Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 65

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Request for Reassessment

Sorry if this isn't the right spot for this sort of question. I have recently rewritten Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens. It used to be a stub, but I have added a significant amount of detail. I'd like a second pair of eyes to look at it and decide what class it should be listed at. Thanks! --Mooeena (talk) 15:59, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

B-class as far as I am concerned.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:11, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
I haven't been through the whole thing, but my overall impression is good. I am concerned about the photo you uploaded from a 1965 brochure. If it has a copyright notice on it, it may be a copyright violation, probably depending on whether or not the copyright was renewed. (I improved the scan a little.) Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:36, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. I've added the correct copyright tag. --Mooeena (talk) 02:42, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Confirm a house?

At National Register of Historic Places listings in Jones County, Georgia, #8 - the Roberts house, I took this photo yesterday but I can't confirm that it is the right house. The NRHP form and photos aren't available (as far as I know), so I can't check their photos or description. The coordinates of the satellite view don't match the location and neither does the street view. However, in this area this house had a mailbox with that number and it looks like a house that could be on the NRHP. Is there a way to confirm it? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:40, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Google turned up a description of the house by the Georgia SHPO. You'd know better than me since you were actually there, but based on your photo it looks like it matches. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 20:35, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
That is probably it. The description matches - raised brick foundation, porch with round columns, porte-cochere on the north end. The location doesn't match - state highway 157 is in a different part of the state, and I think it is more than 1/4 mile from the courthouse. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 22:34, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Just a comment on that: I've found references to state road numbers to be singularly unreliable. Looking at the Maryland roads website one can see that they get moved around pretty freely. Mangoe (talk) 15:30, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
  Resolved

New refnum format?

The latest NPS pending list appears to have replaced our old, familiar 8-digit reference number with a new format of ID number (either "SG" or "MP" + 9 digits). This of course leads to lots of questions: Does anyone here have any official info on what NPS is doing here? Is this new format replacing the old refnum altogether, or is it a more limited matter? If so, how will a new format play with our infobox, row, and NRHP url templates? — Ipoellet (talk) 02:37, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Reading the pending list more closely, the two-letter prefix seems to indicate the type of action. (Possibly: SG=single new listing, MP=new MPS, BC=boundary change, MV=move, OT=?) The last 4 items on the pending list use the two-letter prefix, plus the old 8-digit refnum. So, maybe what's going on here is they've added a digit to the unique refnum for future listings, then used the prefix to designate the type of action they're taking at the present moment. — Ipoellet (talk) 02:53, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
I wonder if those are internal code numbers that were never intended to be on the page shown on the website. Any regular follower of that page knows that there's a lot of "good enough for government work" that goes up there, that for that reason the pages are regularly taken down shortly after being posted, that we often wait a while to see a particular week's listings, and that the last three weeks show the same set of listings.

Given that none of the recent state applications listed on the pending lists use these new code numbers, I suspect this will be another one they can blame on the interns ... Daniel Case (talk) 06:22, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

The new weekly list is out and it has the standard refnums. The only difference is the code AD for additional documentation. The previous list also had MC for multiple cover in an MPS cover. Einbierbitte (talk) 23:11, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
with the latest lists add one new code OT (maybe that means 'other'?) for removals Einbierbitte (talk) 23:15, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
Now we have a new number in the latest Weekly List. New format for a MPS cover: Architecture of E. Stewart Williams MPS, with reference number MC100000457. Einbierbitte (talk) 03:46, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
There's also an item on that Weekly List with the new prefix ("AD"=additional documentation?) attached to the old refnum: Minneapolis Warehouse HD. I wonder if that means we can just ignore the prefixes and just use the numeric refnum that follows...? — Ipoellet (talk) 06:28, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
The AD was used back in December, as well (see my first post above). If the refnum follows the old format, I think we can forget the alphabetic prefix. What are others' thoughts on this? And how we handle the new MPS refum? Einbierbitte (talk) 16:32, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

The new numbers have arrived: Weekly List for January 19, 2017 Einbierbitte (talk) 13:47, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

There is a mix of old and "new" ones. Can someone find out, somehow, from the NPS what the hell's going on here? Will all listings be issued a new reference number, will we use the new ones and old ones in parallel (like IPv4 and v6 addresses), or is this all some huge mistake? Daniel Case (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
It seems pretty clear to me that Ipoellet has it right above: the two-letter prefix is not part of the actual reference number, but an indicator of the action type. This is most clear with actions related to existing listings, of which there are several examples in the most recent list: removal, boundary change, proposed move, additional documentation. Magic♪piano 22:10, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
It also seems like the new listings, with the exception of a few holdovers from 2016, are using nine-digit reference numbers after the prefix. My best guess is this is some kind of future proofing (though it seems a little pointless, since there are 999,999 potential refnums in a year and the most we've ever had is 5000 or so). The prefix is also different for properties listed as part of multiple property submissions, as opposed to properties listed on their own (does the SG stand for "Single"?) TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 04:23, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
My best guess: SG = single property (includes districts); MC = multiple cover; MP = multiple property (part of an MPS); MV = move; AD = additional documentation; BC = boundary change; OT = other Einbierbitte (talk) 04:49, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
The January 27 list explains the prefixes. Daniel Case (talk) 21:37, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

location maps and infoboxes

There are cases where editors have used a location maps with a location that does not fall within the map. This happens in all kinds of articles, not just NRHPs. One NRHP case was [[1]]. If you look at this version, the location dot displays outside the infobox. I made note of this on the talk page, and another editor came along and, not being able to find and suitable map of the whole county (the one that had been used was just the city of Miami) removed the map entirely.

Then I was looking at the same problem in Ammerud (not NRHP related) where a map of part of Oslo, Norway was used but the location was elsewhere. People at project Norway didn't know of a better map of all of Oslo, so I asked at Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop#Oslo, Norway and there I was told about {{OSM Location map}} where anyone can "create" a map on-the-fly by just specifying the coordinate and a scale. I tried this back at Silver_Palm_Schoolhouse where you can see the result.

Now the "problem" is this isn't integrated into the infobox. You loose the functionality to display it as one of several maps, and you have to repeat the coordinates. I don't have that much experience with maps (or templates), but this template seems quite useful. Anyone could "make" a region map for anywhere in the world, as I did in Silver_Palm_Schoolhouse. It even has more than the basic capability I used.

