Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 48

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 45

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Archive 47

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Another broken infobox

Just like the Bayport Aerodrome, the infobox for Slidell (Amtrak station) is broken. Could somebody fix this? ----DanTD (talk) 00:50, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Fixed Slidell (easy, there's paremeter for that). Haven't a clue as to how to fix the airport (new parameter needed?). Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 01:20, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Niagara.... remember this?. That's the root of the problem. The solutions are 1) increase the colspan of the NRHP infobox again, or 2) add an |nrhp= parameter to {{Infobox airport}}.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:29, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Damn... If the people at WP:AVIATION go along with it, I'm all for adding the parameter, although I'm starting to question the purpose for embedding the NRHP infobox. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 01:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Importance Ratings

Relating to the new importance ratings hashed out above, I'm looking for some guidance as to the rating of the Black Moshannon State Park article, a featured article under our scope. I have rated it Related-importance because of the fact that the park itself is not actually on the register. There are three districts within the boundaries of the park that are listed (I rated the districts article Low-importance), but the park as a whole is not actually on the register.

Another example of the same type is the Hanford Site. The Hanford B Reactor on the site is an NHL, and there are 2 districts (neither of which have articles) in the site that are listed as well. The site as a whole, though is not on the NRHP itself. I rated this one related as well.

Do others agree with my rating? Disagree? Should this be how we handle all cases like these when articles cover a broader scope than just the NRHP listing (so long as there is an actual article about the listing itself)? I think it's pretty obvious that we should rate articles about something narrower than an NRHP listing (i.e. contributing properties) Related-importance, but we haven't really mentioned/though about a case when the article is broader than the NRHP listing.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:36, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Some Federal government agencies are very reluctant to nominate their properties for the NRHP. I can't explain that. Under federal regulations, any federally owned property that is National Register-eligible is subject to essentially the same restrictions as a listed property would be. However, I imagine there is more visibility of -- and thus public objections to the demolition of -- a listed property than to a mere eligible property. --Orlady (talk) 01:03, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

The Black Moshannon and Hanford importance ratings seem fine to me, but i would defer to Ruhrfisch or any other involved editor. In the Hanford Site case, i had developed a very little bit about the 2 NRHP-listed archeological sites it includes, at the time of an early peer review for it, only to have that wiped out by the main editor, as i recall. I don't disagree terribly with the editorial decision, but it just underlines that the editing of a bigger article is often not going to much involve NRHP stuff, which is clearly secondary. It seems appropriate for WikiProject NRHP to rate importance very low, like "Related", for articles where NRHP-related information is so clearly minor.

Also, I rated Chaco Culture National Historical Park top-importance. It's a World Heritage Site, NHL, and also has some other NPS designations. Would this qualify as "truly exceptional importance?"--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:47, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd just rate that one High for NRHP, like other NHLs. It's for discussion over at WikiProject Historic sites, perhaps, but i would rate it High for wp:HSITES too along with all other World Heritage Sites. When HSITES started up i wasn't myself into the idea of attaching importance ratings, but now i would be for that. Chaco can't be Top importance for NRHP though, IMO; it is not incredibly more important than many other NHLs for U.S. history; it is certainly less known to most Americans than many other NHLs. (Aside: I do think we could/should begin to mention the handful of World Heritage Sites in the U.S. in our highest-level NRHP list-articles about historic sites in each state, i.e. in our articles now labelled "National Historic Landmarks in STATE", but that's perhaps for another discussion.) I don't currently think we can choose a Top Ten list, or any other very short list of most-important NRHP sites; i'd use Top for just the articles about National Register itself and the other articles linked from many hundreds of our other NRHP articles. --Doncram (talk) 01:33, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Idk, I think something with enough status to become a World Heritage Site would be extremely important. According to the List of World Heritage Sites in the Americas, there are only 21 WHS's in the entire country. I think that's a pretty small set, and I think any NRHP listing that is also a WHS should be top importance. I haven't looked at all of them, but even if all 21 are listed on the NRHP, that's still not that many articles in top-importance.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:05, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, not even wp:HSITES gives Chaco or other WHSs a high rating. Fix importance ratings for wp:HSITES, first! Many of the other WHS items are natural places, not historic places, by the way.

And U.S. readers would be more interested in history of Chrysler Building, Woolworth Building, Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, Flatiron Building, R. H. Macy and Company Store, and several other NHLs out of List of NHLs in NYC alone, and presumably many more in other NHL lists. So, i personally don't think Chaco should be given standout importance for wp:NRHP. --Doncram (talk) 17:41, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

So you proclaim to know exactly what US readers are interested in, oh mighty omniscient one? Haha no, but in all seriousness, one person's interests aren't the same as another's. Just because you may be interested in the Chrysler Building doesn't mean that Tom next door is. He may like Chaco; he may have never heard of Chaco; he may see that it is internationally recognized as one of the most important sites in the world and want to learn about it, thus expanding his cultural knowledge. I don't see a WHS stamp on the Chrysler Building, so obviously UNESCO didn't think it was as important as Chaco.. I, personally, would think they have a better idea of what is and is not historic or notable than you do.

The point still stands that there are only a few of these sites in the entire country (orders of magnitude fewer than there are NHLs), and as you point out, not all of them are even listed on the NRHP. I think because of their rarity, any WHS that is also listed on the NRHP should be considered to have extremely exceptional importance. The fact that WP:HSITES hasn't focused on rating these articles doesn't mean we shouldn't; this discussion is about this project and this project alone. HSITES could give this a No-importance rating for all we care, and that wouldn't change our rating system.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, how should we handle former NHLs? I would imagine we would rate NHLs that have been delisted completely (i.e. no longer on NRHP either) as Related, but should NHLs that have been delisted but remain on the NRHP still just be low? Perhaps we should up these to Mid?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:26, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Presumably, former NHLs have been removed from the list because they've been substantially altered or completely demolished. In my opinion, IF the thought is that sites should be rated as a function of their historic importance, then former NHLs should be rated "high" like current NHLs--demolition does not affect historic importance, much like George Washington is still historically important despite being completely dead. However, IF the thought is that sites should be rated as a function of how likely readers are to look up the article, I would feel that mid-importance is the right target for a former NHL, with the caveat that regional editors who are aware of the site's relative importance should be free to rate it high or low (rather than mid) as appropriate. Andrew Jameson (talk) 13:10, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

And a couple comments

Comment 1: Would it be possible to get a bot to tag articles with default importance ratings? Seems like 80%-90% of regular NRHP properties should be "low", and 80%-90% of NHLs should be "high", so tagging everything as such just leaces the remaining 10%-20% for human editors to clean up. If done, I would suggest adding a talk-page note to the effect of "This article had no importance rating assigned for WikiProject:National Register of Historic Places and so has been auto-tagged as low importance by XX-bot. The article may, however, be of higher importance; see the NRHP importance scale for rating guidelines."

Comment 2: And about that the NRHP importance scale. I'd like to see a verbal description of what differentiates low-, mid-, or high-importance properties. For example, something like:

Most NRHP-listed sites are of low importance. However, as a rule of thumb, 10%-15% of sites in a state or region should be rated at higher importance. These sites could include:

structures or locations associated with a particularly important local historical event
structures or locations associated with a particularly well-known person or organization
structures which are the best or most influential work by a well-known architect
structures that are particularly representative of a certain architectural style
structures or locations that possess some locally unique trait (for example, the oldest building in a large city)
historic districts which include a number of individually significant structures
structures or locations that are relatively well-known, whose articles are likely to be more widely read

Nearly all of these sites should be rated mid-importance. However, a very few exceptional sites may merit a high-importance rating. Please propose these exceptions on the talk page at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places.

Or something like that. Comments? Andrew Jameson (talk) 13:39, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

About Comment 1, Bot edits could be marked as such, and hence not show up in all of our watchlists. I don't support adding any other Talk page note; the bot should just insert "importance=Low" (or possibly "importance=High" if it can be detected that a place is an NHL). This importance rating stuff is not that important! And, it is not easy to get any botrequest considered. I could use help now maybe in the NRIS reference related bot request, by the way.

Bottomline: What we need, mainly, is for Dudemanfellabra to get himself to bot school. !!! --Doncram (talk) 16:50, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

About Andrew Jameson's Comment 2, i would prefer for a lower percentage guidance to be given, but otherwise that's good i think. --Doncram (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I've added the above disclaimer to the importance scale now. About the bot run, I think we can manage doing it by hand to tell you the truth. I went through all the FAs yesterday and plan to go through all the GAs today. If a bot goes through and rates everything low, it will be harder to root out and determine which sites need to be mid importance. If we do end up going with a bot, however, I would support the talk page note.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:37, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Where did you do that? I thot Andrew Jameson was asking for statement to be added to the NRHP importance scale, and i don't see it there. --Doncram (talk) 18:41, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

It's definitely there. It's in a {{hidden}} template right under the state/local qualifier in the mid-importance level. It says "Click [show] for more information.".--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:55, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Can we please take care to discuss any removals of wp:NRHP banner, because removing it cuts off all connection (while changing an importance rating does not). I had added wp:NRHP banner to Talk:National Trust for Historic Preservation with importance rating High, and noticed it being removed altogether. I restored it, as the National Trust owns or has a lot to do with many important NRHP-listed places, just as certain architects have association with many NRHP places. I had chosen High rather than Top as my best judgement of importance; am open to that being different, but the NRHP banner is appropriate to keep. --Doncram (talk) 18:41, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I removed it because I saw that it was you that had put it there in the first place, and I know you watchlist all the pages you edit. That's why my edit summary was a question: "the nhtp (sic) has nothing to do with the nrhp, does it? remove banner". I figured that you would either object or somehow answer my question like on my talk page. If you hadn't replied in a few days, I was going to bring it up here or on your talk page to ask about it.

Like i said below, n.p. BTW, I usually do have default set to add pages i edit to my watchlist. But i also drop pages from my watchlist and sometimes it wasn't set to add automatically. I do try to watch all NRHP disambiguation pages, though. I think that's the only complete category or type that i try to watch all of (i don't watch all NHLs or all of any geographic area). --Doncram (talk) 22:05, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

As to the article itself, I just don't really think it should be under the project's scope. The NTHP, though yes it has ownership of or other connections to many sites on the National Register, is not affiliated with the register itself. There are sites on the NTHP that are not on the NRHP (first example on the list is Carpenter Theater; probably others too), and there are of course sites on the NRHP that aren't on the NTHP. The NTHP is a completely separate organization. Just because some of the buildings/places on the NTHP register are also listed on the NRHP doesn't mean that the NTHP article should be under our scope. That's like saying well, some NRHP listings are also Mississippi Landmarks, so the MS Landmarks article should be under our scope as well. Or Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments. Or New York State Historic Sites. They are all separate registers that have little to no affiliation with the NRHP. Because of that, the banner should be removed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:55, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Could the NTHP be rated related-importance? I'm a bit fuzzy on what that rating covers, but this seems applicable. Or am I way off base? More than usual, that is. :) --Ebyabe (talk) 19:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, n.p. about changing the banner before, D. E, I am fuzzy on that too, but thot it was meant for really not-important-for-us stuff, like many delisted places and nominated-but-not-yet-or-never-listed places. NTHP is important; it is like the predecessor of the NRHP program; it runs the America's 11 Most Endangered Places program which covers more NRHP places; i am guesstimating that 25 or more of the 29 places it operates are NRHP-listed, a high proportion of which are NHLs; it is highly associated with NRHP. I think it is like an architect who has designed many places listed on the NRHP, but more so, as it is about historic preservation and is the owner and influential politically. It's an article that should be linked from a good number of regular NRHP articles and should be discussed in the history of the NRHP program itself. I am guessing it was involved in the founding of the NRHP program. Since it is not directly part of the NRHP, that's why i rated it High rather than Top, as one step down. I see that the Los Angeles program started in 1962, not sure about Mississippi Landmarks started, but those are clearly lower level local or state programs. The NTHP is higher level in several senses: it started sooner than NRHP, it went to protect at a strong level (ownership, operation as historic sites) some of the very best/most important sites that could be purchased/saved/preserved. It's like an honor roll, like NPS's NHS, NHP, and historic NMON sites. So that's why i think it should be High. I wouldn't mind Mid tho; clearly above Low though. Again this importance ratings stuff is not that important.... :) --Doncram (talk) 20:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Im getting here kinda late but if you want I can tag them quite easily. --Kumioko (talk) 20:56, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I still think the NTHP is a different register, but I can see the angle you're coming from. In fact, one of the items on the list showing what high-importance is says "A few exceptions to be discussed at wt:NRHP". Apparently the NTHP will be one of them? haha. As to related-importance, I think of it as meaning "related to the register, though not actually affiliated with or listed on it." Thus contributing properties, delisted ones, and non-prolific architects/styles would be there. I also think some lists like List of plantations in the United States, which I saw Doncram edited earlier, that don't specifically focus on NRHP sites, but may include a large number of them on the list should be related as well.

About the bot, I still think right now we can go through by hand. I have already gone through and checked all the FAs and GAs, and I've seen several people tagging NHLs en masse. I also went through and tagged all the state lists of NHLs as high (will do NRHP state lists later today), and I can go through and tag all county lists by hand as well. After that I plan on going through C-class articles and then B. I think by the time I get to the 24K+ stubs, though, I won't really be able to do all that by hand.. I still think, though, that if everyone went through their respective lists (as I have done to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Lauderdale County, Mississippi) and assess them manually that we would be more satisfied with the ratings. Bots are always good, but for things like the mid- and related-importance ratings, a human editor really needs to review them. If they are grouped in with all the low-importance articles, they will be harder to weed out, but going through the "____-Class articles of Unknown-importance" allows individual ratings for each article. Yes, it may take a long time, but we'll finish eventually. There's no rush.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:11, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Although I can see your argument with tagging them by hand I would recommend starting with the higher importance articles and working down. If you know for example that a certain group like the NTHP are always going to be X then I can use AWB to make them that and then move on to the next group. With that said I have had a bot account request pending for some other things since December 23rd so in all likelihood if several editors worked together you could manually tag the majority before the bot request ever came back with approval to do the task. --Kumioko (talk) 21:18, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Kumioko, those guys are doing all the higher ones really fast, lighting up my watchlist which seems to have a huge number of NHLs on it. Later if u could run a bot to attach Low to all the remaining places, but Related/Lowest to the ones that are only contributing properties, that would be great. After the dust settles here! And maybe implementing some other change to NRHP articles or Talk pages at the same time.

Let's not change what "importance=related" means. Importance=related means "Lowest priority", just politely said. Everything is related. Some list-articles like List of Elks buildings and List of plantations in the United States are almost all NRHP-listed places, and get Mid importance rating i think according to what we were planning before. There are other list-articles which have barely any NRHP-listed places, and places with small association with NRHP, that might get importance=Lowest/Related. Don't let the final choice of wording to substitute "Related" for "Lowest" to throw you. Don't let it transform what we think is in fact lowest priority. --Doncram (talk) 21:57, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

No problem just let me know once you get the higher onces done and your ready to do the lower ones and Ill plow through them. Hopefully my bot will be approved by then. --Kumioko (talk) 00:23, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not changing what related importance means.. that's what we agreed on above.. things that are related to the register but not actually on it.. things that aren't very important to us because we're only focusing on the register itself. The list of plantations, though it may include a lot of NRHP listings, is NOT affiliated with the National Register, so it should be Related-importance. It may be high importance for some other project (e.g. WP:HSITES), but not for us. We're only concerned with the National Register of Historic Places.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:25, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Steam locomotive

If a historic steam locomotive is NRHP registered, should its article have {{Infobox NRHP}} or {{Infobox locomotive}}? Two specific cases: (a) Virginia and Truckee RR. Engines No. 18, The Dayton; and No. 22, The Inyo; (b) Virginia and Truckee Railroad No. 27. This follows on from a thread started yesterday at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Locomotives task force#Virginia and Truckee Railroad No. 27. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:40, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

My personal preference would be to use the locomotive infobox as the primary, and embed the nrhp infobox within it using the "embed" parameter (see The General (locomotive) as an example). That's because I think both aspects are important, but what the thing is--in this case a locomotive--takes precedence over a designation. Note that the nrhp infobox is still appropriate, despite the fact that a locomotive is not a "place"--there are multiple locomotives and ships listed on the NRHP despite the fact both are movable objects rather than static "places." Andrew Jameson (talk) 13:43, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm copying Andrew Jameson's comment to the discussion at Wikiproject Trains. That should pretty much answer the request! --Doncram (talk) 14:00, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Hoosiers Rejoice

I've just created five Indiana County NRHP categories this month:

And I've never even been to Indiana. Enjoy, and feel free to fill them up. ----DanTD (talk) 17:05, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

historic preservation in STATE articles

I find myself wanting to attach a High importance rating to Historic preservation in New York, and to want to start comparable articles in other states. As you can see the New York one is not yet a well-referenced article, and not well written yet, but there is some good stuff there. The idea is for it to describe the range of historic preservation programs and activities in the state. Note, the effect of NRHP listing is different across states. Some might not like the current article as sort of being a synthesis or otherwise reflecting original research, but I imagine some good secondary source treatments can be found.

I am sorta embarrassed for us, that we haven't really tackled explaining the advantages and disadvantages of NRHP listing. Doing so requires state-customized treatment. In Arizona NRHP listing gives a property tax or some state-level tax deduction for some number of years. In New York State, according to some measure of town average income or some such criteria, different tax benefits for compatible renovations are available. In Colorado NRHP listing is emphasized as having practically zero effect, not constraining owners' rights to demolish property in any way. In some municipalities in California, NRHP listing will bring in local zoning restrictions, so NHRP listing will be opposed by some owners who want to preserve their free hand to demolish or renovate a historic building. I think this kind of state and local information relating to the NRHP program impact, should perhaps be compiled gradually, in state-specific articles like the New York one. And then these state-level articles could be summarized / linked from the main National Register of Historic Places article. The articles would not solely be about NRHP stuff, but would greatly clarify the role of NRHP among other options, so i think these should be High importance. --Doncram (talk) 20:50, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I use the same argument here as I do for List of plantations in the United States. The article(s) should be Related-importance since they are not actually about the NRHP. They include information about the NRHP, but they are not actually about the register itself. Since they are not articles about sites on the register or about the register itself, they are of the Lowest priority for this project (though you are welcome to still develop them of course), and thus should be our lowest importance level, which is Related-importance.

I would actually like to see a single article about the benefits of NRHP listing in each state, as well as a section on the National Register of Historic Places article – not 50 different new articles, some of which will only have a few sentences because there isn't much to say about it. That single article could be of high importance, but left in its present state, I believe the New York article should be Related-importance.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:18, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Notwithstanding your apparent more fundamental view differences vs. mine, I think partly you're letting our wording choice "Related" be the tail wagging the dog. I think you may be more likely to apply it when it seems descriptive to you (any case where an article covers non-NRHP stuff as well as NRHP), rather than when an article should be Lowest importance to the wikiproject. If we're going to have this difference of view due possibly merely to wording choice in naming the importance category time and again, then i want to revisit the naming choice or stop use of the Related extra category altogether.

You do seem to agree that a single article would be important. We're not going to get to a single article that addresses all the state and local differences of impact of NRHP listing, if we do not encourage and build up from state or other lower level articles. To get the single article that you do want, we need to attach High importance to the building blocks. The fact that the current article has a certain "present state" doesn't lower its importance: we should rate it High which will prompt us to revisit it again and again to check it, and to push us to develop the NRHP information in it so that it will be more clear why it is High importance. Like for the Connecticut NHL articles, where I currently can't explain to others why they should be High importance for Connecticut (because the articles are not yet adequately developed). It's good to have the High rating put in, to push us to bring up the article to explain its High rating. I say use importance ratings to set priorities for where we want articles to get to, not as for where they are now.

And, it seems really important to me in some fundamental way that we hobbyists should be aware of the benefits and drawbacks of NRHP listing, like adequately well to explain to a local building owner who is considering seeking NRHP listing. I think we should better understand why huge swaths of some cities but not others are being designated historic districts, connected to tax subsidies or specific state economic development program tie-ins. Explaining why similar areas that are equally or more meritorious on architecture or history grounds are not being NRHP-listed. If we knew more, it would inform our article writing. And we would be less like dupes or pawns that we are, sometimes, when we naively seek and assert grand meaning for why some crummy places and areas are NRHP-listed. I think the NRHP-listing has to be understood locally, as an option relative to other program options, and the right place to come to a deeper understanding is at the state level. NRHP listing can't be explained to a local building owner if you don't discuss it relative to other options.

