rows of articles/pictures in that state should be corrected for that. I have been adding reference tags to states where this is an issue in a somewhat boilerplate fashion, essentially copying/modifying the references given in each state's list in mainspace, as can be seen for the aforementioned completed states. I would appreciate it if everyone accounted for the duplicates in this fashion to avoid confusion.

Also, many of the county links are redlinks, indicating that redirects need to be created pointing to that county's section in the relevant state list. I have created redirects for the states I have done, and I think I saw User:Doncram creating a few for other states as well.

As a final technical note, the "Code" column is used for adding data to the SVG map, so please do not edit/remove these codes. I have found a few errors in the codes, specifically in Alaska where the map I'm using is somewhat out of date (pre-2007). If future errors are found, a citation should be included explaining the error as I have done for Alaska.

I envision this table being updated every time the county lists are updated (e.g. a picture is added, an article created, a new listing, etc.) although that will almost certainly never happen haha. It would be great if it did though. Maybe eventually we can figure out how to make a bot do this, but for right now, I'm asking all project members to help out with this. I think it will be a great visual to showcase the great things this project has done and continues to do! Thanks!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:31, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Great work! Thanks so much. I think this is a wonderful idea. Ntsimp (talk) 20:21, March 2013 (UTC)
Fantastic work - in fact we could have a contest to see who can come up with the most exemplary adjective, and I doubt if anybody would overstate how good it is! Multichill used to run the erfeod-bot (sp?) and somebody still does on a daily basis, which gives output like [3] and [4] clearly related to this and useful but I don't know the exact definitions. If we could get together exactly what we want, perhaps they could reprogram the bot, e.g. on the first link have it sortable by state. In general photos are handled well, but I don't think blue-links are counted yet, but could be. More after the weekend. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:57, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
Ah, I wasn't aware of this bot.. of course I likely spent all that time for nothing haha. Maybe it is possible for that to be adjusted to our purposes. Although I would still like to go through the lists manually at least once to make sure we get everything like duplicates accounted for. Actually by doing this, I have found an error in and corrected the state total on two states done so far, so the manual route has secondary benefits too. After we've gone through everything manually, maybe we can run the bot and see if anything changes, and that change will tell us if the bot is working correctly. If we don't have a manual baseline, the bot could be outputting garbage, and no one would ever know...
Thanks to Ntsimp for adding data from Idaho and Utah. I'll wait a bit and see if anything else gets filled in (and also fill in a few myself) by the end of the weekend before updating the map.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:17, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Those bot tables appear to include delisted properties, so they're not exactly the same. Ntsimp (talk) 17:35, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Looks good! Do you have an example of a delisted entry which is included so I can have a look at it?
We have data for a lot of countries. Is this scalable? Can you also run this for other countries? Multichill (talk) 21:33, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
For example, the Toolserver table says that one of three sites in Union County, Indiana has a photo; National Register of Historic Places listings in Union County, Indiana says that there's one site (with a photo) in the county, plus two delisted sites without photos. I just wonder if the whole thing could be automated — for example, imagine a bot that looks at the page once per week and uploads a new version of the map to reflect any changes. I have two related requests: please change the colors and add a key. As a colorblind person, I have trouble telling what's what; if you'd simply use a few basic-yet-very-different colors and add a key for them, I'd greatly appreciate it. Perhaps you could do something like what I do with my own personal maps of where I've been? White for no listings, yellow for listings but no photos, grey for 25% photos or less, light green for 50% photos or less but more than 25%, bright purple for 75% photos or less but more than 50%, deep blue for less than 100% photos but more than 75%, and red with 100%? Nyttend (talk) 21:46, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Sure, I can add a key. I'll do so when I update the image next, tentatively at the end of the weekend, although homework may get in the way of that haha. I'm not too hot on changing the colors, though.. they go from red (bad) to yellow (average) to green (good)--which I think is pretty universal and actually that's why I didn't think a key was necessary--broken up into 10s (0-10%, 10-20%, etc., with 100% getting its own color). Maybe the shades of red, yellow, and green can be changed to make them more distinguishable, but I would prefer something with some kind of meaning. The colors you suggested above seem almost completely random, and I feel like no average viewer would immediately pick up on that without looking at a key.
If consensus requests it, though, there are other color schemes that can be used. Doncram suggested somewhere that we could fade a single color, perhaps {{NRHP color}}, from light to dark. That could work, but I still prefer the red-green scale.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:35, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
I appreciate what you're trying to do with the colors, Dudemanfellabra, and I've always liked that scheme, but if it's useless to colorblind users it needs to change. I just read WP:COLOR, which also points out that not everyone reads Wikipedia on a color device. Accessibility is something we must take seriously. If Nyttend's suggestion is too extreme, there are other ideas at WP:COLOR. Ntsimp (talk) 04:00, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
The colors I suggested are the ones I use for my own purposes (I picked them because they were easy to use in Windows Paint), and I gave them purely as an example of what I meant; I wasn't pushing for those specific ones to be used. The problem with fading a single color is that it becomes too hard for everyone to distinguish because the differences between levels are too small, while the problem with using a group of related colors is its inaccessibility for us colorblind people. If we go with a random grouping of substantially different colors, we'll use both darkness and color to distinguish them, so even the greyscale-screen-users and people who are 100% colorblind (not just somewhat red-green like me, but no ability to tell colors at all) would be able to distinguish them; it's useless without a key, but a very simple key in a prominent spot (e.g. east of the Atlantic coast) will be spotted quickly and prove easy to use. Nyttend (talk) 03:52, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
In the mean time, I've added Indiana photograph statistics to the chart, which was easy because we're past 95% coverage; everything's illustrated except for the northern counties and for a few sites on the former Jefferson Proving Ground, where you're not allowed to go for fear that you'll find some unexploded ordnance and convert yourself into smithereens. Nyttend (talk) 04:27, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I have lots of questions and opinions on this:

  • Let Nyytend pick the colors that work best - as long as it makes sense to the rest of us. Not knowing anything about this I went to http://colorbrewer2.org/ and chose "10 data classes", "diverging", "colorblind safe" and the rightmost choice of the 6 given. Looks ok to me, but it's not in my area of expertise.
  • [5] seems to be using a list that's from 2010. In any case it doesn't match up with manual counting.
  • How should we handle address restricted sites, moved ships, etc.? It seems that the simplest way is - if it's on the current list, and has a pic (even if it's the address restricted symbol) then it is illustrated.
  • If the bot can give us good numbers, we should use it and update as often as possible. To do this, we need to ask Multichill (?) and tell him exactly what we want. My preferences would be:
    • Using an updated overall list (changes every week or two are made by us manually)
    • Exclude sites that have been removed from the register (but these are usually put in a 2nd section below the current listings section)
    • Count bluelinks (that would be so good!)
    • Any other "requirements" that somebody else wants?

Oh, and when are the new maps going to appear to reflect recent changes? Does this take a while?

Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:37, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

One more problem is redirects. Sometimes they point out to a renamed article, then they are ok; sometimes they point out to a more general article which has a section on the listing, then I am not so sure they are ok; sometimes they point out to a more general article which does not even mention the listing (historical districts sometimes tend to fall in this last category), then I think they are not ok and we have no article on the listing.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:43, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
Smallbones, to respond to your questions/opinions in order:
  1. I looked at the colors website, and I agree that the rightmost set looks like it would work. Thanks for that. I'll use it when I update the map.
  2. While that bot doesn't match up exactly with what we want, it might only be a simple matter of tweaking a bit to get it to work for our purposes.
  3. I've been counting the Address Restricted image as illustrated. I don't think anyone has really brought that up, but I feel like it's a good practice.
  4. We would need for the bot to check every county/city/other list individually and count the number of active listings (maybe possible by modifying Template:NRHP row), count the number of images in those rows, and count the number of bluelinks. I think this may all be possible by using the "class" HTML attribute, but I'm not sure. I planned on looking into it later. We could make the bot then tabulate all these numbers, update the Progress page, calculate the percentages, and even possibly update the map. I expressed earlier, though, that a manual baseline would be nice to compare to the first bot run to possibly catch any errors in the code.
  5. I plan on updating the map soon. I'm in grad school and have had some tough quantum mechanics and differential geometry homework to work on for the past few days, so I haven't been able to contribute much. Expect an update by the end of the week. Maybe even later tonight if I can get around to it. I still have some homework to do by Thursday in another class, but I'll probably procrastinate as usual haha.
And to Ymblanter, I haven't been paying attention to redirects, but you raise a good point. The only way to really avoid this would be to edit the county lists to point to some other redlink if this is the case.... especially if a bot is eventually involved.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:14, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
I'd be inclined not to count sites as illustrated if all they've got is the address-restricted graphic. Some of these sites shouldn't be AR at all; others can be found and photographed without giving their location away; and even the well-concealed archaeological sites could be illustrated with a photo of something recovered from the site, or with a historic photo. I'm afraid that if a county appears on the fully-illustrated list on the strength of AR graphics, then editors who might've been able to find usable illustrations will be dissuaded from trying. Ammodramus (talk) 01:44, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
The way I suggested is simple, so therefore likely to be done consistently. Your suggestion has its merits, which you state well. I'm afraid there will be objections and people will say that we're encouraging revealing sites that shouldn't be revealed - and then we'll be inconsistent. All I want to do is be consistent, so we just need to pick one method and be firm about it. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:03, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Update 1

I've just updated the map with the data recently entered. I changed the color scheme to a (hopefully?) color-blind friendly one and added a key. What do you guys think?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:49, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Looks great. thanks a million. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:28, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the update. My only problem is it's hard to see the state lines out west. Could they be made really dark or something? Ntsimp (talk) 14:43, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
The new maps look terrific. I'm looking forward to watching them as more states' data are entered. At some point, do we want to add a link for this to the main project page? Ammodramus (talk) 20:29, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Ntsimp, I'll thicken/darken the borders in the next update, probably some time later this week or this weekend. Ammodramus, I had planned on linking to this page and including the two maps on the main project page as soon as the data was completely filled out. I was thinking of moving the lists of fully illustrated and fully articled sites out of the "Recognized content" section, putting them with the Assessment and collaboration stats, and renaming that section "Progress". Like I said, though, I planned on waiting until we get this completely filled out manually. Maybe eventually we can make this auto-update (via bot or some other means) exactly like the assessment stats do, making that section of the project page a real-time snapshot of what this project has accomplished/is accomplishing.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:06, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for the color changes; they're generally easy to keep separate because they use both color and darkness. Just one more request — could you have an additional color for 0% illustrated? Right now, a county with 9.5% illustration is indistinguishable from a county with no photos at all, unless I misunderstand. Nyttend (talk) 01:51, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
Also, Butte County, Idaho is 100% illustrated, but doesn't seem to be colored in that way. Ntsimp (talk) 03:42, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
Nyttend, you're correct that there is no distinction between a county with 9.5% (actually anything less than 10.0, even 9.9%) illustrated/articled and one with 0%, but I don't really see the need to split the zeroes out. I feel like having <10% illustrated is basically just as bad as having 0% articled (and in fact equivalent for counties with 10 or fewer listings), so seeing dark blue just equates to bad. What would you use this extra color for? Like a motivation to go photograph sites in that county, just to make it a little less blue? Why not just see the dark blue for <10% and try to make it at least lighter blue. 100% is split out into its own color because we have a "Fully illustrated/articled" section on the main page, so it's like special recognition. I don't think we need a "Completely un-illustrated/article" list of shame or anything...
Ntsimp, thanks for pointing that out. I hand-enter the county codes into the SVG file, so I had accidentally mistyped a code in Michigan that just so happened to line up with Butte County, but since Idaho was already filled in I didn't catch it. Actually the current map has a few other errors in it, namely a random county in Kentucky is filled in (due to another typo) and some counties are missing in several states. I fixed those errors in the file on my hard drive earlier, and I just fixed the Butte County error, so everything should be fine on the next update. Hopefully if anyone sees anymore errors like that they'll point them out. This would also be good reason to work on the bot thing... so errors like that don't happen as often.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:17, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
If you don't think it valuable, no problem; it's basically the motivation to go photograph (or write about) sites in that county, because if we had a separate color, the >0-10 color would say "Well, at least we've started". Meanwhile, would you be willing to consider adding an extra feature? It might be interesting to have a miniature state-level map in the top (i.e. where southern Ontario and Quebec would be) with the same color scheme; it would help us to get a more general view, and it would be a good accompaniment for the state-level table at the top of the page. Nyttend (talk) 02:15, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't see this comment when I was posting below. The idea of a state map sounds good. I actually have a state-level map as a separate file, but I didn't think about doing it as an inset. I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the suggestion!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:44, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
You're welcome, and thank you. In my mind, the driving force for the state map inset was for states with unequal distribution of photos, such as Illinois. It's 69.3% illustrated, but you'd never know that from looking at a map of the counties — there are lots of unillustrated and underillustrated counties, while the massive number of sites and high photo percentage in Cook County drives the statewide percentage; if we took away all of the state's photos except for the ones currently in Cook County, Illinois would still be 28.1% illustrated. I guess it's like File:2012 Presidential Election by County.svg; if you didn't know better, you'd think that Romney had won Illinois, Ohio, and Florida (and the country) with massive margins. Nyttend (talk) 04:12, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Great new tool

Good news! I have developed some JavaScript code located at User:Dudemanfellabra/NRHPstats.js that triggers when you visit a county list. After the page loads, an alert box will appear telling you the total number of listings in the county, the number and percentage of listings illustrated, and the number and percentage of listings articled. Instead of spending sometimes hours counting images and bluelinks, then making possible rounding errors/typos with the percentages, you can just copy the numbers this code spits out into the table on the Progress page! I realize this is not exactly "automated" because you still have to visit every single county list manually, but it is one step closer to that level. Maybe we can get a bot to expand off of this. For now, though, I hope it is a welcomed improvement over completely manual tabulation.

I have tested the code on a few county lists that have already been entered on the Progress page, and it seems to be working as expected. There are some limitations, though. It won't work unless the county has its own list article, i.e. it is not included on a list with other counties (more specifically, if the list of sites isn't the first table on the page). A workaround for counties/areas on larger lists is to click the edit link for the county in question, so that the edit page shows only the desired county. Then the JS code will work normally. Other than that, I haven't found any bugs. If you find one, please let me know, and I'll try to fix it.