So, do more experienced editors already know about this? Could/should it be integrated into {{Infobox}}? Where should this be discussed (or has it been already). Who could do it? It probably could apply to all Infobox templates that use maps/coordinates (NRHP, Settlement, etc.) I need some guidance. MB 04:02, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Location in Miami Dade County
I like the map very much, so I copied it here for others to see. It looks to me like it wouldn't merge into the infobox very well. Maybe it is time we quit trying to fit everything in the article into the infobox. One thing to note. That article now has 4 maps 1)just click the coords, 2) US map in info box 3) FL map in infobox if you click the button and 4) this one. It's certainly time to discuss the big picture and decide a general strategy. Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:32, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
Another question, can there be a list, to help us locate the location map that a box needs? Jim.henderson (talk) 13:21, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Coordinates conversions, and should we be footnoting coordinates?

 
Sites can be located 40 meters off on the east coast, 100 meters off on the West coast. The old coordinates put places closer to Chicago than where they really are.

For converting coordinates between decimal and DMS systems there are various websites, including FCC's at https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/dms-decimal. But I don't recall being aware of any site to convert from old to new system, which might have been handy sometimes for trying to find NRHP-listed places that aren't located where maps say they should be. The North American Datum change "moved" places whose coordinates were once correctly identified in their NRHP applications, based on old U.S. topographical maps, by as much as 100 meters. I've never been clear which way the "move" went, i.e. whether east coast sites were likely to be marked 40 meters east, or west, of where they're actually located.

But I see now that there is http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/nadcon.prl which does the old-new conversion, for single sets of coordinates or for batches of coordinates in a file. Applying it to the location of the Prescott Public Library in Arizona, yields this:

                                   Latitude                 Longitude
 NAD 27 datum values:           34 32 29.90273          112 28  0.49100
 NAD 83 datum values:           34 32 29.99000          112 28  3.10000
 NAD 27 - NAD 83 shift values:        -0.08727                 -2.60900(secs.)
                                      -2.689                  -66.525  (meters)
 Magnitude of total shift:                         66.580(meters)

which tells me that I would have been 66 meters off to the east of the actual location (and 3 meters north), if I relied upon old-style coordinates. For an east coast example, in Boston, I would have been off by 42 meters to the west and 10 meters to the south. So the direction of error is towards Chicago.

Should we be footnoting our coordinates's sources now? I try a custom footnote stating "Location determined by use of Google Maps, December 8, 2016" to support the two locations now in the Prescott Public Library article. By the way, it's obvious now where to place a footnote on coordinates in our infobox (just after the {{coord}} template), now that the Wikipedia:Coordinates in infoboxes decision to use coord templates has been implemented by JJCM89 bot. --doncram 23:27, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I recall an earlier discussion that concluded that semi-original research to find coordinates (e.g. when the NRIS is way off, or for newer listings) is okay due to the nature of coordinate info, so I wouldn't worry too much about footnotes. Though they're definitely useful if there's something to cite. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 04:16, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
Right, we've long allowed/encouraged replacement of NRIS-supplied old-style or otherwise bad coordinates by better info supplied by any editor. I was part of deciding not to try to collect/document coordinates errors in the wp:NRIS info issues system, which in general supports our usage of correct info where NRIS is wrong. A vast number of coordinates have been changed, no doubt correctly improved in almost all cases, and I haven't heard of a single instance of coordinates vandalism. But there must be a lot of cases where the coordinates were not fixed, or were fixed in one but not all places used, out of NRHP place's article, the corresponding geo-list-article, and any corresponding topic-list-articles like List of Presbyterian churches in the United States. We don't know which coordinates are verified. Perhaps adopting a practice of footnoting, using some standard footnote that could have a category included or otherwise be edited centrally, now would set the stage for systematic cleanup campaigns later. Hmm, I wonder if progress could be made by a bot that would find where old NRIS coordinates are currently used and would insert footnotes identifying that, so those could be targeted for improvement? At least we could be tagging, up front, any new usages in new articles of the old NRIS coordinates. --doncram 22:12, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
It's not original research to correct mathematical errors in coordinates. Nominations already have the coordinates and/or the location on a map in them, aside from address-restricted sites (for which we do need citations) and the occasional 1960s or 1970s nomination that NPS accepted without a proper map. We don't need to be footnoting these. Nyttend (talk) 00:04, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
I've corrected dozens of coordinates, mostly in southeast Georgia, where the error is supposed to be 30 meters or less. But, I think that most of them were more on the order of 100 meters off. I wonder if most of the time they didn't bother to determine the coordinates that well. (I've also seen indications that people didn't make the shift to the 1983 coordinates immediately.)Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:02, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Is it "original research" for one of us to use Google maps to get corrected coordinates? I dunno. I think it is more like a reasonable interpretation of Google maps as a source. I am not sure if it is very important to indicate for readers whether the coordinates are derived from Google maps vs. Bing maps vs. a handheld GIS device vs. whatever else. It is a problem, though, that we don't know which NRHP coordinates have been corrected vs. which ones are from old NRIS and are off by 30 [or 100] meters or whatever. At least because we don't know which ones to focus effort on correcting.