I disagree about List of plantations in the United States. It should get Mid or higher rating, as a very useful compendium of many NRHPs, in fact mostly NRHPs. I take umbrage on the part of the editor doing a lot to develop that article! From my experience working on List of Elks buildings and similar lists, i also want to assert that such development pays a lot of other benefits for the wikiproject, in unexpected ways, like my quickly developing out more architectural categories and starting architecture articles because the Elks buildings seemed to need that development. Deeply working on a list-article has more obvious payoffs in the simultaneous, associated development of the associated regular NRHP articles, too. So any list-article like that should be fairly highly rated for importance, IMO.

These discussions are bringing me to agree more with what Blueboar said earlier, and to think the higher importance ratings should be attached to articles that themselves link to, or are linked from, lots of other NRHP-listed articles. The big architects, the architectural styles are linked from a lot of articles. The list of plantations links to a lot of NRHP articles. These are where the NRHP article readers are or will be travelling, in browsing in and out and around. The Chaco Historical park and the Statue of Liberty can be understood as not important because they do not link from or to many other NRHP articles. List of plantations and List of Elks buildings are more important, seriously. I think that's a pretty good rule of thumb: mainly set our priorities to work on the articles that can be expected to get the most NRHP-associated traffic, based on both links inbound from NRHP articles and outbound to NRHP articles. --Doncram (talk) 04:08, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to hear someone else's opinion. It's obvious that we two don't agree (as usual); would anyone else like to join in?

As far as replying goes:

There is no reason to rate an article's importance based on its present state (that's what quality assessment is for), but just the same, there is no reason to rate an article's importance based on what we want it to be in the future. We should rate an article's importance based on how important the article is to this project. Before we discuss that, though, we must get a grip on what exactly this project covers. As far as I can tell, the front page of this project says that "[w]e are a group dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of listings on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places." That seems pretty cut and dry to me. We are supposed to be focusing on sites that are actually on – and lists that are actually about – the National Register. Any list that is not something like "National Register of Historic Places listings in X" or "National Historic Landmarks in Y" should not be of great importance to this project. They may be of great – even utmost – importance to you, but as far as this project is concerned, they are largely irrelevant. Like I feared above when we were hashing out what the importance levels would mean, it seems that you are assessing articles' importances based on how important you feel the subjects are. That is not how this works. Maybe you should start a WikiProject Doncram? Then you could rate importances of whatever you'd like, and no one would care in the least. This project is not WikiProject Doncram, though; it is WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. We talk about the NRHP here – not what Doncram likes or what Dudemanfellabra likes or Elkman or Ebyabe or anyone else. If a topic is important to the understanding of the register, it should receive a higher importance.

That said, the list of plantations is not affiliated with the NRHP. Yes, there are many plantations on the NRHP, but we're not talking about a List of plantations on the National Register of Historic Places, are we? We're talking about a list of every single plantation in the United States, including those that aren't on the register. Now granted there is a high degree of overlap in this case (partly because NRHP editors were instrumental in its creation/progression), so it may warrant a related-importance, (Which I very well understand is not because the list is related to the NRHP but because it is of low importance to the NRHP) but as I said, it is not a list of NRHP sites. If you wanted to create the above redlink, then I would be all for giving that article a more-than-related-importance, but because the present list is not expressly tailored to talk about sites on the NRHP, it should not be of very high importance to the NRHP project. Like I said above, it may be of very high importance to you, and you are more than welcome to improve it and other lists even to FL status if you'd like, but your infatuation with it shouldn't force the entire project to be chomping at the bits to improve it; we should be focusing on our county/state lists first and foremost.

About the "Historic preservation in X" articles, they fall under the same category in my opinion. If there were an Effects of National Register of Historic Places listing article with a section for each state (or however is best for logical flow), then that list could most definitely be of a higher importance (maybe even top) to this project, but if the article is also talking about state historic site listing (more than briefly of course) or some other designation, then this project should not be as focused on it. While there very well may need to be 50 individual "Historic preservation in X" lists now to get this wanted NRHP-focused article, that still doesn't suggest that this project should place higher importance on something non-NRHP-related in order to get what we want. Now we as individual editors may wish to do so, but as far as the project itself is concerned, these proposed state articles and other lists discussed above have little to nothing to do with the register itself and should thus be rated no more than related-importance.

Where I think our fundamental difference arises is that you seem to think that the people in this project are tied to only this project. We can edit outside this project as well, you know. We can do things for individual state projects or for WP:HSITES, or any other wikiproject out there if we want to. As far as this wikiproject goes, though, it only focuses on NRHP sites. Anything outside of that domain – though it still may be very important to us, the individual editors – is not of interest to this project. I'm fine with starting up all these state-specific articles and would help out with a MS one (or at least put it on my to do list, which thanks to these importance ratings has suddenly gotten a lot bigger), but I would not support adding that article as an integral part of this project until it was sufficiently focused on NRHP sites. Wikipedia is about more than just project stuff. We can go rogue if we want haha. I shudder to say it, but maybe Sarah Palin actually got something right?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:02, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

In wikipedia i have worn many other hats than wikiproject NRHP, but hey, i like the idea of "Wikiproject doncram". :)

A point of difference here is that Dudemanfellabra is (when wearing his NRHP hat) liking what might be called the "pure" NRHP lists, e.g. List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania and List of U.S. National Historic Landmark ships, shipwrecks, and shipyards and National Register of Historic Places listings at colleges and universities in the United States. I have started and developed in some of those, but those are no longer to my taste. The NRHP information is better used to serve as the backbone within slightly broader list-articles, like what should be "List of historic bridges in Pennsylvania" instead (if not included in a broader List of bridges in Pennsylvania). For an encyclopedia, rather than a too-specialized club of NRHP-only hobbyists, the topics like List of Elks buildings and List of governors' mansions in the United States and List of plantations in the United States (which Altairisfar should be given credit for developing) are better contributions. I rather think the too-NRHP-specific lists should all eventually be converted. The slightly broader ones should get higher importance ratings; the too-specific ones should actually perhaps get lower importance ratings indicating deprecation, to indicate NRHP project level intentions to move away from those (which i understand is not yet consensus). If any editor really wants to create a new too-specific-for-my-tastes list-article i would generally support them doing it, to allow them to do what they want and in general out of wish for development of good material. But i would support more their doing a broader, more encyclopedically useful list instead, and in part we do that by assigning high importance ratings.

Perhaps what should be focussed upon is the quantity of links to and from other NRHP articles; not the fact of any other links, and not too closely focusing on the exact percentage of places covered that are NRHP-listed. Certainly a lot of preserved plantation houses are NRHP-listed and are well linked in a good list-article. I fail to see why mentioning a few non-NRHP-listed preserved plantation houses should disqualify the plantations list article from high rating by this wikiproject.

I'd also like to hear from others. These importance ratings are serving as a good way to bring up priorities. I do hope focusing on what is important going forward will allow us to leave behind some old gripes, and i think this discussion is productive that way, so far. --Doncram (talk) 16:46, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Dudemanfellabra that only what you call the "pure" NRHP lists are really in the scope of this project. I understand and appreciate your desire to encourage the development of more general topics, but this project does NRHP. Ntsimp (talk) 23:13, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Kinda looks like all this is getting carried away. I mean "Sarah Palin has done something right" and "Project Doncram"? But who am I to tell folks not to do something. Personally, I don't think importance is that important. BTW, how about if we put Jack E. Boucher (the article that is) into the project - and it definitely deserves a top rating. Smallbones (talk) 23:49, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Doncram that topics like "Historic preservation in the United States" and "Historic preservation in New York" belong in the scope of this Wikiproject. Furthermore, I think the disagreement on this topic gets to the question of what the purposes of the NRHP and this Wikiproject are. If articles about American architectural styles and architects are going to be considered to be important elements of the project scope, and not merely "related," then articles about historic preservation definitely need to be treated the same way. Last time I looked, the NRHP was primarily about historic preservation -- not that the law that created it is named the National Historic Preservation Act, not the National Architecture Appreciation Act. --Orlady (talk) 01:08, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Several NRHP images are up for deletion

I just noticed that someone submitted several NRHP related images for deletion due to lack of proper justification and thought I would drop a note and let you all know. --Kumioko (talk) 20:54, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Here is a link to one example File:Kilbride clinic.jpg. --Kumioko (talk) 21:18, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

They are in a deletion drive now and are speedily deleting anything that's not absolutely nailed down. I've asked that they put a notice on the article/list talk page, e.g. for a 7 year old photo on the Central Chicago List, but frankly I thought the answer was unsatisfactory - If I can prove that the deleted file had all the proper permissions and copyright notices, then they will bring it back. I probably got my dander up a bit at that response and went to WP:CSD to ask that the rules be changed so that before a photo is speedied (especially old photos) that notifications will be given. No luck. Checking out what is being deleted, I ran into one file that had been uploaded properly with proper copyright info, but the copyright info had been written over and another file uploaded on top of it. Reverting to the original saved that file, but I doubt that folks on the deletion drive are looking closely for this type of thing. The answer I got at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Photos_over_5_years_old was that if you really care that much for a photo, you should have it on your watchlist. They might try to inform the uploader, but they don't guarantee it, and there should be no expectation that there will be a notice on an article talk page. Smallbones (talk) 05:31, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I think the Kilbride Clinic picture doesn't have the correct permission. The original image appears to be from the Minnesota Historical Society web site, and the picture was taken in 1973. Unless Ray.lowry (talk · contribs) actually has some permission that I don't know about, this one might be a correct tag. Nevertheless, Sfan00 IMG (talk · contribs) has been warned about his high-speed speedy deletion tagging of images, and someone opened an RFC about his behavior. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 05:54, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Clarification please: Are these images on Wikipedia, or on Wikimedia Commons? --DThomsen8 (talk) 11:30, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, not Commons. There are problems on many photos uploaded, and I understand the need for deletion drives. Many of the problems can be easily rectified however, e.g. just ask the uploader to make clear that, even though he labeled the photo his own work, that he also intended to put a free license on it, or in some cases just reverting back to the original license that was on it. I don't understand why notifications can't be made, and really dislike having photos disappeared in secret. Smallbones (talk) 14:01, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Even worse is when an image in use is deleted, with no notice to anybody. Yes, we should have notice all the time. I only put up logo images on Wikipedia, and everything else goes on Wikimedia Commons, under user:DavidT8. --DThomsen8 (talk) 17:28, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Template color change?

PLastikspork, an editor who seems to focus on template maintenance, made updates to the format of our various state-specific {{National Register of Historic Places}} navboxes which included reverting from aqua to the boring default blue. Is this something we agreed on? Is there some reason for using the default color? Does anyone here know anything about this? Daniel Case (talk) 02:58, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't recall the discussion. Just change the text color back to aqua, and if he complains, we'll consider his reasons. Bms4880 (talk) 14:30, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually, he said he only did it because half of them were in the default, and he can actually set it up so all of them are automatically the same color. I'll tell him to go ahead. Daniel Case (talk) 15:23, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

new official NRHPs

The page is up, here's the link. --Ebyabe (talk) 16:21, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Courthouse disambiguation

Does anyone know of any discussion besides this one from 2009 about courthouse disambiguation? User:Doncram, who started that discussion by proposing disambiguating with (City, State), a proposal that did not gain consensus support (not even close, to the contrary), is now claiming that disambiguating like that is an accepted convention, and moving articles accordingly[1]. I agree with much of what others said in that discussion. Each case is different. First of all, if the building has an unambiguous name, there should be no disambiguation. And if it is, perhaps the county name, or just the city or just the state name is more than adequate. Why add more unnecessary precision and make the title less concise? In any case, any such moves should go through WP:RM. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:59, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any conversations specifically about courthouses, but I believe what Doncram may be referring to is the section in our NRHP style guide that says to disambiguate article titles with a "(City, State)" term. That is usually how disambiguating NRHP articles is handled. I've seen many NRHP-listed courthouse articles disambiguated with simply a "(State)" term, however. I have also seen, though, two "___ County Courthouse" articles in the same county – two courthouses in two different cities – which were then necessarily disambiguated by a "(City, State)" term. I have actually even seen two county courthouses in the same county and the same city, which required further disambiguation (not sure how that was handled; don't remember the exact case).

I think modifying NRHP naming conventions may be at hand here, based on whatever consensus comes out of this conversation?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:27, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, i'd like that, D.

Born2cycle, please do also see this edit (i think before u wrote here, and to which i think u responded before writing here) and this edit (perhaps after u wrote here) and perhaps other comments about courthouse naming at the city Naming Conventions policy page, which you disregard. B you misrepresent, here, in suggesting that i have been claiming there was a simple consensus in order to get away with something. Thanks Polaron for finding that past archived discussion, which B cites here. The past discussion seems relevant again. I would like, somewhat, to move all the courthouses that are at (State) to (City, State) disambiguation, but it is not that important. It would indeed have helped in avoiding difficulty now, as i predicted back then, if the NRHP naming was simplified to use (City, State) for all articles where that suffices, rather than for all but "COUNTYNAME County Courthouse" ones. Again, to answer your question B, please see what i wrote at the Naming Conventions page from which you visit. --Doncram (talk) 21:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Dudemanfellabra, I would certainly support modifying any convention that encourages such unnecessarily long disambiguations (except where they are necessary, of course). Such a convention is contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of concise titles are preferred and titles should be only as precise as necessary, and practically guarantees strife, disagreement and instability. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:35, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Just to let you know how bizarre this can get, 2 NRHP courthouses 1724 Chester Courthouse, and Chester County Courthouse (Pennsylvania) both served as the courthouse for Chester County, Pennsylvania, even though they are in different counties. The 1st one later served as the county courthouse for Delaware County, PA. Smallbones (talk) 21:40, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

All the more reason to treat each as an individual case just following general guidance at WP:TITLE and WP:D rather than having some kind of one-size-fits-all contrived convention. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:16, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

For many cases involving ambiguous U.S. building names, the parenthetical "city, state" is necessary (because there often is more than one building by that name in a particular state) and for the majority of other cases the rule works very well. This is because it is far easier to insert the "city, state" into every otherwise-ambiguous title than it is to conduct research to determine that (hypothetical example) two notable buildings with a name like "Center Congregational Church" exist in Massachusetts but there is only one in Maine. For county courthouses it would seem fairly obvious that no state should have more than one county with a particular name, and each such county should have no more than one county seat, but that's surprisingly likely not to be true (county seats can change, for example), so it's easiest for all if the seemingly unnecessary city name is included. --Orlady (talk) 22:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC) However, if an existing article name like Carroll County Court House (New Hampshire) has worked fine for several years, there's no good reason to change that name. --Orlady (talk) 22:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"it is far easier to insert the "city, state" into every otherwise-ambiguous title than it is to conduct research to determine...". Okay, this is crucial, folks. Please, listen up. Easy or not, you have to do the research. You can't just just put an article at [Some Building Name (SomeCity, SomeState)] mindlessly. You need to research the question of whether [Some Building Name] has any other uses, to make it a redirect to your article if nothing else, but also to see whether another use is at that name and needs to be moved to make room for a dab page, to see whether you need to add a link to a dab page or a hat note, etc. This research is absolutely necessary and any convention that encourages you to skip it serves as yet another excellent reason to toss that convention. To the extent that you perceive such a convention as saving you from having to do this kind of research, that's bad. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:53, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the premise of Orlady's comment (and of the NRHP naming conventions) was that this only applies when the name is in fact ambiguous. Of course, we don't always tag the city/state qualifier to every single article on the NRHP. When, however, there is more than one NRHP listing or other building with the same name, we use the city/state qualifier because more than likely there is more than one building in that state with that name. See Smith House for many examples. His comment was meaning to point out that there is really no use to create a Smith House (New York) article because – even if it hasn't been discovered yet – there is more than likely another Smith House somewhere in New York.

"(City, State)" works in 99% of the disambiguation cases we come across, so it is included in the guideline as a general rule of thumb. There is a disclaimer saying that this is not always the case (though this may need to be expanded upon, as I suggested above) and that we should always follow site-wide naming conventions, but for the most part (City, State) works best.

For county courthouses, though, I think 99% of the cases can be disambiguated sufficiently by just a "(State)" qualifier, and the (City, State) convention should take a backseat in these cases. In cases like these, we should only have to use the (City, State) convention when it is necessary, as in the cases pointed out above.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:34, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how many Smith Houses there are in New York. But if there is only one, and the practice was to put to be only as precise as necessary, it would be at Smith House (New York), and that would tell us there is only one. But being at, say, Smith House (Albany, New York), would indicate there is more than one Smith House in New York. With the practice of always using the longer title even when it's overprecise, we do not glean this information from our titles. That's one of the problems with using overprecise titles instead of concise ones. In any case, if there is at least one Smith House in New York, there should be something at Smith House (New York). Either the article about the only one in New York (if there is only one), or a redirect to the New York section of Smith House dab page.

So, even for those that require disambiguation, how to disambiguate should be decided on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the other uses of the name. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:44, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather work on improving articles than on conducting research on the number of buildings in New York named "Smith House" (or the number of buildings in Nebraska named "Terminal Building" or the number of buildings in Nevada named "Masonic Temple" -- the list is nearly endless). Not only that, but I believe Wikipedia would derive more benefit from your involvement if you devoted yourself to improving articles, instead of instigating discussions about the ideal names for articles of little consequence. --Orlady (talk) 04:57, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

The importance of importance

Does the high-importance tag mean that we're finally going to pay attention to articles that are incomplete and that need completion? As an example, look at Lucius Q. C. Lamar House, which is an NHL and high priority. It reads, "The Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar House, also known as Lucius Q. C. Lamar House is a site significant for its ..." Its what? The article was started three years ago as a two-sentence stub, and in that time, nobody has ever done enough research to figure out WHY THE HOUSE IS IMPORTANT. Nobody ever checked the NHL summary listing, except for getting a reference for it. A quick two-minute search on the NHL site and on Wikipedia points out that Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (II) drafted the ordinance that brought Mississippi's secession from the United States in the American Civil War. And, the guy had a distinguished political career after Reconstruction.

Dudemanfellabra noted above that this project is about the NRHP, not what Doncram likes, what Dudemanfellabra likes, what Ebyabe likes, or what I like. It's a good thing that there's no WikiProject Elkman, because I wouldn't have the patience to deal with it.

Rather than debating the importance of the importance tag, how about if we actually address the maintenance backlog of short stub articles that don't provide enough context about an article? --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 06:40, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Good idea about stubs. Some editors, like myself, are doing this by working on such articles in their own city or state, but others, perhaps, may be concentrating on bridges, or by some other specialty. You might explain here how to just look at NRHP stubs. --DThomsen8 (talk) 11:35, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

At the WikiProject NRHP level, u can just click on the Stub X High cell in NRHP's collaboration and review section of our main page, now that has been well set up by Dudemanfellabra.

The catscan tool allows you to find the High importance stubs in a given state, e.g. p=3&go=Scan&format=html&userlang=en this application of catscan to NRHP-rated High importance articles that are rated stub by Mississippi. You have to figure out which categories' intersection will give u what you want. That catscan used Talk page categories of WikiProject NRHP and of WikiProject Mississippi. This catscan application uses mainspace categories Category:National Historic Landmarks in Mississippi and Category:Mississippi Registered Historic Place stubs to get the same or similar articles.

Thank goodness we have stub articles started for the Mississippi and other states' NHLs, else i don't see how we could have this productive discussion identifying the high importance topics for this wikiproject to address! :) But, yes, i agree that addressing the 4 Top importance Stubs and the 358 High importance Stubs that currently show in our table (and more that might arrive soon from several editors importance tagging efforts) would be good to do. Some like Holly Bluff Site, a MS NHL, just need to be re-rated to Start or higher. Others like the L. Q. C. Lamar House one need to get the NRHP/NHL nom doc added as a reference, to develop the article from. We weren't able to manage that during the 2008 NHL article creation drive. --Doncram (talk) 13:38, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Top 5 list

The following 5 have been tagged as "attention needed", i think all by Elkman, i think all being High importance NHLs but minimal stubs:

Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall, Alaska
Ammadelle, Mississippi, a Calvert Vaux
Albert Einstein House, New Jersey
Alexandria Historic District, Virginia
Administration Building, Carnegie Institution of Washington, in D.C., a Carrere and Hastings

Do let's develop these! ~~Many~~All of these have pics. Since they are stubs but as NHLs they have docs available, they should be easy to earn DYKs for. These are 5 i selected out of about a dozen so far in Category:National Register of Historic Places articles needing attention; i think any other High but Stub article is also a candidate, but i am willing to try to focus on these ones. Or, Elkman, would you prefer any other top few to be addressed first? --Doncram (talk) 20:10, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I developed them all at least a little bit. I was hoping some other editors would jump in too, but haven't noticed that. Maybe one or two of these could be rated Start now, i dunno. I am done.