If you want to use this code, navigate to your personal javascript subpage, click to edit the page, add 

importScript('User:Dudemanfellabra/NRHPstats.js');

to the bottom, and save the page. Then simply navigate to some county list and watch the magic! :)--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:39, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the tool; I've started using it and noticed a big speedup. I have a question about the maps: is there any difference between the colors for 30-40% and 40-50%? They look like the same shade of blue to me. For example, the adjacent counties of Iron County, Utah and Beaver County, Utah seem to be the same color on the illustrated counties map. Ntsimp (talk) 16:17, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
You're really good at pointing out that I really shouldn't be in charge of this map haha. The map is supposed to be set up so that 30-40% is  (#ABD9E9), and 40-50% is  (#E0F3F8). It was like that for the first states I did (i.e. those that were done with the red-green color scheme). To add the states in the first update, I made a template for each state that I copied and pasted, and that template had an error in it, so it propagated to all the new states and even the key itself, since it too was added after the update. I've just fixed this in the file on my computer, and I'll update the map soon.. still looking at the end of the week/sometime this weekend. Please, if you find any more errors, don't hesitate to point out my incompetence haha. Maybe I'll look into trying to (at least semi-)automate the map process too, so stuff like this doesn't happen again.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:48, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I added the Great New Tool header above, because this is a great new tool (and I get tired of adding "Convenience break").

It definitely speeds things up, and will likely make this map updatable on a regular basis (say every two months). I'm not sure the following observation helps anything - but if you want the totals of the second table on a page, you can edit that section (e.g. null edit), and click preview and the same type of totals comes up. BTW I'm a total (deleted on account of WP:NPA) when it comes to "Your personal javascript page" but got this to work the first time. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:10, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Not to be snarky or anything, but that's what I said above: "A workaround for counties/areas on larger lists is to click the edit link for the county in question, so that the edit page shows only the desired county." Glad you found the workaround independently, though. I might look into making it so that it cycles through all the tables in a list and instead of showing an alert just adds text to the top of each table.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:23, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
I've updated the tool so that it is a little more useful. It now cycles through all the tables on the page, so it is useful on state lists as well as individual county lists. Instead of producing an alert that must be clicked to continue (and is then lost until a page refresh), it adds a yellow box above each NRHP table on the page with stats about that table. I know at least two other users are using it, so if you guys find any errors or want to change the style or something, let me know.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
I used it to finish off NY last night, it really helps, thank you. Please rerun the map generator, I want to see NY light up! dm (talk) 13:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
California is now ready as well.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
I updated the graphics roughly 2 hours ago, including both NY and CA, for the illustrated and articled lists. For some reason, some of the thumbs aren't updating promptly, but they are uploaded (note the history of both images). Illustrated only has 4 states left! 25or6to4 (talk) 14:14, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I updated the code with further functionality. It now will trigger when you're on the Progress page itself. If you add in all the data for a state, including duplicates, and preview the page, the code will automatically sum up all the numbers for you and display them like it does in the county lists (i.e. in the little yellow box). Then you can just type those numbers into the total row and save. To recap, this is everything that has been automated:

  • Visiting all county/city/other lists. Not done
  • Extracting data from county lists. Done
  • Copying said data to the Progress page. Not done
  • Tallying up state totals on Progress Page. Done
  • Generating image code from data on Progress page. Done
  • Uploading image. Not done

Now if we can just get a bot (or someone smarter than I am) to fill in those "not done" gaps, we're golden!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:27, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I finished NC counties, but have no idea how to figure out which articles are duplicates without dumping each county to a text file. Anyone have an easier way? dm (talk) 05:01, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
I usually just take the citation used on the state article, i.e. National Register of Historic Places listings in North Carolina (reference 4 on that page), and amend it by finding out which of the duplicates are articled and which are illustrated. That can be done by visiting the county lists that include the duplicates. It appears that none of the 8 listings (which make 9 total duplicates because one listing is in three county lists) have articles about them, but I didn't check whether any are illustrated are not.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
that did it, thanks! dm (talk) 15:22, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Update 2

I just updated the maps to include the data entered as of today. I thickened the state borders at the request of Ntsimp, and I fixed several errors found by various editors. I am still looking into the idea of adding a state-level inset, but that will have to wait until the next update. As always, if you find any errors, let me know.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:39, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Looks great! Thanks so much. Congratulations to the WikiProject; good work, everyone. Ntsimp (talk) 19:58, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

This whole page is definitely a help, as I was able to find images for two sites in St. Louis County, Minnesota, on flickr very easily. Chris857 (talk) 18:02, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

First full tabulation complete!

The first full tabulation is now complete! Thanks to many members of this project, every single county in the country is tallied, and the images have been updated. Some comments about the images are that overall we seem to have more sites illustrated than articled (but that could be an illusion.. the illustrated graph just looks redder to me). Several pockets of high activity can be seen on the maps, including notably Florida and Indiana in the illustrated image and Florida, North Dakota, and the Rhode Island-Massachusetts-New York-Pennsylvania-Maryland-West Virginia giant conglomeration on the articled image.

All that is left to do on the Progress page now is to determine which of the 99 duplicates that cross state boundaries are articled/illustrated. After we do that, we can determine how many pictures and articles we have uploaded and created nation-wide! We can periodically update this page, and maybe we can get a bot to run eventually, but for now, good work to everyone who helped out!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:55, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks for coordinating this work.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:26, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Fantastic suggestion and even more impressive outpouring from the NRHP group members, as always. It inspired me to pick up two more photos when I was out for a drive yesterday. dm (talk) 13:12, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
I just tallied up the state totals table. Looks like out of 87,737 total listings, we've taken pictures of 47,102 (53.7%) and written articles about 42,463 (48.4%). Good work, guys!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:16, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Magnificent effort Dude (and all those that helped). We should likely move the ongoing discussions of the ongoing projects that will develop out of this to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress, but I'll throw out a couple of ideas here to get the ball rolling:
  • We need a strategy/procedure for updating this - say every 2 months
  • We should use this as a motivator, e.g. by placing the pix and a notice on the state projects pages saying something like "WP:NRHP needs your help. All those counties colored blue in (your state) need photos and articles for the listings on the NRHP located there." (needs work)
  • We should figure out a way to help out editors who want to concentrate on the blue states - maybe a State of the Month to concentrate our article writing efforts in one state (say Kentucky for May), which will also help the photographers in that state find the sites more easily.
I know in WP everything should be credited to the collective effort, especially for big tables like ours. But when I look at these maps, I see lots of things that can be credited (for the most part) to individual editors, e.g. look at the article map for MD, PA, and WV - I see User:Pubdog written all over it. Or for the illustrated map, look at Indiana and Ohio, and the name User:Nyttend will likely come to mind. I'll just get in trouble by leaving out specific users and states, so I'll just say that there are many further examples of this including for the states of Florida, Mass., NY, Illinois, SC, etc.
Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:51, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
I agree with much of what you said there and have begun a new thread at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress#Moving forward. Please comment further there. As an aside, Florida has User:Ebyabe written all over it.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:22, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Did someone say Florida? :) This has definitely motivated me to articleize (?) some redlinks. Unfortunately, Florida shan't get to 100% for a while, since several sites don't have enough info I can find to create even half-way decent stubs. Whenever Florida NRHPs get digitized at the NPS site, those can be done. I just have this sneaky feeling that it'll be the last state where that happens. Still, this whole mapping project has been pretty terrific, and kudos muchly to all involved. 'Specially the Dude, of course. :) --‖ Ebyabe talk - Health and Welfare ‖ 18:01, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

North Chester (MA)

North Chester Historic District is listed in Hampshire County when it is actually located in Hampden County. This is an error in the NRIS database. --Polaron | Talk 14:46, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh? How do you know that? NRIS gives that the district is "Roughly bounded by E. River, Smith, and N. Chester Rds.", but according to MapQuest, which shows the county borders, E. River and Smith Streets cross the border between the two counties. I can't find N. Chester Rd. in MapQuest. What's available in NRIS suggests this includes a hotel and an agricultural area. Perhaps it includes a farm? Note, just because the NRIS entry mentions Chester, which is a town in Hampshire County, that doesn't mean the NRHP-listed property is in Chester, it could be that Chester is noted as the nearest significant town at the time of listing. See discussion section on Swannanoa, above, a case where a city in Virginia is noted in NRIS, but the property is not in that city. In general, I've found the county information in NRIS to be generally very reliable, so without further information, I'd be skeptical about your suggestion that NRIS is wrong here. Anyhow, if you have specific further information, that you could point to, that would be helpful. Have you collected the NRHP nomination document, for example. --doncram 19:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
A link to the NRHP nomination is here. Click on the "NR" photo just beside the Inventory No. The document includes maps of the district. I don't know the county/town layout of MA, so I can't really say which county it is in. I do note that Chester, Massachusetts–where the district is said to be listed–is in Hampden County, not Hampshire.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:28, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
You can't find North Chester Road because you're looking too close to the county line. It's further south. I don't know why you think I'm always wrong. I wouldn't have posted here otherwise. Please read the nomination form then come back and say you're presumption of me was incorrect. --Polaron | Talk 21:07, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
Looking at online maps based on the brief NRIS description is irrelevant, since the nomination form defines what the bounds actually are. The nomination form (available as described above, and not necessarily in NPS Focus) says "The North Chester Historic District is comprised of a small 19th century village in the town of Chester, Massachusetts, in Hampden County", and contains a topo map showing it entirely within Chester. MACRIS is also usually pretty good about listing entries in all applicable communities; searching for "North Chester" only yields listings in Chester. Since Chester is actually in Hampden County, the error is almost certainly in NRIS; we know how reliable it can be. Magic♪piano 15:57, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
Also, for people unfamiliar with New England states, all of southern New England is fully incorporated, meaning there are no "townships" or unincorporated areas. If something says "X vicinity" in this area, it almost certainly is (at least partially) within the incorporated bounds of X. Magic♪piano 16:05, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Location

Per How to Complete the National Register Registration Form (National Register Bulletin 16a), page 10,

CITY OR TOWN

Enter the name of the city or town where the property is located. For properties outside the boundaries of a city or town, follow the instructions for Vicinity.

VICINITY

For a property located outside the boundaries of a city or town (or where the address is restricted), mark "x" in the box, and enter the name of the nearest city or town found on the USGS map in the blank for "city or town." Enter "N/A" for other properties

...

COUNTY

Enter the name of the county, parish, district, or equivalent area where the property is located. County codes are given in Appendix II. Use a continuation sheet for any additional names.

Einbierbitte (talk) 21:09, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! --doncram 02:37, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Luther F. Tilden House move

Someone's moved Luther F. Tilden House to Luther W. Tilden House. The former is correct, according to the NRHP. Especially as the old homeowner's middle name was Fuller. I'd report this at the "Requested Moves" page, but there's a big backlog there, and I hope an admin who's watching here can deal with it. I'd do it myself, but the move looks a bit complicated, so I'd rather not risk messing things up. Thanks. :) --‖ Ebyabe talk - General Health ‖ 17:06, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I think a "Requested Move" at the Talk page of the article is the best way to discuss the facts and see to a good resolution, so I opened Talk:Luther F. Tilden House#Requested move. There was a 2012 edit indicating that there was a "W." (father) and "F." (son), but there are no sources in the article besides NRIS, which is not clear. It should just be a matter of finding a real source, such as by requesting the actual NRHP nomination document, and I think the discussion is best held at the article Talk page to convey the information to anyone interested, now or in the future. Perhaps there are conflicting sources; best to get it straightened out there.... I suggest discussing at the Talk page. --doncram 17:19, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

FYi - New Mexico State Monuments

Hi everyone. Today I met with folks at New Mexico State Monuments. They informed me that the majority of "monuments" are now being renamed as "sites" - it's not online yet, but, just a heads up that soon that change will be happening so a number of articles will be moved to accomodate the change. Fingers crossed we're going to have our first state sponsored Wiki Loves (Sites) Monuments in NM this year! :) SarahStierch (talk) 00:40, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Volunteer Wiki-Ninja wanted

See here if you can volunteer in Olympia Washington. It would be quite nice if other local organizations do this type of thing. I'll send them an e-mail about what NRHP articles they can write up, and pix to take. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:37, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Eyes

Please see User talk:Besets and the contributions of this editor. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I would like to invite you to comment on Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 April 27#Template:UploadCampaignLink. Thank you, Multichill (talk) 12:32, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Society of Architectural Historians

Is Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) an acceptable source, can it be linked, or should it be banned? Can we work with the SAH people and get them to comply with Wikipedia policies, if they are not doing so? Please see and discuss at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#Society of Architectural Historians.

I have noticed and referenced some SAH articles that have info beyond what we have in wikipedia, so I was thinking it is a legitimate source. But maybe it is not. I found my way to the noticeboard discussion after restoring a SAH link by this restoration edit which had been removed by editor Biker. Please do comment there. --doncram 14:27, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Automatic updating of the Progress page

Please see WT:NRHPPROGRESS#Automatic updating for information about a new script which fully automates the updating of the Progress page.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:05, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Lighthouse article naming

I would like to invite you to comment on a requested move at Talk:Sabine Pass Light#Requested move. Thank you, Otr500 (talk) 10:43, 11 May 2013 (UTC) `

This discussion is being used by doncram, as I figured he might, as an occasion to open up each individual lighthouse article to discussions on moving them from "placename Light" to "Lighthouse" or "Light Station". One of the reasons the lighthouse Wikiproject settled on the convention of using the official Coast Guard names was precisely to avoid spending time on these disruptive, nitpicky, and subjective arguments. Personally I think it's going to look stupid to have state lists of lights which have two or three or more styles of names; at any rate I (and I think everyone else on in the lighthouse project) have better things to do than to go through questionable research to find the "right" name when the USCG names are indisputably valid. This needs systematic resolution, not the creation of a precedent for having to choose between endless argumentation or arbitrary page moves. Mangoe (talk) 12:51, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
We need to find a central place to document these, preferably on the WP:Lighthouses page, so we don't have to go through this all the time. I gave up on Charlotte–Genesee Lighthouse many years ago because of 3RR and someone simply renaming it to what he wanted. There is some discussion on Talk:List of lighthouses in the United States but not a significant consensus that convinced this person. We now have Talk:List_of_lighthouses_in_the_United_States#Sabine_Pass_lighthouse_not_light. References from the WP page would probably carry more weight.