How about using a template to begin to take control of the situation. In new articles that just use the NRIS information, that can be indicated easily, automatically. A bot could figure out where old articles still use the NRIS information. When/where coordinates have been verified/corrected by one of us, indicate that in a standard way (perhaps including the username of the verifying editor...it might be nice to be able to give credit where due). The template can be centrally edited to selectively include different administrative categories as may be helpful, such as, say, Category:NRHP unverified coordinates. The template could be centrally edited, as done with the {{NRISref}}, to control what is displayed as a footnote for readers, if anything. --doncram 21:51, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what to do about it but when I adjust coords, the lack of a standard way to say why bothers me a bit. Oh, and yes, NRIS coords, especially from earlier decades, are full of random errors, besides the systematic ones. Reversed digits, for example, and finding the coords of a street address from inadequate municipal plats. I get all my coords from Google Earth aerial; the Google databases of places are at least as full of errors as NRIS. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:09, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
For active lighthouses I have always used the USCG light list, and for inactive lights I have generally tried to use older light lists or, failing that, I usually use Kraig Anderson's coordinates. I always check them against GMaps, because there are typos, but except the latter, these values are almost without exception spot on. Certainly the light list values are to be preferred given that peoples' lives depend(ed) on their accuracy.
My other reaction to coordinates that seem off is to reduce the precision, but this doesn't seem enough to account for some cases. Looking at the nomination for Hebron Church (Intermont, West Virginia) I see it gives UTM coordinates, which are meaninglessly precise. When I run these through the FCC calculator I don't get the values in the article until I reduce the precision to three decimal places, which for a small building is a little vague, and even then they're a bit off; interestingly, the article coordinates hit right on a corner of the building, while when I work the UTM values through I end up in the woods to the west. You have to think that a nomination from 2014 would be using the most current data for everything, so I'm not sure what this all means.
Part of the question to be asking is, what good are these coordinates as information? Only a very small monument or building can be placed down to a spot in the usual scale available in the aerial mapping; with large properties a point is not where the thing is at, and it isn't clear where the virtual surveyor stood. Part of me is thinking that finding the thing on GMaps is good enough—provided one can actually find it (it's not always obvious). Mangoe (talk) 23:44, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
I've corrected dozens of them, usually using Acme Mapper, and usually ones I've been to personally (or sometimes verified with Google street view). When they are way off from the NRHP form, I try to make a note of that in the county listings, but not always. I feel that it is not original research to correct the coordinates, but others may feel the other way. The problem with O.R. is that others can't verify it, but with the coordinates, they can. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:07, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
I think that is key, that our own assessments of coordinates can be re-evaluated by others. In Wikipedia we are allowed to make reasonable interpretations of sources that are consistent with how others will interpret the same information. Actually the sources we are interpreting are multiple: the Google satellite view (or USCG light list) + the NRHP nomination document with photos that show the subject (+ sometimes our on-the-spot confirmation that the building that would look L-shaped from above is the one pictured from the side in the NRHP photos, or whatever). It is wp:Verifiability verifiable by anyone else who would consult the same sources (including visiting the site if necessary) that our interpretation is correct. The point about wp:OR stuff being "bad" is that it is not verifiable, but coordinates are very verifiable. :) Thanks! --doncram 02:33, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Doncram, your suggestion about footnoting for the purpose of internal marking of "we checked this" sounds interesting and perhaps quite useful; bot-related maintenance stuff (presumably with hidden categories and HTML comments) isn't something that would actively invite readers to discriminate between better and poorer coordinates, and that discrimination is the issue that I opposed. I've previously engaged in a mass correction project, cleaning up the coords for 450+ sites in Jefferson County/Louisville, Kentucky, and right now I'm mostly done with a project to check every Virginia site's coords, since I've downloaded all the nominations and most of them have good maps. Nyttend (talk) 05:08, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I started up Template:NRHPcoord for possible use. Keeping it simple, it currently displays nothing for readers at all, but allows recording of a correction or a verification of coordinates, with an optional "note" field. It adds an administrative category Category:NRHPcoord simply to allow the counting of usage for now, and to allow easy access to edit all instances by AWB. Nyttend, perhaps you could begin to use it ({{NRHPcoord |correctedby=Nyttend}}) after each of your newly corrected coordinates, to begin to build up a test base?

There [were about 3 applications of the coordinates] and, continually updating when this wt:NRHP page is edited, there are currently 11 in Category:NRHPcoord. It's possible that bots will butt in unhelpfully, I am afraid, because the template inserts a category at the usage of the template, while bots expect categories to be located at the bottom of an article. We'll see if bots' actions mess things up or just move the category to the bottom of the page without hurting anything else. [seems not to be a problem --23 January.] --doncram 21:27, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I have revised the syntax for using the template (and it can be revised again in the future, with edits going back to any usages if necessary). Usage currently would be to use {{NRHPcoord|providedby=USERNAME}} if you simply provide coordinates from your interpreting Google satellite view or whatever, or {{NRHPcoord |correctedby=USERNAME}} if you want to emphasize that you have made a change. It would be good if new usages of coordinates from the 2010 version of NRIS system would get tagged {{NRHPcoord|providedby=NRIS2010a}} (compatible with our coding of NRIS references using template {{NRISref}}) when introduced. It will be a long term project to get a handle on these. --doncram 01:05, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
I've corrected and verified a lot of sets of coordinates, but mostly in the county listings. Can this be used in the county lists? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:43, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
I should note that on lighthouse articles I have always used the USCG coordinates if I can get them from a light list, as "good enough for navigational purposes" is, well, about as good as it gets. Mangoe (talk) 15:28, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
Right, that makes sense. For almost all non-maritime NRHP locations, I imagine there was almost no usage of the coordinates by anyone until GPS in cars and internet-based mapping started up, so good vs. bad info couldn't determined. --doncram 16:49, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
To Bubba73, I say yes do go ahead and use the NRHPcoord in county list-articles, but then how? In the list-articles, though, the coordinates are entered by use of template:NRHP row's lon= and lat= fields. Adding a note like {{NRHPcoord|improvedby=Bubba73}} to one of those fields causes an error. A new field is needed, and I say make it "nrhpcoord=", and then enter the same note that you'd put into the individual NRHP article. So, after the coordinates you've changed in a list article, it will look like:

|lat=36.693056 |lon=-80.693333 |nrhpcoord={{NRHPcoord|improvedby=Bubba73}}

The template:NRHP row programming just ignores it. This has no effect on the display of the list-article, but the information is recorded, and in the future I expect that the wp:NRHPprogress system can report counts of these.
In an individual NRHP infobox it will look like:

|coordinates={{coord|36.693056|N|80.693333|W|display=title,inline}}{{NRHPcoord|improvedby=Bubba73}}

It would make sense to correct coordinates in corresponding individual articles at the same time, using the same template. But I am hoping/expecting that in the future we will have a bot to cross-check between county lists vs. individual articles, to take any coordinates that are identified as improved/verified and apply them in the other setting. Or to identify discrepancies if they have been changed from NRIS2010a values in both places. Over the years, I personally have changed coordinates at individual articles relatively frequently, and more rarely did i ever change them at county lists. It makes sense to me to change them at the individual article, when focusing on the individual place and consulting the NRHP nomination document or other materials (that are available there but not at county lists). --doncram 16:49, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
I change the coordinates in both places, when there is an article, but the Georgia counties I deal with mostly do not have articles for the places. There seems to be someone converting lat & lon to the coord format. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:51, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
About conversions going on, I assume you mean the JJCM89 bot which went through most of the NRHP infoboxes in individual NRHP articles, doing that. I'm not aware of any conversions at the county list-articles which uses the {{NRHP row}} template; no one has tried to convert it over, have they? --doncram 23:26, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

About footnoting our corrections of coordinates, I browsed the {{coord}} template documentation more, and now I figure that we can just use its "source:" parameter, instead of a separate NRHPcoord template. (I was previously imagining that we'd use a separate NRHPcoord template for a while, then have eventually have a merger of templates.) The "coord" template allows a source to be noted, and it seems to be free-form, allowing any character string without spaces or weird characters.

