Talk:List of historical landmarks in Healdsburg, California

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There was an article on Healdsburg Historical Landmarks and Districts which was deleted.

The primary objection to the article was that the specific Healdsburg City Ordinances for each individual entry had not been referenced. (Multiple versions of at least two official City documents identify the entries, but the specific Ordinances had not been available -- they are not among the online documents of the City.)

The specific Ordinances were found, but ignored by the reviewers of the article and the article was subsequently deleted.

The specific Ordinances are identified in this draft (as they were in the talk on the prior article).

When a City goes through years of historical review, identifies more than 200 historic properties and then identifies the dozen-plus most important sites through specific City Ordinances, notability is established. (Do Wikipedia editors claim to have spent more effort and have more insights into what is notable than does the City Council acting over the period of many years?)

Healdsburg's list is as important as that of other municipalities. There is no reason that Healdsburg, alone, should not be included in Wikipedia.MikeVdP (talk) 20:58, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree with all of those comments. They relate to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of historical landmarks in Healdsburg, California, which was closed with "Delete" decision. I provided, upon request from MikeVdP, what turned out to be fairly long explanation/comment about the AFD at their Talk page. We don't have to agree about why the previous version was deleted, in order to work on a new draft. I did request that the wp:AFC process be used, going forward. --Doncram (talk) 05:00, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Questions or issues

Hi, nice to see this in development. My first main question is:

• is there such a proper noun thing as "Healdsburg Designated Historic Structures and Districts"? Or is that a made-up term, coined due to a perceived vacuum? Currently it is presented as if it is a thing.

Continuing:

• what is the column of numbers? Is there a system of numbering applied by the city, and these are their numbers? Or are these Wikipedia-editor-assigned numbers. Why are the items presented in this order? What are the dates of designation for each of these? It would make sense to provide the designation dates in a column and have the table sorted by that.
• It is stated in the article "Subsequently, the most-important structures and two districts were formally identified and placed on the City's published list." but that is not supported by the two citations given. One citation is about the 1983/1985 cultural resources survey, prior to any designations. The other citation does not provide direct support either, by my reading, and especially not about any assertion that the "most-important" places have been designated. In many other locales, highly important places are NOT listed on the NRHP or on other registers, due to owner objections, for example.
• Relatedly, is there a Healdsburg-published list of these? Or is this just a compendium by Wikipedia editor(s) (which might be okay, but would need to be presented clearly as what it is)?
• About historic nature of these places, are any of them historical in any sense? (sarcasm, not well conveyed in text, sorry). There is no information in the list-article currently about why any place is worth recognizing or preserving, as far as I can tell. This is not acceptable, IMHO.
• About table layout, the table currently has a column labelled "location" and another column for coordinates. Could those be consolidated into one Location column?
• About table layout, there is a whole column devoted to "Length" which only applies, sort of, to two items. Couldn't the .4 and .5 miles lengths of apparently linear historic districts be noted in the Notes column instead.
• About table layout, there is an entire column devoted to NRHP designation information which will only ever have content about one item, the Carnegie library. Could that column please be eliminated.

About table layout, by the way, these comments have been expressed by me previously. Maybe one version of those comments were on the Talk page of the deleted article, I am not sure, but they are also stated in ongoing AFD about Sonoma County Historical Society list-article. I must say I do appreciate very much that the current list-article is considerably better than the previous one, though. --

* The term Designated Historic Structure, then District is from reference 19. That's the official language of the City.

• The numbers come from the City's numbering in reference 8.
• Yes, the City has the official list (reference 19) and the City Council actions are individually identified for each entry.
• Yes, the length can go into notes. And, the NRHP can go into notes.
• In the eyes of the City, these are the most important historical structures which need to be preserved. These are the structures identified, debated and voted upon by the City Council. Are we re-thinking their logic here?MikeVdP (talk) 06:30, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

You deleted my signature just above, but okay.

Rethinking their logic? I don't want that, nor do I want to see stuff made up. You seem to be projecting why the City Council would have done what they did, ignoring other logical factors, so seeming implausible/made up to me. "Most important" is a claim that would require specific support, probably in the form of an exact quote. This is not a blog where one can write whatever you think makes sense to you at a given moment.

