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Outsized maps

Naulakha (Rudyard Kipling House) includes one of your infoboxes. It's nice to have the map, but in the case of "tall" states like Vermont, the map is grossly large, and gets in the way of the material in the article. Is there a way to get rid of it in this article, or, better, to resize it so it doesn't take up so much real estate? Lou Sander (talk) 20:10, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

We should probably use county maps for Vermont (and other tall states), but I don't think they exist in a form usable in the infobox for Vermont. Blanking the template's locmapin parameter will remove the map. Magic♪piano 20:44, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Alternatively, if you don't want to get rid of the map entirely, Infobox NRHP has a parameter |map_width= that you can set to be the width of the map in pixels you want. I think the default is 235, so making it smaller would shrink the height as well.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:32, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Making it narrower did the trick. IMHO, using county maps wouldn't be as good a solution. Now, is there a way to make the map show up somewhere else in the infobox, maybe below the Location or Coordinates, so it doesn't clash with the image of the house? Lou Sander (talk) 01:29, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

There are some interesting maps used in various articles about New Jersey boroughs, I've noticed; they show the location of the borough within the county, and in an inset show the location of the county within the state. Might that be something to try designing for other states as well? --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:35, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

For multi-level maps like that, Frietjes used an interesting trick at Pendleton Center for the Arts that is apparently already part of our infobox. I, at any rate, was not previously aware we could do that. — Ipoellet (talk) 04:30, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I just discovered that myself - wonder if it's a new feature. It's not an infobox trick, exactly - it's more of a map trick, in the way it's coded. I like it very much and hope it becomes standard. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 05:43, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Ipoellet and Ser Amantio di Nicolao, the multilevel map feature should work for any template which used module:location map. the feature was added by Jackmcbarn in December 2014. just delimit the list of maps with '#'. Frietjes (talk) 13:20, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

These are very good developments, and I've just become aware of them. There's something else that has bothered me about Wikipedia's handling of geographical information: There's a need for a simple way to locate smaller locations with regard to nearby or well-known large cities. For example, Golden, Colorado is a suburb of Denver, but you have to get deep into the article to know that. Because it's in a different county, the maps don't help you to locate it. On the other hand, Butler, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, is revealed as such in the first paragraph. All this depends on the editor knowing it and spelling it out. Roswell, New Mexico is about 200 miles from Albuquerque, but unless you are familiar with New Mexico geography, you haven't any idea about that. I guess what I'm looking for is some easy/automatic way to express that "tiny town A" is X miles from "big city B". I appreciate that this is a big order. Maybe it could be done somehow through maps. Maybe there could be some sort of template where you could enter both cities and get the proper text. Such a thing would be useful in the very complete Geography section of Artesia, New Mexico. I see the need for something like this, but I don't know enough to implement it or get it implemented by somebody. Lou Sander (talk) 18:09, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

There is {{Location map+}}, which lets you plot more than one point on a map at a time. You do have to manually enter in the coordinates of each point and choose an appropriate map to display, so it's far from automatic, and it doesn't automatically display distances, but it's at least a start in the direction you want to go, I think. An example of its usage can be found on many earthquake pages to give reference points to nearby major cities, e.g. April 2015 Nepal earthquake.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Can someone help confirm this?

In Jacksonville, National Register of Historic Places listings in Duval County, Florida, the W. A. Knight Building entry links to Greenleaf & Crosby Building and it shows a photo of that building. But according to the NRHP form, the W. A. Knight Building is a three-story building next to it. I think that the confusion comes from the Knight Building also being called the Greenleaf and Crosby Annex (see the NRHP form). The Greenleaf Building article has the Knight Building NRHP. So it seems to me that the Knight Building needs to have a separate article and the NRHP info moved there. Also, the photo on the county listing is wrong, but the commons has two photos of the correct building. Is this right? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:26, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

You might want to check with @Mathew105601:, since he's the one who moved it. He does a lot of editing of Jacksonville articles. I took the original pictures and later renamed them, thinking I got the wrong building. Maybe I was right the first time? --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Union of Opposites ‖ 07:23, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Here's something. [1] --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - State of the Union ‖ 07:27, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Ah, that's what happened. Originally I thought the taller one was the Knight building. Then I clarified later. I name changed those to Greenleaf. I did take a couple shots of the Knight building, tho they're not great. Still usable until something better comes along. [2] --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Attract and Repel ‖ 07:34, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

The same thing happened to me. I was photographing the Elks Club from across the street and I noticed an NRHP plaque for the Knight Building. To be the taller Greenleaf & Crosby building looked much more interesting, so that is the one I photographed! (assuming that it was the NRGP one) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:39, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Map of county NRHPs?

Is there an easy way to see a map of the NRHP locations for a county? It would help a lot when planning a visit.

Yesterday I went ti Jacksonville to photograph some sites. I made a short list to photograph but I didn't have a lot of time to plan a good order to visit them. Sometimes I left one to do another one, and then when I went to another one, it was right around the corner from the previous one. I took photos of one building that I didn't know was on the NRHP until I got back. And while I was across the street from one of them, I found that I was right in front of another one that was not on my list. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:51, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

On most county listing pages, there's a box on the top right. It allows you to view locations via OSM (whatever that is), Google, or Bing. It does depend on the coordinates on the page being accurate, but there's been a lot of maintenance in the past to correct that. I noticed you hit a bunch of the Jax sites. If you need help with planning for Florida trips, I've visited most of them and can give tips. Because downtown Jax can be so confusing, I'd park in one central-ish spot and then walk around to different spots. I'd pre-print detailed maps off Google and carry them with me so I'd know exactly where to go. Let me know if you need any help.  :) --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Border Town ‖ 20:16, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Btw, if you ever get to Jackson County, skip the Robert Lee Norton House. It's not at the coordinates listed (I've looked multiple times). It must have been moved or been demolished, but I can find no records of that. Which makes me think. I know we don't do OR for articles, but when we find things like this when we're photo-roadtripping, would it be good to note it somewhere? Maybe the article talk page, if there is one? --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - General Health ‖ 20:28, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I've put a note in the description field that says "Likely demolished (see talk page)" with "talk page" wikilinked. That way it's noted on the county list but your OR discovery can be fleshed out on the talk page. You can see two examples next to each other at National Register of Historic Places listings in Redwood County, Minnesota at positions 8 & 9. -McGhiever (talk) 00:30, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

When I'm out NRHP-photographing and find that a historic building's gone, I'll shoot the vacant lot, modern building, or whatever's in the given location. Once I've double-checked the nom form, to make sure that the address wasn't yet another NRIS error, I'll put a note in the "Description" field of the list article, with a link to the photo as part of the citation. I did this, for instance, with the First State Bank building in Shattuck, Oklahoma (see Ellis County list and diff). This may verge on OR, but since our list articles are primarily tools for members of the project, I can reconcile it with my Wikiconscience. — Ammodramus (talk) 00:33, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't include anything demolition-related in the Summary field, but I always include a photo of the site, whether it's an empty lot or newer building, or something else. For the reader who's desirous of visiting the site, having a photo of its current appearance is far better than giving the appearance that nobody's gone there to get a photo yet. Last year, I was in Philadelphia to get photos for my personal collection, and because I saw File:NE corner Pine and Quince.JPG (uploaded by Smallbones), I knew that the building had been replaced, i.e. I hadn't accidentally gotten the wrong location. Nyttend (talk) 00:56, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places listings in Geneva County, Alabama

@Hmains: is trying to delete the redirect National Register of Historic Places listings in Geneva County, Alabama since the county has no listings in it. The redirect points to National Register of Historic Places listings in Alabama#Geneva County, which includes the text "There are no sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Geneva County." This is valid information to have in case someone is searching directly for listings in that county. I have reverted his edits twice and don't want to break 3RR. Can anyone else weigh in here? There are redirects for every single county in the country, even if they are empty, and deleting this one (especially a speedy delete) makes no sense in my opinion. At worst there should be an RFD.

Also, I'm not sure if anyone really cares enough to contest anything, but I'm sure you've seen many of his edits in your watchlist making bot-like changes to category trees. Personally I find this all a bit annoying and unnecessary, and I feel like the number of edits involved warrants a discussion here at the project talk page, but I don't really care about categories enough to want to put in the effort it would take to stop him/slow him down.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:47, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

• You should notice that I left the redirect in place. You don't have to further edit anything. Hmains (talk) 03:50, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm glad this seems to be resolved... but Hmains adding a db-author tag to a redirect they didn't create, with the edit summary "refine category structure", and reverting to restore it twice instead of taking it to RfD is the sort of behavior that makes me wonder if we should be taking a closer look at their other edits. (Though Dudemanfellabra is not alone in not caring too much about categories; I get the impression that categories in general are managed by a handful of people and mostly ignored by everyone else, which can lead to unpleasant findings when the rest of the encyclopedia pokes its collective head in there to see what's going on.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 21:33, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I thought I was trying to delete something I had created that had no content; I was wrong and when I noticed that fact, I stopped. Sorry about the confusion and trouble. Hmains (talk) 21:38, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Error message and tracking category for unsupported parameters (Infobox NRHP)

I have added error tracking for unsupported parameters to {{Infobox NRHP}}. See Category:Pages using infobox NRHP with unknown parameters. A red error message appears when you Preview the article, between the edit screen and the rendered preview. In the category, the articles are sorted by the name of the parameter that is unsupported.

There are 53,000 articles in the error category, which makes me think that there may be an inconsistency between how the template is commonly used and how the template is coded, or that I missed some parameters when I added the check. If the latter is the case, ping me here and I will fix the problem ASAP.

It looks like the vast majority of articles are being added to the category by |governing_body=, which was removed from the template in January 2016. If there is consensus to remove this template parameter from these infoboxes, you might want to file a Bot request. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:24, 6 May 2016 (UTC)typo fix—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:34, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

It seems like it might have been better to just not display the governing body, rather than removing the parameter. If the parameter removal is to remain, it might also be a good idea for @Elkman to modify his infobox generator in addition to having a bot remove it from existing uses. Magic♪piano 12:03, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Why do we need to track these? I can understand tracking some items, because errors can sometimes reflect a typo in the parameter name or the inclusion of information that needs to be added to an existing category, but when we have tens of thousands of errors due to the abolition of a single parameter, the tracking seems rather pointless. I've restored the |governing_body= parameter, but with <!-- comment marks --> surrounding the transcluded information, so it doesn't display anything. Nyttend (talk) 00:59, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Consensus was to remove the parameter from the template, so it was removed in January (see link to discussion above). Restoring it to the template is against that consensus. [Note added on 7 May 2016: It also does not change the template's error-checking code, so it is not the right technical fix. I implemented a better fix below.]

I started the discussion above to let the editors here know that the vast majority of articles in the error category were there because of the |governing_body= parameter and to suggest that they might want to file a bot request to follow through on the removal of that parameter from articles. Adding the parameter back to the template is counterproductive to that effort, since the category provides a straightforward way for a bot to choose articles to search for the removed parameter.

The "tens of thousands of errors" do not affect regular readers or editors, since the only place the error appears is in Preview or in a list of hidden categories, the latter of which regular folks do not see by default.

In the meantime, other erroneous parameters will be sorted in the error-tracking category by the name of the parameter, so editors can work through the errors that fall outside of the articles listed under "G". The category page has a table of contents that makes it easy to do so. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:05, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

When you see the discussion linked above, you'll see who proposed it; don't jump on me for going against consensus. This is a technical method to get around a bad situation, not an attempt to overturn a discussion that I started and supported. If you see the discussion linked above, you'll also note that there was consensus against having a bot remove it, because it could simply be ignored. Don't force us to adopt your ideas of how this template ought to be used. You also may wish to review the wheel-warring policy, which specifies that re-undoing an action of this sort is grounds to have your user rights removed. Nyttend (talk) 01:17, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Really, Nyttend, you're reporting this as wheel-warring without waiting for this good faith discussion to proceed? I am surprised. I have reviewed the wheel-warring policy, and I look forward to an explanation of how it applies to this situation.

I have added |governing_body= to the list of parameters that are accepted by the module that checks for unknown parameters, along with a comment that refers to this talk page for an explanation of this unusual condition. I would be interested in hearing from other project participants to determine if they think this is a reasonable way to proceed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:38, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Well that escalated quickly. I agree with Jonesey95's addition of the deprecated parameter to the list of "valid" parameters, along with the comment explaining its presence, and I'm not entirely sure how WW applies here either. Even if it does by some technical definition, I still think the reporting was a bit hasty and uncalled for.

I would also like to point out that there are a lot of articles with infoboxes using the parameter |architect OR builder=, which was a compromise between Doncram and Elkman in his infobox generator since NRIS does not distinguish between the two. This category helps track those now, so I think it is pretty useful indeed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:43, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Dudemanfellabra. Would also add a reminder that project membership does not constitute a waiver to WP:OWN - it appears to me that Jonesey95 was given less "right" to make mods to the infobox because (s)he isn't a project member. — Ipoellet (talk) 18:09, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I appear to have survived being listed at ANI, but I think it wise at this time to protect my blood pressure by unwatching this page and the Infobox NRHP template page. I have done so. After exclusion of |governing_body= from the error check, there are about 4,700 articles in the error category, the vast majority of which are there for |architect OR builder=. I fixed about 20 articles, and the error-checking appears to be functioning properly. Again, ping me if something is wrong with it, and I will work with you to propose a fix. Enjoy the cleanup! – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:29, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Regarding one site on this list; is there any reason Gomez Mill House is categorized under the number 1, when it should be under... oh, I don't know... "G?" ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:44, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

The articles appear to be categorized by the unsupported parameter rather than the article title; since the first unsupported parameter in Gomez Mill House is "1st Floor architects", it gets sorted under 1. This is also presumably why so many articles (especially those that don't start with A) are listed under A, since "architect or builder" is one of the more common unsupported parameters. (Whether this sort of categorization makes sense is another story; it might if we documented this behavior in the category, but since we don't it's just confusing.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 17:52, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Commons NRHP template issue

Just two weeks ago, New York's Wanakena Footbridge was delisted, two years and a few months after it was destroyed by ice on the Oswegatchie River that it crosses. I made the appropriate edits to the article, and the Commons categories for the image. But ... I am at a loss for what to do about the NRHP template on the image page.

Since I would bet this is neither the first nor the last time this has come up, I have started a discussion on the template talk page that I think would be better carried on there than here. Daniel Case (talk) 05:32, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Illinois NRHP nomination documents available

NRHP nomination documents for 1,924 Multiple Property Submissions, National Historic Landmarks, and Single Properties (along with finding aids for each of the three) are available through the National Archives Catalog. The forms are available under entry National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: Illinois (NAID 26457693). The easiest way to find an individual entry is to search the Catalog for the National Register of Historic Places Reference Number. The forms and other associated documentation are in OCRed PDFs and are available for viewing and downloading.--Pubdog (talk) 11:36, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Awesome! Now I can get the handful of forms that the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency doesn't have. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 18:29, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Great! ILHPA tends not to post the nominations for destroyed places, so it's typically been necessary to request them from NPS directly. Much easier just to go to [3] or [4]. Nyttend (talk) 01:49, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

By the way, TheCatalyst31, are you able to view either of the nominations I linked? Both of them are blank single-page documents for me; I don't know if the site's having issues or if it's my browser. Nyttend (talk) 22:39, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I couldn't view them on the page, but I was able to download them and view them that way. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Update: as of today, I am able to view the nominations on the page, though they take a bit to load. (And they're using a pretty bad PDF viewer; either you have to read the nomination in the little box, or you have to fullscreen it, which makes switching to an editing tab annoying.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 12:34, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

In light of the recently emerging trend of nominations being uploaded to the National Archives rather than Focus, should we update the map/text at WP:NRHPHELP#Online? What all is available on the National Archives? Is there a central location where one can look for all NRHP nominations, not just those in one state?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:10, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I found this, which says 3 states have been added to the National Archives: Arkansas, Illinois, and Michigan. Are there any more?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:36, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I think that's all of them so far. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 12:34, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Roy approaches 5,000 pix

Photo by Roy of the Quito-Guayaquil Railway. If I have the story right, this schoolbus was converted to a railway locomotive and the line has now been closed for about 20 years

User:Klotzplate and his earlier incarnation User:KLOTZ is now about 8 photos short of 5,000 photos uploaded. I'm sure he'll hit the milestone in a few days.

A former covered bridge of Madison County (destroyed by arson). Roy had a pic in his files

For those who don't know Roy (I've checked with Roy for permission to post this), he's an octogenarian who been a photographer since his teens. His other hobby is visiting every county in the US. He completed the slate fairly recently and has a pic of each one.

The majority of Roy's pix at Commons are previously unillustrated NRHP sites - one pic per site. So I'd guess that accounts for well over 3,000 sites. He also used to upload pix from his many world travels - very similar in content to his NRHP pix. I'd guess 1,000-1,500 of his pix fit this category. Then add in a few hundred museums, libraries, sites that "should be listed", and "duplicate NRHP pix" and you'll understand most of his contribution. There is something special beyond this however - e.g. covered bridges that were destroyed over a decade ago, sites that I just could never find or get permission to photograph (we live within 100 miles of each other).

So congrats to Roy, who has done all of this since Sept. 2012 (our first Wiki Loves Monuments).

BTW, is there anybody else who could claim 3,000 sites or 5,000 overall pix in this area? We should note them as well here. (FWIW, I likely have 2,000 previously unillustrated sites, but gave up counting several years ago). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:52, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

That is a very impressive number. I've run across his photos several times. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:21, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Wow, what fantastic work, truly. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 03:19, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up and many, many thanks to Roy - so glad he has shared so many of his photos with the world via Wikipedia! Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:05, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Considering I've barely managed a hundred NRHP images myself...magnificent work. I am rendered speechless. Something for us all to aspire to, surely. :-) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:32, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Washington County, Utah

Washington County UT has 78 listings, but National Register of Historic Places listings in Washington County, Utah features only 50 of them — the remaining 28 sites are on a separate list, National Register of Historic Places listings in Zion National Park. What's the point? NPS unit lists typically aren't split out of county lists, e.g. the places on Ohio's National Register of Historic Places listings in Cuyahoga Valley National Park all appear on the Cuyahoga or Summit county lists, and many NPS units don't have their own lists, e.g. there's no National Register of Historic Places listings in Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and all the NR sites in the lakeshore are on the Lake, Porter, or LaPorte county lists. The fact that the park's in one county shouldn't mean that we remove the park's sites from the normal list; all the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park sites appear on National Register of Historic Places listings on the island of Hawaii, for example. Nyttend (talk) 01:56, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Doncram did it in 2013. I didn't like it, but I don't think I said anything. I say add 'em back. Ntsimp (talk) 02:08, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Now that @Doncram:'s topic ban has been lifted, maybe he would like to comment here. I don't have an opinion on whether or not the list should be merged, but if it is, the Progress page should be updated to reflect that, and I will need to update the bot, but those are minor concerns.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:07, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Got the ping. I am blamed for what? I think it's very well-defined and looks pretty good, but I didn't create List of RHPs in Zion. See its talk page where I give notice, and follow link to merger discussion in 2013 to see what the concern was and what happened.