Let's move this discussion to WP:LH Ahwiv (talk) 12:08, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Template fix needed on 12 articles

Please see: United States Coast Guard Yard, there is a red-linked category at the bottom: Category:Historic districts in United States Baltimore that has 12 articles in it. I think that the locator map in each article's infobox may need to be fixed. --Funandtrvl (talk) 16:53, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

They're all fixed now. I edited the |locmapin= parameter to use "Baltimore, Maryland" instead of "United States Baltimore". Both show the same map, but the relevant historic district category is at Category:Historic districts in Baltimore, Maryland. If this happens in the future, and there is no quick fix like this, there is a parameter which disables auto-categorization through Infobox NRHP. You can set |nocat=yes, and all autocategorization is suppressed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:04, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for the help! --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:13, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Henricus

The site is in the list for Henrico County, National Register of Historic Places listings in Henrico County, Virginia. Yesterday I added the category, Category:National Register of Historic Places in Henrico County, Virginia. Til Eulenspiegel twice changed it to Category:National Register of Historic Places in Chesterfield County, Virginia. When I asked at their homepage, they replied that there are no doubts that Henricus is in Chesterfield County.[6] I asked them to remove the site from the Henrico county list and add it to Chesterfield county list, but they have chosen not to reply. Now we have a site which is in a list of one county but in a category in another county, which is not really acceptable. I am not sure what I should do. Should I move it myself from one list to another one?--Ymblanter (talk) 06:51, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, because it should not take that much to convince you that the site is south of the James River and has been part of Chesterfield County for over 250 years now. (For example, merely looking on a map should suffice.) I have never edited the NRHP list articles myself before and don't think I want to start editing them at this present time. But if they say the Henricus site is in Henrico County, they are imparting false information. The nearest part of Henrico County to Henricus would be Varina, on the north bank of the James River. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 13:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
What do sources say? This seems to be about Henrico/Henricus/Henricopolis, which seems to be listed in the National Register's NRIS database with county identified as Henrico, so we here in WikiProject NRHP put it into the List of RHPs in Henrico list-article. NRIS does not provide coordinates or a specific street address for this one; it seems to be an archeological site. NRIS is usually quite good about identification of counties, but there are errors at that level, which we detail at wp:NRIS info issues VA and other pages for other states. In fact we seem to have already identified 3 errors in NRIS for Virginia county locations, which are easier to discern for those places because NRHP nomination documents and other location info is available about them.
Anyhow, the Virginia state Dept of Historic Resources does not list Henrico among its Chesterfield county sites, nor does it list Henrico among its Henrico county sites. Virginia simply doesn't seem to list archeological sites like this. --doncram 14:18, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
It's not that Virginia doesn't list archeological sites, it's that they don't publicize the nom forms. Per their city/county listings page: "Due to the need to protect the location of listed archaeological sites and districts, not all nominations are posted for public access on this page." All sites are, however, listed in their Register Master List, which does indeed show "Henrico (Henricus Site)" as being in Chesterfield County. Andrew Jameson (talk) 15:19, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! I don't think I ever saw that nice Register Master List document before, and I will add a link to it, at wp:NRHPhelp#Virginia. So, Ymblanter, the answer to your question is yes you should move the row from one county to the other county. And, it would be nice if you'd add explanation documenting this decision to go differently from NRIS, at wp:NRIS info issues VA; i'll start something there. Thanks Ymblanter, thanks Til Eulenspiegel, thanks Andrew Jameson. :) --doncram 22:18, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, moved, I also added the link to this discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:15, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

New project proposal

Please review the new project proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Wikipedia editor business card project. The hope is that this project will help Wikipedians gain press credentials and make it easier to get higher quality image files for free use.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:41, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Infobox concerns

(I'm raising this here, rather than at the talkpage for the infobox, because I suspect I'll get more responses here instead of there.)

User:Pubdog has been creating a bunch of articles about NRHP properties in Arlington County, Virginia today. In the process he has chosen to use Location map District of Columbia street.png instead of the general Virginia state map. I support this choice; I generally support more specific maps whenever possible. However, it's leading to an issue in that now articles are being created with the ghost category Category:Historic districts in United States District of Columbia street. I'd love to remove it, but I don't understand infobox formatting well enough to do so. This part of the question may require a simple fix, and I raise it mainly to ask for help from those who understand coding better than I.

Along these lines: I believe it's time to start breaking down the category Category:Historic district contributing properties by state. It's large, and will only get larger. However: again, the category is tied to the infobox, and I don't know how to untie it. More to the point, though - and this is the reason I bring it up here - is untying it desirable? I think it is; there are thousands of contributing properties in the United States, and I think it will go a long way towards making the category navigable if we begin forking it. But I'd like some other input on the proposal. Alternatively, we could go the route of the opera Wikiproject, in which all operas are categorized in a parent category as well as in subcategories. I'm not wild about that suggestion, myself, but it's there.

Thoughts? --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 21:09, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

A similar issue arose about five five threads above this one. Dudemanfellabra pointed out there that you can set |nocat=yes within the infobox to suppress all autocategorization. As for breaking down the parent category, I agree that something probably needs to be done. Altairisfar (talk) 13:18, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Ah, I see - thanks for pointing it out. I missed it before. I've been working on the breakdown of the parent category; it's not that difficult using AWB. For that matter, fixing the infobox problem shouldn't be so, either. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 16:12, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
OT, I've got an infobox concern of my own. I'm working on one for Princeton (NJT station) which is a contributing property of the Princeton Historic District (Princeton, New Jersey). Here's the sandbox, and once again, the POS reference links from the government aren't working for me. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:51, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
Personally, I've stopped embedding Infobox NRHP in favor of {{Designation list}} like what I've done with Lancaster (Amtrak station), also a contributing property. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 18:31, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect commons cat

Recently, while trying to sort out some NRHP in Missouri commons categories I stumbled upon one for "National Register of Historic Places in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States." This looks like a potential merger into the category without the "United States" in it, but I'd like to create my own category for at least five of those images. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 18:05, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Description column

I've reverted a major contribution by a newbie in a SC NRHP table of the description column [7] I'm guessing that everybody here will agree that a couple of paragraphs of material for each entry in this column overwhelm the table, and the paragraphs should go in the article instead. Perhaps the description column should be limited to a couple of short sentences per site.

Still, I hate to discourage a newbie, especially when we've got these big, mostly empty columns that we seldom, if ever, discuss here (and frankly, use poorly). Is there any consensus guideline that we can give on the use of this column?

All newbie-friendly responses welcome.

Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:31, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I went ahead and edited the new contributions to a length I thought was reasonable. (National Register of Historic Places listings in Greenville, South Carolina) (Edited as a suggestion only - if someone else wants to revert/tinker, be my guest.) As a general rule, I usually shoot for about three sentences worth of information in the infobox, which seems like a reasonable short summary. In this particular case, though, a lot of the original contribution was redundant or uninformative, so there wound up being about three sentences of informative content within each description anyway. (The contribution reads like an eighth grade history report to me.) Andrew Jameson (talk) 18:55, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Smallbones that there's no real pattern. Frankly, I'd say that's good: while the diff you linked is definitely too much, we really should have lots of latitude regarding the amount of text for each site. In my opinion, you've gotten to the "too much description" point when the text is taller than the photo, i.e. the line on the table takes up more space because of the amount of text. I don't use the column for this purpose very often, but when I do, I tend to write substantially less than Andrew does — not that I think he's wrong, but that I simply don't care to write as much as he does. I'll normally do a sentence or sentence fragment summarising what's in the article, and if there's no article, I'll not add a summary. See National Register of Historic Places listings in Champaign County, Ohio, for example; I've put in summaries for all the properties with articles (except one useless substub) in what for me is a typical style. Nyttend (talk) 01:12, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

My only stipulation would be that any blurb use complete sentences. At least if you're seeking some sort of recognition for the list. Daniel Case (talk) 23:39, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

New page from Arkansas Post National Memorial?

What would you guys think about moving Arkansas Post National Memorial to a new page dedicated solely to the historical settlement (Arkansas Post (Historical Settlement)?), while keeping a separate page for the memorial itself? I'm planning to do an overhaul of the page soon anyway, along with other related articles (just organizing some sources). The page mostly discusses the history of the settlement anyway instead of the actual memorial. I posted on the article's talk page about it. Feel free to reply there or here with input/opinions. Samuel Peoples (talk) 19:18, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for asking! I see that Arkansas Post is currently a redirect to Arkansas Post National Memorial article, and that the article does not currently describe much about the current site or any memorials present. The "Arkansas Post" is a U.S. National Historic Landmark; "Arkansas Post National Memorial" is how the place is listed on the National Register of Historic Places's NRIS info system; the NRHP registration document gives both names, with the shorter name first. In this WikiProject, we have usually used the NHL name rather than the NRHP name, for a place that is listed on both, if the names differ. If I was naming a new article about the NRHP and NHL, I would use "Arkansas Post". From what I see, the article could be moved to "Arkansas Post", with no need for any parenthetical addition to the name. And, it would be improved by adding some section about recent/modern commemorations and memorials, and include narration of it being NRHP-listed in 1966 (right at the beginning of the NRHP program), how an when it became an NHL, how and when it became a National Memorial. The linked NHL page suggests there is an "Arkansas Post National Monument": is that possibly an error? National Monuments are different than National Memorials. After developing some such section, then I'd consider splitting it out. But my guess is one article at the simpler, historic short name, would suffice. My 2 cents. :) --doncram 19:33, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict, although it looks like I agree with Doncram) My personal opinion would be to move the page to Arkansas Post (currently a redirect) since it's mostly about history and looks like it will be even more about the history soon. The amount of material there about the monument itself is not enough for a standalone article. If at some point in the future, the memorial part is expanded enough, it could be split out via WP:SUMMARYSTYLE.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:34, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the input, guys. The one-article (renamed to Arkansas Post) idea sounds good to me as well. I'll go ahead and make the move. Samuel Peoples (talk) 07:32, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Actually... I get this error trying to move it to Arkansas Post: "The page could not be moved: a page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid." But there is no page named simply Arkansas Post. There's Arkansas Post, Arkansas (an article about the unincorporated community), but Arkansas Post is simply a redirect to the memorial article. I guess that means the name is somehow not valid? Samuel Peoples (talk) 07:37, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
 Done--Ymblanter (talk) 07:51, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! Samuel Peoples (talk) 08:26, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Better split for Westchester County, NY, list

If anyone's interested, I have a proposal to better split the Westchester County, NY, list. Daniel Case (talk) 18:39, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Numbering of counties in statewide lists

User:Jimboradley just made this edit to delete the numbers column in National Register of Historic Places listings in Utah, since "it wasn't really showing any actual data". Looks like all the other state lists have the numbers; what is their function? Ntsimp (talk) 21:44, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The column isn't meant to convey much information; it provides a way to force the table to sort all the entries the way we want them. Re-sort a numbered list any way possible, and you'll still be able to put it back to the original form by sorting the numbered column. Re-sort an unnumbered list, and you'll have a much harder time getting it back to the original form. In the unnumbered table, I can't figure out how to get it to put Salt Lake City before Salt Lake: Other. We could use the {{sort}} template on the county names, but that would prevent us from using the county name column for any other purpose, and if we split out any additional sublists, we might have to rearrange lots of numbers instead of simply adding a .1, .2, etc. in the numbers column. Finally, this column does provide a little information, as having a number next to the county name is mildly helpful for showing at a glance the county's alphabetical place, but the sorting is the primary purpose. Nyttend (talk) 22:50, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
I am sure that i created many of the state list article tables with those numbers. But, a table can be resorted back to its original order by simply hitting "reload" of the page, using your browser. Not sure there is any real value to having the numbers. It is not of great interest how many counties there are in a state, or that is otherwise known. So the purpose is not to accomplish the counting function that the number column in the individual county list-articles accomplishes. Maybe the numbers should be dropped now. --doncram 03:07, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
It's a *lot* easier to edit specific rows if you use the number. Please dont remove them unless you otherwise make it possible to edit one row at a time. dm (talk) 17:41, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Forcing someone to refresh a page just to get the order back would be unhelpful with no benefit. Nyttend (talk) 18:33, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Check my work please (duplicate across county lines)

In writing an article on the Main Street Historic District (Milan, Michigan), I discovered that the district actually spans a county border. Most of it is in Washtenaw County (its "official" home), but the southernmost few buildings are definitely in Monroe County. I added a line to the Monroe County list, then updated the total and noted the duplicate in both National Register of Historic Places listings in Michigan and Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress. Is everything correct here, and any place else this new duplicate should be noted? Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:45, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

All looks correct to me, and I don't see anything that's missing. Nyttend (talk) 18:37, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

NRHP project and Wikidata

I've been playing around Wikidata for some time now. One of the things I've been looking at is how to replace the monuments database (which also contains all the NRHP listings) with Wikidata, we even created a task force for that. I think it's time to also start looking how the NRHP can fit into this. I proposed a property so we can add the reference number. In this list you can see how I did the breakdown of data to include for Rijksmonumenten in the Netherlands. We should also do that for the NRHP. A lot is the same, but I'm not sure yet how to handle the classification yet. National Historic Landmarks is understand, for example the Empire State Building is an instance of that, but how to handle normal listings? Making it an instance of National Register of Historic Places feels a bit weird. Maybe make a new NRHP listing with NHL, etc. subclasses of that? Wikidata supports sourcing of information. Once we have the url type, we can include a link to every listing records as a source (a solution to the problem in the previous section). We would also get rid of the data redundancy we have now with the same data in the list and the infobox. Who wants to help? Multichill (talk) 21:20, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Keep in mind that article<->refnum mappings are not one-to-one, so Wikidata should accomodate that (I don't know enough about Wikidata to know if your proposal addresses this). Some articles include things listed under more than one refnum (the easiest example is separately-listed properties that are also in one or more districts; some articles also cover multiple objects). Likewise, some refnums appear in more than one article (e.g. contributing property articles). Magic♪piano 22:23, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
Your penultimate sentence concerns me: why is it a problem to have the same piece of information in both the list and the infobox? They're different articles, so all information that's relevant to both should be in the list and in the infobox, and if it's not relevant to both, we should remove it regardless of a Wikidata project. Nyttend (talk) 21:01, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand your issue. My point was that structured wikidata should account for these variations; none of the cases I describe seem to me to be problematic (i.e. requiring remedial action) or particularly unusual, and has nothing to do with what's in lists vs. articles. Magic♪piano 00:50, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't replying to you — I'm sorry for being unclear. I meant to reply to Multichill and wasn't thinking of the fact that I made it look like I was replying to you. Nyttend (talk) 02:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

NRHP architectural styles page -- does it belong in article space?