No, the numbers do not appear in reference 8, which is about the NRHP-listed Carnegie library. I suppose you mean a different reference. You edited the article and probably changed the numbering of the references. You also changed the numbering of the places. So are you saying that while the numbering was not the city's before, now it is their numbering?

You say the City has an official list in reference 19, which shows as "Ordinance No. 851: An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Healdsburg Amending Chapter 5 Article XI, Historic Buildings Code, to Designate 726 Fitch Street (APN 002-051-11) An Historic Building. City of Healdsburg. 1989-10-02." Which is offline. Could you possibly please send a copy of that? You have my email. While at it, could you please provide a copy of whatever reference documents the (new) numbering?

Is there any coverage of the Healdsburg designated structures in a newspaper article that names what they are? --Doncram (talk) 15:32, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

see ref. 10, 11 and 21. The reference numbers changed after the talk note.MikeVdP (talk) 17:43, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

see ref. 11, 12, 23 -- they moved again.MikeVdP (talk) 18:35, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

see ref. 14, 23, 25 -- they moved again.MikeVdP (talk) 01:24, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Hereafter in this discussion, please link to the actual source you mean. --Doncram (talk) 14:01, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for emailing me numerous items.

This discussion can go down into bickering, though, based on what the sources say or don't say. I really don't care for assertions in the draft article, or here on this page, which may come across as stretches of the truth about what the sources say.

Here's one issue: currently the first reference in the article is to this Healdsburg "Chapter 20.12: Zoning District Overlays, ostensibly supporting the first sentence of the article "The City of Healdburg has officially recognized Healdsburg Designated Historic Structures and Districts." I'm sorry, but my reading says it does not support that sentence, in that it appears to me that "Healdsburg Designated Historic Structures and Districts" is a Wikipedia-editor-coined, i.e. made-up phrase. The Chapter 20 source uses the phrase "historic structures" and other lower-case wordings; it does not assert that Healdsburg has an official upper-case, proper noun type list of historic places.

Is this really a problem for the article? Yes it is. You can't make up stuff and put it into mainspace, that's not how Wikipedia works. That's why articles and list-articles sometimes get deleted from mainspace, and that's why sometimes some editors get blocked or banned.

Also about the purported numbering, per statement "The numbers come from the City's numbering in reference 8." There does appear a passage in one of the online references where a writer used numbers, but that appears to be one writer's choice as a matter of presentation in that document, and that it was not reporting that those were numbers used in City council resolutions. In fact, in the emailed City council resolutions, it is clear that the council is not doing anything like proclaiming "this house at 123 Main St. is hereby designated Healdsburg Landmark #503". Like, for "Registered Buildings" in the Isle of Man's system of landmarks, there is this official proclamation for Isle of Man Registered Building No. 91, in which the number is very much part of identification which will be used all future references to the place. By my quick glancing at the emailed docs a few days ago, it looked differently to me. If anything, the City council resolutions are designating places officially as lettered places, i.e. these three buildings are hereby designated "d, e, and f", as what the city council resolution is requiring as presentation changes to be put into some bigger official city code.

I wonder, is a numbering being foisted in this list-article, because an editor believes that other Wikipedia editors like me believe that there always exist official numberings? So is there a perceived challenge to come up with a numbering, whether or not the local government uses any numbering, and whether or not any outside coverage by newspapers or second/third parties ever uses any numbering or not?That seems possibly the case to me. It could be confusing that the California state system of California Historical Landmarks does in fact use a very official numbering. It could be confusing that in the system of Wikipedia list-articles covering U.S. National Register of Historic Places, e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in Sonoma County, California, that a numbering is presented. There, however, it is in fact a numbering produced by Wikipedia editors like me, and that is conveyed, see note stating "Numbers represent an alphabetical ordering by significant words. Various colorings, defined here, differentiate National Historic Landmarks and historic districts from other NRHP buildings, structures, sites or objects." So is this a counter-example, that Wikipedia editors are in fact allowed to make up stuff and publish it in mainspace? I don't think so; I think the representation there is clear enough that the Wikipedia encyclopedia is NOT asserting (falsely) that the table row numbering there is anything official or permanent. The table there does in fact also present the official 8-digit NRHP reference numbers, by the way.

--Doncram (talk) 13:54, 16 February 2021 (UTC)