I don't particularly care what is done now, but the 28-item Zion list is not terribly small. There are lots of state lists with some counties split out, city lists with some neighborhoods split out, county lists with some towns split out. In List of rhps in MN the size got down to 9: every county with 9 or more got split out, I see a note from me about that on its talk page. Indiana got every county split out, creating several lists of 3 or 2 or even just 1. I don't see a consistent policy about splitting.--doncram 07:36, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I recall an earlier discussion here that vaguely supported splitting county lists up around 200 listings, though it didn't come to a definitive conclusion. 78 listings is well below that, though, so I don't see a compelling reason to keep those two lists split out. (Splitting counties out of state lists is a different issue, since those are already in separate lists, so you usually end up with either 200+ listings spread out over many small lists or a situation where over half the counties have their own pages and the others are awkwardly broken up by a bunch of "main article" links.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 08:03, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I think this is a smart split that I support. It's well-defined and clean (slick). While 28 is kind of small I don't think it's too small. What I like about it is how it can be listed and linked separately in the NPS article (at the top of a NRHP section would be a "main" heading. Many county lists were split out of the Wisconsin list and they have only a handful of listings. I didn't support splitting when that small. Royalbroil 11:33, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

As noted above, this is quite different from county-list splits; each county nationwide already has its own list, and giving a county a separate page for its list (as opposed to giving it a separate section of a larger page) is quite different from pulling specific entries out of a single list, as was done here. In my experience, pulling specific entries out of a single list is otherwise done only for size reasons, either because we're pulling a single city out of a big county, to reduce the size of the county list (e.g. Salt Lake City out of Salt Lake County), or because we're doing some other sort of geographic division (e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania). Doing this kind of split for a list of just 78 entries is confusing and unhelpful: any split risks making it look as if the county has fewer sites than it actually does, and when the split isn't necessary, it's a downright bad idea. Nyttend (talk) 13:20, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

• Just noting that some editors must have thought this was useful as there are 53 such lists created and maintained in Category:National Register of Historic Places lists in the National Park Service Hmains (talk) 16:43, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

My general instinct in this matter is similar to Nyttend's. But I temper that with the consideration that we don't really want to encourage duplicate lists due to redundant maintenance needs (e.g. Klamath County and Crater Lake). I can see a situation where somebody wants to highlight historic properties within the context of the national park without mixing them up with listings outside the park. If this project forces all the ZNP listings into the county list, a non-project user may well think it's a good idea to add a NRHP-list section to the ZNP article. That's kind of fork-ish behavior, but not devoid of legitimate motivation. In the end, I think the sorting features of the county lists allow us to present the county lists in a way that the national park listings can be easily isolated. So in Klamath County, for example, the various NRIS city/towns for each of the CRLA listings (e.g. Klamath Falls, which is 60 miles away) have been replaced with "Crater Lake National Park". The city/town column can then be easily sorted to conveniently group the national park listings. Bottom line: makes sense to merge the ZNP list into the Washington County list, but we need to watch out for future moves to set up a redundant list. — Ipoellet (talk) 19:21, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Response to Hmains — the difference between Zion and many others, such as Cuyahoga Valley, is that many/most of these lists cover NPS units that are in multiple counties, and the list provides a parkwide overview that the county list doesn't. With a single-county park, or one like Zion with all its listings in one of the park's counties, we can provide that parkwide overview with what Ipoellet suggests. Klamath County isn't the only one doing this already: see National Register of Historic Places listings in Garfield County, Utah, where all the park spots have "Bryce Canyon NP" in the City or Town column, or National Register of Historic Places listings in Edmonson County, Kentucky, where all the park spots have "Mammoth Cave" in that column. Nyttend (talk) 22:35, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with using the NPS unit name in the City/Town column for properties located within one county. Einbierbitte (talk) 02:12, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Zion National Park is east of the I-15 and mostly north of Springdale. There are 28 or 29 RHPs in ZNP. There are zero RHPs further to the north or east of ZNP.

But for all the Zion National Park items, Springdale, Utah is the town or city closest, as can be seen in Google version of "Map of all coordinates". Many of Zion's 3.6 million visitors each year come from the Interstate 15 in Utah so pass through Springdale to get to ZNP's south entrance, and most of them see it again on their way back to the I-15. Visitors coming over the smaller road from the east also would see that Springdale is closest, because most would exit through it. So a lot of people know that Springdale is the closest town. ZNP is not a city or town. So I think it wouldn't look right in the "City or town" column of the Washington County list. And I don't think many readers would sort one big table to put the ZNP ones together.

I don't get why ZNP's RHPs have to be put into the county list (whether duplicating them or "merging" & redirecting). It's not confusing at all. By the way, it is a clean geographic partition: all other Washington County RHPs to the west and south vs. RHPs in ZNP in the northeast. (There are no RHPs in the very NE corner of the county, beyond ZNP.)

Would there be support to move the Zion table into the county list-article, leaving the Zion table intact in a first section, followed by a second section of other RHPs? Allowing the Zion table to be formatted differently, and for the Zion items to be presented together. An example like that: there has always been a table of the city of Spokane's RHPs within the National Register of Historic Places listings in Spokane County, Washington list-article. The Spokane city table is formatted differently in that it doesn't have a city or town column. It could sport a column of neighborhoods, but does not. --doncram 02:25, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I have been thinking for some time that there is no point at all in having Spokane broken out as a separate table from the rest of Spokane County. Had I found the time, I would have merged the two tables without discussion. — Ipoellet (talk) 04:28, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Info-dense graphic example associated with Tufte

Here's my view: it's a matter of information density, in the spirit of Edward Tufte about data visualization / more informative graphics. For two tables, you spend a few more text lines and a new table header row to introduced the 2nd table, and you save a 1 column x 123 row block of cells repeating "Spokane". Also all the city rows are grouped together, and so also are the non-city rows grouped together: the data is organized better for the reader more interested in what's geographically close. Our point in the overall geographic list system is to put together the RHPs that are located close to one another. Merging the two Spokane tables would go backwards IMO.

The question of when to divide an alphabetical ordered NRHP list-article (Spokane) into multiple tables was asked at wt:NRHP in 2008 by User:Murderbike. Some considerations that matter are (i am making these up):

• 1. If the multi-table version groups the data differently, does the reader appreciate having groupings that are smaller and tighter (closer geographically, or more similar in other ways)?
• 2. Does the reader appreciate having a table of contents and being able to navigate more quickly to a section of interest? (Even if the multi-table version leaves data in the same order, as when sectioning List of Presbyterian churches in the United States by state, instead of leaving in one big list sorted by state then city.)
• 3. Does it allow for more informative (better customized) introductions to each section / does it work better with the non-tabular text?
• 4. Does functionality increase, or at least is no desired functionality lost? Having multiple tables prevent user-sorting a big table into some different-than-presented order, but facilitates quick secondary sorts (e.g. sort within city of Spokane on some data column, rather than sort primary on city and secondary on the data column)?
• 5. Is it more visually appealing? Is it more informationally dense (does it use less ink)?

About Spokane, I think Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. About Zion I think the same. --doncram 05:26, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Zion is an unnecessary split of a list that, if the two were merged, would still be of a manageable size. If we're splitting out separate lists for places with high concentrations of sites (regardless of whether the unsplit list would be manageable), where are we going to stop? National Register of Historic Places listings in Monroe County, Indiana has 31 of its 44 sites in Bloomington (5.6% of the county's area), and 57 of the 87 sites on National Register of Historic Places listings in Lucas County, Ohio are in Toledo (23.7% of the county's area); should those be split also? Again, by splitting the list, we make it less obvious that the list doesn't include every site in the county, and while that's sometimes unavoidable due to size, it needs to be avoided whenever possible — especially for somewhere like Zion NP that might not be a "natural" location for lots of sites. At least with a split between big city and everything else, one would expect the big city to have lots of listings (as far as I know, Midland, Texas is by far the biggest city without a good-sized group of listings), so their omission is a good indication that they've been moved somewhere else, but it's not bizarre to imagine that a national park, being "natural", wouldn't have a lot. Spokane is ridiculous: it has two entirely separate tables on the same page! We prove that the page doesn't need to be split for space reasons, and yet we make it impossible to sort everything together. Nyttend (talk) 01:20, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Re: Dirty Duck (Portland, Oregon)

The building nicknamed the "Dirty Duck" was a secondary contributing property to a historic district before being demolished. Is it appropriate to add the WP:NRHP talk page banner? And are there any categories that are appropriate for former/demolished contributing properties? Project members are welcome to add any NRHP-related categories, templates, etc., or make any other general improvement to the article. Thanks! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 00:32, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

I've added a couple categories, the NRHP infobox, and assessments in the project banner. — Ipoellet (talk) 02:44, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 18:21, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Location of Williams House (Ulmer, South Carolina)

The coordinates given for Williams House (Ulmer, South Carolina) are nowhere near being correct. The NRHP form gives zone 17N, 480720E,3860680N, which converts to about 34.888333,-81.210997, but that is up near North Carolina when it is in a county bordering on Georgia. I suspect a major typo in the Northing coordinate, but can someone figure out the correct coordinates? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 08:06, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, maybe I can get it from this. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 08:10, 10 June 2016 (UTC) No, that isn't right either. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 08:14, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Is 33.084913, -81.207035 correct? The nom form says it's in the vicinity of Ulmer, so I played around with the UTM until I got something close to that town. It looks like if you change the first 8 in the northing to a 6 (e.g. 17N,480720E,3660680N), you get near Ulmer. Then I just scanned around that vicinity using Google maps trying to find a structure whose layout and orientation matched the architectural drawing in the nom form and the pictures here. There aren't any street views of the structure, so I can't verify any farther than that.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:21, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

You are dead on! That matches the footprint in the NRHP form. Thanks. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:49, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Resolved

Ford Piquette Avenue Plant Re-assessment

• Ford Piquette Avenue Plant - Re-assessment requested. Apologies if this is the wrong place to request this, but the obvious place where you would put this, the assessment page for this WikiProject, does not have a section for re-assessment requests, as other WikiProjects do. Jackdude101 (Talk) 15:55, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
  • It's fine to request reassessment here, but an easier way is to just remove the assessment in the template on the talk page and it will come up on one of our To Do lists within a very few days. My experience is that then Ammo or another experienced project member will quickly reassess it strictly but fairly. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:57, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
    • Jackdude101, we have a progress page that (among other things) tracks pages that aren't assessed, so as Smallbones notes, we'll just assume that nobody got around to rating this article. Nyttend (talk) 05:34, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Copyright of images taken by SHPOs

I have heard that images taken by federal employees are in the public domain, but does that also apply to SHPOs? There are some nice images in this pdf that I would like to add to Perkins House (DeKalb, Mississippi). They are all attributed to "Jennifer Baughn, MDAH Chief Architectural Historian", so presumably she was working on behalf of the state. The website that hosts the database I got the PDF from has an attribution statement that reads as follows:

To Credit Images from this Database (APA): [Name of photographer, date of photograph]. Retrieved [Date you accessed photo] from Mississippi Historic Resources Inventory (HRI) Database. http://www.apps.mdah.ms.gov/Public.

To me that looks like they expect people to use their images, but they definitely wouldn't be public domain since they're seeking attribution. Many people here probably know more about copyright laws than I do. Can anyone give me a straight answer on whether I can upload these files? Thanks!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:36, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Nomination forms (and photographs, of course) are prepared by all sorts of people, not just employees of SHPOs, or federal goverment employees. If the photos are by a private individual or contracted researcher, they should be assumed to be copyrighted. Whether or not the works of state employees are in the public domain or otherwise freely usable depends on the state. See Copyright status of work by U.S. subnational governments. Magic♪piano 13:38, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Looking over that PDF, my thought is that you probably cannot upload the photos. Jennifer Baughn does appear to be a Mississippi government employee, but I've never seen anything (including the link Magicpiano provided) that automatically puts MS government works in the public domain or freely licensed status. The citation statement on the MDAH web site makes clear that they allow use of their photos for some purposes, but not necessarily for any purpose, which is the free licensing criterion for Wikipedia/Commons. — Ipoellet (talk) 17:33, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your responses. This page lists Jennifer Baughn as a state employee, but I too cannot find anything relating to MS state employee's work being in public domain by law. I just sent an email to MDAH in which I CC'd Jennifer Baughn as well, so hopefully they respond quickly. Maybe I can even get them to change the notice on their website to clarify the extent to which they release their images, which might help us with our coverage of Mississippi.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:20, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

I received an email back:

Mr. Maseda,

Thank you for your email. You are correct, those images are in the public domain. You are free to use them on the Wikipedia article for the Perkins House. It is helpful if you will cite MDAH as the creator; that way if other people want to obtain high-resolution copies of the images they can easily find us.

If I can help with anything else please let me know.

Regards,
Chris Goodwin

Director, Public Information Section
Mississippi Department of Archives and History

How should I proceed? This sounds to me as if they are releasing all images in their database into the public domain (or at the very least under a CC license). Should I do this through OTRS, or should I send an email back and request that they add some kind of public domain statement to their website that can be quoted in the licensing of all of these images?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:26, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Casa Paoli photo in 2009 by Juan Llanes Santos of the Puerto Rico State Historic Preservation Office, provided in 2010 under Creative Commons "CC BY 3.0" license "by photographer with permission of agency"

Pic of Iglesia San Isidro Labrador y Santa María de la Cabeza established to be PD. Was there a OTRS number for this?

Through OTRS, I think. With a list (as complete as possible) of specific sites with photos created by Mississippi state employees. I think the issue is that while Mississippi state staff intended for the photos to be in the public domain and believes them to be in the public domain, it is not documented that they are in the public domain. And Wikipedia doesn't want the pics if license is not clear enough that others can re-use the pics.

Doing it by OTRS request would follow what was done for a large batch of Puerto Rico NRHP photos of historic churches taken by a contractor, where verification of the public domain status was needed. Or maybe it was when the Puerto Rico State Historic Preservation Office owned copyright and was willing and able to put them into the public domain. I can't find the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems right now. User:Quazgaa and/or User:Mercy11 initiated this, not long after I had success corresponding with the PR SHPO about photos for use in the Casa Paoli article. I think this was completed by 6 July 2010 because Quazgaa thanked me then (IIRC, for my identifying more churches whose photos could be covered by the OTRS action, because they were in the same MPS: Historic Churches of Puerto Rico TR). --doncram 01:49, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

As Doncram notes, just send this to OTRS. This isn't the first such incident; see File:West Hickory Bridge.jpg and a lot of other images from the same collection, which PennDOT intended to place in the public domain. Those are OTRS-verified (see Commons:Template:Pennsylvania Department of Transportation permission), so a template, accompanied by the OTRS link, would be workable here as well. With an explicit PD statement coming from the director of the information section, I don't see how anyone could solidly question the idea that they are PD; these are works for hire, not private works created by individuals who just happen to work for the state. If the creator of an image, or the creator's authorized agent (which surely the information director is), states that the image is PD, we can treat it as a PD-release. Nyttend (talk) 22:17, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

I've never done an OTRS ticket before. Do I have to get the SHPO to send a new email to the designated OTRS address, or can I just forward this existing email and not have to contact them anymore? There are like templates and everything at Commons:Email templates for more "official" sounding emails than this one. Honestly rather than make them go through that process, I would rather just ask if they would modify the copyright statement on the database website to make it clear that all images are released. The problem is I don't know exactly what would qualify as a good enough copyright statement or how I would cite that on the image description page.

I do like the PDOT template and would like to make one for MDAH once they are eventually uploaded. Has anyone gone through this process and knows more about it than I do? The users Doncram pinged above have not responded here, and no one has responded to my query at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. Any help?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:21, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

@Dudemanfellabra: I'm afraid I can't help directly - this might even make things more complicated. But in any case here are some thoughts. I've gone through the OTRS process a couple of time (non-NRHP) and found it fairly clumsy, but eventually it got done. My first reaction to the e-mail "Thank you for your email. You are correct, those images are in the public domain." was that is a complete statement of public domain so that's all you'll need to send to OTRS. I still think that there's a 30% chance that that's all you'll need, but I also know that the Commons folks can be incredibly picky at times and that the phrase 'those images' might not be clear enough. Better to send a very explicit e-mail asking about "all" MDAH images, or at least all images in a very broad group where membership in the group is easily determined or specifically listed. (Perhaps that was in the e-mail you sent them originally).

A second thought is that you might ask MDAH to upload all the photo they'd like to a Flickr account and then specifically label them "No known copyright restrictions". Commons is accepting this as a proper licensing tag {{Flickr- No known restrictions}} (or something like that).

Now somebody can give me some advice on a similar matter - only somewhat related to NRHP (see here). I've started working with a well-known library on a project, and they are very anxious to give me very broad access to their historical photo collections for uploading to Commons, but they are working on an official policy. I'm afraid though that once all the very strict requirements at Commons are hammered in, they might just say something like, "we trust your judgement - don't you folks believe in using judgement?" What would be the best official policy that I could advise them to write? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:47, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Dudemanfellabra, open the email you got from Chris Goodwin, forward it to permissions-commonswikimedia.org, and add a message giving the OTRS folks a pointer to this discussion so that they understand what's going on. In particular, give them a link to the PennDOT template and explain that you'd like to create a similar template for the MS images. It's actually rather simple, and because you'll be forwarding them the original email, they'll be able to contact Mr/Ms Goodwin if they believe it necessary. Smallbones, perhaps the best course would be something completely different. If it's acceptable to the folks in charge of the project, it would be acceptable at Commons for you to be authorised to release images owned by the library. The person in charge of rights at the library could send an email to permissions-commons saying "The person called "Smallbones" at Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons is authorized by [name of library] to release copyright to [library]-owned items under [license chosen by the library, or "whatever license he chooses"]". If you provide proof that you're in charge of a batch of images, that's all we need. Nyttend (talk) 20:54, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I've sent an email to them and asked them for guidance. I will wait until they respond to upload anything and post here with the results. If this is sufficient for all PDFs in the database, that would be awesome for Mississippi articles!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 09:02, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Unknown asset

Focus gives "unknown asset" for the photos of the Harris-Murrow-Trowell House in National Register of Historic Places listings in Screven County, Georgia. The form is there, but not the photos. I was there today but I need to see the photos to make sure I got the right house. A while back I tried to locate the house by the footprint in the nom form, but I'm not sure I got the right one. I Googled to try to find photos of the house, but I didn't find any. Is there a way to get an "unknown asset"? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:47, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I think I photographed the right house today, but I'm not sure. The address didn't match what is there now. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:59, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

In theory, you could email NPS and ask for a copy, but they haven't been replying to requests for a couple of months (at least based on ones I've asked for). You also might be able to get pictures by contacting the right people at Georgia's SHPO, though I don't know who those would be. And if all else fails, sometimes comparing the photos to the physical description from the nomination is enough to identify a building. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:33, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Based on the nomination form, I'd say this is the correct house.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:47, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that is the one I thought it was - I photographed it and others in the area. Looking at the footprint in the form and the satellite view, that seemed close, but the satellite view isn't clear enough. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:46, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

NPS Focus is a mess (and apparently not NPS Focus any more)

After User:Doncram pointed out some flaws in the {{NRISref}} template related to version dates (which don't really make sense to include any more in my opinion), I did some digging into what is going on with Focus. As it stands, it seems the Focus system is fractured and scattered all over the place. The "official" name of the database including information about properties listed on the National Register appears to have been changed to "NPGallery" (note the parenthetical "formerly NPS Focus" in the banner). All of the old links appear to remain operational, but they are redirecting to that subdomain, so maybe it's best if we change the link in {{NRHP Focus}} to point there? That template is used in NRISref if a refnum is supplied, and it's also the link we use in {{Infobox NRHP}} and {{NRHP row}}. The current links work, so it's not a matter of urgency or anything, but it's possible the NPS could decide to clean up their system and remove legacy redirects at any point.