So my current suggestion now is to use "source:NRIS2010a" to mark coordinates from NRIS or "source:USER" if USER has refined the coordinates, within the coord template in NRHP infoboxes, as for example:

|coordinates={{coord|36.693056|N|80.693333|W|display=title,inline,source:NRIS2010a}}

or

|coordinates={{coord|36.693056|N|80.693333|W|display=title,inline,source:Bubba73}}

And on county list-articles, making it as similar as possible, use:

|lat=36.693056 |lon=-80.693333 |source=NRIS2010a

or

|lat=36.693056 |lon=-80.693333 |source=Bubba73

Or perhaps the JJCM89 bot or whatever should be used to change over the row data, to use the coord template directly everywhere in the NRHP list-articles, too. Does anyone know if that is going to happen, or where that would be discussed?

I will search out the few recent usages of "NRHPcoord" and revise them to this format. These source notes will be invisible and useless, if they cannot be accessed by a category or read by the NRHPprogress system, but I am semi-confident that the NRHPprogress program can be revised so that it can notice these text strings and report on them. Or there will be some other way to get useful reporting. I happened to notice that User:Dispenser has some utility program reporting on usage errors of the coord template and he has been helpful on other matters, so he is one programmer that might be able & willing to help. There was another programmer who ran programs against NRIS to identify where coordinates were being given out for supposedly address-restricted sites a number of years ago, too.

If there is programming support, would NRHP editors here agree to start noting coordinate sources in these ways? What more would be required for you to support this, anyone? --doncram 23:26, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

NPS down

It looks like all NRIS and most or all NPS Focus material is unavailable at the moment. Given the current level of turmoil in NPS public outreach this may bear watching, I've already had to remove "unreferenced/dead link" tags from one article. Hopefully it's just a technical issue that will resolve itself. I was able to pull up one NHL nom. Acroterion (talk) 17:52, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Possibly an issue with our {{NRHP url}} template? As of right now, there are a couple of nominations I can get to by navigating through Focus but that give me a 404 result when using the template. — Ipoellet (talk) 18:58, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
Ditto to Ipoellet. I invited User:Trappist the monk, the sole editor of the template:NRHP url, to take a look. But I think what is needed is to figure out what new text string works in a general URL, instead of "focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/". I.e., to replace that string in the url created by {{NRHP url|id=00001069|title=Central Park Historic District}}, which is http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/00001069.pdf, which currently fails. While searching in the NPS Focus system yields the document, at https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/ff9f51f6-32f3-4110-a80d-ba84e032510d. --doncram 20:28, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
P.S. I have just sent an email to NPGallery@nps.gov to inquire, will follow up of course if I hear back. Feel free, anyone else, to contact the NPS any other way. --doncram 20:45, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
I created {{NRHP url}}, {{NHLS url}}, and {{NRHP url/core}} because of this conversation.
The obvious quick fix is to change the templates to ignore the |photos= or third unnammed parameter and change the url from:
http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/*.pdf
to:
https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/*
where * is the identifier.
Doing this will at least give access to both the text and photos if Editor Ipoellet's example is typical of the 'new' way that nps is doing things.
Better would be to have a useful discussion with nps (though that might be as difficult as having a conversation with a Roman or Greek god/ess) and from that discussion arrive at a long term solution to the problem.
Trappist the monk (talk) 21:05, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you to Trappist the monk for your prompt reply, and for your previous yeoman work on this. In the previous discussion you linked, User:Jeff the quiet (pinging by this) had the direct contact with someone at NPS, and hopefully they could follow up with that person again?
I'm not completely sure, but I think that the NPS Gallery system did not change overnight, in terms of what it shows when you have run a search for a given property. If you search at https://npgallery.nps.gov/ search page for "Central Park Historic District" you can get to the following result page: https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/ff9f51f6-32f3-4110-a80d-ba84e032510d, which apparently can also be linked to as http://focus.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/00001069. I think as of yesterday that would have shown what it does today (it shows NRIS "metadata" and links to the text PDF and to the photos PDF). But yesterday http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/00001069.pdf would have worked as a direct link to the text PDF, and today it does not (and likewise for the photos PDF). --doncram 21:34, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
I received a reply with mention that "We are attempting to keep the legacy links working and they should redirect to the new ones. Clearly we missed a step in our testing and will work to get the redirects working again as soon as possible." That sounds good. There may be something more to do besides wait, I am not completely clear, and I replied back to them. --doncram 23:28, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
My links that were broken are now working again - hopefully the situation is resolved across the board. Thanks @Doncram: for reaching out to NPS and alerting them there was something to fix. — Ipoellet (talk) 00:43, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone who worked on this. I was hoping it was something we could solve with NPS help, and I didn't have time during my lunchtime to figure out what precisely was wrong. Acroterion (talk) 01:15, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
Hi, am still getting http1 not available for the National Register Information System link at Notchaway Baptist Church and Cemetery and five others and a number of other articles I reviewed over the last week that have mainly been created by Candleabracadabra (talk · contribs), thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 03:04, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
Argh, it's not relevant that it was Candleabracadabra (who is a permanently banned editor) that created the articles they just came across. Candleabracadabra created a bunch of articles long ago, which I happen to have been restoring. Atlantic306 is onto something though, that our standard references to NRIS using {{NRISref}}, i.e. invoked by <ref name="nris">{{NRISref|version=2010a}}</ref> are yielding Http1 error when one follows the link to https://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html. --doncram 03:14, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Rhode Island, Texas, and Virginia NRHP nomination documents available