I'm wondering whether National Register of Historic Places architectural style categories truly belongs in article space. It seems to me that it exists mostly to help contributors to this WikiProject work with the NRIS architecture codes. Also, since most the sections are templated as "requiring expansion", it is not exactly an example of Wikipedia's best work. I recognize that many articles link to it, largely because a bunch of terms are redirects to this page. Explication of the codes used in a database is important, but it doesn't seem like an appropriate topic for an encyclopedia article. Is there any hope of ever doing away with the need for those redirects so that this can be repurposed as solely a resource for contributors? --Orlady (talk) 17:50, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that this is not an original question

but I have looked around and not found an answer so I'll toss it out. But first a preface. I have noticed and been annoyed by this before but while at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens I clicked on the reference number 1 in the infobox, which was for the NRHP listing, but the link just takes me to page 1 of the NRHP website rather than to the registration information for that particular site. I attempted (think I succeeded) to change it but am wondering if the original way is how the project wants it to be? So my question is, should a reference to the NRHP in an infobox take you right to the particular building or whatever that the article is about or is close (NRHP website) close enough? Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 18:39, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

There has been much discussion about the use of {{NRISref}} as the preferred citation in NRHP articles, mostly because of the fact that you mention that the reference doesn't point directly to the listing in question but rather the front page of a search engine. Your changed link is one that I have never seen, but I don't think we should use that, especially because it can simply be replaced by a link to the PDF for that file (See WP:NRHPMOS#References for info about how to construct a citation template from that pdf). The reason NRISref is generally used is that the nomination document does not include information such as the reference number and the listing date, while the NPS skeleton record does. In the case of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, the ref tag is attached to the reference number, so the nomination document should not be used in that case. If there were some way to link directly to the skeleton record, that would be great, but the NPS website does not currently allow that, so NRISref is the most accurate thing we can get.
That said, I have brought up many times the fact that there is a {{NRHP Focus}} template which takes the reference number as an input and links a tad bit closer to the actual skeletal record for a site (one click away rather than a whole search engine away). The output for that template for Stan Hywet Hall is

Staff. "NPS Focus: 75002058". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.

I've suggested on numerous occasions that we somehow combine this into the NRISref template, but it has never caught on for whatever reason.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:03, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
The Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens is actually National Historic Landmark. For NHLs, there is almost always an NRHP Inventory/Nomination or Registration document available. I just added that to this article:

[1]

  1. ^ James H. Shiere (May 27, 1981). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Stan Hywett Hall and Gardens (Frank A. Sieberling House)" (PDF). National Park Service. and accompanying 10 photos from 1973
I would very much support a campaign to revisit all 2,500 or so NHL articles, to ensure that each has such a good reference.
(further statement by me, removed by me) --doncram 12:38, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
The main point behind linking to the Focus database is that, like I said in my first post, the nomination documents don't include the reference numbers or the listing dates for properties, and that is usually what the NRISref is used for in articles. If there does exist a nomination document online, that's great, and no one is saying that shouldn't be included as a reference in the article (although it appears in the Stan Hywet Hall case, you've just thrown the ref onto the end of the article in your trademark quick-fix, let-someone-else-clean-up-my-mess style, which is definitely NOT the way we should be including the reference), but you can't use a source that doesn't include certain information as a reference for said information.
The link I included above is one step away from the reference number/listing date, which is closer than the front page of a search engine. Yes, the skeletal record may also include a link to a non-existent pdf file, but the reference isn't claiming the pdf exists. Maybe would could put a qualifier in the ref where if you set |pdf=no, it will include something like "The pdf linked from this skeletal record has not yet been digitized; this citation is only meant to apply to the reference number and/or date of listing for this property." Regardless, I think changing the NRISref link to point to the search results rather than the search interface would definitely be an improvement, although not perfect by any means.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:27, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
The problem with that idea is that our information comes from the database, which is a single downloadable document. If we could link directly to the database, we'd be at what I'd call the best possible solution, but I dimly remember trying and failing to get a good link to the database; if I remember rightly, that's why we link to the search screen, since it's the best way to go to the database. Prove me wrong and I'll be happy :-) Nyttend (talk) 21:03, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
If "although it appears in the Stan Hywet Hall case, you've just thrown the ref onto the end of the article in your trademark quick-fix, let-someone-else-clean-up-my-mess style, which is definitely NOT the way we should be including the reference" is referring to me and my edit I'll just say that I feel that I left the reference in a better state than when I found it and move on. Carptrash (talk) 21:53, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
That was directed at Doncram. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I don't think you, Carptrash, did anything wrong.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:36, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Also, Nyttend, I agree that it would be great to link to the database, but as you said that isn't possible. I do think, though, that linking to search results rather than the search input would be a step in the right direction, though.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:38, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I feel better (men have feelings too), but I am a bit out of my league here in any case. I just feel that the NRHP web page is not much of a reference. A bit like saying "You'll find it in the Bible" and letting it go at that. I expect (perhaps "hope" is a better word) that a reference, at least a web one, will take me pretty close to the information being referenced. But you (singular and plural) know a lot more than I do about how NRHP info can be accessed than I do. Carptrash (talk) 22:51, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

(a statement by me, removed by me, was here) --doncram 12:38, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Could someone find a link for me? Trying to get the nomination for the Wendell August Forge, but I'm on a public computer whose version of IE can't navigate past the CRGIS page for the Pennsylvania SHPO, and their URLs don't have consistent naming. Could someone please find the URL and either add it as an external link to the article or just dump the link on the talk page? Nyttend backup (talk) 14:06, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Got it: https://www.dot7.state.pa.us/ce_imagery/phmc_scans/H102379_01H.pdf. CRGIS is being ornery today. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 14:31, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! Back up on my own computer now, and I can't get the AskRegis to do anything; perhaps I'll just have to wait a day or two. Planning to be back in PA this weekend :-D and trying to get nominations for sites that I'd like to visit. Nyttend (talk) 17:02, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Verifiability tags

Hello all - In trying to fully article and picture the list of National Register of Historic Places listings in Iredell County, North Carolina, I created George Houston House. Upon creation, with NRIS as it's sole reference, it was promptly tagged with a refimprove template. I'm still figuring out how things work on WP:NRHP, and while I know over at my usual stomping grounds of MILHIST, an article with one sole source would rightfully be challenged, I was under the impression that for NRHP stub articles, a cite to the NRIS was sufficient for verifiability purposes. Could someone tell me if I'm doin' it wrong? In the meantime I've dug up a few sources to add to NRIS on the Houston House. Cdtew (talk) 15:16, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

While a citation to the NRIS database is technically enough, according to current consensus, to establish notability, it is suggested that other references be used as well upon creation of an article to edify the NRIS data, which can sometimes be faulty. From WP:NRHPHELP#North Carolina, it appears that there is a pdf of the George Houston House's NRHP nomination form online at http://www.hpo.ncdcr.gov/nr/ID0026.pdf. That would be the best source to use to expand the article, but feel free to browse that help page as well as WP:NRHPMOS to get acquainted with common practices.
As a side note to project members, should we add something to WP:NRHPFAQ about notability and use of the NRIS reference?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:37, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Cdtew, the George Houston House appears to be the "Walls-Houston House" mentioned at several places within the Iredell County "Multiple Resources Assessment"-type document or MRA or Thematic Resources or TR type document available at http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/64000457.pdf. I found link to that at wp:MPS, and knew to look for that because there is an indication of the "Iredell County MRA" in the NRHP infobox in the article. Perhaps it is sometimes called "Wall-Houston House" and sometimes "Walls-Houston House"? It seems to be an important type of early planters house in the area, being built of logs but including some "high style".
It is true that you could improve the article by adding more sources and information. The document that is found by following WP:NRHPHELP#North Carolina advice, which Dudemanfellabra points to, would usually be a complete NRHP nomination document. But here, in this case, it turns out to be a North Carolina form (not a National Register form) used to document the place briefly as part of a bigger Multiple Property Submission. It could be considered an adjunct form to the Iredell County MRA document. Both should be used together in the article. I won't comment further here about how to cite them; I may try to compose citations for use in the article and add them directly. Or i might not contribute further; maybe someone else could help compose something.
The initial tagging of "refimprove" was nonsensical because you had clearly used NRIS as your source for the NRHP listing date and location and so on, and no improvement on the sourcing is needed. Everything was sourced (unless perhaps you had used some judgment in characterizing the location, and that would not have required a source probably. If NRIS is the source it is the source it is the source. And NRIS is held by consensus to be reliable in general, though it like other databases has errors which we document in a workpages system (e.g. see wp:NRIS info issues NC for North Carolina errors noted). So the tag could simply have been removed and it would have been no big deal. Again, it is nice that you have added more to the article.
Hope this helps. --doncram 21:17, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Doncram, that helps immensely! I will be taking much of this with me while I create other NRHP articles. I sincerely appreciate your advice, and yours too, Dudeman. Cdtew (talk) 02:44, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments in Canada

Does anyone know how it is being organized? I'm going to the Montana and Canadian Rockies in late August and I might be able to contribute to their 2013 contest too! Royalbroil 14:51, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

The lists are here. This is their starting page, but I am not sure they have a centralized discussion place for questions.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:45, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
I've not found a discussion point; the Canadian listings are very rough, and need a lot of work (duplicates, not always sortable by geography, not mappable, overlong). I started working on the Newfoundland list, since I'm planning to go there. Magic♪piano 00:52, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park, Virginia

I created National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park, Virginia (cities in Virginia are county-equivalents), it probably needs some cleaning up. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 21:13, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I see that many of your recent edits to NRHP lists in Virginia are based off of the coordinates shown in the lists not lining up with the city/county that the list says they're in. See WP:NRHPHELP#Coordinates issues. If you are basing these edits on the coordinates included in the lists, that's not advised. The city/county in all of these lists comes from the National Register Information System (NRIS), and they're usually correct, although the coordinates may not be for reasons explained at the link I just gave you. I personally don't think the article you have created is necessary, as all of the listings there are also included in other county lists. I'll let someone else weigh in, though.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:24, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Legally speaking, any listings in Manassas Park aren't actually part of Prince William County, so they shouldn't be in the Prince William County list. Unfortunately, the NRIS doesn't make it very clear what's where. It lists three properties in Manassas, none in Manassas Park, and everything else in the three areas as Prince William County, but some of the Prince William County listings are clearly wrong; for instance, Prince William County Courthouse is in the heart of Manassas (unless the courthouse is an enclave of Prince William County for legal reasons). I also suspect a few places were in the vicinity of the two cities (and therefore part of Prince William County) when they were listed but got annexed later on, though I can't really prove that. At any rate, we're probably best off trusting the NRIS as to where places are, which would mean there aren't any places in Manassas Park proper anyway. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:55, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Emmette Hernandez Coleman's effort seems helpful. I would absolutely NOT trust NRIS as to the locations. I would tend to agree with strategy of looking at where coordinates show the place to be located, and agree that bringing up the item here at wt:NRHP is a good idea, as EHC did. Items should indeed be moved out of the county lists if it can be established that they were incorrectly included. Note there are could be similar other fixes needed in Virginia where there are independent cities which are not part of counties that surround them. Recently archived discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Register_of_Historic_Places/Archive_55#Swannanoa (mansion) covered another example, where NRIS correctly reported independent city Waynesboro as being the nearest city, while including it in Augusta County and we verified/clarified it is located in Augusta County (which surrounds but does not include Waynesboro). So, we should focus now on trying to verify where the several items are actually located. Probably best to start articles on each of them, and bring in the NRHP nomination documents that Virginia makes available, and examine the locations on sometimes-included maps in those documents. --doncram 22:13, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)As for the article I created, any other state, and you'd probably be correct, but Virginia has lists for it's incorporated cities (see National Register of Historic Places listings in Virginia) This is probably because, due to a quick in Virginia law, incorporated cities in Virginia aren't legally part of their counties (see cities in Virginia).
As for the coordinates and the city/county source, I had no idea. Still, most of the ones I fixed are probably not in Manassas. Two of the entries explicitly say that they are "NW of Manassas", they all had Manass postal addresses according to their coordinates, and the Manassas National Battlefield Park article itself says that it is outside of Manassas. The Manassas postal addresses extends well outside of Manassas, and it's a common mistake, even among otherwise reliable sources, and even the locales, to list all places with a Manassas address as in Manassas.
Is it possible that the NRIS bases it's city data on postal addresses rather then the city something is in, I had assumed that the "false" Manassas in National Register of Historic Places listings in Prince William County, Virginia were the result of some editor who mistakenly thought they were in Manassas. That would also explain why the Fairfax County list had entries that listed their city as Manassas Park and Manassas (which are in Prince William County, not Fairfax County) and Arlington (which is itself a county). Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 22:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Conner House, verified to be in Manassas Park, VA
Given some doubt as to the information in NRIS for these, it is good that the state of Virginia provides specific lists for each (can find by lookup at wp:NRHPhelp). Specifically:
BUT, hmm, big caveat: even state registers are wonky and don't perfectly identify which counties are relevant, especially where an item spans county lines. I recall that the state of Oregon's official list of national register listings often includes just one county, for multiple-county items, and had other problems, which caused confusion (sorted out in big reconciliation and discussion at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Oregon#Reconciliation of wikipedia tables vs. Oregon PDF and Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Oregon#Development. So just because the Virginia Department of Historic Resources lists them one way, it is not a sure thing that their info is precise enough for us. --doncram 00:00, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
For Conner House, its NRHP nomination document includes a USGS quadrant map in its last page, page 7, that shows the location precisely. Happily Mapquest shows county borders (while Google and Bing do not), and in fact seems to distinguish between independent cities vs. counties within Virginia. Comparing, it is clear that Conner House is within the city of Manassas Park. And not in Prince William County. --doncram 00:18, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Another caveat about the Virginia website: I've found that if the Virginia DHR doesn't have the nomination forms online, they just don't list the site in their listings, which might be a problem for the Address Restricted sites. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:30, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes. Since the 3 others, besides Conner House, are Address Restricted ones, I am guessing our best info is that the Manassas Park list is best with those 4 items, exactly as EHC created it. So I'm gonna proceed and remove those 4 items from the Prince William county list-article. I will say it is really quite extraordinary that EHC has found a new list of NRHPs to create. Congratulations! The NRHP wikiproject regulars, me included, have been pretty darn confident we had them all set up, though there are always new additions of items, and though we know we have to make changes/corrections/occasional moves as fuller information comes forward. And we subdivide lists sometimes due to article size problems. But it is really surprising to find we completely missed the need for a list for this specific city. --doncram 01:24, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I rechecked the ones on the Prince William County list that I identified as not Manassas, using thiar addresses instead of their coordinates, thiar not in Manassas. I did however mistakenly identify Ben Lomond as in Sudley, it's in Bull Run. The Manassas ones with a {{citation needed}} I was unable to check, they didn't have addresses, or even coordinates. The remainder I've confirmed as being in Manassas, except for Prince William County Courthouse which is otherwise well within Manassas, but tough I'm not sure of this, it appears to be PWC enclave for legal reasons, as TheCatalyst31 pointed out. Even if it is I think we should still count it as in Manassas though, tough clearly state it's enclave status. I've added them all to the Manassas list, but put the unconfirmed ones in their own clearly marked section.