Say, what does it take to interest any other NRHP editors in joining any NRHP article improvement drive, on any set of NRHP articles? Elkman succeeded in getting me to look at some of these articles he tagged with Attention-needed just now, but i don't recall getting much success in getting other editors interested in any campaigns (besides for new article creation or for various technical clean-ups). --Doncram (talk) 22:02, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

The key word in your query is "interest." We can't get other volunteers to help with our projects and priorities unless they are actually interested. --Orlady (talk) 23:42, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

US Collaboration reactivated & Portal:United States starting next

Casliber recently posted a suggestion on the talk page for WikiProject United States about getting the US Wikipedians Collaboration page going again in an effort to build up articles for GA through FA class. See Wikipedia:U.S. Wikipedians' notice board/USCOTM. After several days of work from him the page is up and ready for action. A few candidates have already been added for you to vote on or you can submit one using the directions provided. If you are looking for inspiration here is a link to the most commonly viewed articles currently under the scope of Wikiproject United States. There are tons of good articles in the various US related projects as well so feel free to submit any article relating to US topics (not just those under the scope of WPUS). This noticeboard is intended for ‘’’All’’’ editors working on US subjects, not just those under WPUS.

The next item I intend to start updating is Portal:United States if anyone is interested in helping. Again this is not specific to WPUS and any help would be greatly appreciated to maximize visibility of US topics. The foundation has already been established its just a matter of updating the content with some new images, biographies and articles. Please let leave a comment on the Portals talk page or let me know if you have any questions or ideas. --Kumioko (talk) 19:16, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

survey on top vs. high importance of World Heritage Sites

As discussed partly in #historic preservation in STATE articles section above, there's some difference in views about whether World Heritage Sites in the U.S. should automatically get Top importance in WikiProject NRHP. So far there have been four tagged as Top priority:

and there likely is some overlap of NRHP-listed areas with others in the 21 WHS sites in the U.S. indexed at List of World Heritage Sites in the Americas#United States (21).

Could editors comment briefly here? --Doncram (talk) 03:45, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

High is what i would want for these. The purposes and criteria for World Heritage Site listing are different than for NRHP listing; there are more naturally important NRHP sites within our NHLs and National Park Service areas such as Independence Hall and many others. Also i don't think we have much to add about the Statue of Liberty; any discussion of its NRHP listing would probably be out of place; we don't have standing to even contribute there; i didn't study it but i don't believe any WikiProject NRHP editors have contributed anything much to any of these. Besides these 4, our Top importance is so far reserved for just articles about the NRHP itself and our very top List of NHLs and List of NRHPs. No other individual sites are rated Top (and i think that is good). I note that WikiProject World Heritage Sites rates the 4 merely as "Mid" or "Low" importance. I leave it for that Wikiproject or WikiProject Historic sites to rate the WHS's as Top important if they wish. P.S. I would support mentioning the WHS sites in our top STATE list-articles. I believe all or most of our List of NHLs in STATE lists include mention of any NHSs or other NPS areas in the state, as other top contenders for being most important historic sites in a state, and the WHS ones should be mentioned too (or the fact of WHS listing should be mentioned, if place is already covered). --Doncram (talk) 03:45, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Top. The NRHP importance scale says that one of the inclusion criteria for Top-importance is a site of exceptional importance. I think since the above World Heritage Sites (and 3 others – "La Fortaleza and San Juan National Historic Site" (as one WHS listing), "Mesa Verde National Park", and "Monticello and the University of Virginia" (one listing) – that are listed on the NRHP) have clearly demonstrated enough importance to be recognized not just nationally but globally, then they do in fact have truly exceptional importance. In fact, Independence Hall (the example Doncram points out above) is a World Heritage Site as well. While I'm not saying that only World Heritage Sites should be Top-importance, I believe this title should guarantee them that distinction. If we want to add some other non-WHS sites with truly exceptional importance, that's fine too. There's no reason why Top-importance must only be 20 or so articles. When we're talking about an eventual scope of 80K+ articles, I think even 100 top-importance articles would be fine.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:23, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying about Independence Hall being WHS. Its article wasn't even in Wp:NRHP, while Independence National Historical Park that includes it as a contributing property, has High rating. I added Independence Hall with importance=Mid, for now. I think its article was developed by Wikiproject Protected areas editors long ago; i just removed it from that wikiproject. See its Talk.

I can see that WHS listing of Monticello and the University of Virginia is a logical argument you could make to support your personally rating 3 NHLs The Rotunda (University of Virginia), Monticello, and University of Virginia Historic District pretty highly, like in a personal top 100 list. They're already rated High for wp:NRHP because they are NHLs. Note University of Virginia and Monticello and the University of Virginia are not even in the WikiProject NRHP, and by your arguments elsewhere i think you should rate them "Related/Lowest" importance. Which of these 5 would you want to be Top or High rated? I just don't think it is obvious that WHS listing picks the most important U.S. sites for U.S.-based criteria or for WikiProject NRHP criteria (and note they pick many non-NRHP places). I think one could surmise the WHS's political process picks natural areas and cultural areas that an international committee views as important-for-educating-the-rest-of-the-world-about, which is different. I would rather have our Top rating put on a spotlight on some of our shabbier-than-they-should-be broad articles for a while. How about dropping the Top rating for these few, for now, and coming back with a more comprehensive Top 100 proposal sometime later (perhaps to limit the High importance to just those 100, or to be a priority list outside of the wp:NRHP importance rating system)? --Doncram (talk) 19:28, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how you made it logical to above suggest that Independence Hall be rated top- and now rate it mid-importance. I agree with the high rating of Independence National Historic Park as high because it has received the NPS designation of a national historical park. I have been rating any such NPS-designated place as high-importance. As to Independence Hall itself, I took for granted that Doncram had done the research before bringing up such an example that the place he brought up would actually be listed on the register. In light of the fact that Independence Hall is not listed individually and is only contributing to an NPS-designated park, I think it should be related-importance. Yes, it is a very important place, but as far as the NRHP is concerned, it is just another contributing property.

As for the articles I pointed out above, I think they should all be top-importance because they are a pivotal part of their respective WHS designations (i.e. Monticello is a pivotal part of "Monticello and the University of Virginia"). Same thing goes for La Fortaleza, San Juan National Historic Site, and Mesa Verde National Park – all of which would already be rated high because they are either NHLs or NPS areas. I would make an exception for the University of Virginia article because it isn't listed on the register or as an NPS article, but the HD article you pointed out above is an NHL, so the HD article should be high, and at most the university article should be related.

I personally don't agree with the creation of the two-sentence Monticello and the University of Virginia article – which you created from this discussion – and would have speedily deleted it had I not been involved here. Regardless, that article should not be under the scope of the NRHP project, or at most it should be related-importance. Same goes for the University of Virginia article. Guess we agree there haha :P.

You keep bringing up the fact that these importance ratings should be molded to what our needs/wishes are now. I don't see it that way. Yes, we may need to focus on some of the NHLs we have now, but our lack of work on them doesn't make them somehow more important that others that are pretty much fully developed (e.g. Statue of Liberty). If anything it makes them less important because no one in the entire lifespan of this project has found the NHL important enough to expand it. Importance ratings shouldn't be about what we need to work on; they should be about importance. Now as far as importance goes, I think that if an international organization such as UNESCO has seen such importance in a site that they will designate it globally important, that we should put a higher importance on it than a site that has on been deemed nationally important like an NHL.

So the basic breakdown of how I would rate the articles mentioned is:

Top: Monticello, La Fortaleza, San Juan National Historic Site, and Mesa Verde National Park, along with the 4 articles I had already rated top – all NHLs or NPS areas; total of 8.
High: University of Virginia Historic District, Independence National Historical Park, and The Rotunda (University of Virginia) – all 3 NHLs that aren't pivotal in the WHS designations
Related: Independence Hall, University of Virginia, and Monticello and the University of Virginia (if it isn't deleted) – none of which are listed on the register but are contributing/related to districts that are.

Sound good?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:39, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

At most High. "Top" should be reserved for topics with broad scope and/or that are fundamental to the understanding of the National Register. --Orlady (talk) 06:28, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Honorary NRHPs?

I was taking photos in and around Jacksonville yesterday, and ran into a puzzler. There was a plaque on an old S.H. Kress building stating it was a "National Register Site", and it was "Awarded by the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission". However, it was not on my list, even by address. After I got home, I did a quick Google search, and found photos of it on Flickr, with this commentary, about the plaque being purely honorary. In all my travels, I've not run into this. Has anyone else? And no, before you ask, it's not in a historic district. There are 4 historic districts in Jacksonville, but all are residential, and none encompass any part of downtown. --Ebyabe (talk) 16:47, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, they took a photo of the plaque. See what I mean? --Ebyabe (talk) 16:49, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I've seen somewhat similar signs while out acquiring photos, needless to say it confused the hell out of me. I've since decided those signs were erected by Erie Insurance after they bought a potentially historic building to use as office space. Does the city of Jacksonville have its own historic register? (But, then why would they use the term "national"?) I know the plaques have to purchased separately by property owners, so they could have just bought the plaque themselves (haven't a clue as to why one would do that). Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 02:24, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Since the sign doesn't say "National Register of Historic Places" it must not be. Maybe I could make some money selling plaques that say "On the Register of National Historic Places." At least there probably isn't a law against it! Smallbones (talk) 02:37, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Portal:United States

Now that WPUS is up and running and the US Wikipedian's collaboration is rebuilt, I wanted to focus on cleaning up and revamping Portal:United States.

As one of the most active US related WikiProjects I also wanted to ask if anyone would be interested in adding a selected article or biography related to the NRHP to the list of selected articles. If not perhaps you could suggest one and I will add it? The article should preferably be GA or higher quality or it may be B class if it is high or top importance. --Kumioko (talk) 18:07, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

National Register's 2011 County Challenge

This is also on Flickr. Here's the link. Thought it might be of interest. :) --Ebyabe (talk) 16:58, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. The main text there is:

The National Register of Historic Places announces the 2011 County Challenge:
Did you know almost every county in the United States has at least one place listed in the National Register?
Following the inspirations of Marcfoto’s Massachusetts 351 Project, the National Register would like to inspire you to explore the National Register’s listings in your county.
The Challenge: take a photograph of a historical property and post it to this group. Together we will try and represent each county of each state that has a property listed; a snapshot of America’s historical properties and places. Remember, not all Register listings have decided to attach a plaque to their buildings – you may be surprised at the number of listings around you!
Through the NR database, do a search for a specific county and state, see what comes up! Please include the name of listing, county, and state in the description of the photograph.
Please keep in mind that the vast majority of properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places are privately owned. Please respect privacy and all private property rights in your area.
Good Luck!

That seems basically fine and good. But what seems odd to me is that the National Register has been promoting Flickr stuff like this, with no regard to copyright status. I notice the lead pic displaying there is by Marcfoto, and is of "All rights reserved". Perhaps a few of us could go and mention preference for public domain or for the type of creative commons license that would allow the pics to be used more widely, e.g. in Wikipedia. --Doncram (talk) 17:13, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

It would be wonderful if they suggested a free license, though I doubt they will. Perhaps if a couple people joined and suggested it to individual photographers?

One bizarre part of the NRHP message "Through the NR database, do a search for a specific county and state, see what comes up!" How many counties does Focus work for? Maybe we should suggest that folks come here for their info! Smallbones (talk) 02:49, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Smallbones, could you please explain for the NRHP novice where and how the search is done? --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I put their link to NPS Focus in the quote (in full its http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreghome.do?searchtype=natreghome ) My pet peeve (and not just mine) about the NRHP is how terrible (polite word) their database is. For example if you search for St. David's Episcopal Church (Radnor, Pennsylvania) go to the Focus website, put in "St. David's Episcopal Church" and "Pennsylvania" and "Delaware County" you will get a page that has a link to the nomination form - except it says that it hasn't been digitalized yet - and to photos - ditto. There is some database info on the page that you can view and if you find the right line - it will tell you that the church is "7 miles (12 KM) north of Media". But anybody who knows those winding roads will tell you that those directions are completely inadequate. The links have been digitalized for 9 states only, plus overseas territories and islands. Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Nevada, North Dakota, Utah, Wyoming.

State SHPO agencies generally have better info - but they can be quite quirky. There are generally directions at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Editor help . But for the Pennsylvania PHML all you need to do is go to the Ask Regis page enter "public" for both the ID and password, make sure that you are using Internet Explorer as your browser (no - this is not impossible if you are using a Mac) and follow the directions fairly carefully. Smallbones (talk) 15:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Independence Hall

Independence Hall was just added to the project with a Mid level importance rating. There is the complication that Independence National Historical Park is the name on the NHL list, but I think that Independence Hall itself clearly should be in the project. The Mid-importance however should be changed to TOP - as there are no historic sites MORE important than this. In fact I'd say that Independence Hall is more important than the Statue of Liberty (both historically and symbolically), which gets Top importance. (I can understand, however, if New Yorkers considered them to be of equal importance) BTW, I went to check United States Capitol as it is the only other site I can think of that might be of similar importance, and it does not have an importance rating - it clearly should also be TOP. Smallbones (talk) 14:50, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Independence Hall came up in #survey on top vs. high importance of World Heritage Sites discussion further above. What's needed is some proposal for a comprehensive set of highest importance individual sites. So far I and Orlady have commented in favor of keeping the Top importance rating for general articles only, like the NRHP article itself. But clearly there is interest in having a top 100 or similar list of individual NRHP sites, defined subjectively, smaller than the set of all High rated articles (includes all NHLs now). Whether those are to be put into the Top importance rating or used as a separate list, there seems to be definite interest.

How about generating a longer draft list and then running a voting process, to combine our subjective preferences? P.s. i'll vote for Independence Hall, if u'll vote for Niagara Mohawk Building (article which needs work, but is a spectacular Art Deco building). :) --Doncram (talk) 17:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not qualified either by my knowledge or by temperament to do this, but I have started Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/100 top importance and put 11 items on the list - and a few more will follow. Smallbones (talk) 18:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

There are 21 sites now and it looks hopelessly like a personal favorites list. Smallbones (talk) 19:20, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/100 top importance

As suggested by Doncram (immediately above) I've set out a draft list of the 100 "most important" NRHP/NHL sites, to be determined purely subjectively by !vote (the "possible" list now has about 60 sites). I do have mixed feelings on such a list. If people take it too seriously, or spend too much time on it, it could very well detract from the project. But if folks realize that for some reasons that can't be objectively defined, many of us consider many of the same sites to be especially important, then we'll come up with a reasonable list (rather than the inevitable ad hoc carping if we don't), we might be able to focus our attention on some of the truly important sites, and at worst we can have some fun trying.

So I invite everybody to contribute possible sites, !vote, and have some fun with this. There's no need to fill the 100 slots in any given time frame. And we might come up with 0.0125% of the NRHP sites listed as top importance. Smallbones (talk) 19:25, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that this is worth doing, but had doubts about how we could come up with a credible system to choose the top 100; perhaps this would help. The tables showing articles by quality and importance on the Biography project's pages are different than ours. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government. If you click on any of the column totals, instead of getting a category page (e.g., of all the Top-ranked articles), you get a Toolserver page that ranks all the articles in the total for possible inclusion in the next Release. Here are our results: list & Register of Historic Places summary. The tool is not just basing the scores on our rankings of importance and quality--see this list of 247 articles with a score over 1000. Perhaps this would help select our top 100 articles. If not, we still might want to use this tool to create a priority list of articles that need to be assessed.--Hjal (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

How do they come up with their score? Smallbones (talk) 21:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I just found this on their Guide page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SelectionBot/Web/Guide

Show external interest data
Display information used for generating the release version scores:

PL: count of incoming wiki-page links. This number includes links to articles that redirect to the article in question.

LL: count of outgoing inter-language links (to other language versions of Wikipedia)

HC: estimate of average daily hitcount for the article

EI: the composite "external interest score", used as one component of the overall selection score. The algorithm used to calculate this score is documented at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/SelectionBot.

There is a longer description of scoring at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Article selection. And here is the list of 247 top scoring NRHP articles, sorted by the External Interest score: [2]. And here are links to the top 100 of those, in External Interest rank order: White House, Statue of Liberty, New York Stock Exchange, University of California, Berkeley, Pearl Harbor, National Register of Historic Places, Niagara Falls, Empire State Building, The Pentagon, Library of Congress, National Park Service, United States Military Academy, Central Park, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wake Island, Midway Atoll, Organization of American States, United States Capitol, Alcatraz Island, University of Florida, Greenwich Village, Mount Rushmore, Kennedy Space Center, Brooklyn Bridge, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, United States Naval Academy, Hoover Dam, Chrysler Building, Carnegie Hall, Vanderbilt University, National Historic Landmark, U.S. Route 66, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, United States National Academy of Sciences, American Museum of Natural History, Washington Monument, Edwards Air Force Base, Ellis Island, Rockefeller Center, University of Missouri, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Art Institute of Chicago, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Erie Canal, Haymarket affair, Grand Central Terminal, Lincoln Memorial, Trinity (nuclear test), Mesa Verde National Park, SoHo, USS Missouri (BB-63), Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Cahokia, University of Oklahoma, Arecibo Observatory, Graceland, Oregon Trail, Fort Sumter, USS Constitution, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station , Rose Bowl (stadium), Wounded Knee Massacre, Anheuser-Busch, Utah State University, Petersburg, Virginia, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Tinian, National Mall, Lower East Side, Tulane University, Clemson University, USS Arizona (BB-39), RMS Queen Mary, Golden Gate Park, Manhattan Bridge, Woolworth Building, H. J. Heinz Company, Jack Daniel's, Mount Vernon, Radio City Music Hall, San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge, GE Building, Monticello, Flatiron Building, Lick Observatory, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Oberlin College, Liberty Island, Hearst Castle, Washington National Cathedral, Bodie, California, 40 Wall Street, Chinatown, Manhattan, USS Monitor, Taos Pueblo, Greek Revival architecture, Brooklyn Museum, American Stock Exchange, Fallingwater.--Hjal (talk) 07:26, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it's a place to start. On the other hand it really is subjective in its own way about why these are "important places" for example Organization of American States, University of Florida, UC- Berkeley, Rose Bowl (stadium), Anheuser-Busch, Utah State U, H. J. Heinz Company, and Jack Daniel's have "external interest" for reasons that have nothing to do with history or architecture - the things that I consider important in this project. But maybe it's a starting point. It could also serve as a list of articles that we might want to work on to make it onto Wikipedia:Version 0.8, if folks consider that an important goal of the project. Smallbones (talk) 15:09, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions regarding this project and Portal:United States

I have added a recommendation to the talk page of Portal:United States for Consideration. Since we have more than 200 US related projects, about 75 of which are active in some capacity, I would like to add a section to the portal to feature a project (I am trying to determine the interval but I was thinking random pick like the articles are). I believe this would draw interest to the projects, to the articles they support and even to the portal itself (at least from the members of that projet I hope). Does anyone have any comments, concerns or suggestions with regards to doing this? As one of the more active projects I was considering profiling NRHP as one of the first along with US roads and United States (not sure about the order yet) starting February 1st adding more after that. --Kumioko (talk) 21:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I would also like to invite you to provide a couple of articles to be featured on the portal. The content of the portal really needs to be updated and adding a couple of HP's IMO would be great. I think we only have one on there now and the content is very heavy in the Military history aspect of things. Maybe the 2 Top importance FA's? --Kumioko (talk) 21:20, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Please change the standard citation to omit the link

I notice that people are still including a link to www.nr.nps.gov in their citations. Can we change this please... that website has been down for months now. Please note that I am not talking about the source (ie the NRHP database... that is still fine)... I am only talking about the link to the website [www.rn.nps.gov]. Either omit the link (citing the database as if it were in hard copy) or link to an archived copy of the database that readers can access. Also, I am not talking about fixing old articles that contain the link (although that does need to be done)... I am talking about not using the bad link in new articles. Moving forward, please stop using the same old out-dated "cut, paste and forget citation" ... or at least come up with a new "cut, paste and forget citation" that does not take the reader to a dead page when they click on the link. Blueboar (talk) 21:06, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

The possible replacements were discussed a lot before. Blueboar, or anyone, can you provide links to the previous discussions? There is no particular urgency to change these, but it would be good to do.