NRHP nomination documents for 810 Multiple Property Submissions, National Historic Landmarks, and Single Properties (along with finding aids for each of the three) for Rhode Island; 3,260 Multiple Property Submissions, National Historic Landmarks, and Single Properties (along with finding aids for each of the three) for Texas; and 2,958 Multiple Property Submissions, National Historic Landmarks, and Single Properties (along with finding aids for each of the three) for Virginia; are available through the National Archives Catalog. The forms are available under entry National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: Rhode Island (NAID 3725032); National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: Texas (NAID 37250329); National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: Virginia (NAID 40571316). 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) 22:10, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Ooooh, and Texas was one of the big ones that was still missing, too. How many states are still incomplete now? I know Ohio's still not digitized anywhere, and Massachusetts and Louisiana are mostly but not entirely covered at the state level; are there any others? (Also, Rhode Island is interesting, since it's the first state to be added to the National Archives Catalog that's already in Focus; I wonder if they'll eventually add all of them.) TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 04:41, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
This is really great.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:04, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
Nice to get Virginia. We already have most of the nominations online through the subpages of [2], but a bunch of random ones are missing, and nearly nothing from the last few years is on there. Nyttend (talk) 04:47, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
Recent Virginia nominations are typically available from the DHR web site, but are not always obviously locatable by navigation of the site. They seem to be published as part of the agendas for SHPO-related meetings. If you want to see the nomination for a recent listing, search Google using keywords from the name, restricting the search to site:dhr.virginia.gov. Magic♪piano 19:38, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
The problem is that they actively take down those ones after a while. See [3], [4], and [5] for a few examples that are currently cited in some articles about places listed in the last few years. I've been able to get some nominations with Google searches (in particular, a lot of them are through NPS, e.g. [6]), but there are still a good number of non-archaeological listings that Google has failed to find. If one or two of the recent years' listings had non-working PDF links, I'd assume that you'd just made a typo, but when lots of them have URLs that clearly worked at one time and no longer work, I'm left assuming that they've taken them down. Their robots.txt is also rather tight, so I can't use Archive.org to find them. Nyttend (talk) 00:13, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

North Carolina is also available now. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 02:07, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

NRHP status for Ghostbusters Firehouse

Does anyone here think Firehouse, Hook & Ladder Company 8 in Lower Manhattan should be eligible for an NRHP nomination? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 22:17, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

My personal opinion based on minimal research is: probably not. I'm looking at it through the 4 NRHP criteria. D is reserved almost exclusively for archaeological sites and so doesn't apply. B requires identification of a person of significance, and the article you linked doesn't do that. Of course, there might be a person who just wasn't mentioned in the article, but the balance of probability says no. C would relate to the architecture. It's a good and interesting looking building no doubt, but the fact that half of the building was demolished must have severely compromised its architectural integrity. Besides, there's a lower Manhattan firehouse of the same style and roughly the same age (4 years older) already on the NRHP. A presents a few themes that the building might represent: Creation of the FDNY and reorganization of fire services, but there are already two lower Manhattan fire stations on the NRHP representing this period (1 and 2). Neighborhood development with the widening of Varick Street just seems unlikely - this firehouse represents the "before" state, while that theme would be better represented by a newer, "after" building. Film definitely not. The building's connection to Ghostbusters is only 33 years old (i.e. <50), and it's only to 3 specific films rather than to the cinema arts/industry in general. However, if after 2034 (=1984+50) the Ghostbusters franchise has the status of a recognized classic, then maybe.
Upshot is I don't think it meets any of the 4 criteria. However, it's always possible that there's additional information out there that could change my thinking on any of the criteria. Just my opinion. — Ipoellet (talk) 23:44, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
Well, I know there are lots of firestations listed, e.g. in Washington, DC. How many listings are there primarily known for being flim locations. I'd imagine Monument Valley is listed (nope), maybe Tara (plantation) (nope), Daddy Warbucks house in the film Annie (film) Shadow Lawn (New Jersey) is, though I have no idea what it is best known for. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:39, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
Personally, I thought its use in the Ghostbusters franchise might've been an additional footnote. If it doesn't meet the other criteria, then so be it. If I thought a site was worthy of registering just because it was on film, I could've just as easily selected File:JHS 99 E Harlem jeh.JPG in East Harlem simply because it was used in "Up the Down Staircase," or the Douglaston Park Townhouses because they were used in "Cops and Robbers."---------User:DanTD (talk) 04:54, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
Honestly I think the most important criteria is whether the owner or another potential investor in the property would like to take advantage of tax credits to subsidize a renovation of the property. The New York State office for historic preservation pretty clearly works to serve the purpose of economic development and achievement of financial benefits for New York State. It is itself well-funded, I expect, because it generates new listings in New York State at quite a fast rate, and generally where needed, i.e. more in downtown areas that are being targeted for renovations. Whether a property is historically eligible is a bit fluid...it depends on how hard you do research to find historical tidbits, and how hard you want it. Note that uniqueness is not required. Establishing that something is "a good example of its type" works, too, and is a very flexible argument.  :) The tax credits / financial incentives for NRHP listing are huge and are under-covered in our Wikipedia articles about the overall NRHP program and about each state's listings. --doncram 02:51, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Re: Maps

I see there are a few map/coordinate-related discussions above, but I'm not sure any of them are directly related to my issue here, so I'm starting a new discussion. Can project members please take a look at this conversation and let me know if the replacement of city maps with state maps if a project-approved action? I don't want to further accuse this editor of doing something wrong, but I'm still not understanding why displaying the location of an NRHP site within an entire state map is more helpful than displaying a local map. Thanks for any feedback in advance. ---Another Believer (Talk) 01:30, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

From that conversation, it appears to me that User:Rathfelder's concern was limited to the red-category issue, and (s)he isn't concerned about the map scale issue provided the infobox doesn't trigger the category redlink. Given that, your solution about setting |nocat=yes is the correct answer - it makes the redlink go away and you can set whatever map scale you like. However, it has become semi-standard practice in WPNRHP to use an infobox feature that lets us insert multiple map scales and let the reader select the scale that best suits them. Take a look at what I've done to Trevett–Nunn House to see what I mean. (I also inserted |nocat=yes to solve the redlink problem.)
As a broader matter, the categorization functionality in {{Infobox NRHP}} appears to violate the guideline at WP:TCAT. That guideline specifically discourages using templates to place articles into content categories (as opposed to hidden administration categories). The redlink that Rathfelder was concerned about was exactly this situation - the template attempting to place the page into the content category Category:Historic district contributing properties in Portland downtown. These attempts by the infobox to use redlinked categories are so common that I just automatically add |nocat=yes to every NRHP infobox I handle, and here we have an example of it being an issue for an editor outside the NRHP project as well. I strongly recommend that we remove this categorization functionality from the infobox template. — Ipoellet (talk) 02:44, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Yes please. There are lots of red categories generated by templates (not just yours by any means)Rathfelder (talk) 14:53, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Is the NRHP concentration map accurate?