As for the date up to which the database is current, there is conflicting information all over the place. The new NPGallery domain doesn't appear to allow one to download the entire database at the top level, but there is apparently a /nrhp subdirectory that still includes a link to download it in the form of an Excel document, which it claims is up to date as of 06/01/2014. Note that this is not talking about pdfs but only about skeletal information.

For pdfs, if you go through the National Register subdirectory of the NPS main website, you will eventually get to a Database/Research page (which btw points to the /nrhp subdirectory of NPGallery rather than the main directory.. guess they haven't updated that link?). That research page says that scanned pdfs of sites listed between 1966-2012 except for in a few states should be available in the NPGallery database (still called Focus there) but nothing past then should be in NPGallery. Instead, pdfs of the listings from 2013 and onward, the research page claims, can be found in the Weekly List search engine, which I did not know about until now, but seems to have pdfs for almost every new listing. The latest I could find was listed in April 2016. So presumably, if a site has been listed before 2013, there should be a pdf in NPGallery unless it's in one of the states specifically excluded (although Arkansas, Illinois, and Michigan, which are in their list, can be found at the National Archives, current up to listings in 2013). If a site is listed in 2013 or later, a PDF should be available in the Weekly List search engine.

But wait there's more! Later down the aforementioned research page they link to an excel document similar to the one found in the download center of the /nrhp subdirectory of the NPGallery database (which claimed to be updated through June 2014), but this one they claim is current through late September of 2015. So actually I guess there are skeletal records (though not in easily linkable/citable database form) up through September 2015 rather than only June 2014. But that isn't the end of the story. Further down the page, there is a link to yet another Download center, where all the excel documents claim to be current only through July of 2015.

So, compiling all that, it seems that

1. For properties listed before 2013, there are both skeletal records and PDFs in NPGallery, except for a handful of states (three of which are available from the National Archives, also through 2013).
2. For properties listed from 2013 up until either June 2014 or July 2015 or September 2015, depending on who you ask, there is a skeletal record in Excel format but nothing in NPGallery.
3. For properties listed from 2013 up until about April 2016, there are pdfs at the Weekly List search engine.
4. Of course, the weekly list can always be used as a citation.

Now..... given all this information, how should we (or should we at all?) update our referencing/linking/documentation/guidelines to accurately reflect this?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 10:25, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

There are a couple of other things that aren't covered in that list (because of course there are): properties from 2008-ish through 2012 generally don't have PDFs in NPGallery (which used to be mentioned on the Database/Research page but isn't now) and Louisiana still doesn't have PDFs available despite not being listed in the handful of states (no idea about that one). As for the links, I'd say we should update the templates to the new link format, though I'd wait a week or so for the dust to settle before we do that. NRISref is a little trickier, though; for that one, I wonder if we might be better off replacing it (at least in future articles) with a link to the Focus/NPGallery page for the site, which should be easy enough to implement. More recently listed sites than what's in there should cite either the Excel documents or the weekly lists (the latter of which I think is already the standard practice). (Of course, if we did this we'd need to do something about Category:Articles sourced only to NRIS, since a link to NPGallery in the replacement to NRISref would also link to the nomination in most cases and would therefore be a reliable source.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 12:32, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I've been absent for the past week or so with some friends in town and have just gotten back to this. Does anyone else have any suggestions? I didn't even think about the can of worms that is NRIS-only articles. It looks like there is about to be a large upheaval in the standard practices of this project... yet no one is commenting!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:52, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Re: Jefferson County Courthouse (Idaho)

This NRHP site was demolished. Project members are invited to help expand the article, or at least add appropriate categories. Thanks, --Another Believer _(Talk) 18:31, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Flickr search reveals a couple of photos. None under a free license, but it might be worth asking photographers. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:53, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Categorizing NRHP articles under alternate names

I've had a brief discussion with Hmains here about how to categorize redirects under alternate names. It seems to have petered out, so I'd like to get other opinions here. They've been making thousands upon thousands of category edits to NRHP-related articles, most of which are unambiguously good. However, they have been removing categories from articles that are under a different name from their NRHP name, and moving the categories to the redirect. See for example this edit and then this edit. For the most part this has been with railroad stations, as the policy WP:USSTATION specifies names that are usually different from the NRHP name. Hmains says the purpose of this is that the NRHP categories then only show the NRHP names.

I believe this creates two problems. One, the NRHP names for railroad stations are often terrible descriptors. Old Colony Railroad Station is used at least three times (and could reasonably describe hundreds of stations in two states); Northbound and Southbound Stations doesn't tell you anything. Meanwhile, the USSTATION names identify the name the station was/is operated under, and the state/city/company if needed to disambiguate.

Second, this also means that the categories are no longer accessible from the actual article, and I believe that's problematic. WP:RCAT supports adding categorization where appropriate for sufficiently different alternate titles; however, it does not say that those categories should not be removed from the actual article. I support categorizing the redirects where the names are sufficiently different; however, the categories should not be removed from the main article for the sole purpose of aesthetics when viewing categories. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 15:09, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

All of the categories should be in the article itself. NRHP names aren't nearly as official as Hmains is making them out to be; they're just what the National Park Service decided to call the building. Considering how many times the NPS can't even get the spelling right, they shouldn't be treated as the official names for what we put in the category; the article name should be, since that's what the site is (usually) actually called. And splitting up the categories between the article itself and an alternate-name redirect is just plain confusing and does a disservice to our readers. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:22, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree. I can see why someone might want to put subject categories on sub-topics of a major topic (e.g. if we had Olympia Building (New Bedford, Massachusetts), rather than on Times and Olympia Buildings), we could put the construction year category there), but when the redirect is merely an alternate name, it shouldn't get any categories except perhaps for project-specific hidden categories, e.g. Category:Redirects from alternative names. Nyttend (talk) 15:53, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

I tend to be in agreement on this as well - most of those categories don't belong on the redirect page. The only time I think categories can be used on a redirect page, beyond project-specific ones, would be if the redirect has the potential to be expanded some day, and I don't think these fill the bill on that count. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:29, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Okay, thank you all for your replies. I will be restoring all categories to the main station articles, and only having categories for redirects in limited cases. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:14, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Infobox maps

I've been playing around with infobox maps a bit this week. There's a newish feature that allows for a series of maps to be placed in the infobox instead of just one: instead of writing, say "locmapin = Virginia", one would write "locmapin = Virginia#USA". With enough #'s to create as long a chain as one wishes. I find this exceedingly useful, as it makes using localized maps instead of state maps far easier. See Pohick Church for an example of what can be done, and what I've started doing.

I'd like to suggest the creation of more of these local maps for the project - largely as I don't know how to do it myself. Something for most major metropolitan areas, for instance, as well as for individual counties with large numbers of entries. Massachusetts, for instance, would benefit from county-by-county infobox maps...as would most smaller states, I think.

I also took the liberty of adding the US map as an option in all Virginia infoboxes - it doesn't add many bytes to the article, but I think it can be extremely useful for readers who don't have a knowledge of US geography.

What do y'all think? I'd like to start adding the US map, at least, into infoboxes for other states as well, for the same reason. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 08:28, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Wow, that's great! I've always found localised maps a problem, because they don't do a good job of showing where in the state a place is located (unless you're familiar with the state's geography, a local map is useless, but of course they're good for people at or near the site), but at the same time a statewide map is less useful in bigger cities. This overcomes both problems while assisting people who don't know where in the USA a particular state is located. And all we need to do is this. I'd suggest that we get ask a bot operator to find for us all the maps currently in use, other than state and USA, and then a bot or an AWB operator to add this feature immediately to all of those pages. Nyttend (talk) 15:47, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree with this suggestion, and would be happy to be the AWB operator to run the program once I have a list of maps. And I also agree that this is really nice to have - I've been hoping we could get a similar setup for some time for exactly the reason you describe. Right now it seems to be working out well with Virginia, and I've started on West Virginia also. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:26, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Just found this list. It includes a map for Baltimore, for instance - that will be my next step after West Virginia. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:41, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

I've just seen a few example of SAdN's work and like it very much. It'd be worthwhile to make up some new local maps, e.g. I think Philadelphia proper could use 3-5 local maps. I don't know ho to make these maps myself - can anybody link to instructions? I do know however that I don't like the pink/green/gray maps based on openmaps. The red and yellow maps are 100% better IMHO. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:11, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you kindly. :-)

That's the same problem I have - I don't know how to make the maps, either, else I'd be doing it now.

Other large cities could also use maps, if they don't have 'em already; I know there's one for Manhattan. And one for DC downtown. I'd also like to see one for the suburban counties of Maryland - at least Montgomery and Prince George's. Also, given the numbers of NRHP listings in each, perhaps a map for each county in Massachusetts.

I've done Baltimore and Rhode Island in addition to Virginia and West Virginia, and am moving on to Washington, D.C. now. Perhaps I'll do Maryland, too, as I don't think by-county maps for the state are that urgent. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:50, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

One thing that I've noticed is that this system adds bullets below the map, but it doesn't get rid of the caption if one is supplied in |map_caption=. See Kingsbridge Armory for an example of the awkward caption under that map. Should these captions be removed when there are multiple maps? If so, maybe we should just get rid of the map_caption parameter all together? That or maybe just hide it if |locmapin= includes a # symbol?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:26, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Eh, I don't think it matters that much given that the default map is still the one listed in the caption. That said, if a decision is reached to eliminate the captions I won't be against it. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 23:42, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

I would not get rid of the |map_caption= parameter, because the USA map only shows the 48 contiguous states. So there will be plenty listings in AK, HI, PR, territories that will only have one map, rather than 2 or 3 to select from. In those cases, editors may well want the caption parameter. But I would support hiding the caption when there's a #. — Ipoellet (talk) 06:24, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Info box generator

The info box generator fails on 14000153. Why? Is it too new? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:08, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes. The infobox generator uses a download of NRIS data that only includes properties listed through around 2012 or so. For newer properties, you have to create an infobox on your own.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:12, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

I did that with Frank M. Scarlett Federal Building, but I don't know what goes in some of the fields - can someone check it? Also, it is giving an error about using NPS as a reference, and I don't know how to fix that. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:41, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

You seem to have filled in the infobox parameters just fine, except that the |governing_body= parameter is no longer functional in the infobox template, so you may as well leave it out. The error is because you told the software to display a reference named "NPS", but you never created such a reference for it to display. What was your source - the Weekly List? — Ipoellet (talk) 06:32, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

The article already existed under the current name (I didn't know it existed until yesterday). I linked to it from National Register of Historic Places listings in Glynn County, Georgia, where it is #18, US post office and courthouse. All I did was add the info box and two sentences. I don't really know how to fix the NPS reference.

What are the nrhp_type and nocat parameters? The one I copied from had something in there. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:34, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

When you link from a county list to an NRHP listing, please don't change the link from the official NRHP name (with the exception of any disambiguation). Instead, create a redirect at the official NRHP name that points to the actual article title. I've just undone your edit on Glynn County, GA, and created a redirect. This, in accordance with WP:NRHPMOS, allows for people that are searching for the official NRHP name to get to the relevant Wikipedia article without having to go through the county list.

As for the NPS reference, the way that ref tags work is explained here. Basically when you add a <ref></ref> tag, you must include some information between the tags that tells the page what to display in the references section later on the page. For example, reference number 2 on the courthouse page is given as <ref>[http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d093:25:./temp/~bdwITn::|/home/LegislativeData.php?n=BSS;c=93 S.2807 : A bill to name the Federal building, U.S. Post Office, U.S. courthouse in Brunswick, Ga., as the "Frank M. Scarlett Federal Building"].</ref>, which tells the page to display "S.2807 : A bill to name the Federal building, U.S. Post Office, U.S. courthouse in Brunswick, Ga., as the "Frank M. Scarlett Federal Building"." in the references section at the bottom of the page. If you use the same source for multiple facts in the article, rather than having to retype that same citation over and over again in each place, you can give the reference a name, e.g. <ref name="NAME"> ... </ref> as you've tried to give the NPS reference. Then only the first instance of the reference needs to have everything spelled out, and any later references can just have a single tag, <ref name="NAME"/>, and the page will just link all those references together in the references section, displaying the reference once rather than multiple times for each invocation. The problem with the courthouse article is that you've told the page to look for where you defined something to display for the reference named "NPS", but you never actually told the page what to display! Instead of just calling the reference some name, you need to add a link or {{cite web}} template giving the URL of the page where you got the information.

Finally, about the |nrhp_type= and |nocat= parameters, you don't need to add anything to them for this article. According to the infobox's documentation, the |nrhp_type= parameter is used if the site has been listed as some other special designation rather than just being on the NRHP. For example, if a site is listed as a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in addition to being listed on the NRHP, you would add |nrhp_type=nhl. If the site was listed as a historic district (HD) rather than a single building, you could use |nrhp_type=hd. This courthouse has not been designated as anything else, so it is fine to leave that parameter blank. The |nocat= parameter deals with automatic categorization provided by the infobox if the listing is a district or some other cases. Setting |nocat=yes means the infobox will refrain from categorizing the article. Since this courthouse is not a district or some other automatically-categorized site, there is no need to use the |nocat= parameter; you can leave it blank as well.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:01, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Looking for feedback on a tool on Visual Editor to add open license text from other sources

Hi all

I'm designing a tool for Visual Editor to make it easy for people to add open license text from other sources, there are a huge number of open license sources compatible with Wikipedia including around 9000 journals. I can see a very large opportunity to easily create a high volume of good quality articles quickly. I have done a small project with open license text from UNESCO as a proof of concept, any thoughts, feedback or endorsements (on the Meta page) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 14:57, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Mission Church (Arctic Village, Alaska)

More OR problems. The infobox photo claims to be of the NR-listed church taken in 2009. Looking at the description page on the FWS website, it offers indication that the photo was actually taken in 1976. Furthermore, it likely depicts the current church. I have many ties to Arctic Village and therefore see social media photos from there quite often. Photos on those sites of the NR-listed church taken within the past decade show not only a building with a much different spire than what is shown in the infobox photo, but also a building which is seriously tilting, appearing to be near collapsing. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 20:38, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

I double-checked with the photos from the nomination form, and you're absolutely right, so I removed the photo. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:10, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Lately, I've been scanning images which are now PD due to lack of a copyright notice in original publication (Commons' Upload Wizard is a burden, so I've only uploaded a small portion thus far). One of those publications is The Alaskan Churchman published by the Episcopal Diocese of Alaska. The masthead indicates that it began publication in 1906, so that's a whole lot of issues to pour through. Anyway, I would be extremely surprised if I can't find a free image of the church there, considering that I have other photos from that publication taken in Arctic Village. It may take a while, but I'll keep looking. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 23:22, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Notice to participants at this page about adminship

Many participants here create a lot of content, have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the considerations at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:

• Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and maybe even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:03, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Kentucky courthouses

Coming here is a bit of a stretch, since most people here aren't that familiar with Kentucky (otherwise the state wouldn't have the second-lowest quality rating east of the Mississippi, and an illustrated rate lower than Alaska), but I figured there was a chance.

Before retiring in 2008, User:W.marsh created a project to find free-licensed photos of all 120 courthouses in Kentucky, but because he retired, I moved that page to my userspace some time ago. After a couple of recent trips to western Kentucky and southern Illinois, the project is complete, with an image for every courthouse. I'd like to create a page comparable to my recently created List of county courthouses in Illinois, but I've never seen a good source that addresses courthouses statewide; the only courthouses book I've encountered is self-published, and as it's from 1988, it predates the wave of courthouse construction that's been happening in the last ten years. This being said, has anyone encountered a good resource of any sort with information on courthouses statewide? It could be a book, or a reliable website comparable to what the Ohio Supreme Court maintains, or anything else both reliable and comprehensive. I've already asked a couple of active Kentucky editors, but because it's been just earlier this afternoon, neither one's really had a chance to reply yet. Nyttend (talk) 18:38, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Doncram has been working on Draft:List of courthouses in the United States for a while. He has a section for Kentucky there; maybe he knows something?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:10, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, but that list is basically just the NR-listed courthouses, regardless of whether they're current courthouses, and not including non-NR courthouses; I'm compiling a different kind of list, one with all current courthouses regardless of whether they're historic in any way. Aside from little footnotes (in the Illinois list, daggers and double daggers), NR status wouldn't even be mentioned in my imagined list, just as with Illinois. Nyttend (talk) 05:58, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

There would be considerable overlap ... as Nyttend notes in the Illinois list, 39 of the 102 current courthouses are NRHP-listed. So at the List of courthouses in the United States (no longer in draftspace), I stripped the Illinois section down to just the 10 or so notable former county courthouses that are NRHP-listed. These were all already mentioned in the comments column for the corresponding current Illinois courthouses. But they are still properly described as county courthouses, so I think they belong in the "List of county courthouses" list-article. So in these edits I moved that table of former courthouses into the Illinois list. I think that's better; is that okay?

By the way there's [List of county courthouses in Alabama]], created by Spyder Monkey in 2010, which is like the Illinois list, i.e. includes modern courthouses and appears not to include former courthouses. There are already mainspace lists for AR, DC, IA, NC, SC, TX, WA, and Boston, too. The U.S.-wide list-article I have been working on links to those, and tries to directly cover the other states, starting with NRHP-listed ones (current and former courthouses). It happens to include just a couple non-NR courthouses so far (e.g. Adams County Courthouse (West Union, Ohio), Providence County Courthouse). --doncram 20:41, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

The boats...they move!