The standard NRIS reference has been

<ref name="nris">
{{cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/
|title=National Register Information System
|date=2009-03-13
|work=National Register of Historic Places
|publisher=National Park Service}}
</ref>

I would favor something like

<ref name="nris2009_03_13">
{{cite web|url= 
|title=National Register Information System
|date=2009-03-13
|work=National Register of Historic Places
|publisher=[[National Park Service]]}}
</ref>

which provides a specific label to indicate that it is the March 13, 2009 version of NRIS database, in the reference label itself. That way if a copy of the March 13, 2009 database is posted on the web somewhere, a bot run could change all of these references to include a URL to that. For now the URL, which does not work, could simply be dropped. And i'd link to National Park Service as publisher. I haven't checked the previous discussions, but I think there were other ideas and considerations that seemed important to other editors. --doncram (talk) 15:24, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

(Addendum) Also, it needs to be understood that there are a couple other versions of the NRIS database that have, like different editions of a printed book, been sources for many articles. There were one or two versions during 2007. Can anyone point to an article or two that has date= pointing to some date in 2007? NRIS references based on a 2007 edition should not be blindly changed to point to the March 13, 2009 edition, but rather should be changed to similar references with labels of format "nris2007_xx_xx" instead. There are only one or two other versions that were used widely in articles. (Aside: In any bot run, a hidden category could be usefully inserted so that editors could navigate among all the articles having an obsolescent version, in order to update the info in those articles relying upon it.) --doncram (talk) 17:12, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm 90% sure you can't {{cite web}} without a URL, so that won't work. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:28, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Your right you cant. If this site is down is there a new one that we can replace it with? --Kumioko (talk) 15:48, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Um... I just tested Doncram's suggestion... it seems to work (as follows)^[1]

^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2009-03-13. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)

So... I think Doncram's suggestion would resolve my concerns. Again, my issue was not with the source, but with the link (we should not point the reader to a dead webpage). I see two ways to resolve the issue... a) cite the source as if it were a hard copy book (ie no link at all), or b) cite the source with a link to an archived version of the database. Doncram's suggestion seems to be essentially a mix of the two... which works for me. As for implementation, (assuming Doncram's suggestion gains consensus), I think the easiest way to proceed is to see if someone could write a bot that would swap out the citations en-mass. If a bot find/replace is not possible, I agree that there is not any rush to replace existing citations (it can be done article by article as editors find time to do it)... That said, I would like to see any new article use the new "standard". Blueboar (talk) 15:50, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

After doing some searching through the NPS website it seems they just changed the structure of the link to http://www.nps.gov/nr/. This should be easy enought to fix with a bot or AWB. --Kumioko (talk) 15:56, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I think http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/ corresponds better to the original link, but both of them are just search pages, which isn't ideal. We could try linking directly to http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/74000185.pdf (for example), but some (many?) (most?) of those are just placeholders.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:06, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

This is something the project has discussed before. There are several possible sources that have been suggested to replace the old database... but all are limited. Based on previous discussions, I gather that the old database apparently contained all sorts of information that has not been transferred to any of the new systems (at least not yet). This is why the project wants to keep the that old database as the "source"... even if they can no longer point to a link when citing it. (at least that is my understanding... Doncram or other members of the project can correct me if I am mistaken on this). We do want to resolve this with minimal disruption to the project. Blueboar (talk) 16:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, no, we should be looking for minimal disruption to the encyclopedia. Pasting known dead links into new articles doesn't qualify, IMHO. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:27, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

OK... let me restate... we are actually talking about two issues... a) what to use as a citation moving forward... and b) finding a way to retroactively correct the citations that are in hundreds of existing articles with minimal disruption. There are several editors who have downloaded copies of the old database... and apparently anyone can obtain one by writing to the NPS (or some thing like that)... which means that the old database is still a valid (reliable) source (it's the electronic equivalent of an out of print book... it exists, it just takes some effort to get a copy). The argument is that since that old database contains the information being cited, it should remain the "standard source"... and if we accept that, then what we are talking about here is how to cite it... not what to replace it with. Blueboar (talk) 16:38, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the search pages we gave arent the best but its better than having dead links. I agree that we should source it to the PDF doc if possible but if its not there I think the search page is a good fallback solution. I also dont really agree that the old database shoudl remain the standard sourec. If the site is no longer valid then it has ceasaed being a valid source. --Kumioko (talk) 16:45, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

If the "cite web" templete works without a link, and if we think it will continue to work without a link, then we should follow Doncram's suggestion. Focus, to my mind, is a joke of a website, slow and 75% incomplete, and I don't think they have any intention of improving it. So linking to it would be a hopeless task. Smallbones (talk) 16:40, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

It doesnt work without a URL. --Kumioko (talk) 16:43, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Kumioko, As I showed above... it does work without a URL. Or am I missing something? Blueboar (talk) 17:00, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Or maybe something down the lines of {{Cite database}} would be more appropriate in this case? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:04, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok I stand corrected I didnt think Cite web would work without the URL but I guess it does when you embed it in the ref name tag. Question though do all the articles have it formatted this way or would we still need to go through thousands of articles to make a change? --Kumioko (talk) 17:09, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Certainly the vast majority of citations are formated this way (I recently changed about 20 or so manually, but that can easily be undone). I agree with Sarek's suggestion that {{Cite database}} is better than {{Cite web}}, but if the the consensus is to simply fix it under {{Cite web}} I will not object. Blueboar (talk) 17:18, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree that at least the infbox tool should be changed to not add a dead link. Otherwise it should automatically add the {{Dead link}} template? (half serious). If the March 2009 dump of NRIS was used to generate the infobox, then be honest and state that in the citation. A few bits of info, especially the exact listing date, are not in the nomination form, so the nom form should be a separate citation. W Nowicki (talk) 17:33, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I just wanted to followup about the Cite Database template. The last I heard there was still no concensus to use this and most of the contributors felt that it was unneeded due to the Cite web template. This is all based on the assumption that the URL is removed, which I think would be a mistake to not give the users at least a link to the search site. --Kumioko (talk) 17:50, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out that Cite Database is dead. "What links here" shows it is not used at all in mainspace. See Template talk:Cite database for confirmation.

I'd say here there seems to be consensus to use the cite web version suggested. If there is consensus now, then the next step would be to request User:Elkman to implement the revision into the oft-used NRHP infobox/article generator that he provides as a public service. --doncram (talk) 10:28, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I think we do have consensus.

Asking Elkman to revise his infobox/article generator is also a good idea. A revised generator would certainly resolve the issue for future articles. As for retroactive fixing in existing articles... perhaps someone could create a bot that would do a find/replace? Anyone know where you go to request such a bot? Blueboar (talk) 13:51, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

There are several but can you clarify what you want it to find and replace please. --Kumioko (talk) 13:58, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Find: {{cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/ |title=National Register Information System |date=2009-03-13 |work=National Register of Historic Places |publisher=National Park Service}}

replace with: {{cite web|url= |title=National Register Information System |date=2009-03-13 |work=National Register of Historic Places |publisher=[[National Park Service]]}} Blueboar (talk) 15:28, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok I think thats doable but I also think that there are going to be quite a few that fall out with broken URLs if their not included in a ref list tag. Just to clarify is the dat always going to be 2009-03-13 or is this just an example? Also do you know how many articles would be affected? Do you also want to link the fields for National Register Information System and National Register of Historic Places while we are there? --Kumioko (talk) 15:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Doncram can probably answer these questions better than I can... but I don't think we will get that many that fall out with a broken URL... Most (all?) of the citations we are talking about were created using Elkman's infobox generator bot, and I think it give the same exact citation language no matter what the building is. Even if running a find/replace bot only fixes half of the citations, that in itself will be a huge saving in time and effort. Blueboar (talk) 16:17, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree even half would be an improvement. The logic to do this in AWB would look something like this

Find: \{\{[ ]*cite web[ ]*\|[ ]*url[ ]*=[ ]*http\:\/\/www.nr.nps.gov\/[ ]*\|[ ]*title[ ]*=[ ]*National Register Information System[ ]*\|[ ]*date[ ]*=[ ]*2009-03-13[ ]*\|[ ]*work[ ]*=[ ]*National Register of Historic Places[ ]*\|publisher[ ]*=[ ]*National Park Service[ ]*\}\}

replace with: {{cite web|url= |title=National Register Information System|date=2009-03-13|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=[[National Park Service]]}}

The [ ]* means any number of spaces (including no space). If the date changes then we would need to chaneg it to work with a variable date like ([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2})--Kumioko (talk) 16:28, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

We previously estimated there would be about 22,000 articles to change. There are 36,000 articles in WikiProject NRHP now though. Maybe 22,000 was a guess how many are of the 03-13-2009 version. It's not very hard for a bot request, i believe, but the imposition on everybodies' watchlists is high and there are other costs, so i think it is better to get a good consensus first on all aspects, including what hidden categories would be added. I would like to try to get input from Dudemanfellabra who has implemented hidden categories for NRHP articles before. I am also waiting on what are the other couple versions of the NRIS database from 2007 that should be labelled. I suggest requesting the Elkman generator revised first, as Elkman's personal judgment matters, and he would possibly suggest or implement something different than stated here so far. Then complete specifications for the bot run and then request it. --doncram (talk) 17:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to get Elkman's input on this, and possible a hidden category to make the next run (hopefully adding real links) run more smoothly. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:27, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree, it sounds like he already has something set up. I have a bot account but havent used it yet so I would need to go through a BRFA and do a test run (which he willl likely have to do as well). I still think it would be better to use the generic url to none at all but I will let you all decide on that since youhave been the ones actively working on the project. If Elkman cant or doesnt have the time let me know. I cna do a BRFA and do a test run and see if we can get the ball rolling. --Kumioko (talk) 17:36, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Elkman would probably not be creating/running the bot. In the past i and others have made requests at wp:botrequest. The bot would also have to revise calls to the reference within the article, i.e. also replace calls like <ref name=nris/> and <ref name="nris"/>.

About categories, i guess hiding them is accomplished by {{Hidden category}} applied to the category; nothing about being hidden needs to be included in the articles getting the category added. For the 3-13-2009 NRIS edition, i suggest adding Category:NRIS2009_03_13. Having the category in will allow editors to use cross-cat tool to look for all instances of this reference within a given county, for example, when updating to use a new edition of NRIS or some other source that may provide more data.

I wonder if "2009_03_13" is cumbersome to type in future use, maybe "2009march" in reference label and category would be better. --doncram (talk) 19:08, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Doncram asked me to comment here about the possibility of hidden categories for this. I personally don't think a hidden category is necessary in this case.. simply tell the bot to look through all Wikipedia articles for the above string and take out the link. If the bot needs at least some starting point, tell it to look for all pages under the scope of this project (i.e. those with talk pages on which {{WikiProject National Register of Historic Places}} is transcluded). A hidden category would have to be added manually to every article since there isn't a standard template for the reference, so we would basically be negating the need for a bot. One interesting idea is that of a standard template (maybe {{NRHPref}}?) that the bot could transclude on all these pages so that efforts like this in the future (if the NRHP ever gets an online database again) would be much easier.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:15, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Of course, once u say it, this should just be a template for NRIS reference, maybe with a switch for version. E.g. {{NRISref|version=2009march13}}, with expectation there will be a few versions. And then forget about a category for now, because if anyone was up for a big editing drive where having a category for a given version is helpful, then the template could be revised, centrally, to include version-specific categories. And the reference label can stay at name=nris always. So the code to go into new articles would simply be:

<ref name=nris>{{NRISref|version=2009march13}}</ref>

and the template would include the title and publisher and so on. Does this make sense? If so then it would be good to program the template now, to handle at least the 3-13-2009 version. Not sure if "version=2009march13" would be needed or if you could just have optional parameter being "2009march13". Thanks! --doncram (talk) 21:35, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Template started at {{NRISref}}. Discussion of programming technicalities might best continue at Template talk:NRISref. --doncram (talk) 14:17, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I poked around the NRIS site some more. This link is a working link to the database download. Unfortunately, it still dates to March 13, 2009, so it'd be pointless to download a new version and load it. However, I can update the citation, at least.

They're also making their data available in Google Earth layers. Since that data is in XML, I could download it and find a way to process it to get new properties into the database. I don't think it would include all the architectural data, though. I'll look into it. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 16:31, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Elkman for commenting and for doing more research. At this point I would hope your NRHP infobox/article generator could be modified to put in <ref name=nris>{{NRISref|2009a}}</ref>, with "2009a" more briefly indicating first version of 2009, instead of the current NRIS reference. And the new info you provide that the March 13 database is back available on-line could be worked into the template:NRISref to display something like "database available here" and link to that download site. Or the template might be revised to say "more info here" and link to a page providing that info about the database being available plus other info that doesn't need to display in all 20,000+ articles out there. I heard that the Google Earth layers data had better quality coordinates than are in the basic NRIS database (or are in whatever is the basic coordinates file that you merged originally, if a merge was needed), that it reflected geo-coding work done for places having addresses, and other corrections. So it would be an improvement upon the current NRIS version if you did additional merge work. Technically i would want to call it a different version, a different source. So then I would hope you could modify your generator to put in <ref name=nris>{{NRISref|2010a}}</ref> to indicate this is a 2010a version, which could be suitably described as being a combo of March 13 NRIS plus Google Earth layers info, or whatever it is, in the template-produced footnote. Thanks! Again let's not feel rushed into anything here. It's gonna be one huge bot run eventually, best to get it right. --doncram (talk) 00:41, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree... better to get it right than to rush... but we can move forward with due deliberation. So... do we have a consensus plan? Just to make sure we are all on the same page... Doncram, what is your understanding of what is to happen? Blueboar (talk) 17:49, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

With Elkman's info, i revised the information given at Template:NRISref to give the link to the current URL of downloadable info. What's needed, i think, is:

(1a.) we need some help to fix the template so that it accepts "2009a" and "2007a" and "2007b" as arguments
(1b.) we need to identify the pre-2009 version dates of NRIS, i believe there were two during 2007 that appear in articles
(2.) if editor Elkman agrees with using the NRISref template, for Elkman to make revisions to the NRHP inbobox/article generator so that new infoboxes being created include {{NRISref|2009a}} (or whatever is the correct call once (1.) is completed), rather than the current reference
(3.) we put in a bot request for changes to be applied to existing articles, in a smart way that gets and displays the right version date information (2009a, 2007a, 2007b)
(4.) consider any refinements to the Template:NRISref, such as whether the link to a download URL is to be included into what Template:NRISref displays. These discussions can take place here and/or at Template talk:NRISref.

--doncram (talk) 18:25, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good... any update as to progress? Blueboar (talk) 13:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, User:Dudemanfellabra kindly fixed up the program to accept those arguments, so (1a.) is done, leaving open the identification of the dates used in two 2007 versions, to be added into the template later (so 1b. is still open). And perhaps Elkman might notice here, or i'll ask at his talk, if he'd be willing now to revise the NRHP infobox/article generator to include <ref name=nris>{{NRISref|version=2009a}}</ref> instead of the current NRIS reference. --doncram (talk) 21:54, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Good... slow but steady progress is fine. Any initial thoughts on what to do if Elkman does not have time to fix his generator? Blueboar (talk) 15:51, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

We can keep preparing for a bot run. To make a proper request it would still help to know the previous few NRIS database release dates, and to fix up the template accordingly. One of the previous NRIS database release dates was April 15, 2008, as showed in, for example, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hatch_House_%28Greensboro,_Alabama%29&oldid=263250205 this version of Hatch House (Greensboro, Alabama) article. I came across one or more of the 2007 versions recently, but forgot to note them. --doncram (talk) 18:22, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe someone could run AWB or otherwise use some automated tool to search for NRIS reference with search to exclude those having "date=2009-03-13", to round up other dates used? There will be a few oft-used dates, and a sprinkling of incorrect individual dates where an editor put in an accessdate instead. --doncram (talk) 18:25, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I can probably do that. Just to be clear though you want to know which of the 30K+ NRHP articles have the NRIS reference but do not have a date=2009-03-13? Is that correct? --Kumioko (talk) 18:53, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Here is a link to all the articles with the nr.nps.gov link. I can link to this using AWB if needed and pull the articles in. --Kumioko (talk) 19:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Here is a little more info. The site is linked 28972 times on 27894 pages of which 27496 are in main space (the rest are talk pages, user pages, templates, etc). Also there are 1921 articles that link to the NRP site that are not currently in WikiProject NRHP and 10548 that are in the NRHP project that do not link to the NRHP site. --Kumioko (talk) 20:27, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. I was/am wanting to know what are the date versions of NRIS database that are out in wikipedia articles. The dates known so far are:

March 13, 2009 – Used in probably 10,000+ wikipedia articles. This version was available for download from the National Park Service until about July 2010. It was soon reuploaded on the NPS Focus website at http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html.
April 15, 2008 - Used in several thousand wikipedia articles, some later updated to use a later version.
January 23, 2007 - Used in several thousand wikipedia articles, some later updated to use a later version.

I believe there is another version in 2007 and perhaps a 2006 version which might appear in many articles. I was trying to figure this out so as to form a proper bot request. The basic bot request will be to replace the nris ref in articles (i.e. something like <ref name="nris">{{cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/ |title=National Register Information System |date=2009-03-13 |work=National Register of Historic Places |publisher=National Park Service}}</ref>)

by

<ref name=nris>{{NRISref|2009a}}</ref> if date=2009-03-13 appears in what is being replaced, or
<ref name=nris>{{NRISref|2008a}}</ref> if date=2008-04-15 appears in what is being replaced, or
<ref name=nris>{{NRISref|2007a}}</ref> if date=2007-01-23 appears in what is being replaced, or
<ref name=nris>{{NRISref|2007b}}</ref> if some other commonly used 2007 date, date yet to be identified, is to be replaced, or
similarly if there is another version date that also appears in multiple articles

and, to flag articles having odd dates not being one of those recognized as a valid version date, for a manual campaign of editing, i.e. for those odd ones put into the article a temporary cleanup category tag, e.g. Category:NRIS reference cleanup. Kumioko, if it would be convenient for you to do some AWB identifying, or if it would be convenient for you to just test a bot that would begin to process and would discover any odd date ones in the process, it would be great if you just wanted to take this forward. --doncram (talk) 21:26, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

FYI ... I had an email exchange with John Byrne, the NRHP database manager, and he told me they are going to release an up-to-date Access version of the database in "a few more weeks". That was November 22, so it should be available very soon. --sanfranman59 (talk) 00:42, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it woudl be easiest if we just do the ones we know about and then go back and do the ones that are left. The code to replace the cite web reference with the other should be fairly easy. If you don't care what the version is and just want the date from one to be in the other I can do that without you having to find all the different formats. I can just copy it from the old ref to the new one. Otherwise we can start with the above and then do the remnants individually with whats left.

There is one problem so far and that is that some of them have documents that are linked and not just a standard link like you demonstrate above. Not sure how we need to handle those.

As for the access database if we can get that we can probably program something that will build the missing articles. It may take a few days to iron out the format but I think its doable. --Kumioko (talk) 01:26, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I/we do care about the version dates. There are only a handful of valid NRIS version dates. Which version was used for a given article, should be given properly, as one of specific versions denoted 2009a, 2008a, 2007a, and perhaps 2007b and some others. But I do think that date=2009-03-13, date=2008-04-15, and date=2007-01-23 will cover 95% or more of the current Wikipedia articles. You could proceed and process those, flagging others with a cleanup category tag. If there are a lot of articles then in the cleanup category that share a given date, then another bot run to fix those could be done. But also an alternative is for a cleanup drive to update the NRIS information in all of those ones, so probably no further bot run would be needed.