The map at the top right of Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places shows the concentration of NRHP sites per 100 square miles. I'm looking at Chatham County, Georgia, which has 66 NRHP sites. The total area of the county is 632 square miles, but a lot of that is water. Its land area is 426 square miles. Going by total area, that is 9.97 per 100 square miles. Going by land area (which seems more reasonable, even though a few sites are in water), there are 15.49 sites per 100 square miles. Yet the county is green, showing only around 3 sites per 100 square miles. Am I missing something? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 06:53, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Whoops, I misidentified Chatham county on the map - it is actually yellow. But does it go by the total area of the county or the land area? (It appears to go by total area.) Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 06:57, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
Shhhhh, you weren't supposed to see that... Yes, the shapefile I use to create those maps includes a small extension into any adjacent body of water, and then a water mask is overlaid upon it. So it does take generally the entire county area, not land area. This will be most noticeable in areas that have larger bodies of water tucked inland somewhat (Mobile Bay, Lake Pontchartrain, all Great Lakes). Which I guess it technically accurate, as there are a few NRHP listings in adjacent bodies of water. 25or6to4 (talk) 20:07, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
There are a few locations in the water. 33% of Chatham County's area is water. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 20:33, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Category:Hotels on the National Register of Historic Places in Hawaii has been nominated for discussion

 

Category:Hotels on the National Register of Historic Places in Hawaii, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for renaming to Category:Hotel buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Hawaii 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) 07:38, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Automated way to create commons category?

Is there an automated way to create a commons category for a NRHP site? Yesterday I went to 12 NRHP sites and took several photos of each one. I'd like to upload several photos for most of the sites, but it is so time-consuming to create the categories, etc. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 17:11, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

No automated way, unfortunately. Not all Commons category structures are the same as enwiki, so it still takes some human work to create them properly. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:50, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Well, I was looking for a little better way to do it. I've done this before. Yesterday I drove more than 2 hours, hit three counties, and then a 2-hour drive back, a total of about 9 hours and about 200 photos. The photos and even the driving is fun. But then it is going to take me about that many hours again to get the photos uploaded. I have them all on my computer, but then I have to copy the ones for each place to another folder. Some of the photos I have to tweak. And the JPEGs are 10-15 megybytes each, which Vicuna uploader and the commons uploaders often balk at, so now I run them through a program to reduce them to about 5 megabytes each. I have several photos of each place, so a category needs to be created if it doesn't already exist (usually the case). I have to figure out which categories it is a subcategory of and add some info and the NRHP data. Then I have to duplicate some of that data into Vicuna uploader to upload that batch of photos. And then the conversion to smaller JPGs doesn't retain the photo rotation info, so I have to rotate vertical photos again, one way or the other. And then add a link to the commons photo in the county listing and the individual article, if it exists. I wish there was an easier way - it literally takes me aoub the same number of hours (9) to manage the photos as the trip took (and this part isn't fun). Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 20:44, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Yes, the darkroom workflow is often the hard part. I batch the photos of a subject to a work folder, mark and turn the ones that ought to turn using plain old Windows File Explorer, and fine tune the ones that need it. Upload Wizard sends the whole batch to a preliminary Commons category, a parent of the future fine cat. Cat-A-Lot moves them into the red category or categories where they belong. Click on the redcats and give them parents. The rest is exactly as you say. Being a better file clerk than photographer, I spend more hours categorizing 19th century images than doing anything with my own. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:21, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
There is probably a better way to do it than what I'm doing, or at least needs to be. I think I'm going to spend more than the 9 hours I spent on the trip yesterday. For one thing, Vicuna uploader keeps bombing out on me. Sometimes it hits an image that has been rotated 90 degrees and it won't do that file or any of the rest. Sometimes it does 2-4 and then won't do the rest. But just within the last couple of hours I think that it seems to work correctly once and then not correctly again until after I reboot my computer.
I used to take 2-5 photos and pick one to upload, except for HDs. This was before I knew about creating a commons cat for a specific place. That is also why some HD articles that I created have 6-8 photos in them - I wanted a place to display all of the photos. Then somewhere on the discussion a year or more ago, someone said that it was good to get different angles, different features, and close-ups of details. That is why I took so many of the Montgomery Co courthouse yesterday. Sure there is redundancy, but I don't want to go through 49 to pick out 15, so I just dump all of them. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:21, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
Been busy lately with edit-a-thon and other matters, so forgot about this discussion. Anyway if we want other opinions and practices, we should switch to somewhere in Commons.
Actually I think there needs to be an easier process to create a category and upload a set of photos to it, or to upload a set of photos to an existing category. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 18:02, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Two articles for the same place??

We have two articles for the same place:

The first is linked from National Register of Historic Places listings in Allendale County, South Carolina and the other is linked from National Register of Historic Places listings in Hampton County, South Carolina, so part of the property must be in each county. But we only need one article. BUT they have different NRHP numbers.Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:41, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

I believe they may be completely independent places that happen to have the same name. Note the non-matching dates and descriptions. You photographed the Allendale location (1850s), which has the incorrect (Hampton) address in the article, but is actually miles away from the county line. I believe the Hampton (1910s) location is actually here, at the address given; it matches these photographs. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:11, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
I have to study this - and help would be good too. The one I photographed (which is in both articles) at the coordinates given in Gravel Hill Plantation (Hampton, South Carolina). And the NRHP photos are not available in the former Focus. Looking at your link to the pictures, you seem to be right. There are some errors, then. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 22:27, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
S.C. website:

OK, I think I've fixed the mess - photo and coordinates. Several days ago I checked coordinates for places w/o photos in three counties, then made a list, planned the route, then spent 10 hours on the trip, then spent a few hours struggling with Wikimedia Commons to get about 15 photos uploaded, and I never realized that there were two with the same name. I must have seen one and thought that I'd already done it. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:34, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I just fixed the address for Allendale. Otherwise, everything looks great - good job making the best of a confusing situation! Pi.1415926535 (talk) 16:10, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for doing the address - I missed that. I made changes to Gravel Hill disambig too. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 16:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Photo sufficient for a county listing?