I happened to notice a recent uncited addition to List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan about the Ste. Claire (passenger steamboat). Turns out the addition is correct and citable, but opened a can o' worms that I'm not sure what-all to do with. To explain, here's the timeline:

• The Ste. Claire (passenger steamboat) was placed on the Register in 1979 and designated a NHL in 1992. At the time she was moored in Detroit. In 2003, she was towed to Toledo, Ohio, and both the List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan and the List of National Historic Landmarks in Ohio reflect the move (The Ste. Claire has an entry on the Ohio list, and is listed as a "Former NHL" on the Michigan list). However, at some point, the Ste Claire moved back to Michigan (specifically, the US Steel dock in Ecorse, Michigan), and then in 2015 was moved again, this time back to Detroit, but now at "125 S. Dix Street," per this article. She's apparently still there.

• Meanwhile, the Ste Claire's sister ship, the SS Columbia (also placed on the Register in 1979 and designated a NHL in 1992) also started out in Detroit, and indeed is currently listed in the List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan. However, she was moved to Toledo, Ohio in 2014, and then in 2015 to Buffalo, New York (according to the article above), and will at some point be moved to New York City.

Whew. So it looks like, at the moment, the Ste Claire should be listed as a current NHL in Michigan, and the Columbia as a "former NHL" in Michigan, and a current one in New York. Which is not the way either are listed at all, and so needs some cleanup.

But then: do either of these ships get listed as former NHLs in Ohio, since they were both docked in Toledo for some time? On the one hand, that seems consistent with past practice, but on the other it also seems like it could lead to some odd circumstances where individual vessels are listed in four or five or six states. Or does docking for repairs not "count," only being in service? Andrew Jameson (talk) 20:09, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Our lists generally include "former" places only if they no longer have the status for the list: "former NHLs in MI" includes Michigan NHLs that have had their NHL status removed, not NHLs that have been moved from Michigan to another state. That's why National Register of Historic Places listings in Washington County, Ohio has no mention of the Mississippi III — she got moved to the Pittsburgh area (thus appearing on the Allegheny County list) several years ago, and despite being sunk in 2010, she's still on the list, so she's not a former listing. If Ste. Claire is in MI, put her on that list and take her off the OH list. Columbia is an exceptional situation, since she's officially in transit to New York City (see the first thread at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 December 23), so we ought just to wait for now. Nyttend (talk) 22:22, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure we really treat this consistently; sometimes relocated listings are included in a separate section of the list, sometimes they're lumped under former listings, and sometimes they're not included at all. I'd probably prefer a separate section for relocated listings, though it's not a strong preference. (List of National Historic Landmarks in California is an example of a listing that's under the former listings, but the former listings section of that article is such a mess that I'd rather not use it as an example of anything.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:12, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

I've got a somewhat similar issue with the Sternwheeler Jean. She was originally listed in Lewiston, Idaho, but was subsequently moved to Portland, Oregon. Since then, I think (but haven't pinned down for sure yet) she has been dismantled, and so cannot be meaningfully said to be located anywhere anymore. So, if and when I establish for sure that the boat no longer exists, should she be left on the Portland list or added back to the Lewiston list? (I doubt she'll ever actually be delisted - she's invisible to the Oregon SHPO having been listed in Idaho, and the Idaho Historical Society rarely if ever acts to delist destroyed properties.) — Ipoellet (talk) 06:49, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

I've encountered this with a couple of vessels in Maryland and Virginia, though to a lesser degree - the state historical societies have them listed under one county, but they've since been moved to another. This is a bit troublesome given that their documentation is currently listed under the original county. I'm not sure what the answer should be, but I think we should think of some way of handling it; it's becoming a too-common issue, I'm afraid. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:29, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Delisting of these things sometimes does happen. See PRESIDENT (Steamboat), listed originally in St. Louis but currently located in a few different spots in south-central Illinois; she was delisted in 2011, after being moved to her current locations. Nyttend (talk) 12:45, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

It's not just boats. I've just discovered that a railroad depot has been moved from Utica, Yankton County, South Dakota, where it was listed, to a pioneer museum in Hutchinson County. For now, I've added a note to the Yankton Co. list article. However, I'm not sure what I should do once I get to the museum, photograph the depot, and come up with a good set of coordinates. If I put the coords in the Yankton Co list, the map will have a point well outside the county. On the other hand, if I move it to the Hutchinson Co. list, it could cause headaches for editors who search the NPS database for Hutchinson Co. sites and don't find it.

I agree with Ser Amantio di Nicolao: the WikiProject ought to establish a standard approach to this kind of situation. My inclination would be to move the entry to the list for the county in which the object currently resides, with a well-sourced footnote regarding the move from the former county; and to add the site to the list of NRIS issues. I'd be disinclined to put it on a list of former sites in Original County; as Nyttend points out, that list is for sites that've lost their NRHP status. What about leaving it on the Original County list, with a well-sourced note about the move to the new location, until the NPS changes it? That wouldn't be trouble-free: for instance, the site would show up on the progress page as being in two counties. However, as long as the NHP lists the site in Original County, I think we need an entry for it there. — Ammodramus (talk) 18:50, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Instead of "former listings", what about another section for "other issues"? That would get the affected site out of the main list...and there might be a way to code it to keep it from appearing on the map with other listings. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:26, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

NPS focus problems again?

For about 6 days I've been having problems with the NPS site. Usually either only the banner will come up or it will show the PDFs but not download them. Does anyone know about this problem? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:15, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I have sometimes found that accessing through Focus or whatever it is called now fails, while hard-coding a document URL like http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/76001958.pdf into Wikipedia, and then following its link, does work. Another issue about NPS documents I have seen (including that one for J.C. Penney House article) is that some PDFs there (maybe especially MPS ones?) come through garbled when accessed via Chrome browser, while they are okay when accessed through MS Internet Explorer. Is there a template to use to indicate that problem to readers (labelled "best viewed using MSIE" or similar) and to put those PDF links into a category? I believe that all of the New York State-hosted NRHP documents have similar access problem requiring use of MSIE and to have javascript enabled. I wonder if it is possible to have templates that display messages about these issues, conditional upon the reader's browser? --doncram 18:52, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Category:Historic district contributing properties has been nominated for discussion

Category:Historic district contributing properties, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for renaming by another editor.. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:24, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

NRHP infobox distinctions for contributing properties?

@Dudemanfellabra:. This touches on a feature/bug of the {{Infobox NRHP}}: how places that are just contributing properties are indicated vs. how places that are both individually listed and contributing properties are indicated. It's not easy to tell. I think they have both always been indicated with a green color bar that reads the same: "US Historic district
Contributing property". When I go and study at Template:Infobox NRHP#Contributing property only, I eventually figure out there is in fact a subtle difference between what is shown at top of the infoboxes, but the difference is not one that I am likely to remember and it is opaque to non-insiders. And I don't see how the display difference is triggered. Both cases use "nrhp_type = cp".

How about fix this by using explicit labels within the colorbar that are different:

• "Contributing property in a historic district" for the cp-only case
• "Separately listed, and a contributing property in a historic district" for the sl-and-cp case

and use selectors that are explicitly different, "nrhp_type = cp-only" vs. "nrhp_type = sl-and-cp". That way at least NRHP editors could tell there's a difference without a cribsheet. It is a further issue what categories, if any, should be inserted by the infobox code (see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 July 22#Category:Historic district contributing properties).

For example, consider Canal Warehouse (Chillicothe, Ohio). It has the ambiguous label color bar, and a 1973 date added is given in the infobox. From the infobox alone I would figure it is just a contributing property. The text is inconsistent with the infobox, and mentions both a 1974 date of separate listing and a 1979 date for a historic district.

It's fine if anyone wants to leave a pointer here and move this over to Template talk:Infobox NRHP, but I thought the issue should at least be raised here. --doncram 14:54, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

If you want to be unambiguous in the infobox about individual and contributing property designations, use nrhp_type{digit} (and related) fields to add all designations beyond a primary one, treating individual and contributing as separate items. Contrast the Canal Warehouse infobox with e.g. Daniel How House; the former has only one listing date, apparently that of the individual listing, while the latter also has the district listing date and refnum. If you do things this way, it is unnecessary to create special "x-and-y" combination designators for every actual (or potential) designation combination. A property that is only contributing and not individually listed will lack the "U.S. National Register of Historic Places" bar just below the infobox title, assuming the box is properly configured. Magic♪piano 20:50, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Photo road trips revisited

I just found out it would actually be very easy to get pictures of the last two NRHP listed sites that don't have photographs (or articles) in Jasper County, South Carolina. If Google Street View is any indication, the old Sinclair station in Ridgeland is the "Morris Center for Lowcountry Heritage" and the Tillman School was reopened as a furniture store that was also shut down. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 15:03, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

WLM photo contest and related ideas

I've been contacted to see if anybody want to be part of Wiki Loves Monuments this year. From a discussion in the Spring and my personal preferences, I'd say no. WLM has worked well for us in the past as far as generating pix for many sites and helping to recruit new photographers, but there is something of a mismatch between what most members of this project want to do and the emphasis that WLM has. We'd need greater participation in things like screening the photos before sending them to the jury, placing photos, and personal interaction with new photogs.

I do have a couple of suggestions on how we might do things differently, however, to fit our needs.

• Have a pure "count how many photos of previously unillustrated sites you've uploaded in September" contest. No need for screening or a jury.
• There is money from the WMF for individual projects that we can tailor to our own needs. Say $2,000 would be easy enough to get IMHO.
  • A crazy idea - Road trips

Have our own "fun contests" as we've done previously. Individual challengers/judges set up their own contests for the most previously unillustrated site photos in counties along certain roads or rivers. e.g. along US1/I95. That would cover many important parts of the East Coast, a lot of which we've already got photos for, e.g. all of Florida, but also many places where we don't have photos, e.g. most of North Carolina. Prize might be $500 for the photog with the most pix over the course of a month, or better a whole summer or a whole year.

Other road trips might be US 101 on the West Coast, or along the Mississippi River, or along the Ohio and Missouri Rivers.

So these wouldn't be part of WLM, but they'd be fun and getting $500 to help-out with the costs would be nice (no guarantee that you'd win of course).

Any ideas appreciated. If we really want to be a part of this year's WLM, we'd have to start up very quickly however. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:22, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

As is generally the case with project contests, I think the biggest issue is that our most heavily illustrated areas are within a weekend trip's radius from where an active project member lives, and anywhere else doesn't get nearly the same coverage; if we want to fix that, we either need to recruit active photographers in other areas or find the resources to get our more active photographers to other parts of the country. WLM has been helpful for the first part of that goal, but our remaining gaps are concentrated in fairly specific areas, some of which are sparsely populated enough that trying to recruit a local could be difficult (e.g. the Dakotas). If the WMF was willing to put up money to cover expenses and/or contest prizes for those road trips you suggested, though, it would probably make it easier for some of our more established photographers to get out to less-illustrated parts of the country and fill in those gaps. (And hey, I sure wouldn't mind getting to drive around a new state for a week with the WMF partially covering expenses.) I'm sure there would still be issues around how the WMF would provide the money and if and when our active photographers would have time for this sort of thing, but I'm a fan of the idea. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:00, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

@TheCatalyst31: Thanks for the feedback. I don't see your reaction as supporting doing WLM this year, but maybe doing something tailored to our needs would work. I don't want to limit this discussion to contests, though we are all familiar with how these would work. Perhaps we could just ask for support for road trips, where the photographer suggests his/her own trip. That would take some bureaucracy, but we could do it among ourselves and keep it minimal. I'd also be against major sums, e.g. $5,000 - a $500 "help with the gas and the motels" is more what I'm thinking. Also small amounts, say under $200, may not be worth the trouble when all participants are considered (i.e. the bureaucrats). How to get the money from the WMF? I'll suggest just going to the Idea Lab and bouncing it off them but there are a range of options. I think individual Engagement Grants go up to $2,000. Other forms of grants might require an informally organized group, or even official by-laws and officers in some cases. I'd personally want to keep it as simple as possible. Say 4-8 road-trip grants, $200-500 each, for the summer months, with 3 person committee reviewing or checking the basics. It could be done, the only question I have is do people want to do it? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:39, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I may apply. A few hundred dollars for gas and motels could take me to a lot of unphotographed listed places in Iowa or the Dakotas, now that most of Minnesota is done. But if we are not going to participate in WLM, I wonder what we can do to promote more people taking photos near them. Jonathunder (talk) 15:53, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I would appreciate some money for a road trip - even if it is less than half of the cost. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:27, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I would likely apply as well. I've been informing myself about Puerto Rico and the sites there quite a bit and was thinking about a photo trip - some help with that would be lovely. (I was also going to suggest Iowa and the Dakotas before Jonathunder stole my thunder.) — Ipoellet (talk) 04:16, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Iowa is much closer to me than either of the Dakotas, and they are vast. If you want them, they're all yours. Jonathunder (talk) 17:32, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Count me as someone interested too. My home territory of New England is pretty well covered, but there's a lot of Maine and Vermont I could potentially go after. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 14:59, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Don't think I'd be applying for a grant, but if there's someone who'd like to take up the banner of western Virginia that would be grand. Coverage is getting better but is still spotty in some locations. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:37, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

• Is there any more news on getting a grant? September is approaching. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:41, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Toward a concrete proposal

It sounds like we've come up with something that several people can support. I'd like to

• hear from folks who have objections to this (I have a few minor ones myself)
• come up with a concrete proposal that we can take to Rapid Grants, which could be approved as fast as 2 week for up to $2,000. There are definitely other avenues available, but this seems like a place to start.

I'll start with some of my potential objections. I wouldn't want to see this become a big money, big bureaucracy type of program. That could very much hurt the WP:NRHP community and the volunteer nature of what we do. It could also cause dissension within the group and criticism from outsiders. ("Why do you guys get paid when nobody else is?") I'd very much like it to be "a little bit of help with gas and motels" covering about half of the minimum cost of a very productive trip. And with only $2,000 total that would only be 4+ trips per year(?)

I'd like the "application" to be 2-3 paragraphs, more like a check-list than anything else. Approval could be by community members, say a 3 person committee, where 1 person just checks off the checklist for the application before the trip, a 2nd person looks at the checklist after the trip (but we wouldn't necessarily want to wait until all photos are uploaded and placed) and approves a payment, and the 3rd person fills in, helps relative newbies in the process, and serves as the final appeal if there are any appeals. People could switch roles and new members of the committee could serve ad hoc or be appointed by the other 2 as needed.

We'd need at least 3 people to commit to making this work, but I don't see it as a huge time commitment. We'd need folks to go over to Rapid Grants to express their support. I don't think we'd need an official RfC in the project, but I'd really like to encourage anybody with objections, suggestions or questions to speak up.

Then we need to get a concrete proposal and fill out the application. I'll open a page say at WP:NRHP/Road trips sometime today to specifically work on that.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:22, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

All comments welcome at that page. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:24, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Stripped Oshkosh House Mover

Road trips are always worthwhile. I just wish I had more money and more time to drive all the places I want to go. BTW, has anybody noticed the new pics I've uploaded since my June 2016 roadtrip? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 20:08, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Nice. It took me awhile to get thru it - was that about 400 (non-NRHP) pix? My favorite though was from just before the trip (shown at right). So that's where all those missing buildings went?! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:53, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Oh, funny. That was about six years ago, and none of the houses being moved would've even come close to being added to any historic list. Most of what I had along the way were subway, train station, and highway related. I still have to work on one historic district in Emporia, Virginia, believe it or not. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 20:29, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be funny. I really liked the photo and only noted the upload date. Road trips are good for all sorts of content, no criticism there either. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:00, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

My mistake, then. Hey, do you know what I'd like to see more images of? The Appomattox Iron Works in Petersburg, Virginia. I've been considered a whole new gallery for that site, and the Petersburg commons gallery could use a little diffusion in general. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 18:31, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposal 2: Support central archiving of local history materials

Summary: An OTRS-like service with a central repository of local history docs could promote and go with WLM photo contest, inviting involvement of new editors

• Goal: An overall goal of WikiProject NRHP could be to build a deep, robust community of local historians supporting the development and updating of NRHP articles.
• Motivation: A number of local historians have had their fingers burnt in the experience of trying to edit NRHP articles in wikipedia (which is not different than the experience of other professionals in their areas), when their writing is doubted and negatively tagged and/or deleted in Wikipedia and when their photo contributions are questioned and deleted at Commons. Local historians may feel generally unwelcome, and experienced editors may reasonably choose to advise them to stay away because the environment is too unfriendly. This could change, and the knowledge of local historians could be valued and added to Wikipedia, if there was a good process to validate and permanently make accessible local history materials that are unpublished and/or not available on the internet to be checked. Any local history society is chock full of primary source materials, local histories which are secondary but unpublished, and historic photographs which provide concrete evidence of events in history. The copyright status of all of these may be unknown and it may not be financially possible for local societies to publish materials to the internet.
• Proposal: If funding for computer space and programming and scanning and postal mailing costs and other operating expenses, and for one or a few paid administrators could be obtained, an OTRS-like team of qualified volunteers might perform as a central library/archiving service to hold scanned copies of local history materials that support assertions in Wikipedia, and to provide the ability to check sourcing when it is questioned. Copyright issues are avoided by all scanned materials being kept as a unpublished collection behind secure protection, accessible to only the qualified volunteers. One or two central librarians or technical administrators probably should be paid to develop the technical side of this, if it is not immediately possible to get Wikipedia Foundation hardware/software/technical support.
• Issues: This would not be an attempt to vacuum up vast amounts of local rubbish. It would be limited to indexed materials that are used directly as sources in drafts and mainspace Wikipedia writing, indicated by use of a special template within footnotes. Material that is found to be worthless can be removed from the collection, akin to how Commons deletes copyrighted photos that might be used under Fair Use, but which are not used in any articles. With this mechanism in place, local historians can be invited to participate in Wikipedia by writing with sourcing to their local history materials (with usual caveats about primary materials being used only with care).
• How does this relate to WLM photo contests? Well, if we can be reasonably confident that the locals will not be burned when they edit according to guidelines in this program, then we can feel free to mass contact local historical societies and town historians to invite their involvement, starting with their contribution of new photos of NRHP places in a WLM photo contest. Contributing photos is a good first experience, with direct reward of contributors seeing their photos used in articles. We've fallen short in the next step, after locals contribute in a photo contest, by our not having a gentle way forward to their becoming involved in writing.
• Home not WikiProject NRHP? I am guessing this kind of program is NOT what most WikiProject NRHP members are interested in, and this might best be handled in a new/different arena, perhaps a WikiProject Local history? Local historians' interest would not be limited to NRHP-listed sites, but rather they would be motivated to develop History sections of town and hamlet articles, and from there to split out articles on local historic sites and list-articles of local historic registries and so on, which goes outside scope of WP:NRHP (and also outside scope of wp:HSITES). Comments indicating interest AND non-interest would be appreciated. --doncram 19:16, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Commons categorization and historic districts

I've noticed some situations on Commons with editors changing the categories on HD-related images in ways that were - well - different than I had been logicking my categories. I thought I'd bring the situations up here to see if there is any consensus on them:

(a) Contributing properties categories

Whenever I have uploaded a picture of a building in an HD that is identified in the HD nomination as contributing (or equivalent status), then I attach a Category:Historic district contributing properties in State X to it. However, I have seen numerous edits (example) where the category was simply removed. So should we be using the contributing property categories, and if not should the contributing property categories be put through Commons CFD for deletion?