To clarify, my creation of the Manassas Park list was not intended to get the Manassas Park ones off the PWC list. Right now the scope includes PWC's independent cities, rather that should change is a separate matter. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 03:10, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, both the Mayfield Fort and Cannon Branch Fort are described in this document. The two sites and the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth are precisely located, by address, by the Manassas Historical Society (I assume in Manassas, but I'm not familiar with the area). Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:59, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. The Cannon Branch Fort, then, appears to be located in Manassas, as street address "10611 Gateway Boulevard" (per the latter reference the manassascity.org one) shows, in MapQuest, to be in Manassas, though if the listed property extends far enough it could go into Prince William. It depends how far off Gateway, and in what direction off, it goes; the "Located off Gateway Blvd. near the Manassas Airport, this site is part of the Manassas Museum System" (at first source the The Civil War in PWC") is not precise enough to absolutely rule out the property extending into Prince William. ) --doncram 13:10, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary edit point

About the PWC list's scope, many VA county lists include their independent cities, and at least a few don't. I've amended a the leads of the lists I've come across that include their independent cities to state that they do, for example PWC's "... in Prince William County, Virginia (including the independent cities of Manassas and Manassas Park)". There's no dispute that the independent cities aren't legally part of their counties, however for many non-legal purposes they are counted as part of their counties. For example, as the Manassas article says: "The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Manassas (along with Manassas Park) with Prince William County for statistical purposes." I think it makes scene to include the independent cities on the county lists, but we should decide this on a Virginia-wide bases, and not for any one list in particular. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 03:30, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I commented already at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Prince William County, Virginia already about this. I think overall we don't want overlapping lists, and I was trying to follow your lead in splitting out the National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park list. If Manassas Park is separate, we should drop the 4 entries from the Prince Wm list, and edit the lede (define the scope) accordingly. If we want the Prince Wm list to include the Manassas Park (and city of Manassas) ones, then I think it should include two (or three) separate tables, in 2 or 3 sections, one for each city or county, and National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park should be changed to a redirect back to the Prince Wm list. See, for example, National Register of Historic Places listings in Spokane County, Washington which contains one table of the city of Spokane NRHPs and one table of the rest of the county.
I agree it is somewhat arbitrary and it doesn't really matter if one list contains both a county and the city it encloses. It does not have to be the same everywhere in Virginia; it just needs to be clearly presented in each case. --doncram 04:13, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

As a general policy, it's not clear to me what the benefit is of splitting out small lists into different articles. If anything, I think it would be better to combine geographically contiguous short lists, so that the reader can more easily find or compare historic properties in a certain locale. What, exactly, is the utility to the reader of creating a list article containing only three or four entries? Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:41, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that splitting out small lists usually shouldn't be done, unless the main list is simply too big to keep together. One reason is that splitting prevents us and readers from seeing all the locations in one linked Google or Bing map. It's better to be able to see them all, sometimes, as was preferred for Spokane city and the others in Spokane County. Too many short town lists were split out in Massachusetts and in some other states, IMO, and some shold be recombined. But here, the fact is that the sites are not correctly included in an article titled NRHP listings in Prince William County. They are not in fact in Prince Wm county. If one wants to include them all in one article, then I say put them into separate tables within one article to give proper clarification that they are not in the same entities (and this allows all to be seen in linked Google or Bing map). And I guess rename/move the article, too, to National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas, Manassas Park, and Prince William County. Or keep them in 3 separate articles. --doncram 13:10, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

In view of the fact that several listed properties are address-restricted, and most of them seem to be related to Civil War battles, Wouldn't it make more sense to create an article about the National Register listings associated with the Battles of First and Second Bull Run (a.k.a. First and Second Manassas)? IMO, that would be far more informative and useful to most readers than a bunch of formatted lists that are slavishly tied to jurisdictional boundaries, but don't have much content. --Orlady (talk) 19:54, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

continuing

The Virginia DHR statewide list, mentioned in another discussion section, and now linked from wp:NRHPhelp#Virginia, shows 4 items in Manassas and 2 items in Manassas Park: 

CITY OF MANASSAS
Liberia Manassas 12-18-79 03-20-80 155-0001; Liberia, mapping update Manassas 02-15-07 Pending 155-0001
Manassas Historic District Independ. Hill, Manassas 02-16-88 06-29-88 155-0161
Manassas Industrial School (44PW505) Independent Hill 04-20-94 08-01-94 155-0010
Cannon Branch Fort (44PW227) Nokesville 03-20-96 08-26-99 155-5020

CITY OF MANASSAS PARK
Conner House Manassas 01-20-81 10-06-81 152-0001
Louisiana Brigade Winter Camp Manassas 08-15-89 11-16-89 152-5001

Since it is pretty few items, and there is some agreement (not unanimous) above that it's better not to split out smaller lists when not needed for size reasons, I am inclined now to merge back or redirect back the separated National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park, Virginia and/or National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas, Virginia, combining/directing them back into National Register of Historic Places listings in Prince William County, Virginia and moving/renaming that list article to be clear about it. I may just proceed with some edits, and maybe comment more at Talk page of the last-linked. --doncram 19:51, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to wait six days before voicing my objection. The title is way too clunky. No other Virgina list has a title that lists the cities, and the lead does a good enough job of explaining that the list includes PWC's independent cities. Placing independent cities in their own section isn't done on any other VA list ether, and aside from being clunky, it damages the ability to use the table to organize the list by date listed, or alphabetical order.
The Manassas and Manassas Park lists should not have been redirected. Every VA independent city gets it's own list, even when it overlaps with a county list. While I wouldn't necessarily be against removing these city lists, to redirect just these two is WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 23:19, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Why would overlapping lists be a problem? Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 23:28, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
This is partly about the current title of the combined list-article, which is National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas, in Manassas Park, and in Prince William County, Virginia. I agree that is a mouthful. I repeated the preposition "in" to clarify that the three items are different areas. Perhaps it could be renamed; I am certainly open to a different name for the combo list-article. It is accurate and descriptive though. Or i am open to them being split back out to 3 lists in 3 separate Wikipedia articles (but there is advantage to being in one Wikipedia article, including that all locations can be seen in a linked Google/Bing map). My view about "overlapping" lists, is that it is a problem. One way is that it calls duplicatively for descriptions to be created, and it is perhaps calling for more maintenance. I think nowhere within our nation-wide system of geographical lists do we keep duplicate lists of any area.
About this being possibly different treatment than for any other Virginia or other cities and surrounding counties, I am not sure. Could people point to any other examples? It is often not an issue, say for Waynesboro and its surrounding Augusta County. National Register of Historic Places listings in Waynesboro, Virginia is a long enough list to have a separate article for it; I don't feel tempted to combine it into National Register of Historic Places listings in Augusta County, Virginia. But Manassas has just 4 and Manassas Park have just 2, so I am tempted to include them in a combo with their surrounding county. Are there any other similar examples? --doncram 23:43, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

redundant?

Is there a need for National Register of Historic Places listings in Winchester, Virginia since it's very similar to National Register of Historic Places listings in Frederick County, Virginia? (not sure what List of historic sites in Frederick County, Virginia is all about...) Winchester isn't that large of a city and the list for the county is only 25, although judging by the city-specific list, some appear to be missing on the county list. 204.111.20.10 (talk) 05:44, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing that duplication. This indeed seems to be another example of a Virginia city-county situation, as discussed in above subsections. Assuming that Winchester is an independent city, not included in Frederick County, I think one good option is to remove the Winchester items out of the Frederick County list-article, and have two list-articles. The other option is to have two sections in one list-article, titled perhaps National Register of Historic Places listings in Winchester and in Frederick County, Virginia. --doncram 06:08, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Port Gibson Battlefield / Battle Site, Mississippi

We have an old worklist Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRHP articles needing attention covering various old problems. One is about proper treatment of Port Gibson Battle Site, an NHL, vs. Port Gibson Battlefield, an NRHP, which seem to overlap but not cover the same areas exactly. At this point, i think they should be merged and treated in one article. Does anyone have the energy? It was an interesting Civil War battle, in which Grant's army landed below Vicksburg and pushed inland, leading to the July 4, 1863 capture of Vicksburg. --doncram 19:59, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Interesting problem! The one article about this topic that is reasonably well developed is Battle of Port Gibson. As one option, these two articles could be merged (and redirected) into that one (that is, by creating a new article section about the NHL and NRHP designations, and adding information about the designations in the lead section of the battle article). Since Battle of Port Gibson gets a whole lot more pageviews than either of the other articles, a merger would give these topics a lot more visibility than they are getting now. --Orlady (talk) 20:33, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
We should have a discussion about how to treat the separate articles Port Gibson Battlefield and Port Gibson Battle Site, both of which seem to cover the same general topic. What should we do about them?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:30, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
I've put all three of this thread's comments in their chronological order; it's quite confusing when you remove a question after a reply is posted. Nyttend (talk) 14:51, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
I removed a comment by me, above, which Dudemanfellabra replaced in a way, and then Nyttend restored my comment. And I just removed my comment again. I retract my question about Port Gibson. Also, I am offended by the use of vulgar language about me within an edit summary of this thread, language which I have to look up to understand but which basically means that the commenter expressed contempt for me, in a particularly vulgar way. I don't want this. I wish that administrators would take appropriate action--to warn and/or to block, the responsible party--rather than seem to condone and encourage such behavior. Please don't harass, follow, insult and so on. Please stop. --doncram 15:03, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
No. Do not refactor talk pages. Nyttend (talk) 15:26, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
IMHO: Dudemanfellabra - that particular edit summary was unnecessary, regardless of what you thought of Doncram's actions. Doncram - you asked a great question and people responded in good faith. If you didnt want to participate after that, fine, don't. No need to delete the original (very good) question. dm (talk) 01:53, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
I agree, dm. However, Doncram, if you wish to delete a comment after someone else has responded, the better way is to use the strike-out markup: <s> at the start of your comment and </s> at the end. That shows you've retracted your comment but allows the response to make sense in context. 69.95.203.110 (talk) 19:27, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Experiment - feedback requested

Swigart's Mill slideshow

At Swigart's Mill I've included a slideshow masquerading as a video. I think the general idea is better than many galleries and that there are other things we could do with video/slideshows, but this is obviously still a first-stage experiment. Other things might include a full house tour, highlights of county lists (with maps), or photos showing change over time. Does anybody know how to make better slideshows or videos? I'm very much a newby on this.

Any comments appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:31, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

After uploading, I found that the quality looked much worse here, made a few changes (just learning all of this) and uploaded a new larger (5 MB) version.
Basic feedback question - Is this as good or better than a gallery? Or is it better to just let good-enough alone? Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for creating that, Smallbones. I liked seeing multiple views of the property, but I don't think the slide show worked real well. For some reason, I saw blank screens for seemingly long periods (in the transition between images). Also, when I saw images, I often wanted them to change faster or slower than they were changing for me. IMO, a static gallery is preferable. Congratulations for thinking creatively about how to improve Wikipedia, but I don't think this idea is ready for "prime time". --Orlady (talk) 22:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
It might be related to your downloading speed, but 5 MB isn't that much. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:21, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

However, video tours of some sites might be a good idea... --Orlady (talk) 22:11, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

While it's not something directly in the article, Commons has a slideshow feature for categories. Chris857 (talk) 22:26, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
That's the 1st thing I tried, but I can't control the order of the slides. If you know how to do this, please let me know. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:21, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
It doesn't appear that there is a way to custom order images there. There are Mediawiki extensions for slideshows, but it doesn't look like any are enabled on Wikipedia. Chris857 (talk) 19:58, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for making this. I tried it in Internet Explorer and got the message that a video player was needed. Firefox played it without any issues. My guess is that more people use IE, so that would be a problem. If something like this is implemented, I think a note that the images can be found on Commons should be part of the video (last image - would be great if it were clickable). I would much prefer if the reader could click on a frame and see multiple images in succession (with each linked to the original on Commons or en). There is something sort of like that on the French Wikipedia (for two images). See the bottom map in the French article here on Black Moshannon State Park - there is a link below the map and clicking on it switches between two different maps (PA and the USA). Overall I like the idea in theory, but am not so sure in practice. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 01:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

And thank you for all the responses. I would have thought that with YouTube so popular everybody could play videos on their computers, but it's interesting that IE can't play it. Could people try it from a few other setups to see if this is a common problem? It looks like there are many technical solutions for a simple slideshow tool, but nobody has implemented it here yet. Who would be the best person to contact to get it implemented? What kind of Wikiprocess would be needed? I'm sure lots of folks could use a simple ordered slide show on lots of articles.
After working with it a couple of days though I'm starting to like the movies. This is just the simplest thing in the world to do in iMovie - actually the hardest work was figuring out how to turn off the fancy effects (e.g. pan and zoom) and converting it to the right format. A major source of inspiration for me is a woman I only know thru her videos on YouTube, but who does many movies (really fancy slideshows) on sites where I've taken a few pix, see Woodmont and Dolobran (which does not actually seem to be on the NRHP despite the plaque) What I found out this weekend - those are all done in iMovie, and give me a few days, some good photos, and the right to include music - I could do something just as good. I guess it all comes down to what is "encyclopedic." Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:29, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
Actually, I like the movie (only got a chance to run it just now).--Ymblanter (talk) 12:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. With just a little more encouragement (I'm easy), I'll try experiment 2 in a few days. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:28, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Kentucky

All- I have started to create articles for the unincorporated communities in Kentucky that have a place on the NRHP. As KY has over 100 counties, I have found quite a few places in need of a basic article for its location. Clark County is on my to do list. IF any of you out there know of a specific county which should be addressed, feel free to drop me a line.Coal town guy (talk) 16:50, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Changing NRIS numbers

