Talk:National heritage site

Proposed merger

I propose that this article should be merged into List of heritage registers. It does not cite a source for its own main term "National Heritage Site". – Fayenatic London (talk) 13:17, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Against: You don't need one source for "National Heritage Site", since the word "National" can refer to any country, and for each country, the register is the source. The list of heritage registers can be longer than this one, because for any country there may be many heritage registers, but not all of them nationally based. The idea of a "County Heritage Site" also exists, on the other side of National from " World Heritage Site". Jane (talk) 19:54, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Is there a treaty, protocol etc that uses the term "National Heritage Site", or "National Heritage Register"? If not then all the capitalisations in the article should be changed to lower case. But this article has the more serious problem that its text sections seem to be original research. – Fayenatic London (talk) 11:20, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Is there a treaty, protocol etc that uses the term "World Heritage Site", or "County Heritage Site"? I guess you've lost me now completely. Jane (talk) 15:41, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Good question, it seems... I had assumed that World Heritage Site was a legally defined term, but can't find it straight away. UNESCO has a World Heritage Centre and World Heritage List established under the 1972 World Heritage Convention. However, a news item at http://whc.unesco.org/ says "Help save World Heritage sites", with a small s. UNESCO's article titled Reducing Disasters Risks at World Heritage Properties actually refers to "World Heritage properties" with a small p. There is clearly a process for inscription of a site on the List, but is there no actual legal term for a World Heritage site?

As for national heritage site, it seems to have small letters in National heritage sites (South Africa) and to be a made-up term on the page National Heritage Site (Belgium). The latter should perhaps be renamed to something like "heritage registers in Belgium".

The point about "original research" is important. The policy that I linked to above can be a bit hard to get your head around, but the main point is explained as one of Wikipedia's WP:Five pillars:

All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy: unreferenced material may be removed, so please provide references. Editors' personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong here. That means citing verifiable, authoritative sources...

It's worth reading the linked pages to make sure you get the idea. – Fayenatic London (talk) 21:57, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I am still unclear what you want. Do you want to merge because you feel all heritage registers should be listed in one article? I can see an article on Belgian heritage registers listing the names of various objects, such as heritage relating to books, parks, buildings, or artwork. For the locations, the term heritage site seems appropriate. Within the group of Belgian heritage sites there are world heritage, national heritage, county heritage, and town heritage designations. I think this is the same for many European countries. Your point about sources is also unclear. Do you claim that without a source the name heritage site is invalid? Jane (talk) 04:55, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I proposed the merge because I don't see a difference in purpose between the two pages. National Heritage Site includes some list entries that are not in the other page, such as the Australian legal instrument Burra Charter, but this could usefully be added to the other page, expanding the entry for Australia with explanatory text. The prose text of National Heritage Site is entirely uncited and, while some of it is common sense, the interesting statements in the sentence that begins "The concept of protecting..." are the sort of assertions that require citations for verification. Wikipedia settles on generic terms by consensus, so the name "heritage site" is probably fine, but it seems to be misleading to use capital letters for "National Heritage Site" (in the page name and the text of the article) unless that term is widely used in the English-speaking world, or legally defined in at least one major nation. As for the Belgian article, "National Heritage Site" is not even a translation of any of their national terms; do you object to renaming that page as "Heritage registers in Belgium"? – Fayenatic London (talk) 12:13, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I see where you are going with this, but I am still a bit fuzzy! A heritage register, in my mind, is a list which is kept by one specific agency. A heritage site, in my mind, is a location, which can be found in a specific municipality. I made this article to define the concept of a country-level heritage site, as opposed to a municipality-level heritage site, province-level heritage site, or global-level heritage site. My idea was that all of the various country specific names can link here as a quick way of defining what that is. Especially in Europe, where the European Heritage Days countries quote the pacts listed on the page. Feel free to rename the Belgian article, I think the category has already been renamed to Protected heritage or something like that. Jane (talk) 15:44, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand your purpose for this page now. I can see that this list could be useful if the page List of heritage registers has a lot of entries that are not at a national level – but is that the case? otherwise I would still be inclined to merge it. There is still the problem about the lack of citations. For now, I have renamed it to use lower case. What about National Heritage Site (United States) – is that one a defined term? – Fayenatic London (talk) 07:49, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

That page has a bunch of entries for state-level organizations, and those are not national level, so yes, that is the case. The US has 50 states, and Germany has 16 and Belgium has 3, and so on. As far as the US goes, yes it is needed because there are so many lists at the national level. Good luck with the citations, cultural heritage can be difficult in that respect. Jane (talk) 14:57, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Split, not merger

Revisting this discussion, I think the List of heritage registers, which has become quite large, should be split into two classes; immoveable and moveable, and then split off again into three levels; global (as far as I know, this is only UNESCO now, though I believe there are also international agreement lists kept by museums for moveable world heritage), national, and municipal (it's up to editors to determine whether the individual states should have their own pages). This page could theoretically be split into the explanation and the list of national registers/register agencies. Jane (talk) 13:26, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Merge from Kulturdenkmal

Please see Talk:Kulturdenkmal for rationale. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 21:34, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

After further consideration, I withdraw the merge request. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:12, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Xoloz (talk) 00:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

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National heritage site → Heritage site – Short version: there is no compelling reason to keep the word national, as even this article acknowledges not all heritage sites (or registers) fit within national borders. This word is thus unnecessary (related policies: WP:COMMONNAME, .WP:PRECISION).