(b) Non-contributing properties in the district's category

Usually I don't bother to photograph or upload non-contributing properties that are included within an HD's boundary. When I do, however, I categorize the file in the HD's category (but without the contributing property category, obviously). But I have seen cases where the non-contributing image was removed from the HD category because the non-contrib property "isn't part of the district" (example). I disagree with that logic as worded in this example, because the property is clearly within the district boundary, was included in the district inventory in the nomination (and, in this case, in the narrative), and is often (though not in this case) historic within the significance of the district but has been altered for some loss of integrity. That disagreement aside, I can see a broader logic that HD categories should be limited to contributing properties only. Personally, I dislike that logic too, because non-contributing properties speak to the present state of the district, in much the same way that we upload pictures of empty lots when a property has been demolished. So is there any consensus on how we handle images of non-contributing properties?

(c) Contributing properties not individually listed, and "type" categories

When I upload an image of a contributing property and add categories to it, I look for appropriate "type" categories to add: e.g. Category:Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in State X, or Category:Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in State X. However, some edits lately (example) have been done on the logic that those "type" categories should only contain individually-listed properties, and HD contributing properties don't belong. Personally, I'd rather see the "type" categories contain a more expansive set of recognized historic properties rather than less, but what does the group think? — Ipoellet (talk) 22:35, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Anyone? — Ipoellet (talk) 06:10, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

For (b) and (c), I agree with you; non-contributing properties are part of historic districts (and, as you said, can be important for noting the district's current state), and contributing properties are still on the National Register despite not being individually listed. (For the latter, consider that whether a property is individually listed or not is often a matter of timing, since buildings are rarely individually listed after they're listed as part of a district.) For the first one, while I'm not convinced of the usefulness of contributing property categories outside of the context of a single historic district, we shouldn't be removing it from photos for which it applies; either CFD the whole category, or leave it be. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 13:50, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

I've been wondering if a couple of already listed sites in Irvington, New York are part of the Irvington Historic District (New York) and how I can list that aspect of them separately within the infobox. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:55, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Regarding (a), I have to disagree with Ipoellet. I don't see any value of such contributing-property categories, especially at the state or county level. I'd favor CFD for these categories.

Regarding (b), non-contributing properties should definitely be included in the HD category: they're part of the HD, and sometimes described, though usually at no great length, in the nom form. A well-written article on an HD might well want to discuss some of the non-contributing properties, and leaving them out of the HD category would make it difficult for an editor working on such an article to find the images.

Regarding (c), I'd have to disagree with Ipoellet and TheCatalyst31. By my read, "on the NRHP" means "individually listed". The alternative interpretation would put lots of images of historically and architecturally uninteresting non-contributing properties in the "$BUILDINGTYPES on the NRHP" categories. — Ammodramus (talk) 04:08, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

There's consensus of 3 above, and I agree too, on (b) that both contributing and non-contributing properties should be included in the category of the HD they're in. Note that the HD itself will likely be included into "Category:Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in STATE", so that kinda puts both contributing and non-contributing "into the NRHP", no matter what.

About (c), to me "on the NRHP" includes contributing properties. CP means that their owners are entitled to benefits of being on the NRHP, i.e. tax credits for renovations compatible with preservation, while NC properties do not get tax credits. CP owners are entitled to say they're on the NRHP, and they do say that, and CP properties often have the NRHP plaque on them. So to me CP's indeed should be included into "type" categories like Category:Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in State X, in Wikipedia and in Commons too.

About (a), I don't know if the category structure needs to distinguish between contributing vs. non-contributing. Does it matter? But anyhow:

• a1: How about make no such distinction (allowing NC ones to be put into NRHP by their HD being in an NRHP category)? In fact I see no way to keep NC ones out of NRHP categories higher up.
• a2: Or how about not creating "Contributing property" categories, but put NC ones into some NC-category (although recognizing they will be in NRHP higher up): i.e. create a "Category:Non-contributing properties in HISTORIC DISTRICT" subcategory when needed, even for just one NC property in a district. And I don't really see the need for readers to find their way to all the NC ones grouped together, but with that there would be no way to stop categorizers from grouping those into "Category:Non-contributing properties in historic districts in STATE", so it would best to plan on STATE groupings that way. The guideline for readers/users should be: "If a property is in an NRHP HD, and an NC category is not present, assume property is contributing." They should be able to confirm the CP status by what's covered in the Wikipedia article for the HD. And then logically there is a need for a Wikipedia NRHP guideline on NRHP historic districts (in wp:NRHPHELP and/or wp:NRHPMOS) to say that the article should specifically list any CP properties and any NC properties that have photos in Commons, to serve the Commons readers/users.

(d) HD categories- There may or may not be inconsistency on this in Wikipedia categories, but there is inconsistency in Commons categories about historic districts belonging to NRHP or not. E.g. Commons category c:Category:Historic districts in Chatham County, Georgia is put into c:Category:National Register of Historic Places in Chatham County, Georgia. There could be a local historic district that is not in the NRHP though, so logically there should be "Historic districts on the NRHP in STATE" (which might or might not have COUNTY subcategories), and an NRHP HD should be put into that instead.

(e) How does WikiProject NRHP give direction to Commons categorizers?- I.e., is there or should there be a Commons guideline for NRHP equivalent to Wikipedia's wp:NRHPMOS? Where could that exist in Commons? The Commons version should point to wp:NRHPHELP and address any commons-specific issue.

(f) NRHPMOS- But first, shouldn't we cover how categories should work for Wikipedia in wp:NRHPMOS's section on Historic districts? I.e. how categories must work to address historic districts being in NRHP or not, and to address CP vs. NC properties. And to cover what is done automatically by NRHP infobox vs. what is to be manually added if a churches infobox, a rail station infobox, etc. is used instead, or if no infobox is used. (What happened in the recent CFD in Wikipedia on contributing properties, by the way? Whether or not the current Wikipedia policy set by CFDs agrees, this WikiProject NRHP can have its NRHPMOS guideline on how categories should work.) Also the wp:NRHPHELP should be edited to include a "Historic districts" section that links to the NRHPMOS section. IMO some of what's at NRHPMOS's HD section is not about MOS and should be moved to an HD section in NRHPHELP. --doncram 03:48, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

WLM 2016 map

I just noticed the map for WLM 2016 which has the US on it. It might be useful for some folks. [5]. You do need to zoom in to see all the details. Playing around with it a bit, it looked accurate in PA.

I believe it's based on their overall database at Commons [6] which is pretty close to (but not exactly the same as) our tables. I suppose the same caveats should be repeated as we do for our own tables. Any maps based on NRHP data can be off a hundred yards or more, depending on your location in the US.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:21, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

: Are the red ones where photos are needed? yes. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:54, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

One error I noticed. The map placed the West 114th Street Historic District in the middle of the East River south of Soundview, Bronx, when it's actually in Upper Manhattan. Oh, by the way, there are still tons of images from New Rochelle Historic Sites that need to be added. I took some already that I haven't uploaded or named yet, but there are many others that I missed. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 23:05, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Another thing; I see that two historic houses on Awixa Avenue in Bay Shore, New York have three images each (thanks to me), but apparently the lack of coordinates for these houses is making them not show up on the map. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 23:31, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

That's the nice thing about a smartphone or geotagging camera. The coordinates where you stood easily lead to the coords of the object. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:20, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

There are cameras that have GPS built in too. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:08, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Not very many, alas. I had to accept the ultrazoom lens on my Nikon Coolpix P520 to get its useful features, mainly GPS. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:00, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

You remember my camera from September 2015, right? I'll have to check to see if I can get geotagging software on it. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 03:28, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

But besides built-in GPS units, there are attachments that you can plug into the camera to transfer GPS data to the EXIF data (e.g. the Nikon GP-1). I have one for my camera, but I don't use it, mainly because it is cumbersome and has a cable running around that can get caught on something. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:27, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

We might attract wider, more expert attention by transferring this discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. Alas, the Coolpix S3600 has no GPS receiver and cannot load software anyway. An attachment is indeed cumbersome in the field, especially when I'm bicycling and my larger Nikon Coolpix P520 camera itself is a bit much to handle. Having visited a Best Buy yesterday and found no GPS camera at all, I'm thinking more of resorting to a camera with Wi-Fi feature, that can transfer a picture instantly by radio to my Nexus 6P smartphone which, perhaps, could use its superior aGPS to geotag the photo. The question there is, is the software available?

Okay, now the Rafael Guastavino Jr. House and John Mollenhauer House on Awixa Avenue in Bay Shore, New York still aren't on the map... and I still have images for both sites. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 04:21, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know why no one had added coordinates. I've done it now. Ntsimp (talk) 07:59, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Westchester House

I've had a message on my talkpage regarding this hotel in New York, asking that the article be moved to the title "Sohotel" as that's the name of the structure currently there. On the one hand, I can see the point...on the other, I'm not convinced the new name is notable enough to warrant being the subject of the article. So I decided to do the democratic American thing and make someone else do the deed solicit opinions before coming to a decision. What do y'all think? Is the move warranted? --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 18:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Cars and trucks in front of sites

Two months ago, on my excursion to the New York Tri-State area, I was able to hit the East End of Long Island, and one of the sites I captured was the Jamesport Meeting House. Unfortunately a full shot of the old church was obstructed by a westbound Chevrolet Silverado passing along New York State Route 25, although I did get a few signs at or on the building. Should I add any of them instead, or should I just let that one with the truck in front of it in the way be the main pic? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 03:34, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

A photo of the building partially obscured by a vehicle is certainly better than nothing. A photo of a sign is not a good substitute for the thing itself. Jonathunder (talk) 05:03, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree, a photo of the building with a truck in the front is better than nothing, or just a photo of a sign. (In general, this is why I try to take multiple pictures of buildings, in case one is affected by passing vehicles, sun glare, the camera being crooked, etc.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 13:06, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

In general, if you can, wait for automobiles to pass. Also, walk around to try to get an angle with few signs, power lines, poles, and trees & bushes in the way. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 14:11, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I snap photos from many angles, since it's so cheap. Sometimes I walk back and repeat a shot because the same truck isn't parked there anymore. Crooked camera is easy with simple retouch freeware. Heck, it's even bundled in Windows 10. Easy retouch is also why I like to shoot too wide, and at home crop away those boring bits that are not useful for context, location finding, etc. Some places, we shall have to start using today's lovely little drone cameras. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:48, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, it did just drive in front of me seemingly out of nowhere as I was trying to take the shot. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:09, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: Here's what I've got so far:

• 
  The truck that got in my way.
• 
  One big sign in the front yard
• 
  A Riverhead Town Landmark plaque...
• 
  ..a smaller sign on the opposite side of the door...
• 
  .. and some old sign carved into the top of the door, probably from the 18th Century.

I know it wasn't much, but it was all I was able to get at the time. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:48, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

I wasn't here for the bus. I was here for the church.

Surprises happen. This pic was one of eight from the same street corner, same intended subject. So, I used a later one for the original purpose, and this one for an unexpected purpose, and didn't bother uploading the discards. Even the pix I upload, the majority don't go into articles; they're just in case someone might want them. When I shoot fifty, upload ten and use three, that's a pretty good afternoon's photography. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:52, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

The secret of good photography (well, one of the secrets) is to shoot lots. With an SLR I shoot a couple in bursts to allow choice for shake, birds, bugs or cars, or I do a three-shot exposure bracket. Electrons are pretty much free. Pictures of details are valuable too as we fill in the big here's-what-it-looks-like-from-the-street categories. My peeve is with stationary cars, traffic signs and overhead wires. Acroterion (talk) 12:08, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

To add to that, first start with a good camera. Then, get out and walk around the site to look for good angles. There are tons of photos here that all the photographer saw was the building (or whatever) and didn't see the road signs, poles, power lines, traffic signals, trash cans, trees, bushes, cars, etc in the way. Find angles to cut out as much of that stuff as you can. And not only do you need to find good angles, you often need to move in or zoom in to exclude that stuff. But if you are too close, it messes up the perspective. And also watch the angle of the Sun - avoid shooting into it unless you know how to expose properly. And also consider the shadows. (Some cameras can cope with them a lot better than others.) Personally, I think buildings (especially brick ones) look good in direct sunlight. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:07, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

A few more hints in Wikipedia:Photograph your hometown. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:35, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I have to admit it --- my old car made it into a couple photos. Cheers-----Pubdog (talk) 17:13, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

• 
  US Post Office Tonawanda NY
• 
  Buffalo Trunk Manufacturing Company Building.
• 
  C. W. Miller Livery Stable

The listings...They move!

So a while back, I brought up the question of what to do when ships on the Register relocate from one state to another.

As a background, I was looking at two ships originally listed as NHLs in Michigan; I ended up dealing with a total of five NHLs:

• SS Columbia, originally located in Michigan, moved to Ohio, now in Buffalo, New York (planned move to NYC).
• Ste. Claire (passenger steamboat), originally located in Michigan, moved to Ohio, now back in Michigan.
• USS Edson, originally in New York, now in Michigan.
• USCGC Fir (WLM-212), originally in New York, now in California.
• United States lightship Nantucket (LV-112), originally in New York, now in Massachusetts.

To account for the moves, I added sections to the List of National Historic Landmarks in New York and the List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan titled "NHLs Formerly Located in Foo." This is a separate section from "Former NHLs in Foo," the difference being one section is for delisted NHL, and the other for relocated NHLs. I also made sure each NHL was also listed in the main section of article in the state it's now located: SS Columbia is in the New York list, USS Edson is in the Michigan list, USCGC Fir (WLM-212) is in the California list, and United States lightship Nantucket (LV-112) in the Massachusetts list. I completely removed the SS Columbia from the Ohio list.

I think that's a reasonable solution: each NHL is listed in the state article where they are actually located, so anyone who's interested can find them. At the same time, they're also mentioned in the state article where they were originally listed (so the bookkeeping is correct) with an appropriate explanation of why they're not on the main list (i.e., "moved to..."), and not comingled with delisted NHLs.

Please take a look at the List of National Historic Landmarks in New York and the List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan (and the Massachusetts, California, and Ohio lists) and see if this looks reasonable to you-all Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:58, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

I think so. Looks like it makes everything nice and neat. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 18:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Looks really good. Note that the Fir also makes an appearance on the Washington list. Suggest you put that in this new format too. — Ipoellet (talk) 04:53, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I have reverted the placement of Nantucket on the Massachusetts list. It is already on the Boston list, where it belongs. (N.B. I note that the edit I reverted did not update the numbers of the listings -- is this a problem in other places?) Magic♪piano 18:25, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Indiana ostensibly done

Hi all --- stubs and SHAARD refs (or equivalent) added for all Indiana NRHP. Only articles left to stub are archaeological sites and the few that do not otherwise have SHAARD NRHP forms.

It has truly been a pleasure to have the opportunity to celebrate Indiana over the last 15 months. I have enjoyed learning about the many exceptional places in that great state. I'm also glad I was able to fill so many gaps in the articles during this (tho they be lowly stubs), the 200th anniversary year of Indiana becoming a state! (saw that on a license plate just this last week) Cheers all --- --Pubdog (talk) 19:08, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Awesome! Now we have articles to go with all those photos that Nyttend took. (And if you're looking for a new state to work on, might I suggest Missouri? It has all of its nomination forms in convenient lists on the state DNR's website, but has been languishing near the bottom of the progress table for a while now.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 21:08, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Well done! Maybe Iowa next? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:42, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Yikes: NPS replaced NRHP nom doc by later NHL nom doc

Recording this here, in case it might help someone sort out any similar case later.

Owner, lost at sea during house's construction

1. User:W Nowicki created Washington Place article on the "Governor's House" in Hawaii, bringing it to this version in 2009. It included use of 1972 NRHP nomination document, then located at http://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/73000666.pdf, with "author=Robert M. Fox and Dorothy Riconda" and "date=September 22, 1972" noted.
2. Sometime later another editor added 23-page NHL nomination document (omitting date and authors though) that is located at http://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NHLS/Text/73000666.pdf (viewable in MSIE but not Chrome).
3. NPS sometime replaced the NRHP document by a different copy of the NHL nomination. By the way, this copy is 50 pages, including 27 additional pages of maps and photos. So then the NRHP reference link was wrong.
4. In these edits, I think i have done all that's possible: delink the NRHP doc reference, add author and date to the NHL doc reference, link to the longer NHL document while noting the other one exists.

If the authors and date weren't noted, it would have been impossible to figure out what happened. Maybe it could be worthwhile to review completeness of NRHP and NHL doc referencing in NHL articles? Anyhow I like the article: W Nowiki did a good job including with the illustrations, IMHO. :) --doncram 01:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the attention to detail and appreciation! An obvious thing to try would be another archive. I cannot get the "wayback machine" to work right now. But these are all minor issues, in my opinion. W Nowicki (talk) 21:08, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

RM notification 27 December 2024

Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Jaeckel Hotel#Requested move 22 August 2016, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, — Sam Sailor 01:24, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

WLM-US this year

I was somewhat surprised to see that there is a WLM-US this year, though I heard about WLM-Ohio a couple of weeks ago. Please see Commons:Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 in the United States for details. I think the organizers will be surprised at the work involved, but we should wish them well and take advantage of everything that they are helping us with.

We've already gotten about 40 pix posted to Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images, most look like they've been handled pretty well today. There are about 600 pix already at Commons:Category:Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 in the United States, most likely of sites previously illustrated. We should definitely look through these to see if there are better photos than the ones we currently use.