Is the photo at The Pineland sufficient for a county listing? The house is not visible from public property (at ground level). Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 16:26, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

I have used such in the absence of anything more available. I have no objection to placeholders such as that. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 18:04, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
I'll do that but I'll leave the photo request in the articles talk, hoping for a better photo. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:52, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree: I'd prefer that the photo not be used in the NRHP infobox in the article, and not in the county list-article. It should be used in the article outside the infobox, though. Like photos of sites of demolished buildings, it is not a photo of the object of the NRHP listing, and it is better to keep the hunt going for a historic or new photo. That's just my opinion; I know that there are others who agree and others who disagree about pics of demolished buildings. Thanks for getting out there to lots of sites and getting pics recently! --doncram 22:55, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
OK about the photo. It is actually fun doing it, and it is interesting to see things along the way. I see many things that I'd like to take a photo of, but I can only do a few and get done what I want to do. Uploading isn't fun, especially like last night when Wikimedia Commons didn't want to take uploads. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:20, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
I've restored the photo to the infobox. The right placement of the image in the previous version was contrary to MOS:IMAGELOCATION: "[A]void sandwiching text between two images that face each other; or between an image and infobox..."
It'd be much better if we had a photo of the actual house; but using this photo until we get a better one won't necessarily keep us from seeking that better one; just as, for instance, we'd use a photo taken in poor light or one with lots of obscuring foliage, while looking for opportunities to replace that photo with a better. — Ammodramus (talk) 12:52, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
One thing though, I left the "photo requested" tag on the talk page. With a photo in the info box, a bot will probably come along and remove that tag. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 16:20, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
I wonder whether it would be worth the effort, to tag items with grades from Unillustrated through illustrated badly, adequately, and finally well illustrated. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:55, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Following up Jim.henderson, I think we may soon come down to a some disputes about which photo should go into the article or list, based upon quality considerations. With photos for almost 80% of sites, many additional photos will be for sites that already have pix. How do we decide which is the better pic? I'll suggest something like Jim's classification, but focusing on the flaws in the pix (all pix have flaws). Mostly the flaws only become visible if the pic is displayed at a high enough resolution, e.g. you might not see the flaws at 100px, but you would at 250px. So here are my proposed classes
  • 0 - not clear that the photo is of the correct building
  • 1 - flaws show if the pic is displayed at 100x100px
  • 2 - flaws show if the pic is displayed at 250px
  • 3 - flaws show if the pic is displayed at 400px
  • 4 - flaws show if the pic is displayed at 600px
  • 5 - flaws doen't show if the pic is displayed at 600px
How to record the ratings. I've tried this myself at Commons:Category:1724 Chester Courthouse, which has some pretty bad photos by yours truly. If you record [[Category:1724 Chester Courthouse|1]], [[Category:1724 Chester Courthouse|2]], and [[Category:1724 Chester Courthouse|3]] all the 1's will display first in the category list, all the 2's will display next, etc., and all the unrateds will display last. I'm not sure exactly if this works, but I believe if you type [[Category:1724 Chester Courthouse|2|1,3]] you can record individual ratings from different editors without effecting the display order.
More later Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:28, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Continued. This is all too detailed for now, but our photos will keep on getting better, bringing up this question more and more often. We should probably be ready to deal with it in an organized manner in a year or two. For now, it's just the start of a discussion. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:15, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
This would be a huge task. Huge. Aren't there about 16,000 places that have at least one photo? And many of them have multiple photos. I think that would be at least 40,000 or 50000 photos. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 23:36, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Digital cameras have come a long way in recent years. One problem that I see in a lot of photos is that they are too dark - especially in shadows. Their dynamic range is too low, and that depends on the camera. A lot of the time, the color is off on bad cameras. Another issue is resolution. Small files with low resolution don't have much detail. If someone wants to enlarge a photo to see architectural details, for instance, a low-resolution photo won't show those details.
For a couple of examples, look at Sinclair Oil Corporation. In the history section are two photos of two restored stations. The first has low resolution (blurry) and the color is off. Scroll down to the Holding era section and there is a photo of a gas pump. Down lower is a photo of the top of a pump, but it is blurry. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:03, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
A lot of these images are easy to improve with a little Photoshop action. I took a whack the pale blue Sinclair station (your cache may still show the old one). Dicklyon (talk) 02:52, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
That really helped the color! But it is still blurry. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:14, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
As usual I have first proposed something, then thought, instead of vice versa. So, in that vein, it seems to me different criteria can apply. We could assess each picture itself, as in a photo contest using several different technical and aesthetic principles. We could also judge how well an article has been illustrated. Image quality questions would seem to belong in Commons. As for a summary of how well the picture or pictures explain the topic, that would go into article assessment. Already, alas, article ratings are at best sporadic, and it's hard to see how this detail would get enough attention. Incidentally Wikipedia:WikiProject Images and Media would seem to have a more precise purview, concentrating on illustration rather than some particular category of illustrated articles such as NRHP, but it shows few signs of life. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:59, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
First, I think that the Pineland image should be used in the article & county list since it's the only legal option for that site. We can't advocate trespassing. Second, I don't like the idea of spending time to assess image quality. If an image gets improved, then the best image should be used. BTW, newer is not necessary better. Royalbroil 03:14, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Yes, trespassing = bad. But there are other options: seeking permission from the owner, requesting permission to use the nomination photos, watch for an open house, etc. Just because we can't see it from the road isn't a final closure to the issue. — Ipoellet (talk) 23:34, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
I've thought of the possibility of using drones in these situations, but I don't have one and don't expect to get one. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
Like Ipoellet says, there are other options, and a blank in the NRHP infobox and the county list-article should not be seen as encouraging trespassing! Bubba73 and I were chatting elsewhere recently about drones (which I personally don't think we should advocate!) and more benignly sending postcards/letters to the owners/occupants of properties like Pineland, asking for permission to come onto their properties. That's a real possibility for Bubba73 to do, towards getting a photo there on a future trip he'd have to make. And in our conversation I was building up steam myself to write to the owner/occupant of a similar property. Also we can ask them to share photos themselves, and we can contact local libraries and museums and historical societies, etc. In my view, this WikiProject NRHP thing is more fun if we choose to disallow photos of not-the-subject from the infoboxes and list-article tables, setting a continuing good challenge for us for cases like this.