About the ones having different links now, i think those should be put into another, different cleanup category. It is not correct to change them over to imply they were sourced from the 2009a version or any other specific version of NRIS. We'll have to address those manually.

About using the new access database (thanks Sanfranman59 for noting) to create 55,000 stub articles, I would actually now support that, if done well (i.e. incorporating all the good features in Elkman-generated articles, and some other features, and using the now properly disambiguated names reflected in our NRHP list-articles), but there has been a good amount of disagreement about that in the past, so this needs to be discussed as a separate proposal. Perhaps some states would be excluded to accomodate local editors' preferences not to have stubs created, but pretty good stubs could be created for other states. --doncram (talk) 19:42, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I think I am close to getting the logic worked out for this. Is there a group of articles you want to start with as a test. Maybe a certain county or state perhaps. I would like to test it on 20-50 before I unleash the beast so to speak. If the test works then we I recommend setting up a simple rollout with occassional spot checks rather than doing a mass push all at once. --Kumioko (talk)

Ok I am running into a little snag with the logic. I have found that I can convert

<ref name="nris">
{{cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/
|title=National Register Information System
|date=2009-03-13
|work=National Register of Historic Places
|publisher=National Park Service}}
</ref>

into something like this <ref name=nris>{{NRISref|2009a}}</ref> but in many cases the nris reference appears later in the article and I need to convert that as well. This is where i am running into trouble. I am still working it out but I wanted to let you know and if you have any suggestions I am open. --Kumioko (talk) 21:17, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe i don't follow exactly. We want to convert the definition of the nris reference that way you describe, great, and then just retain later invocations of it as <ref name=nris/> in the article. If the same reference is defined twice in the article, instead, that should probably just be flagged with a problem category for us to return to. The later definition should be edited down manually to just show <ref name=nris/>. Can you point me to an example or two where this trouble is coming up? --doncram (talk) 15:13, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I would think that in most cases, the appropriate conversion for the first instance of the nris citation in an article would apply to all the subsequent nris citations in that article. Blueboar (talk) 15:48, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Brief comment: you just want to define a reference once, and then invoke that same reference again in later references. We only want to convert one reference with "name=nris", and then all later invocations of that by <ref name=nris/> will be correct. If there are two separate complete definitions of a reference with "name=nris" that is itself a problem to be fixed in a given article. I don't happen to know whether it would be the first or second definition that would display, but any article having 2 definitions could be given a cleanup category so that we could revisit it. --doncram (talk) 03:53, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Happily, Elkman has updated his NRHP infobox/article generator to give the template now. That's progress! And, I have implemented the template in the new NRHP batches-of-articles-generator (NBOAG?) program, so it is starting to appear in more and more articles now. Kumioko, what do you need to proceed with a test? Perhaps you could apply your bot to NRHP articles linked from National Register of Historic Places listings in Tolland County, Connecticut. That is a smallish NRHP list-article with about 49 NRHPs, some new with the template and some with the old version of NRIS reference to be replaced. --doncram (talk) 03:53, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Bot request at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 39#NRIS references replacement request. No guarantee any programmer there will pick it up. Kumioko sounded like s/he could implement a bot, previously, which is probably our best bet, in terms of a capable programmer interested in the problem. --Doncram (talk) 06:33, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Anomie is coding. Anomie found about 1,000 other problem links of ours, and listed them here. This is leading to our having template:NRIS dead link and Category:All NRHP articles with dead external links to allow us address them over time, i think. I don't follow everything that Anomie suggests for us; other attention to the bot request discussion from editors here might help. Dudemanfellabra has helped, thanks! We're lucky to get the attention there, which should help us fix up a lot of NRHP articles efficiently. --Doncram (talk) 16:08, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Bot approved for small trial, at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 50. Bot will also address small cleanup issue regarding sites having NRIS-reported area = .9 acres, which really is a code for "less than one acre", different than if NRIS reports area=.4 acres or .7 acres. --do ncr am 15:48, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for following up on this, and for the update. Blueboar (talk) 15:57, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

event and site articles

In some of the importance rating discussions and edit summaries, and in some discussions last year, there's been complaints or disagreement about whether site articles should be separate from articles on corresponding events. It may be unclear whether wp:NRHP banner belongs on an event article, if there is a corresponding site article, and what wp:NRHP importance ratings should apply. Some examples:

Battle of Franklin (1864) (event, 1864) vs. Franklin Battlefield (site, NHL)
Battle of Sayler's Creek (event, 1865) vs. Sayler's Creek Battlefield (site, NHL)
Wounded Knee Massacre (event, 1890) vs. new article Wounded Knee Battlefield (site, NHL)
Ludlow Massacre (event, 1914) vs. Ludlow Tent Colony Site (site, NHL)
Kent State shootings (event, 1970) Kent State Shootings Site (site, currently a redirect to event article, NRHP-listed in 2010)

My suggestion: I usually like to have a separate article on the site, and have created many, to handle additional details that aren't appropriate in an event article, which usually should not be about preservation of the site. If the site is NHL-listed, rate both the site article and the event article as High importance for wp:NRHP. Our editing might focus on the separate site article, but we should also be concerned that the event article includes appropriate summary. We can think about editing the site article as developing well the more important (more highly viewed) summary in the higher profile event article, and take appropriate ownership, in a good way, over both. Comments? --do ncr am 19:35, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

If there is enough material to justify a separate article on the site as distinct from the event (ie if we have sourced details on preservation, monuments, etc.) then, of course, we can have an article on it. But if all we are going to have is "the site is a NHL listed", I would say no... we should avoid creating articles until we have some details to justify them. Just my opinion. Blueboar (talk) 21:20, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

There often/usually is material about the recent state of preservation of the site that is appropriate for a separate article (because the site is NRHP listed, there is reliable, extensive documentation available...). I suppose there could be debates about split vs. merger, according to specifics of each case.

What I meant as my suggestion, that is new thinking for me at least, is that we could attach wp:NRHP banner and High importance to both, when there exist both event and site articles, and we could seek to positively influence the event article without overwhelming it. By doing so we would increase our presence in high-profile, FA articles that are included in Wikipedia Version 0.8, too, instead of walking away from involvement. --do ncr am 21:41, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I would rather that this project increase its presence by improving its own articles to FA status, rather than "piggy backing" on the work of other projects. As for importance ratings... well, you know my views on that (base importance on the number of links in other articles). Blueboar (talk) 22:03, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I suppose this discussion came from the comment I made at the top 100 list recently created. I didn't take the time to look at the other examples, but the one I brought up there was that of Wounded Knee. The Wounded Knee Massacre article has a "Remembrance" section there that talks about a church/monument being erected at the cemetery that all the victims are buried in as well as other things like organizations, etc. that preserve the memory of the massacre. I believe the Wounded Knee Battlefield article could be merged into this section fairly seamlessly. In fact, nowhere in the entire massacre article does it elaborate about the fact that the battlefield is now a national historic landmark; this would be a good place to add it.

The fact that the NHL documentation contains a lot of information does not mean that it is specific to the site itself. ~~Much~~ The majority of the document is dedicated to describing the massacre itself (much of it in interview fashion), and only a very little portion of it talks about the actual battlefield. On top of that, much of the information the document covers (e.g. the erection of the church/monument) is already in the article. We should simply expand this section of the article to include the NHL information. If the section becomes too long, it can be split out due to WP:SS, but until then I stick by the belief that there should not be two articles.

I suspect the other cases in question are for the most part similar to the Wounded Knee one, and they should be approached the same way.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:51, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Right, you are not familiar with those other cases. :)

Well, super, we seem to have unanimous agreement, that taking an expansive view to include the Event articles into Wp:NRHP, which has so far focussed mostly on the sites, is a good idea. I added NRHP banner and High importance where it was missing for the above ones. And going through the first 12 states' NHLs, I also added

Talk:Camden Expedition (event) to match Camden Expedition Sites (Arkansas NHL)
Talk:Battle of Lake Okeechobee (event) vs. Okeechobee Battlefield (Florida NHL)
Talk:Dade Massacre (event) to match Dade Battlefield (Florida NHL)
Bear River Massacre (event) to match Bear River Massacre Site (Idaho NHL)
Battle of Camas Creek (event) to match Camas Meadows Battle Sites (Idaho NHL)

to correspond to their NHL sites. Thanks for helping to think this out! --do ncr am 01:39, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

....You completely ignored my comment. Thanks for that.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:29, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, at least we have unanimous agreement among doncram. Ntsimp (talk) 04:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Too funny. IvoShandor (talk) 09:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Hey, i am glad you enjoyed my summary. :) Dudemanfellabra, i did read your comment fully. I get your generalized antipathy about the site articles which are already in wp:NRHP, based on your having considered all of one matched event - site pair. Your priority is the event articles. So, you should agree with adding them to the wikiproject, where there is just a site article now. Neither you nor anyone else actually responded to my suggestion that, where there exist two articles regarding a NHL, they should both be given High importance rating.

You don't think i should drop everything and implement mergers and delete long-standing articles, on the basis of your offhand comment about one new site article, though, do you? Of course there is detailed information about the sites and their history of preservation and their potential to reveal more about the events that go far beyond what is appropriate in an event article. See for example the NHL nom regarding the archeological explorations of the Ludlow Tent Colony Site. Feel free to launch AFDs on numerous of our NHL articles though. :) Seriously, rating both site and event articles high, and paying some attention to developing them in sync with one another (which conceivably could lead to removing one article upon specific consideration in a proper discussion), seems logical. And no one has disagreed (no one has commented). No one has acknowledged that there can exist, there there do exist, many paired site-event articles, most not created by me.

Happily wp:NRHP banner presence and importance ratings aren't important for anything, really, so this chat is all in fun.... :) --do ncr am 10:12, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Some more examples:

Chicago Pile-1 which is where Illinois NHL Site of the First Self Sustaining Nuclear Reaction is covered; there's no separate event article about the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction that i notice.
Haymarket affair to which Illinois NHL Haymarket Martyrs' Monument redirects.
Battle of Tippecanoe (event) and Tippecanoe Battlefield (site, Indiana NHL)
Marais des Cygnes massacre (1858 event) which does not currently mention NHL, Marais des Cygnes Massacre Site (site, Kansas NHL)
Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty? event to correspond to Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty Site currently a redlink for site, Kansas NHL
Battle of Mill Springs (event, 1862) and Mill Springs Battlefield (site, Kentucky NHL)
Battle of Perryville (event, 1862) and Perryville Battlefield (site, Kentucky NHL)
Battle of Monocacy Junction (event, 1864) and Monocacy National Battlefield (site, Maryland NHL)
Goddard Rocket Launching Site (site, Massachusetts NHL), there's no separate article about the world's first successful liquid-fueled rocket launch AFAIK

That's all i notice when reviewing NHLs through 21 states, through Massachusetts, so far. --do ncr am 10:51, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Another issue, based on actually looking at more than one of the event and site articles, :) , is that the wp:NRHP quality rating should probably reflect something about the coverage of historic preservation, and not just echo a quality rating regarding coverage of the event. For example in Haymarket affair, a single article covering the Haymarket Massacre and the redirect target for Haymarket Martyrs' Monument (an NHL), i don't think the wp:NRHP rating should be "Good article", as it is now. The article does not give adequate treatment to deserve that, IMHO, though it may be a good article in general.

Battle of Port Gibson (event) and Port Gibson Battle Site (Mississippi NHL)
Battle of Hatchie's Bridge, Second Battle of Corinth, Siege of Corinth (events) corresponding to Siege and Battle of Corinth Sites (MS and TN NHL)

I added NRHP banner and High importance where it was missing for the above ones, now done with 24 states, through MS, in reviewing List of NHLs. --do ncr am 15:33, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

While they are events and their respective sites that deserve two separate article (e.g. Battle of Gettysburg and Gettysburg Battlefield) but the NRHP banner should only be on the site (i.e. Gettysburg Battlefield). However for "less developed" subjects, one article can suffice, though if it doesn't cover the NRHP designation satisfactorily, you could always expand it so it does. The NRHP banner should also reflect what other projects have, I don't believe article quality grades change between project (except for A-class). If you feel that Haymarket no longer deserve to be a GA, start a GAR (it was promoted in 2008, criteria could have changed, article could have deteroriated since then), though, from a glance, a little more effort and you could see it become an FA. By the way, I have another NRHP at PR, before heading to FAC, if anyone is interested, so at least one of us is "improving [the project's] own articles to FA" (no offense intended to Blueboar).Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 16:51, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Listen, I can really feel both sides of this argument. On one hand, a whole lot of stubs that will never amount to anything don't help anyone, they just split content up. One more click for every person trying to read about a topic, right? On the other hand, some sites have their own tale to tell, outside only the moment of the event they are most significant for, right? I think the answer has to absolutely be that this type of thing is determined ad hoc, that it is decided on a case by case basis. I have been able to turn around some decent articles on events and their related sites that are able to remain focused and deserving of independent articles, in my opinion.

See:

But at the same time, I can definitely see how many, many of these sites, NHL, NRHP, whatever, could not possibly be a topic of an independent article. I think the article that don't show themselves to be a subject for an independent article will be obvious, and within short order proper mergers, or in some cases even splits, can be done. These are my thoughts.

tl:dr: This issue has to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

IvoShandor (talk) 19:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with IvoShandor here that it's case by case. Not only will the amount of info available on the site be an important factor, but the amount of info available on the event too. I remember discussing this with the Kent State shootings topic when the site was added to the NRHP this past year. The consensus was to keep it part of the event article (section called "Memorials"), but I believe a separate site article could be created that not only describes the site, but also gives some background before and after the shootings. On top of that, the Kent State shootings article is fairly long, so taking the bulk of the site info to a separate article would be more than appropriate. I do recognize, however, that it wouldn't be true for every site and every event. --JonRidinger (talk) 19:12, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Clearly needs to be case by case, but we should have some guidelines. I would say start with the normal notability guidelines. If the site itself is notable for other things that have happened there (including, say, other uses of the site before or after, modern museum or park facilities, or a notable controversy over preservation) then separate articles makes sense. Also certainly if the "event" includes lots of background or related information that happened in other places. Otherwise, as a reader I would prefer a single article instead of two. That is, one article if the only notable thing to happen there was the event, and the event only happened in one place. A related question is if there is one article and a redirect: then does the project tag go on the redirect or on the actual article? I can see both arguments there too.W Nowicki (talk) 23:22, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

We also have the situation where there is a good section on the site (preservation, monuments, etc.) within an article on the event. That section could be hived off or copied into a "site" article, but there is no reason it must be (consensus can figure that out). But, if it is left in the event article, then it makes sense for a NRHP project tag to go on the talk page of the "event" article, as part of that article relates to this project. Blueboar (talk) 00:50, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for good comments. You tend to be focusing on the possible issue of whether or not to have a separate NRHP article, separate from an event article to which it corresponds. Fact is there are separate articles in many cases. Like i said i usually/often think that is good to have a separate article, to allow one to go into more detail, and I like how Ivo put it in terms of a site having a tale to tell. Another reason is so that categories make sense. It is usually not helpful to classify an event as having Category:Greek Revival architecture, say. Note i don't always; i chose to put the new Kent State listing info into the Kent State shooting article on my own (and then there was other discussion at Talk:Kent State shootings#NRHP listing about how much belonged there, whether a big long quote that i started with or not, etc.).

It happens that i am inclined to start a separate site article if there is not one, in order to develop material in rougher, more expanded form than some would like to see in an event article, and for categories to make sense, and to allow an infobox, and so on. I started separate Marais des Cygnes Massacre Site and Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty Site articles now, and offhand i think there should be a separate Haymarket Martyrs' Monument article, without knowing a lot about the subject yet. It's like having a work area, which will allow us to compose a good short statement to put into the corresponding event article, then eventually one could revisit that to decide to keep or redirect the site article. It should not be a problem to have the separate site article for a while at least; for the most part there are separate ones already. Note, it is hard to judge whether everything in a separate site article could be merged, or which are the most important points to merge, if you don't draft the site article separately. It's often not possible to do a lot of drafting in a fairly polished event article like the Kent State shootings one; there would be too many editors interrupting to say the detail is not needed. It is premature to argue about many of these cases, where we have developed very little material so far.

What i was seeking comment on is, GIVEN A CASE WHERE THERE ARE TWO ARTICLES, or where there is just an event article, can we decide now to put the NRHP banner onto the event article, and to take some responsibility for making sure it is a good, concise summary (with good link to the expanded article about the place if that is separate). Like i think the Haymarket affair article is not there in terms of explaining why the monument is an NHL. Just because a separate site article exists or is created, we shouldn't drop the event article from our radar screen. The separate vs. merge decision is fluid; we shouldn't add and drop our wp:NRHP banner with each change that way. I think we do have something to contribute on certain battles and massacres and other events, the ones where there are substantial artifacts in terms of preserved places that evoke the past events, and which can be interpreted. It should not matter so much if an NRHP infobox and categories get moved to a side article, we should stay involved in the event article and relate in the place information, ensuring it is well stated concisely. Like IvoShandor describes, he has good complementary articles on a battle and a battlefield. We should pay attention to both, and take responsibility and take credit too. In the past i have usually dropped the wp:NRHP banner from an event article if there is a separate site article. Now I think we should stay involved in the Event article, and add our banner to more of them. Niagara commented on that, saying "NRHP banner should only be on the site (i.e. Gettysburg Battlefield)", but now i don't understand why. Why not put our banner onto the Battle of Gettysburg article and try to contribute to it in a restrained, complementary way? And with importance level same as for the corresponding site article. That way we are not involved in fighting others for representation of the NRHP / site info; we are working with others to ensure good coverage where it best fits.