Probably the most important thing for us is to help and attract new photographers to WP:NRHP. A kind word here and there, would be appreciated by all. And if we can find somebody who will help fill in the missing pix in North Dakota or Alaska, etc., so much the better.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:55, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm actually sitting on a handful of things I haven't uploaded from the past few months; this is going to be as good an excuse as any to get them sorted out, I suspect. Just have to remind myself to getting around to it... --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:09, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@Smallbones: "I think the organizers will be surprised at the work involved, but we should wish them well and take advantage of everything that they are helping us with." A bit surprised, yes, and thanks for the kind words! I'm one of the organizers for WLM-US this year. As you noticed, we were originally going to host WLM in Ohio this year, but after some organizational interest from around the nation and support from the international team, we decided to go national at the last moment. Lots of work, but overall going smoothly. That all being said - if there's anything from WikiProject NRHP's perspective with which I can help with, don't hesitate to let me know. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 14:57, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

P.S. I'm planning to send a "thanks for participating!" message to all WLM-US uploaders in the next few days. I can put a line in there pointing them towards WP:NRHP if they're interested in participating, if that would be helpful. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 14:59, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Plagiarism check

The article for Green Pastures (Austin, Texas) has the text of the Texas Historic Commission plaque cut and paste into the article. Double checking that this is plagiarism before removing. 25or6to4 (talk) 22:06, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Unless there's evidence that the text is public domain or freely licensed, copying the text of historical markers is typically considered plaigarism. In this case, I don't see any evidence that it is in the public domain, and the Texas Historical Commission's copyright page for their website indicates that their works are copyrighted in general, so I'd expect the same policy would extend to their other works. (Depending on the age of the historical marker and whether there was an original copyright notice, it could fall into the public domain for age-related reasons, but the burden of proof for that is on whoever added the text/wants to keep it in.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 23:23, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

vocabulary for describing deteriorating stone

ftp://ftp.thc.state.tx.us/cemeteries/Monuments_and_Sites_15_ISCS_Glossary_Stone.pdf holds ICOMOS-ISCS's "Illustrated glossary on stone deterioration patterns". The Texas Historical Commission provides it as a resource in a directory for writing about cemeteries. Referring to it would give me some confidence to describe in words the condition of stone surfaces, say in a caption to a closeup photo of a stone wall, a foundation, or a gravestone. Seems like Wikipedia editors' reporting on current conditions shown in photos would be allowable and helpful. For example, to describe "sugaring" of marble as at the Empire State Plaza's Agency buildings, described on page 21.--doncram 04:08, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I have to disagree. This suggestion—that we cite an original or found photograph to support an original statement re. the condition of the stone—seems like a fairly clear case of OR. Specifically, it's contraindicated at WP:OI: "Original images created by a Wikipedian are not considered original research, so long as they do not illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments..." [italics in original].

I've pushed the limits of this policy a number of times, generally on one of the many occasions when I've found erroneous location information in NRIS data. However, I think that this is justifiable in that it's documenting errors in published sources, which might otherwise being taken as reliable, and thus preventing those errors from being incorporated into and promulgated by WP articles. This differs significantly from using an original photo to support an editor's own statement. — Ammodramus (talk) 13:11, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

You're completely right, of course. How about put it this way: this glossary would give me confidence to interpret an NRHP document or other source that commented on the condition of deteriorating stone, so I could focus some detail pics on what is described and properly caption them. It also potentially could help me write primary source material such as a new NRHP nomination, or to write a newspaper article or a blog about an existing NRHP site...which potentially could be cited, depending.

I appreciate you recognize some gray areas, too. --doncram 03:35, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

More infobox merge requests

Is there any way we can merge the infoboxes for the New York State Capitol? The usual embedding parameters aren't working for some reason. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 21:15, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

You may want to look at Pennsylvania State Capitol as a model. It uses {{Infobox designation list}}, instead of Infobox NRHP if that's not a problem. Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 01:25, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Old gas station on US 17 in South Carolina

Back in September 2015 when I drove up north and took that detour along US 17 so I could gather pictures of Charleston, South Carolina (Amtrak station), I spotted an old gas station in Beaufort County, South Carolina just north of the end of the overlap with US 21 which is now used by the "Carolina Cherry Company." I know that station's not NRHP listed, but is there any local historical significance to the place, or is it just an old gas station refurbished for another business? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 03:47, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Arbitration amendment request

FYI, I have requested release from an NRHP-related editing restriction at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Amendment request: Doncram. Any editor is free to comment there. The request would allow me to move my own draft NRHP articles to mainspace without going through the Articles-For-Creation process, and it should essentially end the arbitration case.

A list of new NRHP place articles I have created since May 2016 is linked there, and, FYI, a more complete record of my creations is here. I considered seeking comments in some kind of process here or at my talk page, in advance of making the amendment request, but that might have seemed an imposition. However I am happy to discuss the request and anything related to it at my Talk page, or here, or in the formal amendment request itself. --doncram 14:42, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

to use or ....... not to use?

An image I came across today. Agathoclea (talk) 14:40, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

That's mine...I debated whether or not to upload it in the first place (especially as it's the best of three, if you can imagine), and finally decided that having something, however awful, would be better than nothing for the article. A lot of the Charles County sites were like that, I found - behind trees, or otherwise in the center of a large lot, and barely visible as a result. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 05:59, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't use it. When I find a property that I can't meaningfully image (e.g. this recent failure), I typically don't bother taking any pictures, leaving it to others who may have more success. I am extremely jealous of the amazing KLOTZ, who has taken very good pictures of things I and others opted against trying to get closer to. Magic♪piano 15:10, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

I had a similar problem with Wild Heron. I went there twice, bout couldn't see it. The color photo of a building is not the one on the NRHP. I added some photos of their sign and some of the land. But the photo you have doesn't show much. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:28, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't use it either; I've left similar images on the unused images page before. It's one thing if you can get some part of the site through the trees (I've taken plenty of those) but if all you can see are trees it's not really illustrative of the site. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:43, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

A camera with a telephoto lens would help a lot with the third one you have. I've had to use a telephoto lens that a few times. For example, you cannot get to this one File:Eureka Club - Farr's Point, Chatham County, GA, US.jpg by land, but I got it from across the river, 1.8 kilometers away. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:19, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Alternative to Vicuna uploader

Is there an alternative to Vicuna uploader (for Windows) - it has stopped working for me. Earlier today it would only upload the first seven of a larger group. Then I tried to upload a group of six and it wouldn't do it. Now, it won't even navigate into a folder with three photos. I'm using Windows 10, which recently had a big update, which may affect it. Also, Commons has been almost intollerably slow for weeks, but this problem seems to be before it even tries to get to Commons. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:08, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

NRHP images before Hurricane Matthew

Does anybody know if there were any images of NRHP sites taken in Georgia, South Carolina, and anywhere else they're needed before Hurricane Matthew slammed the southeast? I've considered getting the last two Jasper County, South Carolina sites myself, either on my next trip to NYC or on a separate trip just for those images. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 19:29, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

My county of Glynn - on the Georgia coast - there was not too much damage on the mainland but there are reports of a lot of damage on the barrier islands, which are still not accessible ("maybe Monday" - tomorrow). We just got electricity, etc, back this afternoon, so I haven't seen too many reports. We were listening to two radio stations in Jacksonville, one in Savannah, and one local station, but each of those were going off the air for long periods of time. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:38, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

This isn't a NRHP, but it is historic: hurricane-matthew-unearths-150-year-old-civil-war-artil. But the mentioned Fort Morris is a NRHP! Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:07, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Dauphin County Bridge No. 27 or just another image issue

ATM I am trying to write all relevant articles to Northumberland County, PA German WP. Therefor I came around that article. Aside from the wrong coordinates – the bridge is several tenths of a mile to the South – there is an image in the article which appearantly is not the bridge on the register. The captions says that it is a replacement bridge though it does not appear like a modern bridge build in the latest decades. However, when looking on Google Earth the bridge in question still exists. So I guess we need an image of the correct bridge. And maybe should amend the image dscription of the image used so far with the correct information. --Matthiasb (talk) 19:21, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

The photo is just three months old, and Google's aerial view is often significantly older; the newest Google image of 37.36222°N 81.05723°W / 37.36222; -81.05723 (not NR-related) is an empty lot, but when I drove past the spot last Wednesday, it was a functioning Chick-Fil-A restaurant. With this in mind: there's at least a chance that Google's image of the truss bridge is outdated. I've checked online for anything about the place, but I'm not seeing anything such as "New bridge built". However, I've just now checked the CRGIS, Pennsylvania's map-based database that includes its NR sites, and I've been able to verify that it places the Dauphin County Bridge No. 27 at the spot where the old bridge appears on Google. They derive their data from a good number of sources, including ordinary PennDOT documentation, so we can trust them when they claim that this is the location of the historic bridge. I agree, however, that it looks like a not-so-new bridge; this leaves me guessing that they perhaps relocated an older bridge to this site, or that they basically reused some older plans. Nyttend (talk) 04:14, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

PS, Matthiasb, I think I've found the answer. Go to 40°37′12.5″N 76°52′10″W, a spot just downstream of Dauphin County Bridge No. 27; you'll see another bridge over the same creek, carrying Diebler Gap Road, and this one is obviously a masonry bridge with walls and a central abutment. I expect that KLOTZ got confused and photographed the wrong place — something I know I've done lots of times, so it's hardly something to complain at him about! Nyttend (talk) 12:15, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I've corrected the coordinates in the article to point at the correct bridge (based on the map in the nomination form) and renamed and redescribed the photo on Commons. Choess (talk) 00:54, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Category:Lists of National Register of Historic Places in Rhode Island by city

The listings for a lot of smaller cities in Rhode Island have been split out into their own lists. They haven't been removed from the county lists, but I nonetheless don't see the point in creating lists for each city; many of them don't have all that many listings, and the lists don't seem to add anything that you can't already get from sorting the county list by city. I redirected one of them (National Register of Historic Places listings in Richmond, Rhode Island) the other day without realizing there were so many others, but given how many of these there are I'd like to get more of a consensus on what to do with them. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:56, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Take away the Providence city listings, and Providence County has 251 sites, according to my offline lists that I may have forgotten to update recently. Perhaps it's worthwhile splitting something additional out of that list (maybe some other place already is split out; I've not bothered to check), but the largest of the other four counties has just 131 sites (Washington County, of which Richmond is a part): there's no need to split a list of 131 sites just for size reasons, and I don't immediately see any other reason that would warrant splitting such a list. Aside from bigger Providence County municipalities, all municipality lists should probably be merged into their county lists. Nyttend (talk) 21:54, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I just picked a random example, Jamestown, which tells me that it was transferred from the Newport County list, but that page still has its Jamestown entries. If a city's entries are still on the county list, that's basically proof that we don't need to split the list; make sure that the city list's entries aren't better than the county list's (e.g. if the city list has a photo that the county list doesn't, add it to the county list, of course), and then just redirect it to the county list. Nyttend (talk) 21:56, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I created several of the RI city/town lists. They are indeed quirky in their formatting, etc. I ran with what was already in place and going back to take another look has been on my to do list ever since. Just to clarify something, the articles in that category are all of the towns with listings. Rhode Island is a small enough state that that kind of completeness is manageable.

Certainly cities like Providence, which have a lot of history, make sense for separate lists. I do get the objection to e.g. Richmond, with its 4 entries -- mainly because the listings are indeed duplicated in the county articles. However, I think the question is less "how many listings in a county merit spinning out city/town lists" and more just "is the list of NRHP for a city/town a valid stand-alone list?". I submit that it is. Whether the listings should be removed from the county pages is another question that I don't have a strong opinion about. As I can't think of a good example of a similar non-diffusing list, my inclination is to say the county pages, in this case, should point to the city/towns. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:39, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

In most cases, splitting a size-reasonable county list is a bad idea, and in all cases, creating a municipality-specific list without splitting its NR listings out of the county list is a bad idea. As long as sizes are reasonable, it's better to have the county list rather than municipality lists, since they reduce the amount of necessary maintenance and provide a wider geographic overview; lacking a solid rationale for a specific unusual situation, there's no good reason to split for some reason other than list size. Nyttend (talk) 14:35, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Concur that forking (which is what most these lists are) is generally BAD. To cite one specific and relevant example, the list for North Smithfield is now out of date. As the editor who is presently doing much of the work to keep NR listings current here, I'm not about to make the needed modifications in two places (it's bad enough keeping city lists split for size up-to-date). Rhode Island's county lists are of manageable length, except Providence County, which was already divided into reasonably sized lists before you forked. Magic♪piano 15:26, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Updating for new listings is one of the types of "necessary maintenance" that I was thinking of, together with adding newly uploaded photos, fixing errors (e.g. bad coords and wrong addresses), etc. We don't want to end up with having improvements on one list but not the other, and while that's easily prevented by splitting listings out of the county list, it's basically inevitable if we have lots of listings on both the county list and a municipality list. Nyttend (talk) 17:17, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

I have no problem with the arguments against forking, of course. As I mentioned, the only reason I didn't remove them myself is because someone had already created one city-based fork and I assumed stick with quasi-precedent, knowing it could always be fixed down the road. So no objection to depopulating the RI county lists. I don't see any of this as a reason for insisting on consolidating, though.

Like I said, I think it's more relevant to ask whether municipality-based lists are valid list topics, rather than to ask at what point it makes sense to spin out (operating under the assumption that only county lists are valid topics). In other words, I don't think reducing the number of entries in the county article is the only reason to have municipality-based lists. So because I think municipality NRHP listings are viable stand-alone list topics, and because RI is small enough for separate municipality lists to be manageable, I still support that approach. If the county lists are depopulated, the issues of redundancy, updating in multiple places, etc. are moot. I'll volunteer to do that and, when doing so, ensure the municipality pages are up to date. Pending discussion here, of course. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:00, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Splitting out a municipality-based list is reasonable, but in most cases, only if the county list is too long; exceptions exist, e.g. the 38-item National Register of Historic Places listings in Clay County, Missouri list doesn't need to be split on size grounds, but since Kansas City already has its own lists, moving the KC sites from the Clay County list to the KC list might be helpful. However, just as splitting counties out of the state list is a bad idea when the state list isn't too large (this is why National Register of Historic Places listings in North Dakota and National Register of Historic Places listings in Nevada still have most of their county lists), splitting municipalities out of the county list is a bad idea when the county list isn't too large. Among other things, splitting forces readers to visit a larger number of pages in order to see what NR sites are located in a specific area, and because the {{GeoGroupTemplate}} map can only display coordinates from one page, splitting makes it harder to find nearby sites on a map. For example, if you hadn't split up Kent County, its map would demonstrate that the Knight Estate and the Valley Queen Mill are close to each other, but because one's on the Warwick list and the other's on the West Warwick list, there's no way to see from a map that the two are something like half a mile away from each other. Nothing is wrong with county lists, and splitting up causes problems: we have no reason to retain separate lists for most Rhode Island cities. Nyttend (talk) 02:33, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm still not seeing the urgency for combining. If anything this says to me that non-diffusing lists makes sense, because there will always be borders of states, counties, and municipalities that can disrupt the map experience if separated. As a navigational aid, if the issue of updating in multiple locations weren't an issue, would you be opposed to having full state, county, and municipality lists? Yes, the state would be cumbersome, but nobody would be forced to use it -- it's just there for the sake of those features that exist when all listings are on the same page. There are multiple ways to address the updating issue. Handling via Wikidata would make it so we could display this content anywhere in any way we want, or the municipality lists could simply be formatted to be transcluded into lists higher up on the hierarchy (noincluding everything but the table content or somesuch). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:30, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

(ec) There always can be lists of the NRHPs in a "landmarks" or "history" section of the article about the municipality itself, though listed briefly rather than covered in an expansive table, and I think that's often/usually good enough. In fact Jamestown's historic sites section has all 15 sites listed (added in 2008). Lincoln's 18, also. A short note about each one of them would build some connection to Jamestown and enhance the article, even if it duplicated what was said about the property in the county list-article. Triplicating seems excessive though.

Rhododendrites, would it work for you to have separated sections for the city vs. non-city properties in the county list-article? I don't see any reason for readers to want to sort and resort all the properties together, because there's no column indicating size or anything quantitative, so having two or more tables is okay, even good (wouldn't readers prefer to see the ones in each town together, rather than in alphabetical order county-wide by name?). As long as the tables are on the same page, the {{GeoGroup}} works to cover all the properties in a big area, which I like. But one table vs. split into town/city tables doesn't matter very much, either. --doncram 02:53, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

wouldn't readers prefer to see the ones in each town together, rather than in alphabetical order county-wide by name - I agree, and I don't know why putting a bunch of tables on one page is preferable to separate pages when it's possible to be exhaustive (i.e. make a complete set of pages that will not grow in number, but will continue to grow individually) rather than continue to build up a county page based on an arbitrary concept of what "too many" would be. Again, I think this is a valid stand-alone list topic (GNG, gazetteer, etc.). I created the pages because I found myself wanting to browse separate pages for each municipality, so I am not the best one to try to convince that a reader wouldn't want that (being a reader myself). I can appreciate that I may be in the minority (or, perhaps, alone), but I do still believe these do not need to be merged and have value as independent lists (and/or that if a county list is uniquely functional, that it's ok to make it a non-diffusing list, despite that being a little tacky). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:30, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Need some advice on deletion request

Morning, We need some advice on the usage permissions of a couple images: SH_34_Trinity_Bridge.png and Kent-Crane_Shell_Midden.png. Any insight would be very helpful here. Thanks. 25or6to4 (talk) 16:56, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata?

The discussion about city vs. county lists and the challenge of keeping them up to date makes me wonder whether Wikidata would simplify this -- generating lists with names, counties, cities, descriptions, images, coordinates, etc. wherever it makes sense to do so based on wikidata (i.e. update wikidata according to weekly lists, etc., and let the bots that update wikidata-based lists do all of the updating). Looking to the talk page archives, I see Multichill started a couple threads about Wikidata, but I don't see much by way of specifics and wonder where things stand now (and whether that's even something people would want). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:09, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

I think Wikidata is intended as a cross-wiki resource. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to make people learn a new wiki just to edit content that's used only here. Ntsimp (talk) 23:46, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Cross-wiki or wherever the same data can be used in more than one place. I see that for the two lists I had open -- North Dakota and New York -- there are corresponding articles on both the German and Portuguese Wikipedias. But even if it weren't used on multiple Wikipedias, it would make it possible to use a dataset in multiple ways, automatically update counts, automatically connect an image with a listing, let a bot do the formatting, etc. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:23, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata for NR listings is used (or usable) on other language wikis, some of which have translated NR listing pages. The data on NR listings that appears in Wikidata today is mostly imported from here, after the heavy lifting is done. Putting it into Wikidata directly only moves the issues. Wikidata does not track on which (sub)lists entries appear, which can theoretically vary by Wiki based on differing editorial considerations, and changes when lists get split. I don't know if Wikidata is updated when we make corrections to location, addressing, naming, and district boundary changes. There are at present no tools for doing the following:

1. determining where a new listing is located geographically (online maps help, but are not always accurate or sufficient, and the information in the weekly updates is sometimes ambiguous or not straightforward to map)
2. determining which NR list an entry belongs in (which may not be possible if step 1 is inconclusive), flagging a listing for editor action if it can't be done automatically
3. correctly updating all of the places where counts appear relative to the addition and removal of NR and NHL listings

The latter could be addressed if there were facilities for transcluding values produced by Dudeman's progress scripts or something analogous, whose use could be propagated into pages where hard-coded numbers now appear. The first two steps (especially #2) require something that doesn't exist in the hard cases, and would require some detailed mapping work to properly implement, as well as tools for interrogating the map data.