What happens (if anything) when we change the NRIS number in a list's |refnum= parameter? I've just found an error for site #7 at National Register of Historic Places listings in Portland, Louisville, Kentucky — two sites have similar names, and the same refnum was assigned to both on our list, even though NRIS gives different numbers. Once I finish uploading and adding a batch of photos, I'll change it to the correct number (please don't edit the page in the next couple of hours, lest we edit-conflict), but I'm unclear if this might have some sort of problematic effect. Nyttend (talk) 19:58, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Cities that don't seem to exist

According to National Register of Historic Places listings in Menifee County, Kentucky, the nearest city for the Red River Gorge District is Menifee, Kentucky. However, as far as I can tell there is no such place as Menifee, Kentucky. It doesn't have a listing in the Geographic Names Information System, it's not marked on any of the three county highway maps in the area, and it's not on any USGS topographic maps of the region. If there was ever a place named Menifee, Kentucky, it probably hasn't existed for several decades. However, the site's address is restricted, and the coordinates in Red River Gorge suggest it's a few miles away from any other community. What should we list the city as for places like this? It doesn't make sense to list it as a nonexistent place, but there's no other clear "nearest city" to list. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:13, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The National Register is known to contain errors -- this could be one of them. Also, rural Kentucky is known to contain many locations that are not clearly identifiable with any named "place". My guess (and this is only a guess) is that that the person who filled in the form was entered the name of the county in the space for the city -- perhaps because they couldn't find any particular named place to list on the form. --Orlady (talk) 05:38, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
Have to agree, UNfortunately, finding an old map with what could have been an older community NOT listed in GNIS yet (been there and done that) will be a challenge........Coal town guy (talk) 15:39, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
Being about 30,000 acres, the district is kind of big enough to be treated as its own entity if you ask me. I would either just leave the city column blank or include another link to Red River Gorge or possibly Daniel Boone National Forest.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:21, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
I've expanded the Red River Gorge article to include some information about the NRHP district and its archaeological resources. Since the district is about 30,000 acres (as Dudemanfellabra notes) and is located in three counties, it is not meaningful to attempt to identify it with a particular city or town. (The "Address restricted" entry in the county list also is, at best, quaint. The location of the district is very well documented; it's the locations of the 664 known archaeological sites in the district that are "restricted".) --Orlady (talk) 17:56, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
Please do not leave the city column blank; it will confuse the bots that use our lists for Wiki Loves Monuments and other purposes. If you don't include the name of a city, please put in something like "Not applicable", like what we're doing for the Delaware Boundary Markers at National Register of Historic Places listings in northern New Castle County, Delaware. Nyttend (talk) 19:55, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
I changed the entry in the list to "Daniel Boone National Forest" -- not a city, but an unambiguous indication of where the district is. I have not yet tried to figure out why the historic district isn't also included in the lists for Powell County and Wolfe County. I also haven't added latitude-longitude to the list. --Orlady (talk) 21:45, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
It's only listed in Menifee County because the National Register only lists it in Menifee County, though I suspect that's another error. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:54, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
Clintonville in Clark County, cant find it there at all. Stupid question, do we know if these places cross multiple counties??Coal town guy (talk) 23:54, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
I determined that the Red River Gorge district crosses county lines from documents such as the Memorandum of Agreement (which I cited in the Red River Gorge article) regarding the management of the district. Although a lot of Wikipedia content about National Register sites was written solely on the basis of NRIS (which is just a computer database), every site has other documentation ... somewhere. --Orlady (talk) 00:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
I think that would be the most logical. Turns out that Clintonville is in Bourbon County or rather JUST at it, and from Clark, SO, while the Registry says, oh yes Clintonville in Clark, GNIS says, Clintonville in BourbonCoal town guy (talk) 00:19, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
Nothing says the "nearest city" has to be in the same county as the National Register property. --Orlady (talk) 00:38, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
Hey, thats a good point and I honestly did not think about that.........HOWEVER, a consideration, in all of the county li8sts for any of the states I have looked, do we, yes or no, have a disclaimer or descriptor that would state something along the lines of what you just said?? Example, NRHP is near or in the city or town of, as opposed to city and town which we have now in the article lists?Coal town guy (talk) 02:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

It's not in the lists right now; there's sort of an implication that the city listed is the nearest city for rural listings. It's not perfect, but changing it to "nearest city" wouldn't make sense for urban listings. There's a box on each NRHP nomination form that indicates if a listing is in the vicinity of the nearest city rather than actually in it, but unfortunately we don't have access to nomination forms for every state yet (and besides, looking that up for all ~90,000 listings would take far more time than it's worth). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:46, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

EGAD, thats a HUGE dataset isnt it? Oh well, one could always, note tha the specific place is in the vicinity of place x, where plae x is in a different county etc etc. However, I very much appreciate the reply.Coal town guy (talk) 00:18, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

NRHP Zorro wuz here

Fully articled counties as of 7/8/2013
Fully articled counties (updating; is this ever gonna render?)

There's a lot more involved than 3 Zorro-like rapier strokes, but pls. note the backwards-"N" swath of "fully articled" counties in all of the Western states of the lower 48. :) Thanks due to multiple wp:AFC editors and to The Catalyst31, also to Cbl62, and others, truly, thanks for your help in the face of arguably nasty bullying treatment over recent years. Also kudos to Pubdog for awesome, continuing contributions in the Mid-Atlantic area, and to Altairisfar for pushing AL. :) Hey, will anyone in New England step up? Cheers, --doncram 09:43, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I think there is an error in your second fully articled map. I downloaded the SVG file and was not able to open it in Inkscape. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 14:23, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
I fixed the second one; @User:Doncram, SVG comments are like HTML comments, i.e. they use the <!-- comment here --> syntax. The reason the /* comment here */ syntax was used in the top of the file is because you were inside style tags for the CSS classes, and style code uses the latter syntax.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:18, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
I wouldn't be too hard on New England. All of MA and RI are over 90% thanks to Swampyank, and I think they were at 100% a few years ago before new listings were added. (Upper New England is another story, but VT and ME are almost as bad as South Dakota when it comes to online resources.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
I'd advise you to color in the counties with no listings. Seems to me that the point of this map is to show counties where we have no un-articled listings (e.g. there's no more page creation left to go), and that's the case with counties with no listings; as is, it looks as if we have listings with no articles in those counties. Nyttend (talk) 04:22, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Half-way

Hey, we're almost halfway there, in terms of creating articles about NRHP-listed places. :) Per wp:NRHPprogress, out of 87,834 current NRHP-listed places, 43,718, or 49.8%, have articles. It's a moving target, but 199 more right now, for a total of 43,917, would hit 50.0%.

Hmm, 4 yrs from wp:NRHPprogress tableization July 4, 2009 to wp:NRHPPROGRESS, a different page, now. --doncram 04:21, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Half Way House (Chatham, Massachusetts) WLM pic from September 2012

I wonder if any "halfway" image is suitable for a barnstar or some other celebration. FYI, "halfway house" NRHP items (about half having articles as of time of this note, maybe more links will turn blue soon) include:

Half-Chance Bridge pic from 2008

Some other half items:

Attaining a halfway point for WikiProject NRHP, by this measure, could easily be reached by July 4. --doncram 12:56, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

The latest update as of June 18 brings us up to 43,752, which is 34 more than we had on June 16 (which was the update you saw). At that rate (~17/day), we should hit the 50% mark in about 10 days, or June 28. Looking back to May 18–one month ago today–we had 43,041 articles. That means over the past month, we've averaged ~23.3/day. At that rate, we would hit 50% in about 7 days, or June 25. The minimum rate of creation to hit 50% by July 4 is ~10.3/day, so we're pretty much assured that we'll get there, assuming everyone doesn't stop creation all at once. How should we celebrate?
P.S. It should be noted that the Progress page will show "50.0%" before we actually cross the halfway point of 43,917 articles because of rounding. So technically when we get to 49.95%, which is 43,873 articles, the Progress page will claim we're halfway there. If we take that as a benchmark instead, the numbers associated with the average over the past two days and past month are 7 days (June 25) and 5 days (June 23) respectively, and the minimum rate of creation to get there by July 4 is ~7.6/day.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
66000001 dam
Halfway dam
Hmm. Suspicious similarity btwn our "alpha" site and newly redirected Halfway Lake Dam; progress? (Aside: R. B. Winter pk has long been linked from National Register of Historic Places listings in Union County, Pennsylvania, but oddly with no explicit treatment of the NRHP; should it be a redlink or should it be covered there in a new section?) --doncram 04:21, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I redirected it since it didn't make sense to have a redlink there when the county list pointed somewhere else, but if someone wanted to write an article about the dam I'd be fine with (and probably encourage) it. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:59, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

One more day, 16 more articles to put the total at 43,768.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:18, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Do your projections take new listings into account? There are 18 new listings in the June 14 new weekly listings of the NRHP, for example. It is reasonable to assess 50% achievement off what we have covered in wikipedia, but then our chief editor/updater of the NRHP list-articles, User:Sanfranman59, might have something to say about whether or not we seem to achieve that... Sanfranman59 keeps our list-articles updated by adding new NRHP listings, I think usually every week but sometimes with a couple of weeks lag, which is fine of course. I dunno how recently the current List of RHPs was updated. Addition of a bunch of new NRHP listings would change the apparent achievement of 50%. Perhaps effort could be expended to bring the lists up to date very promptly, for the next couple weeks?
Also, I wonder about achieving a subgoal of bringing coverage of articles in every state and territory to 10%. I am trying now with an article that would take care of 3 Guam NRHPs, currently drafted at User:Doncram/As Sombreru Pillboxes, which, if moved to mainspace (and redirects set up for the 3 Japanese Imperial Army fortifications that it covers, would bring us close to achieving that. List of RHPs in Guam is the only remaining state or territory under 10%; it currently needs 4 articles to be brought to 10% I think. --doncram 18:17, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
No, I didn't take into account new listings, but even with 18 new listings (or more), we are still very likely to hit halfway on or most likely before July 4 because our rate of creation is much faster than the rate of new listings. Going back to that May 18 diff above, there were 87,789 total listings then and today there are 87,834, giving a rate of new listings as ~1.4/day, and we're creating an average of ~23.3/day, so we still get a net of ~22/day even with new listings. With today's update, we're at a total of 43,777 articles, 9 more than yesterday and 140 from the current half-way point. At 22/day, 140 articles would take ~6.4 days, in which time approximately 9 new listings will have been added, meaning we would have to create 4.5 more, which is within a one day margin of error. Accounting for all of that, if we keep going at our average rates, we should get to halfway even with new listings by June 27. We would have to average a measly 11/day not to make it by July 4, which is highly unlikely.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:02, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
FWIW, I've not been nearly as active out here over the past two or three months. The last time I updated the lists with newly announced listings were those announced by the NPS 4/5/2013. --sanfranman59 (talk) 16:59, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
The June 21 update shows 10 new listings added to the lists since yesterday and 12 new articles. That means we netted two yesterday. The halfway point now is 43,922, and we have 43,789. We need 133 more.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:50, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
It appears that over the past 2 days several users have been updating the county lists with new listings. As of the June 23 update (from which the map was updated.. I was busy Friday and Saturday), there are now 87,879 listings, 35 more than before, meaning our halfway point has moved forward to 43,940. We currently have 43,837, 48 more than 2 days ago, so we still netted 13 over the past two days. We now have 103 to go to make halfway, which should take no more than a week, so there is still no need to worry about making it by July 4, assuming there will be no more days of 40+ listings added between now and then.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:34, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
June 24 update: 1 new listing, 33 new articles, 76 to go before July 4.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:29, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
I have drafted about 20 articles that I hope will be in mainspace soon, and I have a scheme to take care of a further 165 listings at once...by redirects to one common article. If interested, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Utah#summary treatment of NRHP-listed archeological sites. This discussion section initiative(?) to get to "half-way" isn't seeming like much of a collective, collaborative push, this doesn't qualify as a collaborative editing drive, there's nothing different going on right now. Halfway seems more like just a milestone that's gonna be passed no matter what. It's probably worth mentioning in that Wikipedia newsletter though. A short news blurb, to effect that WikiProject NRHP, which began in year X, which completed "tableization" of all NRHPs on July 4, 2009, has now hit the half-way mark of creating articles describing each one (some being combo articles, some being sections in articles about bigger topics, but most being individual standalone articles about individual historic sites. This brings American history to the people blah blah blah (all of which I believe in). This represents Y% of all mainspace English Wikipedia articles, and leaves the wikiproject in good position to support the September 2013 WLM photo uploading campaign. --doncram 16:59, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
It also doesn't help that several of the state lists are still two months out of date, so if we don't update them soon we risk going over the halfway point and falling right back under it as soon as someone updates them. I'm trying to do it now so that's not an issue, but depending on how long it takes, either it could happen anyway or the new listings will make it harder to get to halfway by the Fourth. (Though if we can take care of 165 listings at once, we probably won't have that problem.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:11, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Signpost draft about halfway milestone

I submitted a Signpost announcement. I dunno if one negative comment will torpedo Signpost coverage, but it might. Our 44,000 articles created is about the same as the number of articles addressed in the big Unreferenced BLP drive that I participated in, a couple years ago, now, which got positive coverage. I think ours is a pretty amazing, major milestone that can properly be covered as a great positive for Wikipedia. Please consider a positive comment--or suggested changes to the drafted submission--at the Signpost suggestion, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#NRHP at 50% news, for July 3 signpost. --doncram 03:18, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Update: As I noted in the #User:KLOTZ milestone, Happy July 4th thread below, the Signpost did make a simple positive announcement, including mention that our NRHP articles make up more than 1% of the English Wikipedia, at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-03/News_and_notes#In_brief. In general it seems hard to get positive mentions of Wikiproject NRHP out there, while it seems rather too easy to trash the project. It's worth trying to get the positives out, because the cause of creating coverage of all the NRHP is really worthwhile, isn't it? And the cause keeps attracting new people all the time, more than most editors here are aware of, because new editors are keeping their heads down. I expect that we can get a lot of new people contributing during the 2013 WLM, assuming it will be run the same way as last year. It would be nice if we could maintain some positiveness about the NRHP wikiproject out there, and manage here not to treat the new and old editors too poorly. :) --doncram 10:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

User:KLOTZ milestone, Happy July 4th

User:KLOTZ who started uploading during WLM last September has recently blown through the 2,000 photos milestone. About half of these are NRHP sites - he usually uploads just one photo per site, for sites that were not previously illustrated. The other half of of his uploads are for similar historic sites spread throughout the world. He's been to places that nobody else in this Wikiproject has ever been - I guarantee it.