I'll keep plugging along identifying pairings, about which i suggest we put a specific comment into our new importance ratings guide (that events get same importance rating as site articles, for the listed pairings). --do ncr am 01:33, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I shall state the obvious: This is WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, not WikiProject National Register of Historic Events. There is no reason why we can't add some details about a site into an event article to make it more comprehensive, but why is there a need to claim everything the project touches. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 01:54, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, I am bothered by the state of some of these event-site situations, and trying to think how to give them some priority in our new importance rating system. Maybe Gettysburg is a different, in that there is huge coverage about both the event and site already. Maybe the Cygnes and Medicine Lodge and other cases are different in a describable way. --do ncr am 14:24, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Doncram said: "It's like having a work area".... Doncram, have you become acquainted with userspace? That's what it's there for. A work area. I've told you this many times. Mainspace is for stuff that's been at least somewhat developed. If you have stuff with blanks and "maybe"s and crap like you usually put in new mainspace articles, you should start that in userspace until you have sufficiently researched the topic. THEN move it into mainspace. What don't you get about this concept?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:31, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I've mentioned creating 3 articles as part of this discussion, and you have apparently not looked at any of them. I'm confident that the 3 are good contributions, advancing the encyclopedia. I wish you would not be so confident that insulting language in this Talk page would be a contribution. --do ncr am 14:24, 22 January 2011 (UTC)::

That guy who stood up in the boat, now at Monmouth

Some more pairs:

Battle of the Rosebud (event) and Rosebud Battlefield-Where the Girl Saved Her Brother (site, MT NHL)
Battle of Wolf Mountain (event) to which Wolf Mountains Battlefield-Where Big Crow walked Back and Forth (MT NHL) redirects
Battle of Monmouth (event, 1778) and Monmouth Battlefield (NJ NHL)
Battle of Princeton (event, 1778) and Princeton Battlefield (NJ NHL)
Battle of Red Bank (event, 1778) and Red Bank Battlefield (NJ NHL)
Battle of Glorietta Pass (event) and Glorieta Pass Battlefield (NM NHL)
Battle of Bennington (event, 1777) and Bennington Battlefield (NY NHL)
Battle of Newtown (event, 1779) and Newtown Battlefield (NY NHL)
Battle of Oriskany (event, 1777) and Oriskany Battlefield (NY NHL)
Battle of Stony Point (event, 1779) and Stony Point Battlefield (NY NHL)
Battle of Valcour Island (event, 1776) and Valcour Bay (NY NHL)
Battle of Bentonville (event, 1865) and Bentonville Battlefield (NC NHL)
Fort Fisher (NC NHL) and 2 battles there
Battle of Guilford Court House (event, 1781) and Guilford Court House Battlefield (NC NHL)
Battle of Fallen Timbers (event, 1794) and Fallen Timbers Battlefield (OH NHL)

That's through Ohio NHLs now. A lot of these are battlefields. Maybe a joint article drive to clean up, develop these pairs, with WP:MILHIST or one of its task forces? NHL noms available for all. --do ncr am 15:05, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

This week's NRHPs

They're up, here. --Ebyabe (talk) 13:22, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment I want to add this place to the list. I tried looking for the website of some historical society in the Five Towns Area that might have an interest in getting it registered, but I couldn't find anything like that there. ----DanTD (talk) 21:04, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I must be missing something. Are you asking how to get a site listed on the NRHP? Maybe how to get a site that was supposed to be on this week's list but wasn't, into Wikipedia. Sorry, I have these blind spots ... Smallbones (talk) 21:19, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

No, it's about getting the site listed. I just thought showing a picture of the site, and leading people to the article might get you to figure out why. This is the last former South Side Railroad of Long Island station house, for crying out loud. It's got to be preserved. ----DanTD (talk) 02:32, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Have you considered contacting your state's SHPO and seeing if you can and what you would need to do to submit a nom form? I've thought about it, sometimes seriously, as there are sites I know of that could/should be listed (but then if you write an article about the site here, it might be considered a form of WP:COI). Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 17:57, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Download and fill out forms 10-900 and 10-900a from here [3] and follow the directions here [4] and submit them to the SHPO =) Einbierbitte (talk) 19:57, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

It was actually User:Alansohn's creation, but I contributed to it, especially the images. This image might be more convincing that it's worthy of NRHP designation. So is this reference, as well as these links. It would suck if the facts regarding this station would override any nomination. ----DanTD (talk) 00:38, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe that state SHPO's would basically welcome a NRHP nom from a non-owner although it would be relatively unusual, and it could backfire. Non-owners nominating a place can sometimes be an indication of historic preservationists trying to save a building under some threat. I was involved in one historic preservation issue and considered paying a consultant for NRHP nomination myself (which i was advised from the state would lead to it being named "NRHP-eligible", and from the town/city that that would not put it under a local historic preservation ordinance requiring some further review for any changes). But the interest led the owner to quickly demolish the buildings on the property to stop any possibility of historic preservation. All the developers in the town seemed to be united in pushing through demolition permits through the review board for that (whose members included several developers), if any one developer's property is threatened. I would be curious to know if the owner of this station would likely regard an outsider's NRHP nomination to be a threat and possibly choose to demolish it. You could try it and see! :) Or i would hope you'd talk to the owner and find out if they'd support NRHP nom (though they might say one thing and proceed with rapid demolition anyhow). --do ncr am 01:08, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Ugh! That means I'm going to have to try to find out who owns the older station building (I could send an e-mail to the LIRR if I didn't think they might try to wreck it), but in the meantime I really want to find somebody in charge of historic preservation in and around Hewlett. Looks like if I can't, I'm going to have to write to the library there too. ----DanTD (talk) 01:37, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Re the backfiring issue — the Danville Courthouse Square Historic District (Hendricks County, Indiana) was nominated for the Register several years ago, but because the owner of the primary property (the county government, which owns the courthouse) wasn't consulted about the nomination, they objected. Not sure why they got around to okaying it this time; perhaps they sponsored the nomination this time. Nyttend (talk) 02:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Naval Historical Monument

Please see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 January 24#Naval Historical Monument. Naval Historical Monument is currently a redirect to National Historic Landmark. That wording shows up in this page administered by the NPS as well as in the Hangar One (Mountain View, California) article. A Google search for "Naval Historical Monument" -wikipedia (to remove all results from wikipedia) doesn't really show anything substantive to define this designation. Anyone have any ideas?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Discussion about icon removal

Someone has requested the Mount Rushmore icon be removed from the NRHP Project template. The discussion is here. --Ebyabe (talk) 19:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I thot the suggestion was to remove the National Park Service logo from the navbox Template:National Register of Historic Places which appears at bottom of many NRHP articles, in mainspace. This has logo issues involved, perhaps wp:Logos is relevant. But, yes, please discuss there! --do ncr am 22:08, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The discussion is at Template talk:National Register of Historic Places and is concerning the removal or replacement of the NPS logo on said template. We seem to be getting closer to a consensus but if some other editors could stop by and drop their opinions into the thread, it would be helpful. Currently, considering the number of articles the template appears on, I don't think we can really say we have a consensus for any specific changes, but some more opinions could put us closer. Please consider stopping by the talk page to contribute to the discussion. IvoShandor (talk) 00:51, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

State-by-state Categories for every type of building

Hello, User:Pubdog is in the process of creating a state-by-state and Los Angeles categories for every existing national type of NRHP building category. Most of these have very few articles, some because existing articles just weren't put in the category, some have potential for growth with NRHP listings that don't have articles yet and some have little potential for growth. For the post office ones, I was trying to populate them but these are coming so fast and furious I'm overwhelmed. Generally, these categories work better for California and New York than Delaware and Alaska.

For a small sampling of just the one-article categories, see the following:

Now has 2, that may be all to be added, based on U.S. Post Office (disambiguation) --doncram

I found a 3rd, but would still consider this cat to be too small. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:10, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

~~Category:Post office buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio~~

Now has 8, with more to be added when articles for more Ohio post offices are created, based on U.S. Post Office (disambiguation) --doncram

Looks good to me. To be clear, this wasn't an exhaustive list of the categories of concern. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:10, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Normally I would consider this clear overcategorization but there is an exception for small categories if they are part of an excepted category structure. So do we except this category structure??? RevelationDirect (talk) 02:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll go back and revert whatever is believed to be overcategorization. Perhaps I did get a little carried away. I'm not done with Los Angeles yet, so there will definitely be more in the categories currently identified as small.--Pubdog (talk) 10:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Pubdog,

If I was you, I would take a pause from creating a new categories to look back and do the following:

Fix Categories: I had some luck populating our post office cats. Look for articles to add to your cats and remove the bad WikiMedia links I mentioned on your talk page.
Delete Categories: Identify which categories you regret. The process for speedy deletion by author is here. (This is a much friendlier process than Cfd.) And to Hmains point on your talk page, the old cats need to be restored to articles.
Establish Your Cutoffs Going Forward There is no hard and fast rule about the minimum number of articles to establish a category. I’ve found that those with at least 5 articles are not challenged as being too small. There is also a tipping point where, if a category works for 45 states, I apply it to the last 5 even if the cats are small. Now maybe your cutoff is 3 articles and 40 states, but having a general number in your mind avoids getting carried away.

Now no one died and made me King of Wikipedia; these are just friendly suggestions from another editor. If I can be of any help at all, just let me know on my talk page.RevelationDirect (talk) 23:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the guidance and direction on categorization!--Pubdog (talk) 11:18, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Dates in Template:NRISref

There is a discussion at Template talk:NRISref#Date format about the formatting of the date in the currently-being-rolled-out {{NRISref}} template. Should we go with ISO standard format or another one? Any comments are welcome there.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Brown House (Yuma, Arizona)

Hey. We're trying to improve our German stub on this, but I habe found that the nom form so far wasn't digitalized. I am not sure wether according to the FOIA anyone can ask the NPS for a copy of the document or wether it needs to be an US citizen. Until we're getting that sorted out, could please a project member ask the NPS for the document and foreward it to me via email? --Matthiasb (talk) 14:04, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think nominations are state secrets ;) You don't need an FOIA - just email the NPS and ask for a copy: nr_reference (at) nps.gov or write or phone Einbierbitte (talk) 17:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll try my luck. ;-) --Matthiasb (talk) 19:41, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Category:National Register of Historic Places in Iowa

User:Hmains has been systematically removing articles from Category:National Register of Historic Places in Iowa. Is there a reason for depopulating this cat?4meter4 (talk) 01:09, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

If you asked me on my talk page, I would have told you directly, but no matter. All these articles are in subcategories of Category:National Register of Historic Places in Iowa. Iowa seems to be the only state NRHP category in which the articles were both in the main category and its subcats. There is no reason for this to be so per the MOS and no stated justification anywhere that I can see for this situation. Thanks Hmains (talk) 01:24, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.4meter4 (talk) 01:30, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I see my work generally involved an editor who recently added hundreds of new NRHP articles for Iowa. Previous articles did not double up categories like this. I just don't know know right now of a nice way of telling him/her this without discouraging his/hers outstanding work. Hmains (talk) 01:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

New user? If so you could always drop a tweaked welcome template that includes a link to the categorization page in the MOS or where ever it is that information occurs.IvoShandor (talk) 13:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

When was Washington National Cathedral built?

There are some decided NRHP template issues with Washington National Cathedral (e.g. the actual building hardly resembles Bodley's plans at all; Frohman really could be credited as the sole architect at this point) but the most vexing issue, from my perspective, is that "built" date. It most certainly was not "built" in 1907; if you want to be especially picky, I think it's still not finished (I believe there is still carving going on in the interior), but 1990 is a far better date for "built" than 1907. That would make it perhaps the only building designated before it was built, but before I created this apparent paradox I thought I would check here first. Mangoe (talk) 13:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that saying 1907 is completely inaccurate. It has always been my understanding (and I assume common understanding) that major construction was ongoing for more than 8 decades. I was there in '93 and they made specific mention of the fact that it had just been completed despite being started before 1910. I thought it was interesting. IvoShandor (talk) 13:50, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The date given as "built" in the NRHP infobox as generated from the Elkman generator is actually a date "of significance" (which usually is a built date, but may not be in this case). The NRIS database, which the Elkman generator draws from, actually can carry several dates of significance but only one is reported in Elkman's output. In other cases i have looked at where a building was built over a long period, the beginning and end dates of the build period are both given. It is impossible to really understand what those dates mean without obtaining and reading the actual NRHP inventory/nomination document, which would explain the significance of those dates. I notice the article doesn't cite the NRHP document, so i gather it has not been obtained (see wp:NRHPhelp for how, if interested). If the 1907 date is wrong or misleading in context, it should be dropped, or it should be replaced by "1907-1990" perhaps, and a footnote added to support that. --do ncr am 14:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the date range makes the most sense, and it's supported in the article text. (And I was there in 1900; that makes it true!) Mangoe (talk) 14:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

sortable images in table

I often look for ways to find and map out the un-photographed sites in a county. One way has been to use a personal sandbox and just delete all the "file:" and "image:" entries. That works reasonably quickly, but gets a bit disorganized. A second way that I've tried recently is to put the same type of list on the talk page of the list, always preceded by something like "needed photos - this list may not be complete of accurate." Nobody's complained so far, but I thought I should ask. A third potential way involves sortable images. Though I haven't quite worked out the mapping angle yet, it works quite well in seeing which sites haven't been photographed yet: 2 clicks on the sort button. I saw this on the Portland, Oregon lists and tried it out at National Register of Historic Places listings in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

All it involves is removing the class = "unsortable" from the image entry at the top of the table and adding

"<span style="color: #fcfcfc">image pending" - where the image should be.

In some ways this looks like a fairly big change, so I thought I better ask. Also if others have solved the underlying problem in better ways please let me know. Smallbones (talk) 17:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

That woulda been useful to know before we created all the county list-tables! I do recall people wanting for the pic column to be sortable for just that reason, to see where there were pics or not, but it didn't sort properly, so i think the default stayed (or went back to) it being set up as non-sortable. Of course, please do feel free to improve the entries in any tables you wish, so that those tables can be properly sortable, now that you have it figured out.

I guess this also could be done for all NRHP list-tables by a bot. It looks repetitive and programmable. Perhaps we could accumulate several more cleanup type tasks that a bot could do for the NRHP list-tables all at once? I notice Dudemanfellabra has been plugging along adding NRHP banner with class=list for NRHP list-table articles per To Do item, which is needed/helpful to get a bot run focussed on these (there are a surprising number of NRHP list-table articles lacking any Talk page, so the category of all NRHP lists doesn't cover them all). --do ncr am 15:27, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how useful it is to others, but I'll feel free to change any tables I deal with in this way. I also don't know about it being a high priority, but if somebody's got a bot doing something else, and it's easy to do - why not? Smallbones (talk) 19:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't sortable tables usually greatly slow loading speed? Lots of these lists are rather lengthy and rich in images which already take me a while to bring up. Royal broil 04:26, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Regular county articles and county based NRHP listings lists

I saw that in many county articles – such as Ravalli County, Montana – the list of NRHP listings –such as National Register of Historic Places listings in Ravalli County, Montana – is not mentioned/linked. Is this intentionally or creators of the list simply forgot to add the link? --Matthiasb (talk) 19:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

It would seem logical to put that under "See also." I've seen this done a few times, but not often. Perhaps we thought that that's the county project's business ;-) or that it might seem pushy (I don't think so). Also most folks here might go though the state lists (e.g., put "List of RHPs in DE" to get the Delaware list). I say go ahead if you want, or maybe add another project for a bot. Smallbones (talk) 20:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

This one i don't see how a bot could be set up to do (in making correspondence between our county and split-out city/town list-articles vs. the counties and cities), and it would be changing "other people's" articles. I'd feel more comfortable manually adding links in the "See also" sections or possibly working into a section on history or historic sites, doing one state at a time. I agree this is worthwhile, helpful both ways for the county articles and bringing over readers/editors for future development of the NRHP articles. So added mention of this to our To Do list just now, which i think displays right here, possibly far above, on this page. Thanks Matthiasb for suggesting! --do ncr am 14:50, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Implementation and Alaska

I've done PA, NJ, and MD. Somebody else did Alabama and there are probably others. It's a pretty simple, mindless task (perfect for me) and the only difficulty is keeping track of what's been done, so I'll recommend using the lists List of counties in Arkansas (or similar). By the same reasoning, we may as well go alphabetically through the states.

Which brought me to Alaska. Somebody has proposed and started a National Register of Historic Places listings in the Alaska Panhandle despite the county articles already being done. There are about 400 listings in the 28 "counties"of Alaska, with about 10 counties having less than 10 listings. All the counties have their own lists now. I don't see a real problem in having a list of 2 sites, and will probably delete the panhandle list, but its been discussed here before at length, so let me know within a week if you really object to having the panhandle list deleted. The alternative is that the folks who don't want the panhandle list deleted clean up the other articles and make all the correct links. Smallbones (talk) 14:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing that Alaska situation up again. The consensus of the previous discussion (at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in the Alaska Panhandle and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 35#Individual county articles), as I summarized and no one disagreed, was to divide Alaska up into its four or 5 official economic regions (one being pretty much that Panhandle list-article already existing and duplicating separate, small county ones). The consensus was not implemented yet. Sure, i'll go ahead and do that, which will remove duplication and will redirect from county list-articles to bigger regional list-articles. Give me a week or two. --do ncr am 15:09, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Relevance question at Grand Lodge of Idaho article re: mentioning NRHP buildings

Non-involved editors are requested to comment at the Grand Lodge of Idaho talk page, to resolve a disagreement between two editors. See: Talk:Grand Lodge of Idaho#NRHP listed lodge buildings and subsequent threads. The main question is whether certain information is relevant within the scope of the article. Blueboar (talk) 15:27, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd guess many folks would think it irrelevant: not the factoids, but the argument itself. Suggestion - take a deep breath, relax for a minute, then think of something better to do than argue over this! It can't be too hard. Smallbones (talk) 01:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Listings - Feb 18, 2010

They're posted, here. --Ebyabe (talk) 13:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

AZ schools

I've written more than 150 high school articles in Arizona.

Other schools that need NRHP infoboxes, etc. are below. Most of these I wrote:

Carver High School (Phoenix, Arizona) aka Phoenix Union Colored HS: Needs NRHP templates, better history. The latter name is used on the existing NRHP materials.
Casa Grande Union High School including its gym
Florence High School (Arizona), listed as Florence Union HS in the NRHP but nowhere else
Nogales High School (Nogales, Arizona)
Safford High School (partly razed?)
The auditorium at Glendale High School (Glendale, Arizona)...but just the auditorium?
Two separate listings for Wickenburg High School - the high school and annex, then its gym

Special case:

Gymnasium (Kingman, Arizona) really needs a better location article-wise. Also, because of shuffling, it's not actually at Kingman High School anymore (that school moved). Right now they're building a new Lee Williams High School on the old site. The gym there is being preserved.

Since I'm an NRHP newbie, I don't know how to retrieve important NRHP information or to add this information to the articles in question. Raymie (t • c) 21:35, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to NRHP! There are instructions on how to get copy-paste-ready starter NRHP infoboxes at wp:NRHPhelp. I added one for Carver High School for you already though. About the Wickenburg ones, i see that there exists an NRHP listing for Wickenburg High School and Annex, in Wickenburg, AZ, and also an NRHP listing for Wickenburg High School Gymnasium, in Wickenburg, AZ. Both of those are currently redlinks. I don't know enough to judge if they should be separate articles or all covered in one article, possibly with several sections (you could put in one infobox for each), at bluelink Wickenburg High School. The topics are related and should redirect or include links to one another, surely. For Arizona, unfortunately the NRHP nomination documents are usually not available on-line. But to develop good articles, it makes sense to request free copies (see wp:NRHPhelp also for info on that). Good luck! --do ncr am 21:43, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Specifically, Elkman's infobox generator (see wp:NRHPhelp#Elkman NRHP tools) will give you the basic information from the NRIS database and create an infobox for you. The database information is nowhere as comprehensive as the NRHP nomination documents, but it gives you a place to start. Andrew Jameson (talk) 09:46, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Featured portal candidate: United States

Portal:United States is a current featured portal candidate. Please feel free to leave comments. -- RichardF (talk) 14:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places listings in King County, Washington

I think it is reasonable to split out the Seattle part of the list into an own article. Any objections? --Matthiasb (talk) 11:18, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I am sure it would be fine to split out the Seattle part into its own article. I recall editor Murderbike having done the table-izing there and having added a lot of photos, back in 2008 when the table format was being invented there and in some other list-articles. I vaguely recall Murderbike having chosen to create a separate table for the 160 or so Seattle sites, separate from a table for the 80 or so other King County sites, while choosing to keep both tables together. I think perhaps this was so that the linked Google/Bing map would show all sites together, facilitating photo trip planning. It's been stable for a long time, and pics have been added, and now it is more usual for city articles having more than 100 rows to be split out, and Murderbike is no longer very active and I think would not object at all, anyhow. Go ahead! --do ncr am 14:25, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Did the splitting. Now I am wondering if I should create an own sub category on commons as well. In the EN wikipedia an own cat for Seattle does exist already. I guess I will do so. --Matthiasb (talk) 16:25, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

It looks pretty good to me with just a quick overview. I'll suggest that for the 5th column in the Seattle table, rather than just having "Seattle" in each row (under city), switch the heading to neighborhood, if there is any way to determine "official" neighborhoods. Also I note that there are only 5 missing photos, 4 boats and a demolished theater. It would be great if you could get all these pix, including just the empty lot (or whatever) where the theater was. The problem will likely be the boats, which get moved, sunk, etc. Please do check on them, but are there any suggestions on what to do about missing boats? Smallbones (talk) 01:28, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, when I translated the de:Liste der City of Seattle Landmarks into the German WP, I added the areas the neighbourhood department is using into the table. But it seems that in Seattle no offical neighborhoods are existing. That's actually consistent with what Neighborhoods in Seattle says. I fear adding neighbor hoods might be sort of OR. Maybe the planning regions are a base but that should an editor decide who's familiar with the local understanding . I am not from the region, I am perhaps farther away from Seattle than you from Tokyo (so I also won't be great help in providing images). Cheers. --Matthiasb (talk) 15:40, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Easting and Northing expert

I've got a question on a site's coordinates and can only get Easting and Northing data (marked "unconfirmed") from the nomination form NRHP Nomination Form for River Bend Farm (Enter "public" for ID and "public" for password to access the site). The explanations I've seen for E&N don't make it immediately obvious to me how to convert to degrees (there's something about a reference point).