If you want to understand the scope of the problem, I will be happy to point you to new listings that are problematic when they arise, and you can work on them. If you want to see particularly complicated setups to deal with from the perspective of this routine work, look at the lists for Louisville, KY and Kansas City, MO, and consider how many edits are needed (to how many pages) to add a single listing from the weekly update to one of the sublists. (Hint: you don't automatically get to add 1 to some numbers -- you have to check that the numbers are up-to-date first, because not all editors update all of the numbers, either by ignorance, lack of attention to detail, or forgetfulness.) Magic♪piano 13:02, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

This seems like a good case for using Wikidata to me. There are a number of bots that update Wikipedia based on Wikidata and/or generate entire articles/lists based on Wikidata. I know it doesn't resolve issues like list splitting, but it makes it so that no matter how many places some data appears, it's possible for all of them to always be up to date. We'd have an item for each place, which would have statements for county, city, address, description (in various languages), Wikipedia page, dates, coordinates, and anything else. Then we'd just have bot-updated fields for the number of Wikidata items that have "city" set to [the item for] Louisville, Kentucky, and a bot would update relevant lists to include new items without relying on people to update every page they occur on every Wikipedia they occur. We could even have it autopopulate lists where they don't exist yet and/or create new article stubs (would certainly take a separate discussion to decide something like that -- I'm just trying to convey how powerful it is). It would require some work to get started, to be sure, but a type of information that can be broken down into standardized fields like this is really what Wikidata is good for. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:52, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

I understand Wikidata can also be used to help corral/tag/organize images, and I think it's used by the WikiShootMe tool to help weed out things for which we have pictures. I'm in favor of adding NRHP stuff to it, absolutely. I don't think the argument about foreign languages is particularly convincing, I'm afraid, because even if we don't have a lot of NRHP articles in other-language Wikis, there's no reason why we shouldn't. It would be very useful, I think. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 23:47, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Eberhardt and Ober Brewery and Penn Brewery merge

Just wanted to bring to someone's attention. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 15:19, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Place notability questions?

I'm working on creating new articles for a college course and wanted to create one for the Woman's Club of Evanston (#61 on the NRHP in Evanston list). Online resources are scarce (though not non-existent) and I have some print resources as well. Our professor has had concerns about notability, though it's been mentioned that any location with a NRHP designation ought to be Wikipedia-notable. Do you all have any thoughts on the topic's notability? Foodnaptime (talk) 19:45, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

It's absolutely notable (as are all sites on the NRHP, pretty much). If you don't write the article for your class, I'll probably end up writing it myself eventually, as I'm slowly but surely trying to start articles for every site on the NRHP in Illinois. If you need help finding sources, here's the nomination form, which has a long list of references at the bottom; that should give you plenty of material to work with, especially if you already have some sources. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 23:58, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Don't limit yourself to online sources. Paper materials are fine, if properly cited. Jonathunder (talk) 00:53, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! Page should be underway within 24 hours.Foodnaptime (talk) 07:40, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Delisted and relisted

I just now ran across the Verdoy Schoolhouse, which was listed in 1985, delisted in 1997, and relisted basically on the same day. How many listed-delisted-relisted properties do we know about? I can think of four others: Gramelspacher-Gutzweiler House (no NRIS data for delisting, but delisting is stated in the nomination, if I remember rightly), John Marshall House Site (ditto the G-G House situation), Cincinnati Zoo Historic Structures (listed 1976 as "Cincinnati Zoo District", new CZHS listing 1987, CZD delisted 1999), and Kent Jail. But this phenomenon surely isn't restricted to the Great Lakes states. What others exist? I'm tempted to create a category for these places, keeping it a hidden category because it's not a good content category but because it might be useful for project purposes. Ideas? Nyttend (talk) 03:18, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I think you already know about Zook House (West Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania), which was not necessarily delisted, but was relisted anyway after it was moved 300 feet. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:34, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

The George E. Cisney House in Phoenix was delisted, and then relisted after someone figured out they delisted the wrong Cisney House. Magic♪piano 12:18, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

A quick article search for "relisted historic" indicates that this happens a fair bit, usually because a site was moved without official approval but the move didn't change its historic value. I don't see a problem with having a hidden category for these, but I also don't see a ton of use for one; I suppose it might be useful if we want to do special handling in the infobox. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 19:37, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Update: Notability Questions (Woman's Club of Evanston)

Thank you all for your help! The page has been created, and I hope I got at least some of the project standards and guidelines correct. Glad to get feedback/edits any time. Foodnaptime (talk) 19:09, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Looks good. I've taken the liberty of doing some formatting tweaks and adding categories, but I haven't changed a word of the prose. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:32, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

(EC)It looks pretty good to me. From the POV of this project you should probably have more on architecture. In the line of history, I have a few question (but no answers). I'm interested in knowing how the club itself relates to others women's organizations/issues. For example, the WCTU was headquartered in Evanston, did the two organizations interact? Of course the women's movement moved away from prohibition - how did the club react to Second wave feminism? I suppose they might have been more like the DAR, the New Century Clubs or even the YWCA. Yes, I'm fishing here, but you can see what some people might be interested in knowing.

BTW, this looks a lot better than a stub, so somebody else here should evaluate it, once more architectural info is added. Then you might nominate it for WP:DYK. Congrats. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:44, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject United States - 50,000 Challenge

You are invited to participate in the 50,000 Challenge, aiming for 50,000 article improvements and creations for articles relating to the United States. This effort began on November 1, 2016 and to reach our goal, we will need editors like you to participate, expand, and create. See more here!

NRHP project members are welcome and encouraged to participate! I'm doing my part to encourage NRHP article creation by identifying missing articles in Oregon: Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge/Pacific Northwest. Perhaps some other project members want to do something similar? Sometimes editors need ideas for articles to work on. --Another Believer _(Talk) 20:58, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Milestones

Per WP:NRHPPROGRESS, the project has passed 60,000 articled listings. It is also nearing 20% Start class listings. Magic♪piano 01:48, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

No more persistent links in New York's CRIS System

Just thought I'd give a heads up that, after being down for about a month, the New York Cultural Resource Information System (CRIS) no longer has persistent links to NRHP documents and photos. In February 2015, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation moved from it's old OPRHP system to CRIS, but all the links to documents needed to be updated. For document presentation, it was a great improvement. At the time, I contacted them and congratulated them and asked whether they had a cross-reference from the old to the new system and notified them of their use for the Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places.

The reply I received in February 2015 was:

"I consulted with other OPRHP staff, and they were unaware of the Document Imaging links used for NRHP listings on Wikipedia. Apparently, these were added to Wikipedia by people outside of OPRHP. We do not have plans to edit or maintain these links; however, other people are welcome to do so at their discretion. The URL format in your example (with the ViewDoc query) is probably the best way to link the files, though I am not aware of any plans to use these as permanent links."

Hoping against hope, me and others have used the new links for the New York NRHP project and updated hundreds of properties to the new system. These are all now broken links. When I tried replacing the links in one entry to the specific documentation (United States Post Office (Tonawanda, New York)} the error received was "You must sign in to CRIS to view files". Any thoughts? Very frustrating ... seems like a lot of time and effort wasted.--Pubdog (talk) 21:05, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Pubdog, I'd suggest just treating these files like print documents: you cited the print-original nomination form, not some born digital document, and the link to this document is merely a convenience link that can be omitted when it's not working conveniently anymore. Just leave off the link in the future, and if you feel like editing the existing citations, remove the links that no longer work. Nyttend (talk) 06:39, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Warren A. and Catherine Cartier House

The Warren A. and Catherine Cartier House is listed on the NRHP as the William A. and Catherine Cartier House. (Every single other reference says "Warren," so I'm pretty darned sure it's the NPS that has it wrong.) So I created an article with the correct name (Warren) and redirected the listing name (William), but then left William in the Mason County list and the infobox heading, since that's apparently the official NRHP name, but added a note int the lede. Is this the best approach? Andrew Jameson (talk) 18:00, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

I usually make corrections to the listing name/address, and note the discrepancy from the actual listing in the Description field (and in the article). Magic♪piano 19:35, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

I correct the actual list and the infobox when I come across these mistakes; half of them are obvious typos (the Jefferies-Crabtree House being a particularly egregious example), and readers will just assume that either the editors here can't spell or that we're mindlessly propagating the NPS's mistakes. I don't think we need to give official status to mistakes, especially since they can typically be proved to be mistakes by looking at the nomination form. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:25, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Agree with TheCatalyst31. Perhaps a comment in the article itself would be fine: we don't want to put much weight on a spelling or other minor mistake, but if it's a patently different name, leaving off the NR name might confuse the reader who thinks that he merely ended up at the wrong article. But on the county lists, there's generally no need to mention the mistake by NRIS. Nyttend (talk) 06:45, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Map of Buffalo

How do I create a map of Buffalo, like they have for the map of Pittsburgh in Eberhardt and Ober Brewery?--Pubdog (talk) 22:01, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@Pubdog: First, you're going to have to get the Open Street Map version at the same scale (see here). Then someone else will have to put in the locator-map coding so any map in an infobox will show a red dot at the appropriate place. I'd find out who created those other maps and see if they could do it. Daniel Case (talk) 05:01, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

New National Historic Landmarks

Last week's list of actions includes designations for ten new National Historic Landmarks. Here's the press release. Magic♪piano 15:22, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

I went ahead and created a sub-stub (don't hate me) for William R. Holden House, but I'm hoping this isn't being confused with the William B. Holden House? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:01, 14 November 2016 (UTC) redirect to William B. Holden House. :) ---Another Believer _(Talk) 01:26, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

This year's NHL meetings

Apparently NPS no longer cares enough to put information about the NHL meetings and potential new NHLs on its main page. Only by clicking "Landmarks Committee Meetings" did I find out we've had the usual two this year, with a bunch of interesting ones up for consideration, and what we have as far as coverage:

Spring

• Chicano Park, San Diego. For its murals. Already listed, with photos and an extensive article. Nomination and executive summary
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers House, Jackson, Mississippi. Home of civil rights leader slain in driveway in 1963. Listed, and with photo in the Hinds County list, but no article. Nomination and executive summary.
• Greenhills Historic District, Greenhills, Ohio. One of the three New Deal "greenbelt" towns. We have an article and a picture, but I'd prefer one that actually shows some houses. Nomination and executive summary
• Keim Homestead, Oley, Pennsylvania, vicinity. 1753 stone house is rare intact example of German vernacular architecture. We have an article and a picture. Nomination and executive summary.
• Kimball Village, Westfield, Iowa, vicinity. Well-preserved Plains Village from Big Sioux era, occupied around 900 years ago with minimal changes to terrain since. We have an article but no picture (I think this may well be "address restricted" anyway). Nomination and executive summary.
• Casa José Antonio Navarro, San Antonio, Texas. Home of José Antonio Navarro, early Texas statesman and one of only two native Texans to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence. It's now a state historic site; we have an article and a picture. Nomination and executive summary.
• New York State Barge Canal, between Albany and Buffalo, plus link to Lake Champlain. Successor to Erie Canal, created in early 20th century and still in use. We have article and picture. Nomination and executive summary.
• Richard Neutra Studio and Residence, Los Angeles. Home and workplace of important modernist architect, in that style. We have an article and picture. Nomination and executive summary.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York. The first-ever presidential library would be the third FDR-related NHL in Hyde Park along with nearby Springwood and Top Cottage. Not yet listed on the Register, but notable enough in its own right that we have an article and some pictures. Nomination and executive summary.
• Schifferstadt, Frederick, Maryland. 1758 German stone house with Georgian influence has the only in situ five-plated iron stove in the U.S. And its name sounds like it would make a great one for a craft beer. Nomination and executive summary.
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harlem, New York, NY. Invaluable collection of material on African diaspora founded in 1905. We have an article and a picture. Nomination and executive summary.
• Wyandotte National Burying Ground, Kansas City, Kansas. Last resting place of Lyda Conley, the first Native American and only the second woman ever to argue a case before the Supreme Court, one that concerned the preservation of that very cemetery. Nomination and executive summary.

In addition to some amendments to existing designations, there is also the proposal to withdraw the designation of the Kate Chopin House in Louisiana since it mostly burned down in 2008 (Note that the article's claim those were withdrawn last year are not sourced).

Fall

Some, such as the Hell Gap archaeological site in Wyoming, are continued from earlier meetings. New on this agenda are:

• Biesterfeldt Site, Lisbon, North Dakota, vicinity. Only known Cheyenne site from their horticultural period in the mid-18th century. We have an article but no pic; it's understandably address restricted. Nomination and executive summary.
• Davis-Ferris Organ, Round Lake, New York. Rare intact pre-Civil War pipe organ. Yes, you read this right—for the first time ever, the United States (or any country, as far as I know) is giving a heritage designation to a musical instrument (at least it's at a fixed location). Obviously we don't have an article, although the church it's in is a contributing property to the Round Lake Historic District in Saratoga County. I suppose it will be my task to get this picture (My father-in-law is a pipe organ enthusiast; he might know something about this one, or at least just find the nomination interesting reading). Nomination and executive summary.
• Eldean Bridge, Troy, Ohio. Probably the best example of a surviving Long truss covered bridge now that the Old Blenheim Bridge is gone. We have an article and picture. Nomination and executive summary.
• Matanuska Colony Historic District, Palmer, Alaska. Area resettled with farmers from lower 48 during New Deal. We have article with pictures, since some buildings that would be in the district are presently listed. However, there is as yet no link to the nom documents from the NPS page.
• May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings Site, Kent, Ohio. "This summer I hear the drumming / Four dead in Ohio ..." We have handled this via the article on the shootings themselves per a discussion I started six years ago when this was listed on the Register. I don't see any reason we should change that should it reach NHL status (this should be interesting, especially after the election). And of course we have pictures. Nomination and executive summary.
• Omaha Union Station, Nebraska. First Art Deco train station in U.S. We have an article and pictures. Nomination and executive summary.
• Our Lady of Guadulupe Mission Chapel, San Jose, California. Small parish church later used as community center by Cesar Chavez. Listed as a local and state landmark, but not yet on Register. So no article, and it does not seem from a quick perusal of Commons like we even have a picture, although it looks like it would be easy to get one (2020 East San Antonio Street, if anyone knows the way to San Jose). Nomination and executive summary.
• Painted Desert Community Complex Historic District, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. Richard Neutra-designed complex for NPS modernization back in mid-'60s. We have an article and pictures, although I'd like to think there's more than the one in the article. Nomination and executive summary.
• Pauli Murray Family Home, Durham, North Carolina. Childhood home of Murray, first African-American woman ordained as an Episcopal priest and a social activist whose legacy includes Title VII. Not previously listed; this property was chosen because it's about the only extant one associated with her life, so we will need an article and pictures (906 Carroll Street). Nomination and executive summary
• George Read II House, New Castle, Delaware. Federal style 1801 brick home of signer of Declaration of Independence was largest in state when it was built. Link currently redirects to Delaware Historical Society, which owns the house and operates it as a museum; it is also a contributing property to the NHL New Castle Historic District. But we still don't have a picture? Come on, people ... Nomination and executive summary.
• W. A. Young and Sons Foundry and Machine Shop, Rices Landing, Pennsylvania. Well-preserved remaining early 20th-century family-owned "job shop". No article on it, but it's a contributing property to the Rice's Landing Historic District, and quite picturesque; so naturally we do have a picture of it already. Nomination and executive summary
• Walrus Islands Archeological District, Alaska. One of the few remaining places with evidence of human life on the continental shelf from when the Bering Sea was lower than it is today. Not listed, but we have an article with some pictures. Nomination and executive summary.
• West Union Bridge, Parke County, Indiana. Well-preserved Burr truss covered bridge in its original location. We have an article and pictures, although the color ones could be better. Nomination and executive summary.