TL:DR

I need to introduce a little context here. Our article names and categories on this and related subject is a terrible mess. We need to start cleaning this mess. Here's my proposed solution.

Context:

I just redirected a pitiful unreferenced stub on heritage site here; through we should note this article is not better referenced - it doesn't cite a single ref for it's name or definition - it is simply larger. My redirect was merely a technical cleanup (and if anyone wants to merge histories, go ahead).

Historic site is in an even worse situation and probably should suffer the same fate (i.e. be redirected here), but it is a parent to a large category Category:Historic sites, whereas this article has no category. Commons also has a commons:Category:Historic sites, as well as Category:Cultural heritage monuments. Cultural heritage monument did not exist on en wiki until I redirected it here, through one could argue it could just as well go to monument. Wikidata is in an even bigger mess due to inconsistency on different wikis, where articles about local heritage registers and such link to broader concepts ([1]). Aaargh.

Solution:

First, we have to acknowledge that different countries and even institutions within them use many different terms - just look at the National_heritage_site#Protection. Common adjectives include historical and national, common nouns include monument, site and heritage, through treasure, place and landmark also make an appearance - and I probably missed one of two terms. I believe the best solution is to stick with the United Nation's wording, i.e. heritage site, as used in the World Heritage Site phrase. This should become our main article for this topic. As the first step, I propose to use the term heritage site (per UN) for the top-level concept. Historic site should be redirected here, too.

Loosing the word national is inconsequential. This article already acknowledges that not all heritage sites it discusses are national, and the word national is also absent from the List of heritage registers.

Second, after this RM finishes, hopefully as a pass, I'll propose a category rename for Category:Historic sites to Category:Heritage sites.

Third, a similar rename will change commons:Category:Historic sites to commons:Heritage sites and connect them. Regarding the commons:Category:Cultural heritage monuments I think we will have to a discussion on commons, trying to figure out what to do with that is issue, but that's for later.

Please note I am not proposing to change anything with regards to article on Monument and it's Category:Monuments and memorials, which are relatively well defined as articles about physical structures. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:12, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but I totally disagree with your redirect for all of the same reasons I stated above. Even though at the national level there may be many lists according to the type of heritage site (nature preserves versus buildings), these are clearly of a different importance than heritage sites at the local level (state, province or municipality). I totally agree with you that there needs to be a better structure in place, but first you need generic terms for Global, Country, State/Province, Municipality levels, and then for "Moveable, Immoveable, Tangible vs Intangible" etc. Don't worry about the lack of references - you will not be able to find any references for World Heritage besides what the UNESCO publishes. Jane (talk) 07:54, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose - if anything "National Historic Site" could be capitalized, as places conferred with that designation are generally capitalized, as are their categories; in Canada and the US anyway. There is a big distinction between a heritage site and a heritage site that has national-government recognition, designation and protection.Skookum1 (talk) 08:55, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. Since the article is about national heritage sites. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:22, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Merge from historic site

Are there any objections to redirecting the unreferenced Historic site either here or to the (so far not merged) heritage site? Please state your preference here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:44, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose a National Heritage Site is just that; an historic cite may be designated by a city/municipality or provincial or county/regional government, or as increasingly the case, by band/tribal governments. Historic site needs expansion, not merger with the specifically-national context of the title here.Skookum1 (talk) 01:50, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Not a single reference supports your claim. Perhaps before opposing you'd care to comply with WP:OR/WP:V/WP:GNG and reference the articles in question? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:43, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose - opposing, of course, as I feel I have said enough on the matter. Piotr, perhaps you could better spend your energy looking for references to add? It seems that you are more concerned about that than you are about what the article is about. Jane (talk) 10:30, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. A [national] heritage site is one that has been officially recognised by some authoritative body and usually protected by law as a result. An "historic site" is any site of historic significance, but is not necessarily recognised or protected, despite that article attempting to give it that status. So an historic site could be a heritage site, but need not be... --Bermicourt (talk) 16:10, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Closed as merge declined. bd2412 T 04:11, 22 August 2014 (UTC)