The River Bend Farm entry in our National Register of Historic Places listings in Northern Chester County, Pennsylvania list has "North of Spring City on Sanatoga Road 40°12′11″N 75°33′30″W / 40.20306°N 75.55833°W / 40.20306; -75.55833 East Vincent Township" as the location. The nomination form has Spring City and the township crossed out, and it refers later to East Coventry Township. The description seems to fit two river bends fairly well, but 40°13′47″N 75°35′53″W / 40.2298°N 75.5981°W / 40.2298; -75.5981 fits better. Our current location is closed off by some fairly nasty no trespassing signs, presumably related to a nearby Nuclear Power Plant. How do I check the coords from the E&N data? Smallbones (talk) 19:10, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The easting and northing amounts refer to x and y amounts of offset on a specific map, within the UTM (universal transverse mercator?) system. There's one converter at here, but you need to know which UTM zone to identify in a pull-down menu there, which map the easting and northing apply to, too. And you surely need to check any results for reasonableness. I think that UTM type coordinates are historically what U.S. military uses, as they are relatively easy to interpret for military forces on the field in a particular map of a field of operations. UTM coordinates appear in many NRHP documents, new and old, and in the better quality coordinates database (better than the version of coordinates database we mostly rely upon, via Elkman's system) available from the National Register. I'd like to apply a program to convert its UTM coords into regular coords, but it's not easy.... --do ncr am 20:27, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The convertor seems to work pretty well. I just had to get up my courage to guess Zone 18 (it guided me) and whamo! same coords that we have. Well, I'll see what's at the other set of coords (in the right township) and see if they match-up with the PHMC photos. Smallbones (talk) 21:06, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Good to know about the convertor - for future reference, the number before the UTM coordinates on page 10 of the PDF is the zone (18). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:33, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Images on main page

I've just archived the list of new articles and pictures for February 2011 on the main project page. This is the first month with no new images recorded for a month since we started keeping track in January 2007. Did anyone add images to any articles and just not record them there? The current archive page (viewable here) looks really sad and empty haha. Anyone?

Also, I WP:BOLDly limited the list of fully illustrated lists to only counties/cities that have more than 10 listings to keep the list from taking over the main page. Any comments?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:49, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I forgot that I added some new pictures to Lyceum-The Circle Historic District this month haha. At least the page has something on it now. Anyone else add anything?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:52, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I prefer listing all of the fully illustrated lists, so I reverted your change and stuck the list inside a scrollbox. Still saves space, but we can list all of them. What do you say? Ntsimp (talk) 22:51, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I personally think the scrollbox looks hideous, but even though I did delete half the list, I would still be in favor of doing it if it could be done in a space-conscious manner. Maybe we could do it like the DYKs are done? Just the top ## cities/counties with the highest number of photographed listings should be displayed on the main page and then a "See all" button.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:56, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Preface:What rows my boat may not mean anything to other project members, and vice versa. I really love the Fully Illustrated list and would like to see the complete Fully Illustrated lists list on the main page. On the other hand the "new pictures" list doesn't do much for me, not that I'm against it for other folks. (I will put in my Feb totals). I guess it's the completion of something that does it for me. I've even considered asking for something like "2 more pictures needed for a fully illustrated list" list. There are just some sites that seem impossible to get, but if these were publicized, and somebody knows where the pix can be had ... So, in short, I tend to agree with Ntsimp here. BTW, I think a few snowstorms had something to do with the fewer pix added in the last two months. I'll remind folks that take pictures in the countryside, that late winter, early spring is a good time to take pix while those nasty leaves aren't in the way. Smallbones (talk) 01:07, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in Delaware County, Pennsylvania 2 (out of 87) needed

National Register of Historic Places listings in Cape May County, New Jersey 1 (out of 47) needed Izzard-Reeves House

National Register of Historic Places listings in Cumberland County, New Jersey 2 (of 25) needed

Or maybe just a "Desperately seeking pix" page :-) Smallbones (talk) 01:20, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I've not thought of the "new photos" page for quite a long time. Yes, I added a bunch of photos last month, primarily in Cincinnati and Indianapolis. Nyttend (talk) 05:53, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I've added a bunch of pics over the last two months. Sorry, I just never think to identify them on the main NRHP page.--Pubdog (talk) 11:19, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Being somewhat a Wikipedia newbie, I stumbled across the picture archive for NHRP today for the first time. I added recordings of the pictures I had uploaded to the categories January 2011 and February 2011 and then created the March 2011 (possibly prematurely) picture page before seeing a section for that was on the main project page (oops). I also then added the same listing to the main page. I hope it is not a problem. I also added an article to the list and then looked at the drop down list of "bot-updated list of new articles" and seen it was included there as well as the others someone else had listed. Being the newbie I ask what is the accepted practice for adding articles to the main page list (not the bot generated one)? It seems redundant.
--RifeIdeas Talk 15:31, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the contribution, RifeIdeas. Yes, I see that you've created the March archive a bit prematurely, but don't worry about it. The common practice is to announce new pictures/articles on the front page of the project and wait for the end of the month to archive the list. Articles should use the {{alr}} template to rate their length, but that template is not necessary for pictures. The bot list is almost never edited by humans (unless it is to remove an irrelevant item), so I wouldn't worry about that one. Even if an article is listed in the bot list, it is still desirable to add it to the manual list. Only the manual list is archived here; the bot list has its own archives (which aren't separated by month). Its purpose on the main page is simply to give a more complete view of what's going on in the project since – as should be obvious by now – many project members either forget or just don't like to announce new articles/pictures on the main page.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:34, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

It's nice to see a newby on this page and adding photos and articles. What drew me to this project was a pretty friendly group of contributors (in a business-like way), a sense of direction to the project, and a respect for diversity in contributors' goals. I wonder if we've lost some of that (myself included)? Certainly a few months back we had a few squabbles on this page. May I ask User:RifeIdeas how the project strikes newbies, and what he might suggest to improve our welcome to newbies? Smallbones (talk) 17:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

This project strikes me as being consistent with other projects, nothing stands out, but it is nice to be asked my opinion. To be clear I am not much of an NRHP article writer at this time. I actually stumbled upon this area of Wikipedia in my work with Iowa communities (my main interest). I took a picture of The Floyd County courthouse and placed it in the county article thinking that would be it. I was surprised to see it used elsewhere as it was added to the Floyd County Iowa list of NRHP, which alerted me to these lists. I then seen another editor created a stand alone article about the courthouse. This started a conversation / collaboration with him/her (a former Iowan living in Maryland) creating the articles and me taking the pictures (for instance the Cedar Falls Ice House). I also took pictures for articles already created but without pictures. I have since learned about some of the various lists just by stumbling upon them. For example: List of Iowa Courthouses (not all are NRHP) and Odd Fellow Buildings. If I would be so bold as to make a suggestion, maybe some directory of all of the available lists or at least some suggestions of how to find these lists may be helpful, Of course someone has to stumble upon your project first to see these. I looked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Iowa my home project, and did not see any links to the NRHP. I feel this lack of connectivity in Wikipedia is a general symptom (or it could just be me). All this being said I will be adding pictures and small pieces to the articles (for my local area) as I can but at this time I do not see myself as major contributor.
--RifeIdeas Talk 18:23, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Immediate take-away: we should get some sort of notice on the State Wikiprojects, and in general make it easier for people to find this page. I'll get to work on the State Wikiprojects as soon as I'm done with all the "See also - List of County RHPs" on the County articles, which may take a couple more weeks. Any ideas from anybody on how to best do this or the more general task? Smallbones (talk) 18:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

After some thought, and some more research, maybe the various state WikiProjects are not the place to be putting a notice. There is a Directory of all WikiProjects at the bottom of WP:WikiProject Iowa I also took a look at Portal:Iowa and seen under the Categories/History & Categories/Landmarks were the various NHRP listings for those in the state of Iowa. There a place for related Wikiprojects on the Portal Iowa page but NHRP is not listed (this may be the best place). Another suggestion is to put the NHRP Portal on the various Article pages and County Lists, just not on the Talk page as it is now.
--RifeIdeas Talk 21:15, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

On just one point u mention, nice to see you a positive mention of List of Odd Fellows buildings (which like similar List of Elks buildings and others created in this last year has been pretty low profile in wikipedia), and to see your adding pics to Cedar Falls Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which appears on the Odd Fellows list and also on National Register of Historic Places listings in Black Hawk County, Iowa. I enjoy creating list-tables like these for people to find eventually! --do ncr am 19:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Susina Plantation new article

I have created a new article for Susina Plantation: User:75.90.32.105/Susina Plantation I am a new Wikipedia writer. Any suggestions for this article. I tried to upload an old photograph and a recent photograph of the main house at Susina but I apparently don't have privileges. Can someone help? — Preceding unsigned comment added by NGC4387 (talk • contribs) 16:14, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Nice job, especially for a first article. The "See also" heading on Wikipedia is for linking to other Wikipedia articles, so I changed this heading's title to "resources." Also, you don't need break tags to indicate a new paragraph— Wiki detects line breaks automatically. I suggest splitting the "Antebellum" section into two, or maybe three paragraphs. I also suggest adding a brief section describing the house's design, if such information can be found.

Regarding photographs, we prefer all images be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org). You should create an account there, if you haven't already, and upload your photograph there. Wikipedia automatically detects Commons file names. If you need help with this, let us know. Bms4880 (talk) 17:38, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your changes and suggestions. I added a section on architecture and divided Antebellum into paragraphs. I will work on photographs soon. I don't think the wiki system will let me go live quite yet anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NGC4387 (talk • contribs) 23:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Looks very good. I added a few frills - but you can revert them if you'd like. If you can get a link to an online version of the NRHP nomination - you should do that. The easiest photos to upload are those you've taken yourself. Smallbones (talk) 01:25, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

This is about User:75.90.32.105/Susina Plantation, presumably destined to be moved to Susina Plantation. I notice there's a big claim in the article, that this is one of the best examples of Greek Revival architecture with no qualifications (i.e., not just in the local area), but the claim seems to be supported. I am definitely interested in seeing pics! It does look good, nice job. --do ncr am 02:35, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I thought long and hard about such a claim. I felt it was substantiated by the immediately following comment and references. Reference [6] covers 100 homes throughout the entire state of Georgia, essentially every significant historical residence in the state. The author chose Susina for the cover. Reference [5] covers a smaller number of private and public buildings throughout the deep south and that author chose Susina for the cover. These authors clearly felt it was not only "one" of the best, but "the" best. The four other local contenders by John Wind were destroyed or abandoned because of accidental fire: Oak Lawn 1876, Fair Oaks 1962 (this was rebuilt from the ground), Eudora 1987 and Greenwood 1993. I'll put an early picture and a late picture of Susina up today. Somebody posted some personal, recent pictures from Picasa that you can see. Thanks for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.90.32.105 (talk) 13:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

NRHP status of 45th Road-Court House Square (IRT Flushing Line)

I know that the 45th Road-Court House Square (IRT Flushing Line) subway station has been listed on the NRHP since 2005, but this year it is being merged into Court Square-23rd Street station, which contains the already merged 23rd Street–Ely Avenue (IND Queens Boulevard Line) and Long Island City – Court Square (IND Crosstown Line) and has made me wonder if the NRHP status of the station has been decommissioned. So what's the deal there? Nobody at WP:NYCPT will tell me anything. ----DanTD (talk) 11:48, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Are you asking if the site is or will be de-listed? Why would it be? Has the physical structure been demolished? Even if so, in my experience, it often takes some time for a delisting to occur. For example, the Alexander Chene House was demolished 20 years ago and is still listed on the NRHP. Andrew Jameson (talk) 12:54, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

All that is changing is the name of the station ... not its historic significance. I doubt the NRHP would de-list unless the structure was completely demolished. That said, the NRHP does not always update its list when buildings or structures change their names, so the station may continue to be listed by the NRHP under the old (obsolete) name. If so, that should be noted in the article. Name changes do not affect the historic nature of a structure. Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there's more than just the name. There's that connection to the other two stations that includes some reconstruction, mostly involving the replacement of two staircases with "an in-system transfer to the underground Queens Boulevard and Crosstown platforms." Plus, when those who were working on rewriting the article did so, they got rid of the NRHP parameters, and I'm not really sure of the reason for this. ----DanTD (talk) 22:25, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Another "Address Restricted" Photo Question

The Holcombe Site, included on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Macomb County, Michigan, is an "address restricted" site. It's an archaeological site also known as "Holcombe Beach" or the "Holcombe Beach site." However, the state of Michigan has erected an historical marker near the site. Here's a photo of the marker and the general area--it's in front of a middle school, in fact. So, two questions: 1) given that the marker is "near" the site, is a photograph of the surrounding area representative of the site? and 2) Should I put the location and coordinates of the marker into the list? Andrew Jameson (talk) 13:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Note that the marker says "Near this site ..." It doesn't say you're actually there. I'm sure the marker was placed where it was, in front of the school, for a good reason. Nobody's going to dig there. As long as it seems to not be too far from the site (there's one in my town that's over a half-mile from the site, but that turns out to have been from historical confusion), it looks OK to me.

Actually, the real issue with a photo of the marker would be standing far enough back to make sure that the text is relatively illegible so as to stay on the right side of the de minimis rule about the copyright. Daniel Case (talk) 03:13, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Another consideration is the age of the excavation - it was discovered in 1961, the site is 50 years old. This alone wouldn't be enough - archeologists might be leaving it untouched for so many years because they are pressed for time on other sites, or maybe are hoping some new technology will help on a later excavation. But an old site AND a historical marker strongly suggests that they don't think there is much of importance to keep hidden. Smallbones (talk) 04:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Cedar Rapids Scottish Rite Temple

I recently uploaded a picture to commons and added it to this article among others. My confusion is on the address listed in this article (I changed the address in the info box) and the fact that it is not listed as a NRHP. The National Register of Historic Places listings in Linn County, Iowa has it listed as Consistory Building No. 2 and the List of Masonic buildings#Iowa has it listed as Cedar Rapids Scottish Rite Temple both of these have the 616 A Avenue N.E. Cedar Rapids address. This is not my area of expertise so if someone could sort this out I would appreciate it.
--RifeIdeas Talk 00:47, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Great... another multiple name issue related to Masonic buildings. Just to confuse the issue... according to the building's website, its official name is the "Scottish Rite Masonic Center", and the website says it is listed on the NRHP (Could we get confirmation on that)? Blueboar (talk) 02:29, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Using Elkman's tool http://www2.elkman.net/nrhp/whohas.php it gives both names - no big deal this happens all the time. I added the infobox. Smallbones (talk) 02:40, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Userboxes

I have added the userbox to my userpage exactly as indicated, even going to the G_LeTourneau example page to see exactly how it is done. All I come up with is a red (ain't gonna work) text link: User:Mfwills/userboxes/NRHP1

What am I doing wrong? --Mfwills (talk) 21:02, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Use "G_LeTourneau" instead of "mfwills"

I put that on your userpage - please revert it, if it's not what you want! Smallbones (talk) 22:19, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, I misunderstood what was to be done. Perhaps that should be better described. --Mfwills (talk) 22:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It is (see WP:Transclusion). That should explain it ;-) Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 22:54, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Have we thought about moving these userboxes out of userspace to become templates? I think that would have stemmed any confusion here.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I would have thought that had been contary to the WP:Userbox migration, however moving it to a subpage of the project might work. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 23:41, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm.. wasn't aware of that page. Subpage works too!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Information on nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com

I've just noticed that someone finally got around to updating nrohp.com — among their listings is the Charles Wintzer Building, which was listed last July. Moreover, they've added an ownership statement: according to the bottom of each page, they're owned by American Dreams, Inc. — unless there are multiple firms of this name, it's a house-building company from Hughesville, Maryland. Nyttend (talk) 04:12, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing all that! I see that the areas which they state for historic districts are still off by a factor of 10. I haven't checked yet to see if they still include delisted properties (which they showed as listed on the date that the property was in fact de-listed). Since I haven't heard of a newer NRIS version, i think this must be the NRIS version available some time ago, which is not yet implemented by Elkman into his system, and also not yet implemented by me into the /drafts system which i used to generate bot-like drafts for a few counties. It would be nice to have the newer information available. I noticed that the format of some of the variables within the newer NRIS database has changed, so it is not as easy to update this time around, however. --do ncr am 01:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they still have the delisted and other non-listed (such as owner-objection) properties included on the lists, and the years given are still the delisting dates; for example, their page for the Shelby County, Ohio includes a date of 1985 for the Turtle Creek Culvert and Embankment, which was listed in 1978 and delisted in 1985. Incidentally, this is the main use I have for the website: it's the easiest way to get non-listed properties for adding to the bottoms of lists. As well, note that this is a problem with the NRIS; Elkman gives a listing date of October 29, 1985 for Turtle Creek, and the only difference is that Elkman (unlike NRHP.com) gives a warning of "This property may not actually be listed on the National Register - listing code is RN". Nyttend (talk) 02:46, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Merging navigation templates

Would anyone be opposed to merging the standard {{National Register of Historic Places}} template and {{NRHP by state-region}} to get something similar to the format used by templates like {{National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania}}? Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 14:43, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. Be bold. I notice the Pennsylvania one includes the NPS logo, whose use for the NRHP nationwide one was discussed at template talk:National Register of Historic Places#Icon - Edit request (which resulted in it being removed). I personally would like to see some logo or graphic or photo used, if not that one. Perhaps you could put in something? You could pick any photo or image, and state that it should be considered temporary, to be rotated occasionally / whenever there is enough interest to change it at the Talk page of the template. I am all for whatever u want to do. --do ncr am 15:29, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Plantation complexes in the Southeastern United States

For any project members who may create articles that deal with NRHP properties in the Southeast that are about plantations, plantation houses, or elements of a plantation complex, I've started the article Plantation complexes in the Southeastern United States as a complimentary article to Plantations in the American South, which deals more with the social aspect of plantations (and may be romanticized just a little). The main Plantation article covers nearly as much about modern timber plantations as everything else combined and Plantation house is a redirect to farmhouse (which is true). Nothing really covered the complex as a whole, so now, hopefully, this one does or will in time. I've used all of the book resources that I had at hand and what seemed to be the more reliable sources online (more than a couple from the NPS), so it could some additional balance in areas, typo checking, maybe a better grouping of structure types, ...and a better title if anyone can think of one that is still concise, if interested. Thanks. Altairisfar 23:06, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Grand Forks North Dakota articles help wanted

There are only about 15 remaining redlinks on National Register of Historic Places listings in Grand Forks County, North Dakota, out of 61 NRHP-listed and a number more formerly NRHP-listed places. I've been plugging along developing articles using bot-like /drafts as starters, consistent with a past discussion here at wt:NRHP. The goal was/is to start articles including NRHP documents, in a town where there is a large university and potential future Wikipedia editors who might get involved. Help finishing out the article drive to start all the articles in a pretty good way would be appreciated! Thanks owed already to Elkman, Hugo999, and some others who have helped develop some of these out, add categories, etc. See Recent Changes to Grand Forks County NRHP articles (last 30 days). --do ncr am 13:24, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Please, someone, stop these! These are considerably worse than most stubs. Please see further discussion(s) at User talk:Orlady. - Station1 (talk) 18:30, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, my doing an article drive on these, and others, is now the subject of an ANI motion to ban me from creating NRHP articles. I had hoped to finish starting out these Grand Forks ones, and to create some descriptions in the Grand Forks list-article, and to develop all a bit more, before coming back here to call for some review of what I was expecting would generally be viewed as a successful, productive article drive, using the /drafts generator for starters. The drive is not complete. But at this point, my ability to edit in Wikipedia is under question, as is WikiProject NRHP's role. Please consider commenting at WP:AN#Topic ban proposal re NRHP stubs. --do ncr am 11:26, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

You are misrepresenting the scope of the motion at WP:AN, Doncram. It would not ban you from creating NRHP articles, but rather only from creating pages in article space that contain wording such as "was built or has other significance", "is or was a property", and "was designed and/or built by" -- wording that usually indicates that you are describing an NRIS database entry, and you don't know what the details mean. --Orlady (talk) 12:50, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Orlady, I object to your stating that i was misrepresenting something. I expect/want for us to have a proper Arbitration or other dispute resolution process to address what I perceive to be wikihounding by you. This is one more item to add, an instance of what i perceive to be wikilawyering type negative assertions that you make about me. At some point in our long running disputes I began to point out cases when I thought you were outright lying about something, or otherwise misrepresenting. I perceive many of your recent negative comments, suggesting evil-doing on my part, as part of a general response or escalation, to suggest everywhere possible that i am lying or misrepresenting, running my reputation down. Let's stop with going around and suggesting that I am misrepresenting. I do take offense. I don't know what to do to stop you; you have refused Mediation. One tactic is to respond at each and every assertion you make, to make a counter-assertion. This brings drama everywhere. The better solution would be for you to refrain from making such assertions only in appropriate forums, such as in a Mediation or other dispute resolution process. I would prefer not to further discuss this general pattern here. I ask again if you will engage in Mediation, for the record. Will you? Better discussed elsewhere, of course.