Daniel Case (talk) 07:32, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

We have several HABS pictures (including a color one) of the George Read II House at Commons; check c:Category:New Castle Historic District. Choess (talk) 15:54, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

OK, I see this one's in color ... good. It'll do for now. But it's almost as old as I am ... a modern picture would be best. Daniel Case (talk) 16:27, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

The Kate Chopin House was delisted from the NRHP on December 28, 2015 (weekly list). I presumed at the time this would also imply an NHL de-designation, but that presumption may have been premature. Magic♪piano 17:30, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

You are kidding...you do remember that government processes are involved, right?  :-) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 18:56, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Images from Panoramio

As some of you probably know, Panoramio is closing down. This will lead to the loss of a lot of decent photos that could be transferred here, and I believe some were recently added to the historic sites of New Rochelle, New York in the latest runs of copyvio deletions. Maybe there's some way we can make these legitimate so they can stay alive. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, there's a bot transferring any public domain images from Panoramio to Commons. I haven't found any NRHP ones yet (at least none that can be used to fill a gap), but there are a lot which can be used for unillustrated locations. Commons:Category:Panoramio files uploaded by Panoramio upload bot is full of 'em, though a lot are as yet unsorted. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 15:03, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

There are a lot of them there, and one of the ones that was downloaded then deleted was this one. The category has a ToC template, but I'm going through a lot of "S" just to find that image. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 15:54, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

I've found it quite helpful to go through the "Media needing categories" categories - Commons:Category:Media needing categories as of 31 October 2016 and the like - and see what comes up there. It's not ideal, as a lot of the images have been auto-catted. But what's in there is broken down into bite-sized enough pieces as to be somewhat more reasonably manageable. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:09, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, when this one comes, I'm going to stick in the commons category for United Methodist Church (Patchogue, New York). Actually many of "dans362'" images had names and coordinates, but they disappeared. In any case, I'm still going to keep my eye out for that church in New Rochelle, like so many others. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 22:52, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: This particular photograph should also be added to the commons gallery on the Old Town Hall Historic District (Huntington, New York), specifically the commons gallery for the Old Town Hall itself. Dominick Kosciuk has numerous pics that could be added to galleries on all kinds of projects, not just on NRHP ones. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 15:07, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Prescott Public Library

Prescott Public Library needs work. The article is simultaneously about a Carnegie library building on the NRHP and the current functioning library in a different building. This leads to all sorts of problems. Not sure which one the coordinates are for, or the stuff in the infobox. It should have a single-source NHRP tag, but a bot removed it because a source was added for info about the new library. So I plan to split it into two articles. Looking for advice on article names. I think the contemporary library should be at Prescott Public Library because that is the common modern usage (primary usage). The old building's NRHP nomination used the same name. I could call the article Prescott Public Library (historic) or Prescott Public Library (Carnegie building). Does anyone have any thoughts on this? MB 00:17, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

By all means go ahead and do more, but I hope it helps a bit that I just reorganized it and expanded it a bit, using the NRHP nomination document that is now available. We do have lots of articles on churches and other topics that are both about an organization and its building(s), where there is not too much material requiring a split, and here it's not clear to me that it has to be split. Perhaps it could just be developed more now with some info on the current library? If you do proceed with a split, it would be best to use whatever is local wording now to refer to the old library. The "murals" reference now in the article refers to the old one as the "original" library, but not as if "Original Prescott Public Library" is a proper noun name in any usage. But whether it is split or not, and no matter what the name for the article containing it, I think the NRHP infobox should stay labelled "Prescott Public Library" as that is the NRHP name for the historic building. And, likewise, any coordinates displayed in the NRHP infobox should continue to be the NRHP-listed building's coordinates (although it's an option to remove the coordinates there, too). cheers, --doncram 16:07, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

I believe there is precedent to use the year of construction. See Villa Maria Academy (Erie, Pennsylvania) and Villa Maria Academy (1892). Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 01:57, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Proposed Move for Large City Lists (Dropping State)

User:Mark Schierbecker has proposed moving a number of large city list, by dropping the appended state name pages per WP:USPLACE. Centralized comment is at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:25, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

110 year old NRHP Binghamton (ferryboat) to be demolished

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/nyregion/binghamton-hudson-river-ferryboat.html

Thought you all would be interested...

dm (talk) 14:36, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Map all coordinates - not working

Map all coordinates with Google is not working for me - it is showing only a square in the upper left, and it is wrong. Map up to 200 using Bing is not working - it is showing the wrong area and when you move to the right area, it doesn't show them. (Map with OSM is working.) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:31, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

See WP:VPT#GeoGroupTemplate and Google. This has been an issue for several months, and Pigsonthewing, who's done a lot of work with the template, wonders if it's related to this update from September 2015. As you may know, there have been issues with this template and Google for a while; the template didn't even use Google between March and September of last year, since the horrid new Google Maps wasn't paying attention to it at all. Nyttend (talk) 01:46, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Happy 10th Anniversary NRHP Project

I see the NRHP project reached it's tenth anniversary on October 17. I started my association on the project with an edit on Rose Hill (Port Tobacco, Maryland) October 25, 2008; how about you? Wow does time fly! Thanks to all who have assisted me over the years. This project sure makes for a great contribution to Wikipedia and the world's understanding of our historical properties and fascinating local history. I've worked on Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, and now a bit on Missouri. With every stub I create, I have the opportunity to learn a little bit more about this great nation, it's local and national "celebrities", and the wonderful architecture we all admire. Through photographing these exceptional properties, I've had the opportunity to see and visit places I would have never thought to explore --- from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The project also inspired me to take some time to visit Old Salem, North Carolina and tour the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts; a trip I will always remember (it was January and cold and I was literally the only visitor). Congratulations and thank you Wikipedia for giving me this opportunity.--Pubdog (talk) 21:39, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Wow! Congrats to all. And thanks to Pub for all his work and for pointing out the anniversary. My first edit on this page was exactly 7 years ago! My earliest county list edit I can find is Jan. 2009. First article edit [7] Dec 13, 2008. It seemed that this was a very well established project by then. Thanks to everybody who has participated and special thanks to the early folks who set this up before I got here. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:20, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Rose Hill, eh? I know where that is - I was over there a few months ago, trying to get a picture. (It did not happen.) It's right next door to Thomas Stone National Historic Site, which I did get shots of. My search around Charles County was an...interesting day, shall we say. Don't remember what my first was, but I know what my biggest has been: Pohick Church.

Happy anniversary - when I talk to people about what Wikipedia is good at and capable of, this is the WikiProject I cite as a model. I think it's one of the best-run and most useful around. Here's to ten more years of Register-ing! --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 13:20, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Ten years?! It seems like only yesterday that we hit the 5-year mark. Without doubt, starting this project is the best thing I've ever done here. And it was almost by accident. Here's to happy accidents!  :) --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Health and Welfare ‖ 02:24, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

00000774

Do we have any idea what's going on with the NR listing for First Baptist Church-Newport News? As I'm going around downloading nominations from http://dhr.virginia.gov/registers/register_counties_cities.htm, I'm finding a bunch of nominations for places that aren't on our lists; most of them are Pending/Listed or apparently never even got to DC in the first place, but this church is one of a few that are NR-listed and merely got left off our list. All of the others have full data, but this church is missing a bunch: Elkman provides only the listing name, the address, the city, the listing date, the refnum, and an alleged area of 0 acres, even though the nomination looks entirely normal. I've never seen this before, aside from a few places in Columbus, Indiana (e.g. 00000707) that got NHL status without "merely" being on the NR first. Nyttend (talk) 02:00, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

It's in NPS Focus, and here's the weekly list from the week it was listed. If something changed with the listing since then, I can't find any evidence of it. My best guess is that the NPS somehow botched its entry into the NRIS, and that propagated into Elkman's database, but it sure looks like it's listed nonetheless. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:39, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I have an old Access database from early 2009 that showed the listing had an NRIS code of DR, which is defined as "Date Received/Pending Nomination". I just downloaded the latest database, which is through 2013, and it is tagged LI "Listed in the National Register".25or6to4 (talk) 13:41, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

When did they put a through-2013 database up? I thought that there wasn't anything available after 2010. Nyttend (talk) 17:07, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Got it here [8], the All_Database.mdb. Has refnums through 13000800 listed and 13001100 pending.25or6to4 (talk) 18:00, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Infobox NHL HD contributing, no separate NRHP listing

St. Michael's Lutheran Church
U.S. National Historic Landmark District Contributing Property
St. Michael's in 2010
Location	6671 Germantown Ave. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Coordinates	40.0521°N 75.1845°W / 40.0521; -75.1845
Area	about 3 acres
Built	1897
Architectural style	Gothic Revival
Part of	Colonial Germantown Historic District (ID66000678)

I copied this infobox format from Concord School House (Philadelphia) which doesn't have the "U.S. National Register of Historic Places" line in it. Somehow that line showed up in this box, but I don't want it. I've tried copying the relevant line several times from the Concord article and from the template page, but no luck. I feel like it must be something so obvious that I'll miss it 1,000,000 times. Any help at St. Michael's Evangelical Lutheran Church (Mt. Airy) appreciated. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:10, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

You missed the reference number; filling in the |refnum= automatically displays the NRHP bar. I added |partof= parameters which I believe was what your intention was. Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 21:32, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks - you got it (as shown in the example infobox on the right). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:47, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages

Greetings WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 64 Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:

• Fix and improve Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, Stevietheman — Delivered: 18:04, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

A question about local registers

{Parking it here because this seems the most likely, most active place to get some answers.)

I was tooling around Fairfax County yesterday, doing some Wiki-photography of various neighborhoods, and happened upon a handful of Fairfax County historical markers along the way I hadn't seen before - no surprise, as I was in a part of the county I rarely visit. But this got me thinking: what's our consensus on county historic registers insofar as they convey notability? Many of the historic markers I've seen in Fairfax County are for sites that are already covered under other notability criteria, but there are a handful (e.g., Saint Mark's Episcopal Church) which don't appear to me to have anything beyond county-level notability. Is that enough, do you think, to warrant the creation of an article? Perhaps it is in Fairfax County, with a population of over a million...what about in smaller counties? Arlington, for example? Falls Church city? All have localized historic markers - Arlington's system is quite extensive, actually.

Just something to chew on - it might be fun to start drilling down some of these local stories. At the very least create a codified list or two, or ten, about the markers. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:25, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

I'd say that any state historical marker confers notability on the subject of the marker, but not necessarily on the location of the marker. For example, if the marker read "John Doe was born in a cabin, long since destroyed, half a mile west of here," that would almost certainly confer notability on John Doe, but not the location of the marker, or on the cabin itself.

County markers, especially if they have an ongoing series, are probably close, but would need something else to back up a claim of notability. But purely local historical societies' markers might not even add to notability, e.g. Strasburg, Pennsylvania has small bronze or aluminum markers with about a sentence on each that they've put on maybe 100 houses. It's nice to know when each house was built, but I wouldn't consider it a sign of notability. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:10, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

An example of something I've done Forks of the Brandywine Presbyterian Church. Not an NRHP site, though it very well could be. I think there is a state or county historical marker, but I didn't even mention it. However, it is one of 400 sites listed in the 2 books "On Holy Ground ..." by the Presbyterian Historical Society, as being especially historic national Presbyterian sites. That and the architect Samuel Sloan was enough for me, and it is an especially beautiful church. Some might argue that it doesn't meet general notability standards, but nobody has so far. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:31, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

To your point about the church - I think the fact that it's designated by the national Presbyterian church grants it notability. A similar example from Fairfax County would be Hybla Valley Airport, I think: it's evidently passed the notability threshold, but the marker isn't even mentioned in the text. And most of the Fairfax County sites I know would pass that standard, or the "John Doe" standard of which you speak - I might mention the marker in the article, given that it's been designated by the county, but I wouldn't use it to define notability. There are just two or three sites about which I'd be concerned. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:57, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

There are many such lists. List of City of Pittsburgh historic designations is longer than NRHP Pittsburgh, and List of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks is even longer. NYC has an official New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission whose list is somewhat longer than NRHP NYC. Each designation has a pretty good document, usually better than what's published in NRHP, and there's usually more press commentary because the process includes public hearings and generates more public documents and sometimes a lively controversy. As for whether their entries acquire notability for their own article, I guess so. Otherwise, where to draw the line? Here in New York, we more intensely pursue NRHP items, however. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:16, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

It probably depends a bit on the register in question and whether additional sources can be found, but I'd say that local designation is a pretty solid indication that a site is notable. For instance, Madison, Wisconsin isn't all that big of a city, but its local landmarks go through a nomination process comparable to the NRHP's. The one caveat is that if someone does drag an article on a locally-designated site to AfD, you probably can't fall back on assumed notability like you can with NRHP-listed properties, so be prepared in case that happens. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:40, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Follow-up: I started St. Mark's Episcopal Church (Alexandria, Virginia) to address the specific historic site suggested by User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao, and placed it in Category:Historic sites in Virginia and within Wikipedia:WikiProject Historic sites. The article now mentions Fairfax County History Commission (currently a redlink), which could be where a list of the county's historic plaques could be started. There are not yet any sub-state historic registries in Category:Heritage registers in Virginia. There's nothing stopping anyone from creating a list-article or two or ten, but there's a certain lack of interest in Wikipedia covering historic sites which are merely historic plaques, with no actual historic artifacts. Also there's a difficulty that photos of historic plaques have copyright issues that make it hard for us to compete with private sites that don't worry about copyright, e.g. MarkerHistory.Com's pages on Alexandria, Virginia. --doncram 22:24, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

The Anchorage (Kilmarnock, Virginia)

Someone from this project may want to look at The Anchorage (Kilmarnock, Virginia). All of the wikilinks in the text have been removed by Anchorage24, possibly via a copy/paste from a sandbox or word processor. It looks like new information has been added, so I am reluctant to revert it entirely. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:53, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I have reverted the article to a previous version, and notified the user on how to improve his/her editing skills. Magic♪piano 23:35, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

{{distinguish}} on lists?

Due to our numerous independent cities, here in Virginia we have lots of freestanding city lists, far more than we'd need if the cities were within counties like everywhere else in the country. Some of these cities share their names with counties, and while some city/county pairs are located next to each other (e.g. Roanoke), others are nowhere near each other (e.g. Franklin), and because they're totally separate, we don't treat them like splits of large lists through categorisation, intro references to the other one, maps, etc. As a result, I thought it would be good to add hatnotes to these lists (examples for Franklin, city and county), but I hesitate to add these notes to any other lists nationwide, since the unrelated-city-and-county-lists situation is almost unknown otherwise. Most of our city lists either don't share their names with a county in the same state (there's no possibility of a National Register of Historic Places listings in Columbus County, Ohio, for example), or they're coterminous (nobody's going to create a separate National Register of Historic Places listings in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, for example), or the city's located in the county and therefore the lists are linked (e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in Charleston County, South Carolina) so no hatnote is needed. And of the three independent cities outside of Virginia: there's no Carson City County, Nevada to cause confusion with the city list; the St. Louis County list already mentions St. Louis city; and the Baltimore County list already mentions Baltimore city.

Therefore, I'd like your opinion: is this a good idea as is, or can it be improved upon, or should we just go without the hatnotes? And are there places outside of Virginia where this kind of thing would make sense, or do you agree with me that the circumstances just don't exist in any other state? Nyttend (talk) 00:23, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

This is definitely a good idea in Virginia (I've even seen government sources that confuse Richmond with Richmond County despite them being in different parts of the state). As far as other states go, Ohio has Sandusky in Erie County along with Sandusky County, and there are a few other places where one county is getting close to needing a split that would cause this (Polk County, IA/Des Moines, Travis County, TX/Austin, Harris County, TX/Houston, etc.) I'd say adding them in other states would be useful too. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:46, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Ha — I really should have thought of Sandusky, as I've photographed almost 120 of the sites on those two lists; I was just going by the state subcategories of Category:National Register of Historic Places by state by city, and the city of Sandusky isn't in the Ohio subcategory. Nyttend (talk) 05:30, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Really groovy listing perhaps coming to the Register within the next year

A few days ago I was looking through the list of Register nominations to be discussed at the next meeting of the New York State Historic Preservation Board, this coming week, and one in particular, one that I had been wondering if I would see in my lifetime, jumped right out midway down the list.

In a word, or several:
"We are staaa-aaaa-aaardust; we are golden
We are million-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the gAAAAA-aaaaa-aaaaa-aaaardennnn."

Yes, if all goes well at the meeting (which I may for once attend because of this nomination, but not only this nomination) Thursday, the Woodstock Music Festival Site will likely be seen on a pending list next year and, perhaps before the year is out, the Register itself. This comes on the heels of (as the nomination, obviously still in need of work, notes in a footnote, the NPS's recent approval of the Kent State shootings site (listed in 2010) for NHL status—I can't imagine New York isn't thinking the same for Yasgur's Farm, possibly looking toward the festival's 50th anniversary in 2019).

Frankly, it's about time. Nobody can deny the historical significance of the event, which is still a metonym for everything liked, or disliked, about the late 1960s (Even in the 2008 presidential debates, it still came up, when John McCain joked about how he wasn't able to go to Woodstock because he was "tied up" (Yeah, as if naval aviators in their 40s were likely to head off to the mountains for the weekend at that time anyway ...) I live about an hour's drive away and have been there on a couple of occasions ... the last time I was glad for the sake of any future designation or listing to see that the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts has left that parcel at the corner of Hurd and West Shore undeveloped (and the proposed listing includes a lot of the adjacent acreage that was used for camping and artist support at the festival).

The question again for us is, as with Kent State, do we really need a separate article for it? I suggest we just write a section with an infobox and description of what's included, along with a contemporary image of the site, into the existing Woodstock article.

Now, I suppose, it's up to California's very able historic-preservation authorities to get on the ball and see if they can develop a nomination for Altamont Speedway as well (assuming the integrity of the site remains). Daniel Case (talk) 17:03, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

This looks to be typical of a "____ Site" listing for an event when the event itself is already notable enough for a Wikipedia article: redirect the NR listing name to the article about the event and add the NR infobox to the event article. In my opinion, the most common example for this scenario is Civil War battlefields; I'm unaware of any "___ Battle Site" or "___ Battlefield" listings that have their own separate articles, aside from ones like the Gettysburg Battlefield that fall under WP:SPLIT. Our article on the Battle of Sacramento (Kentucky), which was created at my request to serve as the NR listing article, is typical of this setup. NR listings of this sort, including Woodstock and Sacramento, really aren't that significant aside from the event, so we'll have the listing itself covered sufficiently with a short description of the site's appearance today and a short statement about the event site getting NR listing. Nyttend (talk) 00:08, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I can see your point, although looking through the nomination it seems like it might actually be worth writing a separate article, given that there are some interesting contributing resources to write about (like the Information Tree) and very few photos of the site as it is today (I would be delighted, when spring rolls around, to rectify that). Also the Woodstock article is getting rather large. Daniel Case (talk) 06:18, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Revisiting municipality vs. county lists

Revisiting a recent discussion that began when someone pointed out some Rhode Island municipality NRHP lists which were reproduced in the county page. It is indeed the case that the arrangement is sloppy, and the forks need to be resolved. I intended to come back to it when discussion resolved, but as it tapered off it slipped off my radar until another of the pages was redirected today.

I'm prepared to go through and make the necessary organizational/formatting/style adjustments, ensuring there are no forks and that they are up to date, but I'd like to bring it up here again before I do so. Most of the objections had to do with the forking -- rightly -- but a couple people objected to the idea of municipality-based pages in general (or municipality lists with fewer than x number of listings). I'd rather not spend the time if it turns out there's broad consensus against doing so, of course, or if there's some numeric cutoff (I find the idea of a partial county list, with one or a handful of municipalities' listings removed/see alsoed, the worst of the options). So the question is would it be a mistake to start doing this? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

An example of a list broken down to municipal level is at de:Liste der Baudenkmäler in Bayern on deWiki. In places it is even broken down further due to size, and there is the occasional empty list, and the majority of non-municiple areas are lumped together one article. No content forks. Seems to work well. Agathoclea (talk) 07:10, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

hyphen vs. dash issue monitoring

See Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Hyphens vs. dashes issues for a list of article titles where there may be disagreement about what the title should be. The list is cases where a title that includes hyphens could arguably use dashes instead. Redlinks to NRHP topics exist at NRHP county list-articles, at disambiguation pages, at list-articles like List of Presbyterian churches in the United States, at worklists in Wikipedia- or User-space. The issue is that editors focused on the Manual of Style issue of dashes vs. hyphens may change some redlinks for NRHP topics to use dashes, while other redlinks stay at hyphenated versions. There is no problem for navigation or development if the NRHP article is created, with either dashes or hyphens, and a redirect is created from the other version of title. The problem is only for redlinks. This list will identify redlink article title pairs and facilitate creating the necessary redirects when an article is created. --doncram 07:14, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for doing this. It will make it much easier to keep things consistent when a redlinked house is styled in one place in agreement with MOS:DASH, and later created with hyphens, as is typically done before moving to dash. Dicklyon (talk) 07:24, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Infobox question

I know there's a way to put multiple images in the infobox of an article - and, for that matter, in a county list of properties - but I can't for the life of me remember how. Can anyone point me in the right direction to learn? Thanks kindly. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 18:25, 15 January 2017 (UTC)