In lieu of a barnstar, I've made the video at the right to present to him. (Comments on the video would be appreciated)

Happy Independence Day to all!

Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:55, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Wow! That's an impressive diversity of buildings and locations. - Thanks for pointing this out. dm (talk) 06:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
Thanks User:KLOTZ! This is a great way to honor his many photos - thanks for putting the video together (and for all your work adding categories to his photos and adding them to Wikipedia articles). Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:12, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Happy 4th of July, late. I didn't see it until just now, but the July 3 Signpost's "News and Notes" page included mention of WikiProject NRHP getting "halfway". The full text published:

NRHP: The halfway mark has been reached in the National Register of Historic Places WikiProject's goal of having an article on every listed place. The register is the United States' federal government listing of various locations that are considered worthy of preservation. The current total number of NRHP-related articles is just over 1% of all articles on the English Wikipedia.

Congrats, all! --doncram 16:46, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

And it is great to see the Klotzes' work (and maybe the Klotzes, or friends, themselves) in photos available for new articles about faraway places like Japanese Hospital (Saipan) and Japanese Jail Historic and Archeological District. It makes the process of creating new NRHP article coverage a lot nicer, when there are pics to use, for at least some of the NRHPs in a given area. :) --doncram 10:48, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:NRHPPROGRESS question

Any chance that we could get a set of statistics on how we're covering sites with non-stub articles? It would be a useful supplement to (or potentially a useful replacement of) our current stats on how many bluelinks we have in our lists, since it would show the parts of the country with articles that are substantially useful to readers. Shouldn't be that hard to judge (and could presumably be done automatically), since by "stub" I simply mean "a page with a stub template". Nyttend (talk) 00:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

There's been some discussion of this on the talk page here and here, though it ultimately turned into a debate over differentiating two-line stubs from more substantial articles that are tagged as stubs and didn't accomplish anything. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 01:26, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure I could work something up in a few days time that could give us quality stats for every county, including which articles in every county are not tagged with the {{WPNRHP}} talk page template so we could tag them. I envision adding a # of Stubs, # of Start, # of C, etc., and then a %Start or greater column which IMO would be more indicative of quality than quantity. As TheCatalyst31 said, however, I would really like to get the sub-stub vs. good stub debate settled before we start to look at any kind of quality stats so that 1-sentence stubs with no information are separated out from actual quality material.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
To show that this is technically possible, I've just edited the NRHPstats script which makes the little yellow box appear on list articles to show stats about how many articles are stubs, how many are start or higher (with a percentage), how many are unassessed, and how many don't have the talk page tag on them. It is very simple to extend this code to the full Progress page, but as I said, I would prefer to wait until the whole sub-stub vs. good stub debate is settled.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:37, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
The script appears to be doing strange things with articles that are tagged by other projects but not NRHP. For instance, at National Register of Historic Places listings in Creek County, Oklahoma, it's claiming there are three stubs, three start-class or higher articles, and one untagged article. However, there are three stubs, two start-class articles, and two links pointing to U.S. Route 66 in Oklahoma, which is C-class but isn't tagged by this project. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 12:40, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, this seems to be a quirk with the API where if you query the same page twice in a single call, it only returns one result. That means my script is only counting US Rt 66 in OK as being untagged once, then when it calculates start or higher, it subtracts one less than it should (my script gets the start or higher bit by taking bluelinks - stubs - unassessed - untagged). Adding the project tag to the Rt 66 article fixed the list-article in question, but you're right that this is a flaw that I'll have to see if I can patch. The fact that it is related to untagged articles, though, is actually a blessing because that datapoint was meant to get people to add the NRHP tag to those articles' talk pages. It appears that once a page that is linked multiple times from the same list is tagged, there's no problem.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:32, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, this isn't really addressing my exact proposal — do all of you understand my idea and think there's a better plan, or do you misunderstand what I meant? My primary concern was with the data for File:NRHP Articled Counties.svg, and I was suggesting that we judge purely based on the stub template so that (1) we could avoid debates over substubs and (2) we wouldn't need to worry about article ratings. I'm pretty sure we'll have to accept my idea or reject it and stay with the status quo, since I can't see how we could reflect everything from stub to FA in a single map. Nyttend (talk) 17:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
Well, the only way I know currently how to check if an article is a stub is to check the article quality rating on the talk page. It's much harder and takes much longer to find out if there is a stub template on the article page itself, unless there is some feature in the API that I'm not aware of. And even so, the two should overlap exactly.. If an article has a stub template, it should be rated stub on the talk page, and if an article is rated stub on the talk page, it should have a stub template. Any discrepancies between the two should be fixed.
As to your concerns about a map, I would imagine a map that showed the percentage of a county rated start or higher would be pretty informative as to the quality of articles in that county. It isn't perfect, but it will definitely distinguish "stubbed" counties from those with extended information about each site. Of course the map we have now would still be useful as an idea of the quantitative coverage in each county. Both have their niche.
Parenthetical: I fixed the code, so it should take duplications into account now.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:40, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
(1) I guess I was the one misunderstanding, since I assumed that checking for the presence of a stub template would be at least as easy as checking the quality rating. Completely agree thahat the "stub" rating should be given if and only if the article has a stub template. (2) I thought you meant a map reflecting how many starts, how many Cs, how many Bs, etc., rather than one showing how many starts-and-above. Apparently you meant exactly what I did, yet I didn't realise that. Nyttend (talk) 22:43, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Previous discussions foundered upon interest/insistence that short articles be identified with a derogatory label, e.g. "sub-stub", clearly a non-starter for participating in the Wikipedia project, where any started article is a "stub" or higher. If the primary purpose is to be insulting, then please let's extend that courtesy towards new and old contributors of photographs that we all may choose to follow vindictively. :) Let's create a "sucky photo" category and a WikiProject Talk page rating to insult snapshot quality pics, or to insult pics that turn out to omit key features of an NRHP listing (once that can be determined from a real article-writer finally building an article about a given listing). :) --doncram 12:08, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Any started article is not necessarily a stub and not necessarily useful. Newly created articles are frequently deleted for having no context of notability.. that's kind of the whole point of Wikipedia and it's the reason why there isn't an article about you or me or any of the other 7 billion "common" people out there. The only reason NRHP sub-stubs have previously gotten a pass is because it has been assumed that listing on the NRHP makes a topic notable enough for its own article. Part of the consensus before was that since there existed a nomination form for each site, there would probably be ample sources for each. This was, however, before many forms were digitized and uploaded, and now we're beginning to get a better sense of the quality of them. Please tell me how I'm supposed to write an entire well-sourced and helpful article with this. The idea that listing on the NRHP alone is enough to warrant the creation of an article is, in my opinion, incorrect. At the very least, there should be some "claim to fame" if you will about WHY a property is listed on the register that isn't just a lazy longquote from the nomination form as you're so inclined to do.
As to pictures, yes there are some horrible pictures, some taken by me a few years ago with an old non-digital camera then scanned in with a crappy scanner. It would be great to mark these pictures for improvement, but the fact is there is no "rating" scheme already available for pictures. The idea of adding a new category to the article scheme is a lot more feasible than adding an entirely new image rating scheme.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:24, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Lots of articles that I've put together in Ohio, such as the Leftwich House, are derived from sourcing that's no more extensive (and perhaps less extensive) than the Dabney-Green House, and anyway mini-forms like this one are submitted with MPS forms that have additional information. Sometimes photos are bad because nothing better can be done, e.g. Kintner-Withers House and Elm Spring Farm, but stub articles can be expanded, whether by spending more time with nomination forms or by using non-nomination sources like county histories. We can do better than stubs, while the higher ratings are more subjective than simply length and tracking them would be much less benefit for the amount of work it would take — that's why I've asked for us to track better-than-stub articles. Nyttend (talk) 18:32, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
(In reply to Nyttend) As to the Dabney-Green House, yes this nomination form was submitted with an MPS form, but nowhere in the MRA document is the house even mentioned other than in the list of properties being considered for listing on the register. The only information about the house I can find is what is in that nomination document.
The reason it is named "Dabney-Green" is because, according to the nomination form, it is the former resident of former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi John Milton Dabney. The "Green" part is simply added on because the owner of the house at the time of nomination, 1979, was Hilda Woodward Green, someone who as far as I can tell is not notable in the slightest. It's even tough to find any information about the former mayor Dabney. The only thing I've been able to find about him (and that was from a printed book, mind you.. not online) was that he served one term from 1917–1921 during WWI. Nothing about his accomplishments or anything that would make him notable beyond his title. There is literally nothing out there about this structure that would warrant an article.
The same goes for the Porter-Crawford House, which was recently created by Doncram, although I would tag it as one of those "sub-stubs" we've been talking about above. In its nomination form, it lists the current (i.e. 1979) owner as Dr. M. Crawford, and it doesn't even include the name "Porter" in it. There is seriously no way one could write an informative, better-than-sub-stub article with this kind of sourcing.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Photos

On the sucky photos theme: I have observed lots of photos in various states where it is pretty clear that the pic was a "drive-by", where the photographer didn't bother to get out of the car to take a better pic. And many taken in poor light, probably at dusk, where they likely were trying to complete out the pics in a county. And many of replacement buildings or empty lots where there was a listed building that has been demolished. These are all sucky in different ways. We oughta have a way to mark them as sucky. :) Okay, that is meant as sarcasm, i don't really want to add a photo rating scheme and give them derogatory labels. But actually on the last type, I do believe that photos of a vacant lot or a replacement building really should not "count", should not be included in the NRHP list-articles. I rather think they can/should be included in an article about the NRHP place, but not included in its NRHP infobox, and that we indicate that we want a proper photo of the historic building by showing a blank in the infobox and in the list-article. And, I actually really do think that photo quality is an issue of concern. --doncram 23:14, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

My opinion is that the photos of empty lots and replacement buildings definitely should not be in the lists. On the other hand, drive-by photos and photos at dusk, if they clearly identify the building, and if there are no other photos available - why not? We should just need to accept that if a photo in the list in of an inferior quality, it can eventually be replaced by a better photo. For example, last March I was in Dublin, NH, where I went on purpose to take missing photos. For a number of reason, I took my last photos at dusk (in my opinion, they are still of acceptable quality, but day photos could be better). I added them to the lists, since I was not sure that any other Wikipedian in the next 15 years would get to Dublin, NH, which is in the middle of nowhere to take the pictures. As a matter of fact, User:Magicpiano did it the same year and replaced a couple of my articles with theirs, which was perfectly fine with me.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:50, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
I have to differ with Doncram and Ymblanter on this. I agree that in the case of a demolished property, it'd be better to use an old photo or drawing than a shot of the vacant lot or the Applebee's currently on the site. However, such a shot definitely illustrates the site. As Doncram points out, it'd be used in an article of any length, which would presumably cover the removal of the historic structure. In the case of a building that's still listed despite being demolished, it serves to document the fact of the building's absence; in fact, it may be the only such documentation we can get, if we can't find media coverage of the demolition. Including it also warns photographers that there's nothing to shoot on the site today, which could save them wasted trips and allow them to focus their efforts in more useful places. I'd say: use such photos, but try to replace them with something that actually depicts the historic structure, just as we'd use a poor-quality photo of an existing structure until we could replace it with a better one. Ammodramus (talk) 12:04, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
I have to agree with Ammodramus on this one (sorry, Ammo). The pix of empty lots may be some of our most valuable photos because they do 4 things:
  • lets our readers know that the building is no longer there (the NRHP does a terrible job of this)
  • lets photographers know not to waste time trying to snap them
  • lets "archivists" know that we're looking for old pix of the site
  • lets the NRHP and SHPOs know that they should remove the listing for the site.
Done right - and I think most people take incredible care in photographing these empty lots - these are also some of the most difficult photos to take. Given the inaccuracy of some of the coords a long search through the neighborhood, the nomination, and the internet is usually needed. A couple of examples: Jayne Estate Building was extremely difficult to find because streets had been rerouted due to the construction of a new boulevard, and ramps for 2 interstates and a bridge, resulting in 3 "pocket neighborhoods" that had to be searched. The building was listed in 1987, demolished soon after, and delisted several months after I posted the photo. The Jewel Tea Company building in Lake County, Illinois was almost as frustrating. It was clearly somewhere in a 55-acre park consisting mostly of clumps of trees and big empty lawns. Turns out it was listed in 2003(?) during a break in the demolition, and somebody on Flickr managed to post a photo and give the full story. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:45, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
I wonder if there's need for a placeholder image, like Address Restricted.PNG, for properties that are demolished but not yet delisted. Just something that says "Believed demolished" or "Not at location" or "Demolished, archival photo needed." I agree that something in the image column will help alert other editors not to waste their time on that property. However if I casually see an image of a vacant lot, I might assume some building in the background is the intended subject, and instead prioritize that as a property in particular need of a better photo.-McGhiever (talk) 16:42, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
There's something to this proposal (even if I'm very proud of my photos of empty lots). FWIW you shouldn't use the word "placeholder" on this page! The x-image proposal does all the 4 things I mentioned above, perhaps in a better way than the empty-lot photos. But perhaps not. The counter arguments will be that it uglifies the page (well, let's see it first) and that appropriately detailed text like "Believed demolished, archival photo needed" would be especially ugly or unreadable. Maybe "See comment" and then put the above text in the comment column. Obviously a discussion needed. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:10, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
I'd put moved-or-demolished information in the "Summary" cell: with a citation if we've got a source for the building's fate; otherwise, a statement like "Apparently no longer extant: see photo".
I'll add a use for a vacant-lot photo that's not included on Smallbones's list: it provides a pointer from the list article to the Commons category for that and any other photos taken at the vacant site. This is particularly useful when a site's official NRHP name isn't very specific (e.g. "Bridge"), and the Commons category has to have a more specific name. In such a case, it might not be easy for an editor working on an article to find the photo(s) at Commons. An archival-photo-needed graphic analogous to the AR graphic wouldn't be much help to an editor looking for an illustration. Ammodramus (talk) 19:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
What type of readers are envisioned, who want multiple pics of an empty lot? It's hard to imagine readers to serve this way. If the point is to serve editors / potential photo contributors, that seems like a non-encyclopedic, Talk-page like function that perhaps we shouldn't cater to, very much, in mainspace. Anyhow, one photo of the vacant lot can/should be included in the article for the site, and can be found that way. I think we can/should begin to plan on photographers having smartphone access to the information, and a photographer would properly be alerted to all the available info by an article. Any photographer would naturally be looking up what is the info about a site, in its article.
This version of Jayne Estate Building, edited just now puts its nice photo of a vacant lot as I would prefer, outside the NRHP infobox, and with clear caption about it being a vacant lot. A key visual clue is that there is no pic in the infobox; an archival pic is wanted, implicitly. That edit is my suggestion for the J E Building which I'm gonna revert right now and let Smallbones or anyone else choose to accept it, or not. --doncram 19:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
I'll accept the Jayne Estate Building for now. Doncram may have a useful convention there, but I'd think it all depends on how it appears on Mobile - does it confuse things over there? Anybody should fell free to revert my reversion of Doncram's self-reversion. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I think "Apparently no longer extant: see photo" in the description cell is a fine solution. I withdraw my placeholder image suggestion (and humbly request that someone PM me about why that word is verboten). -McGhiever (talk) 22:04, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
How many bars?
Sorry, Doncram—I must've expressed myself poorly. My point re. Commons was that if we've only got post-demolition photos of a site, and if we don't put one in the list article, then editors interested in writing an article on the site might not be aware that we've got photos at all. It was actually a talk-page conversation with you that made me realize that not all WP editors were as familiar with Commons as those of us who regularly upload photos there: see this diff and its context, in particular: "IMO your work is not findable, is not really available, from just being in commons; it needs to be linked from a wikipedia article."
I'm not suggesting that multiple vacant-lot images should be incorporated into an article. However, it's better for an editor to have a choice of photos. Multiple images are also more likely to include different backgrounds, which might matter in verifying that the Applebee's in the photo is actually on the site once occupied by the Smith-Jones Building.
I get along very nicely without a smartphone, and suspect that I wouldn't get coverage in some of the places where I go searching for NRHP sites. Beside, I enjoy my solitary photographic expeditions, and don't really want the NSA for company... Ammodramus (talk) 23:32, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Could t6here please be a better descriptor for a photo than sucky please? There are times when, I must gree, ANY photo of a place is better than none. How about Jenkinjones WV buildings?? The photo is OK, but look at the buildings. They are heavily mistreated. Now how about a great photo of them , in their prime etc etc? Well, I could MAYBE get a few people to let go of a copyright and get a dated pic, that is NOT the current reality. OR, I could just let them get bulldozed, OR I could not do anything and show up at the spot have locals tell me its gone and OF COURSE there is nothing in Wiki to let me know. I am sensing a bit of sucky, great, better, worse here and that really is a 100% way to drive away efforts on a volunteer project. If I want drama and self important criticism, I can just go to work and get paid for it. Also the places I go to are remote and I would be stunned to see 10 people, much less hundreds flocking in with great cameras and nothing but time. I drove 400 miles to get the shot, dont like it? Get one yourselfCoal town guy (talk) 01:37, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
Really nice Jenkinjones, West Virginia photo by CTG; is this really yours? why is it in B&W, i do like the effect