About the facts here, I am indeed under trial at the ANI, and SarekOfVulcan's originally stated motion could easily be broadened to ban me entirely. The originally stated motion is a bit vague, and would probably not be implemented exactly as stated, if it were generally accepted. There are many uninvolved ANI followers who can easily note the drama, and chime in with comments towards just banning me. This diff is one comment that goes towards that in the current ANI discussion. I don't know that editor, but based on just that comment would expect the editor is one who would possibly support an outright ban. I believe from your experience that you know ANI proceedings can turn and go that way. So, I disagree with your assessment that I misrepresented anything here.

Otherwise, you and I are participating at the ANI. It serves no good purpose to have a separate discussion here, I think. I will watch but hope not to respond here further. --do ncr am 18:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Not to be cynical, but have you considered pausing the creation of stubs,to allow things to cool off, and, say, turn your attention to something else. Perhaps the above proposal of structuring NRHP lists, or maybe picking an NRHP site of interest for expansion and promotion to FA. Hell, I even have a new, prototype NRHP infobox that you could be testing and commenting on. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 19:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Doncram, Orlady is correct. Whether willfully or through a misunderstanding, by saying there is "an ANI motion to ban me from creating NRHP articles" you are misrepresenting the proposal, which is as Orlady indicates. Further, the diff you cite is by an established editor, who I'm pretty sure knows what he is saying, but if you have any doubt you could ask him at the WP:AN discussion or on his talk page. And most importantly, Wikiproject NHRP's role is not under question; you are definitely not synonymous with the Project. Station1 (talk) 22:38, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with you Station1. Let's not focus too much on that diff of an established editor; I used it as an example of a possibly-quick, off-the-cuff, gestalt-type judgment made by an ANI-focused editor who mainly sees the drama there on the ANI page, and is not aware of long history or of complications. The editor did not explain his/her reasoning, it was simply a !vote, and it could possibly be of the quick judgment type. I don't object to that !vote or that editor.

The ANI discussion is in fact a threat to WikiProject NRHP editors. It is a proposal to curtail NRHP activity, contrary to consensus of NRHP editors, and for a long time did not involve comments from NRHP editors. It is a specific proposal about what NRHP articles may and may not say using NRIS information, mostly discussed by editors who are not at all familiar with NRIS data. The specific proposal includes that new NRHP articles (at least ones started by me), shall not include accurately ambiguous, NRIS-sourced statements such as the fact that a person is an architect and/or a builder, when that is what NRIS provides. Outside editors are naturally more comfortable with flat statements that a person is an architect, because it looks better, looks more encyclopedic, whether or not it is true. The proposer is SarekOfVulcan, not an NRHP member. Not being a member signifies, i think, not particularly caring about the Wikiproject and about the opinion of its members. Orlady, listed as an NRHP member and a main supporter of the proposal whose comments swung several voters there, is an unusual NRHP member. She has created relatively few NRHP articles and specifically disdains use of NRIS data (as a policy she proudly does not include an NRHP infobox or NRIS information, comments frequently negatively about NRIS information) and discounts NRHP application documents as sources (she has used online NRHP documents but I believe has never once requested an NRHP application, has frequently shown misunderstanding of what NRHP documents provide). In many Talk pages and edit summaries, she has commented sarcastically about description of architectural detail in articles on NRHP places listed for their architecture, about descriptions of "metes and bounds" of districts, about what she projects is undue reliance upon NRHP information. (That's fine, I guess, but my point is that she has long disdained a lot that interests most other NRHP members, and she is unusual for that.) Most participants at the ANI are not familiar with NRIS and NRHP documents as sources, and I believe they should not dictate what NRHP articles say. SarekOfVulcan and Orlady did not participate in the recent, remarkably civil, wt:NRHP Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 47#just do it by bot now. They are asking for overturn of the consensus of that discussion, which involved me proceeding with some demonstration of the /drafts system that I have developed, without completion of the demonstration that was proposed there. I gave notice in that discussion that I was seeking a bot approval, which was given for me to create /drafts for a number county or architect article drives, with the Grand Forks County one being salient as an idea in the discussion. It would be appropriate to have a new discussion about how starter articles could be improved, when a new approval is needed and/or when the Grand Forks demonstration is completed. They are forcing a decision now to curtail what was described within wt:NRHP discussion. They have a right to participate in civil discussion here, of course. I think the proposal there, however, is out of order, broadly, and also that it is a threat to WikiProject NRHP's authority. --do ncr am 23:54, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

You do know that WP:OWN applies to WikiProjects as well as individual editors, right? These articles are not "NRHP articles"; they are Wikipedia articles, and any member of Wikipedia is free to dictate–through consensus–what the articles say and how they are formatted. You may also want to look at WP:CONLIMITED. I will reply to the comments you made at the ANI there, but I do agree that after the ANI discussion is over, we should have a discussion–not just you defending yourself and not giving an inch–about how to proceed with these /drafts. Obviously, the method you are currently using is not only satisfactory to me but also to many other editors, hence the ANI. Please let's focus on the ANI discussion (trying to at least work something temporary out, such as you holding off for maybe a few weeks, or finding an interim solution while we discuss here) and get that resolved before trying to start one here.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:50, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I absolutely did not mean to suggest that WikiProject NRHP has right on its own to determine content of NRHP articles, which are Wikipedia articles. I was not familiar with that wp:CONLIMITED, but I agree with it. About a temporary solution, how about you and other NRHP editors working to complete out the Grand Forks County demonstration, in a good way, actually trying to work with the system of /drafts and to develop all to a pretty good state. Future discussion of how a better /drafts system should work, will be impoverished if few of those holding strong opinions have actually tried the system and considered how it can work for new/other editors. The Grand Forks /drafts, though, aren't the best I have so far produced in terms of quality and complexity of draft text and categories and so on, but would suffice for a real test. --do ncr am 02:13, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Why do you keep linking to that Archive47 discussion when, as far as I can tell, the consensus was "oh, for God's sake don't do that"? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

That's a very good question. Kindly stop misusing this discussion to support an idea that it rejected. Nyttend (talk) 03:17, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Peter Garretson House

Can someone take a look at Peter Garretson House and Garretson Forge and Farm? The latter was created recently, and someone has placed a merge proposal on the two articles. They seem like they're nearly the same thing, although I don't think the entire farm is listed on the register. I defer to someone with more local knowledge since the NRHP form is not online.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:01, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Grand Forks County Fairgrounds WPA Structures

I would appreciate help with User:Doncram/Grand Forks County Fairgrounds WPA Structures, an article that I had created in mainspace at Grand Forks County Fairgrounds WPA Structures, but which was "userified" to my space and move-protected by editor Orlady. Could anyone please review this article, contribute to its further development? Could any administrator move it back to mainspace if/when you agree it is ready? --do ncr am 11:46, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Update: Using the nice "find sources" search set up by my /batch system at Talk:Grand Forks County Fairgrounds WPA Structures#development, I found 2 good sources and added them to the article. The article improved by edits by SarekOfVulcan and Orlady and perhaps others, and has been returned to mainspace. This was a random case where place is NRHP listed but docs not available online, unlike almost all other Grand Forks county NRHPs, making it temporarily more difficult for doubters to see the notability. Anyhow, done. --do ncr am 18:59, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I do not find your boilerplate messages on these auto-stubs "nice" at all. I find it irritating and presumptuous for you to be telling me how I can and should clean up the mess you just made. If it can be done and you know how to do it, why haven't you done it yourself already, obviating the need for others to clean up such a substandard article? Why do you think it is that every article doesn't have a "please help" message such as this? Station1 (talk) 22:16, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

That's the first complaint about the message that I have seen. I think it is helpful. It would be good to have some such a welcoming invitation, and one that points newbies towards actual sources for the specific topic and conveniently excluding wikipedia from Google search results, at Talk pages of most new and old articles in Wikipedia. --do ncr am 00:00, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Funny -- to me, that message looked like a billboard announcement saying that Doncram feels that Orlady is picking on him and he wants somebody else to make the problem go away. A bit reminiscent of this somewhat similar billboard announcement a couple of weeks back. It's not obvious to me that either of those minor situations warranted such a prominent announcement. --Orlady (talk) 00:56, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Orlady, I think you don't understand that the welcoming invitation is built into all the new articles created from the /draft system. See the cut-and-paste-ready Talk page drafts, customised for each of Grand Forks NRHP site names, in Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Grand Forks County, North Dakota/drafts. In a later /drafts version for another county, I improved it further to set up find sources searches for alternative names of each site, too. I think it's a great innovation, actually.

I don't welcome Orlady's pointing to that WikiProject Connecticut Talk page posting. SarekOfVulcan perceived that as negative and included it in reasoning to block me for a week. SarekOfVulcan and Orlady commented extensively about within my block removal request, archived at User talk:Doncram/Archive 17#Additional discussion (part of unblock request). Orlady, I disagree with his perception and your perception about that, but I did the block. --do ncr am 02:27, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Next batch of NHL noms

The NPS has put on their website the next batch of National Historic Landmark nominations they will be considering at a meeting in late May, with links to the nomination documents. As usual, I am reviewing what we already have on these things:

1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision site, Grand Canyon, Arizona (exact locations where both planes hit the ground restricted; however, there may be enough clues in what isn't redacted). Deadliest aviation disaster in the world at that time led to major changes in regulating aviation, in particular the creation of the FAA (I believe this is only the second aviation-related NHL after Kitty Hawk, and the first one related to commercial aviation). Not presently listed. Perhaps an article on the site can be put together when the designation is made
Carnegie Free Library of Braddock, Pennsylvania. First one. Already on Register, and we have an article.
Carrizo Plain Archeological District. Address restricted (surprise), San Luis Obispo County, California. Includes Painted Rock and other features of what is already listed as the Carrizo Plain Rock Art Discontiguous District.
Deer Medicine Rocks, Address Restricted, Lame Deer, Montana. Native American rock art which includes prophecy of victory at Little Big Horn. Not listed presently, and no article here.
Eyre Hall, Northampton, Virginia. Rare intact example of a Colonial-Federal style in Chesapeake Bay region.
Gardner Earl Memorial Chapel and Crematorium, Troy, New York. Most architecturally sophisticated early crematorium in US. Section in existing Oakwood Cemetery article, with handsome pic, can easily be spun out into separate article.
Florida Southern College Historic District, Lakeland, Florida. Large collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings.
Fort Apache and Theodore Roosevelt School, Fort Apache, Arizona. Military base used to help win Indian wars turned into school to assimilate conquered Native Americans.
Fort Benton, Montana. Expansion of existing NHLD, it seems.
Meadow Brook Hall, Rochester, Michigan. Outstanding example of early 20th-century American estate.
Montauk Light, Montauk Point, New York. Oldest lighthouse in the state and a Long Island icon. Already listed.
Chief Jean Baptiste Richardville House, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Home of the last chief of the united Miami tribe. Already listed.
St. Peter's Church, New Kent, Virginia. Well-preserved colonial church demonstrating transition from 17th-century construction methods to 18th-century ones. Already listed.
Stratobowl, Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota. Launch site for many atmospheric balloon tests in 1950s. Not presently listed.
The Town Hall, Manhattan. Home to America's Town Meeting of the Air on the radio in the 1930s, a major milestone in public-affairs programming. Not presently listed.
USS Slater, Albany, New York. Only remaining destroyer escort; already listed. Another one for the Capital District.
Gen. James Mitchell Varnum House, East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Home of Revolutionary War general. Already listed.
West Point Foundry Archeological District, Cold Spring, New York. Site of one the largest industrial iron and brass plants in the US. Putnam County finally gets a second NHL. (Fun fact added later: On pages 51–52, the nomination cites three of our articles in its bibliography: the one I've already linked, Gouverneur Kemble and Robert Parker Parrott. Daniel Case (talk) 04:32, 18 April 2011 (UTC))

It looks like we're looking pretty good here ... no red links. Pictures? We might want to get some contemporary ones for the older buildings in the East. Daniel Case (talk) 04:26, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, yes. Montauk Point Lighthouse. I actually got to climb to the top of that in 2008, and took a nice pic from there, among others at Montauk Point State Park, many of which I still haven't uploaded. ----DanTD (talk) 11:43, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Murray D. Van Wagoner Bridge

While chugging through the list of Michigan State Historic Sites that I'm currently developing on my user page User:Dudemanfellabra/Sandbox, I came across the Mary D. Van Wagoner Bridge in Lenawee County, Michigan. This MSHO database entry shows that the bridge was listed on the NRHP on January 27, 2000. That date is backed up by this weekly list of actions taken on properties: 1/24/00 through 1/28/00 provided by the National Park service. Querying Elkman's infobox generator for 99001731, the reference number that appears on the NPS site, it returns a listing date of December 22, 1999–before the site was actually listed. Usually when Elkman's generator spits out a different date than other sources, I assume that it is the delisting date, but this site hasn't been delisted. It's listing code is DR, which (according to WP:NRHPHELP#NRHP codes) means "Date Received/Pending Nomination." Is this bridge actually listed on the register? If so, should it be included on the Lenawee County list?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It sorta makes sense, 12-22-99 is the date the nom was recieved and that the bridge wasn't listed until 1-27-00. Putting the ref number into NPS Focus gives the January date, so I say its pretty conclusive that the bridge is indeed listed. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 14:37, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's what I was thinking, but I was just wondering why Elkman's generator (more accurately, the NRIS database) was still listing it as DR.. A listing date of 2000 is way before when the database is supposed to support; should this perhaps be noted on WP:NRIS info issues?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:18, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't think so. If I recall, the generator is somewhat outdated now; and if NPS Focus has the correct date (the supposed successor to NRIS), it's possible it has already been corrected. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 15:31, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

NRHP/NHL sites in Late-April Tornado outbreak

Anybody keeping an eye on NRHP and NHL sites in the vicinity of the April 25–28, 2011 tornado outbreak? I saw some news footage that for a while I feared was the 16th Street Baptist Church, and though I was wrong, it was still a familiar looking church from the civil rights movement. ----DanTD (talk) 11:51, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

In the case of past natural disasters, there's been (ahem) a flood of removals announced several months later in the afflicted areas. Daniel Case (talk) 18:10, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

NRHP Categories for The Five Boroughs

This morning I created the Category:National Register of Historic Places in Queens County, New York. At some point during the week, maybe even today, I'm going to create more categories. I hope they'll be populated with all the NRHP-related articles for New York City, and I'm also going to bring this issue to WP:NYC. ----DanTD (talk) 18:03, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Structured lists

Hi everyone, for the Dutch Rijksmonumenten we created a structured list system. This proved to be very useful for consistent layout, statistics, data extraction and Wiki Loves Monuments. This system was also implemented in other Wikipedia's for other types of monuments, see this overview. It would be great if the NHRP lists would also use such a system. I created {{NRHP header}} and {{NRHP row}} as a start based on the layout of the current lists. I put an example here. Of course the templates need to improved, but this gives an idea of what's possible. What do you think? multichill (talk) 16:53, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't see what this adds to what we already have. Probably gives a little too much prominence to the (not that important) reference number. What advantages does this system have? Ntsimp (talk) 20:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm the reference number turns out very usefull when it's used on the other wiki's. From my experience on the dutch wiki with the heritage project there i know there are a lot of advantages after we used these numbers quite a while. Communicating mistakes in the lists, adding the monuments in a database and with that generate usefull stats (which also motivates people to finnish there city). Other advantage is the communication between the lists on nl-wiki en the pictures on commons, pictures which are tagged with a number can this way easily be added to the lists. And an important thing is that throught the reference numbers we can link to the heritage register, with which we can add information to the lists. So it can be pretty useful. Mvg, NL_Bas (talk) 18:44, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have to say that I agree with Ntsimp that our current lists (which are pretty structured) look better to me. The reference number could be included if we want it, but I'd put it in small type at the end or below the coords, if its really needed. Where are your coords? All that is just cosmetic however. Please explain how your structure is better than our structure. What can it do for us? Why would we want to put in the work to change what looks like a perfectly good system. Not to jump on your case, but these questions need to be answered before we'd make this change. Smallbones (talk) 21:16, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

For the casual reader nothing should change (changing the look becomes very easy, but you don't have to change).

For someone who just wants to update the list it become a bit easier (just find the field you want to update and add the info).

The real improvement with structured lists is the possibility to easily derive information from it. Things we have done based on information in these kind of lists (most of these things will be possible right away if we would implement it here):

Make detailed progress statistics.
Automatically suggest images to be added to the lists.
Plot items on the map: All monuments, just monuments in a certain region, monuments lacking an image (great for photo expeditions)
Automatically categorize images at Commons.
Automatically add coordinates to images at Commons.

The refnum can of course be made less visible. For the structured lists it's a pro because it's the primary key. The coordinates are now in the address field. I'll update the documentation with some examples.

The actual conversion can be done mostly with a bot (regular expression magic). multichill (talk) 10:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I tend to think this could be a good thing, in general, to support conversion of U.S. NRHP list information into other language Wikipedias. The German wikipedia has converted over more than any other wikipedia, including, ongoing now, supporting disambiguation pages that I happen to note include NRHP refnum identifiers, but there is probably lots of work involved in that being done manually. The English language wikipedia would likewise tend to benefit from eventual conversion over of the other country lists (not directly of interest to wp:NRHP but probably a good subject for WP:HSITES). We should try to cooperate, I think. Any changeover using a bot which yields tables that display the same as now, should be okay, I assume. I assume we don't have to display the NRHP refnum if we don't want to in our lists, but it could be a hidden field of use to others. We should be open to improvements in formatting of what we display, too. --do ncr am 18:12, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

You can find the list of othere countries here. Of course the refnum can just be a hidden field. multichill (talk) 08:02, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Any more questions or comments? multichill (talk) 14:11, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok, let's see if I can do a little pilot in the next couple of weeks. multichill (talk) 17:51, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

A pilot could be useful. Note i am the only editor here so far being supportive though. Getting a big change through here is conceivable, if it would be done by a bot program and would not change the appearance of articles. But maybe there would be lots of complications, hence opposition. I don't know much about the benefits to other language wikipedias. I would really like to hear from editor Matthiasb, who is our unofficial favorite German editor and liaison, who has translated many NRHP individual articles and list-articles.

Also, I'd be happier if I could learn about possible translations from any other language into the English wikipedia, of any list-articles already set up in the other language, as you propose should be done here. Perhaps you could provide a pilot demonstration of translating a list from some other language wikipedia? That would perhaps best be mentioned and discussed at wt:HSITES though. --do ncr am 19:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I am late into this discussion. The main issue when translating lists (i.e. tables) consists in differing templates used and in different date formats. For instance instead of Template:Dts we use de:Vorlage:SortDate what means that {{dts|11|08|2007}} must be transformed into {{SortDate|2007-08-11}}, we do have another coordinate template (and do not have several "light versions"). I am using for this stupid transformations some word processor macroes mostly.

I noted that there was a rfd for some of the table templates several days ago – we have some purists who mean that the main goal is to keep the German WP free of templates. --Matthiasb (talk) 15:16, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

NRHP to join Wiki Loves Monuments photo drive for September 2011?

The Commons Wiki Loves Monuments photo drive sounds great, completely consistent with what we do here in U.S. WikiProject NRHP. I notice it is to be organized differently in each country, and then there is to be a Europe-wide choice of best photos. Why not do a photo drive here, too, for the same timeframe, in solidarity? I expect we should be able to join up okay, just not get included in the planned Europe-wide finals. We could run our own geo-based program for each state or bigger U.S. regions, with U.S.-wide finals picking the best overall. A photo drive ending in September would be timed well for our making 2012 calendars using the winning photos. --do ncr am 18:12, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm one of the lead organizers of Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 (I also organized it last year). We're focusing on Europe because otherwise the project gets too big for us, but that doesn't mean you can't organize it in the US! There is a lot of documentation at Commons on how to get going and what needs to get done. Might worth reading. multichill (talk) 08:02, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Did you note that there's a comprehensive project in the German WP? See de:Wikipedia:WikiProjekt Denkmalpflege (what IMO is the equivalent to WP:HSITES but I am not sure, I am not really involved with this). --Matthiasb (talk) 15:16, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

[nris2009_03_13-1] "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2009-03-13. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)

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