CTG, I am sorry that you are seeing all this. It is not really my position that photos should be rated "sucky" or other ratings. My suggesting that, sarcastically, above, is like a "counter-attack" in response to various calls to classify articles as "sub-stubs", similar to classifying editors as "subhumans". It happens that at least some of the NRHP commentators who most criticize article contributions focus on contributing photos, instead. That's okay, but it is hypocritical for them to rant on and forever about articles they want to stop, when the same arguments could be applied to photos they want to keep contributing. I did say, above, several times, that I did not really want to rate photos as "sucky". It was to make a point. And there is some agreement, above and elsewhere, about the point made. The main conclusion that everyone should take, is that it sucks for everyone, if some persons are going on and on forever about how they want to set a quality standard and be King Of Wikipedia and punish persons they don't like, etc. etc.

I am sorry that various other editors have come and seen the contention here, and have gone away, too, or that they were harassed even more directly by being followed and criticized and then have gone away. CoalTownGuy, I appreciate the contributions you are making, including in this conversation and in dicussion further below. I hope you won't be driven away, too. Sincerely, --doncram 03:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Its not a huge deal at first glance but soome locations offer very very little to capture. As a noteI chose B&W in the pic because IMO, it captures what was and shows what is within the scope of that specific location. That small remote place has mined well over 6 million tons of coal and was at one time, a very very developed town, theaters, schools, reident halls, multiple churches, gas stations etc etc. Now, its only because of old maps and SLOOOOOOW driving a person can see anythingCoal town guy (talk) 14:32, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

shorter is better

Well, obviously a great pic helps. Note that in List of RHPs in Saipan, the pic is dark and sucks; giving it space to breathe in a short article makes all the diff.

Suicide Cliff, new NRHP article, would be rated poorly by the automaton-evaluation system at wp:NRHP's new Articles announcement site, wp:NRHP#Articles. No offense meant at all to editor Daniel Case, author of the one recently created article listed there, Knickerbocker and Arnink Garages, but really, don't we want, as a group, to ensure some coverage of everything in order to ensure that really important places are covered, and isn't shorter coverage really better? I am sure that the new Suicide Cliff article could be improved, including by proper linking to Battle of Saipan, but in just a few minutes it is already good, if i do say so myself. It is good for it to be linked from the Battle of Saipan article, as I did link just now, to communicate appropriately that the U.S. has officially honored/recognized the site. It is good that the article is short. It is good that it is not merged into the Battle of Saipan article, in order merely to "get more visibility". I think in this wikiproject that the fringe views of some weirdly-anti-NRHP people have had too much sway. Do let's go forward and get some coverage of everything, sooner rather than later. And then, do let's develop some editorial courage and reduce down the sometimes-excessive, beyond-encyclopedic treatment of some relatively unimportant topics that happen to be NRHP-listed. And, the new articles announcement system is stupid, frankly, capturing a tiny fraction of new, great coverage by numerous NRHP contributors. :) --doncram 01:29, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the Suicide Cliff article is better than a lot of the stuff that comes out of this project, but that isn't something to celebrate. If anything we should be dismayed that an article less than 2000 bytes long (including the infobox, mind you.. the prose is only 695 bytes long) is considered "decent" by our project's standards. Should we seriously settle for this kind of mediocrity?
As to the title of this section, I wholeheartedly disagree, and if the entire encyclopedia felt that "shorter is better", Wikipedia would not have become the massive library of well-documented knowledge it is today. Are you seriously suggesting that less information about a site leaves the reader more informed?! I've always wondered how/why you've been ok with settling for mediocrity rather than the best effort you could give, Doncram, but from your comment here suggesting that we should actively reduce the size of articles, I fully understand now why you've been at the heart of so much trouble in this project and in the encyclopedia as a whole.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:22, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
FA is better than GA, which is better than average, which is better than a stub, which is better than a redlink. It's surprising that this principle is controversial.--GrapedApe (talk) 02:26, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
I believe the word we are striving for is concise as opposed to shorter. Albeit, concise data tends to be brief. I am new to the NRHP process and documents. However, as far as I am able to see, IF and I stress IF the language is sparse BUT informative, thats just fine. HOWEVER, to state oh, it should be shorter for all articles in general, possibly not the best statement. As to what is or is not important on the NRHP, I cant see a set of criteria that anyone on Wikipedia should use. My experience has been that while yes, small articles can be a great start, they do need to grow.Coal town guy (talk) 03:36, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
The original argument here just seems odd, and somewhat contradictory, to me. While I have absolutely nothing wrong with starting short articles as long as they're substantive (to say otherwise would be hypocritical), how is there anything wrong with writing longer articles to add more content? The argument seems to imply that on the one hand, every NRHP-listed site is notable and deserves coverage, but on the other hand, some of them aren't notable enough to deserve more than a paragraph or two of coverage. While I mostly agree with the first point, the second point seems contrary to the goal of writing a good encyclopedia. If a topic is notable enough for its own article, why not write the most comprehensive article that we can on the topic? The work of editors who write longer articles is absolutely to be commended.
As for the rating system itself, the only thing off about it is that it's missing most of the NRHP-related articles that get written. Though since most of those are shorter articles (many of them my own) that wouldn't rate above 1 dot anyway, that may not be a huge loss. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:18, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
The original argument here contains continued attacks on other people, which Doncram is banned from making. The article referenced in the original argument had gaping holes: no live categories (but a nonexistent one), a nonexistent stub template, and an unhelpful overemphasis on the NR designation to the exclusion of information that's relevant on the site. TheCatalyst hits the nail on the head — this is a good example of why our project has rightly gotten the derision of nonmembers. Nyttend (talk) 04:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
There are some fantastic points here that are positive from Doncram, Catalyst and Nyytend, as a "newish" editor here, and as a person who creates populations of geostubs, there has to be a line drawn. Example, to be utterly frank, some of the more rural or remoe locations I document are yes, there is a NRHP there. Of course. However, it is also true from my limited experience (just over a year now) that these small articles do grow. Not fast, not quick, BUT they do grow. The idea of having a grading standard, meaning, oh this place is better than or more notable than this place, does not sit well. BECAUSE, human behavior dictates, oh, its not notable or important, yawn, and the topic becomes a red headed step child. I am not in any way finger pointing or beijng negative, its just my limited experience speaking here. UNLESS there is some official statement telling me, hey CTG, these small places in rural location are yawnsville and nobodu gives a dried rats behind aboutr them and oh yes, dont documet them, I will continue to do so. The idea, IMO, that a place is on the NRHP is in my mind, somewhat notable. UNLESS I have missed a train and I hope someone here gives me the clue I seem to be missing. Otherwise, long articles or short ones, must in some way impart information. The entire quality versius quantity arguments, DO NOT apply here as far as I am reading. I also must state that the perception of oh, here is whats wrong with Wikipedia due to a specific editor speaking their mind, is at best troubling. Reagardless of agreement or disagreement, every editor has a contribution to make Coal town guy (talk) 12:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Yes, short articles do grow. No one is arguing that they don't.
Like Nyttend, I perceive that Doncram's comment was intended primarily as an attack on certain other users, including Nyttend and me (I know he includes me when he refers to "weirdly-anti-NRHP people"). I also see it as an invitation for other users to chime in to stroke his ego by saying nice things about Doncram and consoling him about things like his experience at Arbcom. I specifically detected a jab at me in reaction to my comment on this page regarding Port Gibson Battlefield and Battle Site. As personal attacks go, this (like the comment earlier on this page regarding "arguably nasty bullying treatment over recent years") is pretty small potatoes, so I didn't comment on it at first. However, just as experience indicates that short articles often grow over time, experience shows that misbehavior often escalates if minor incidents are ignored. For Doncram's sake, I hope the outbursts stop here. --Orlady (talk) 14:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Concur. I would however ask that as I create these types of articles, (which I will lets face it, WV and KY have a pile of these) I hope that it is understaood that my desire will be to create an article,and hope it does grow. I am thus far very appreciative of the help I have receivedCoal town guy (talk) 15:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
One has to be careful if one is creating "sub-stubs" because of the potential introduce egregious errors if one does not bother doing a little research on subject they are creating an article for. I just corrected and expanded upon Japanese Lighthouse (Garapan, Saipan); the title and map indicated a lighthouse in the Northern Mariana Islands, however everything else (references, infobox) pointed towards another lighthouse hundreds of miles away in the Federated States of Micronesia. Whereby before it was contradictory and incorrect, now it should be possible to get a DYK out of it. Though I sort of enjoy finding stubs like that (and with a neat photo) because I work on subjects I normally wouldn't. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 17:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Morbid curiosity; was the data for the listing correct at the HP site? OR was it just a user error?Coal town guy (talk) 18:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Most curious, the nomination form has the following coordinates 15° 12' 48
LONG! TUDE
Degrees Minutes Seconds
145o 43 58Coal town guy (talk) 18:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Had to be user error, both NRHP listings are correct. If you're asking why the coordinates are different in the article than the nomination form; I physically located the structure on satellite images and updated the coordinates (most coordinates in nomination form were calculated without the benefit of GPS and, thus, not as accurate). Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 19:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, Niagara. Yep, it's apparent that i used the wrong NRIS info for creating the Japanese Lighthouse (Garapan, Saipan) article, hence got to the wrong NRHP document. I did not consider there were two identically named NRHP listings as I worked. The pics accompanying the NRHP doc seemed consistent with the Klotz pic of the Garapan lighthouse, contributing to my not seeing any problem at all. All coordinates from Elkman's system in Micronesia, Guam, etc. seem completely off, by the way, so i have learned to use coordinates in the NRHP list-articles, instead; there is effectively no warning value information in the coordinates being bad. Have moved the info about the Micronesia one to to Japanese Lighthouse (Poluwat, Federated States of Micronesia) (if still a redlink, has not yet been moved to mainspace). I am only very mildly embarrassed not to have noticed the potential for error here. I myself apparently tried to head off error, by my creating or revising the Japanese Lighthouse (disambiguation) page some time ago (which I had long forgotten). But this kind of confusion on sources is gonna happen from time to time. And IMHO the best solution is to start all the articles sooner rather than later, with sources as usual. --doncram 19:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Sadie Thompson movie promo, not by Klotz, assoc. with NRHP-listed Sadie Thompson Building, Pago Pago
If you don't mind, I might work on this one before it is moved to the mainspace. Also the article title (if we consistently follow the "City, State" precendent) should be Japanese Lighthouse (Poluwat, Chuuk). Chuuk is a state of the Federated States of Micronesia. Now the question is...does KLOTZ have a photo? ;-) Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 20:02, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Seems not, but Klotz does have a 2007 pic of Sadie Thompson Building in Pago Pago. That and Mataguac Hill Command Post, in Guam, are a couple more examples of NRHPs that turn out to be more obviously significant than run-of-the-mill ones, apparent once their articles are started. Thanks for developing the Poluwat lighthouse article, too. :) --doncram 19:14, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I am in occasional email contact with User:KLOTZ and asked him if had a photo of the Japanese Lighthouse (Poluwat, Chuuk) - he did not. By the way, using a reductio ad absurdum argument, if shorter is always better, then no article would be best of all, and stubs are better than GAs, which are better than FAs. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 01:38, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh well...that lighthouse would be neat to visit, though. The length of Sadie Thompson and Mataguac Hill are good for stubs, long enough to establish, beyond a doubt, notability, but short enough to pique someone's interest (and hopefully encourage an expansion). Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 02:10, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
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