About the question of this discussion, I think it's not answered yet, and I hope there could be continued discussion towards setting a policy for this group. I don't think it is helpful to pre-judge the consensus and jump in with an edit to force one way or the other in this case, and I want to interpret an edit at the article as being a bit over-enthusiastic towards one view. I would very strongly support Bubba73 adjusting the article either which way, now, as they like, while this discussion continues. I also hope that we could really cooperate here in choosing to come to some consensus and agreeing to abide by it generally, rather than just expressing different views and going off separately to edit war in other articles. --doncram 20:03, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
Many of the places have an address, so a person could write to that address. But I didn't find a mailing address for Pineland. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 20:55, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
The nom form gives "The Pineland, PO Box 68, Garnett SC" if you'd like to rely on eighteen-year-old data. :) Andrew Jameson (talk) 20:59, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
The property has sold since then, so the PO Box may have changed. Sometimes I have been successful with emails about a property; sometimes not. For instance, I photographed Palmetto Theatre last weekend. It would be great to get it at night with the neon signs on! The NRHP form even has color photos of that. I found an email address and wrote to them. The next day I got an email back saying that the city had taken it over and gave me an email to write to them, which I did. That was Monday and I haven't gotten a reply.
For getting permission for inaccessible places, that will pose some problems. For instance, I saw these blue counties not too far away in S.C. and hit about 15 places in the three counties on a 10-hour trip. Getting permission requires more planning and if you are doing more than a couple of places, it will be hard to know when you will be there. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:15, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
PS - I've just joined the Georgia Historical Society, which manages the historical markers and other things. They are going to send me a membership card. I'm going to laminate it and put it on a lanyard. That will give me more nerve to walk up to a house and say "I'm in the Georgia Historical Society, do you mind if I take a photo of your house?" for the ones that don't have good views from public property. (I've had to shoot from a long way off between trees and bushes a lot of times.) Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:23, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
Be careful about that. Mentioning your membership in the historical society as evidence that your interest in their property is benign is one thing. But if you give the impression, even unintentionally, that you're there on official society business, that you represent or speak for the society, or that you are a society employee or volunteer, then you could open yourself up to accusations of fraudulent misrepresentation. Neither the property owner nor the historical society would be pleased about such a situation. — Ipoellet (talk) 01:15, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I've thought about that. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:21, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
Just about anywhere in the U.S. it should be easy enough to get a mailing address for a property owner from the county recorder's office, or equivalent government office. In some places, the information is readily available online if you know where to look. For example, here's the info for a building that was just recently listed here in Portland. In the next county over (Clackamas), they don't put the owner information online but you can use the online mapping app to get the taxlot number and then phone in for the owner contact info. Generally it's not hard to get owner info if you have an address, or can pinpoint the property on a map. — Ipoellet (talk) 01:27, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
That's right. Some counties in Georgia have maps that you can click on a piece of property and get the owner's name and address, but some don't. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:46, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
[This posting is modified by me to take out contact information. --doncram 07:19, 24 February 2017 (UTC)] I think it is owned by "Pineland Plantation LLC", which owns 798 acres worth $1.2 million, per a Hampton SC county assessor page, which gives a contact for which further direct contact information is not too hard to find online using Whitepages. And/or try neighbors to the property listed if you plug number "075" into parcel search page). --doncram 04:37, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
Wow, a lot of good info. The place is completely surrounded by thick trees so a neighbor would not be able to get a photo without going on the property. And then you have the problem of getting them to release it under a creative commons license. Anyhow, I don't know when I'll be back there - I'd never been in that county until a few days ago. There are other places that have larger numbers of easy-to-get photos and I'm going to concentrate on them. Maybe someday I'll make an effort to get these very hard ones. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:19, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
I'd be careful with leaving all of that info posted here. I don't see a problem with contacting property owners to try to get permission to take pictures of their properties, but posting a bunch of their and their neighbors' personal info in a public forum could be perceived as doxxing, and I don't want this project to get a reputation of doing stuff like that. (It seems unintentional and unlikely to be harmful here, so I'm not going to take out the info myself, but I'd recommend removing it regardless.) TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 05:27, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the need to keep ownership info private, because ownership of real property is a matter of public record for the most part, and I believe that is the way it should be, but I just removed the contact info that I had looked up. It wasn't totally easy to get, by the way, as the county assessor charges $10 for a day's full access to its information, which I was not willing to pay. No harm done in posting it here, but I would agree that an owner could be jarred a bit if they were directed to see their info posted here or if a person called them up out of the blue and jabbered insensitively about their info. No one was going to do that, though. Editors could help each other compile a list of contact info in a shared Google spreadsheet, before a big road trip, as an alternative.
Here and in other conversations I have sensed a lot of discomfort sometimes about the idea of us talking to property owners/occupants. In my experience it usually goes extremely well to ask a person in front of their house, or to knock on a door and ask politely about taking pictures. Have some confidence and explain it's just a hobby to take pics of historic sites. They're living in them and typically have some pride/interest themselves in anyone else taking an interest. I am perfectly willing to not take pictures or not use them if a person doesn't want it (even though it is our right with freedom of panorama in the U.S. to take pictures from the public way, but I probably wouldn't get into explaining that). I hope/expect none of us want to make people uncomfortable. I wouldn't enter onto a property like Pinelands that looks like a private estate, now, but I would go up to a door if it appears that the mailman and others do, in order to ask about taking pics if pics from the street won't do very well. And then I have been invited inside or invited to walk around to take pics of non-public areas, multiple times. I hope others have some positive experiences to share. :) --doncram 07:19, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
My opinion is we shouldn't disqualify an image but we also don't discourage reaching out to the owner either (contributors can decide if they want to try if comfortable). Each site will be different. In my an earlier work situation, I went to Riverbend (estate). The site is owned by the Kohler Co. family and they are extremely private. To even enter the worksite, I needed a special pass. It's unlikely that very rich owners with privacy issues would ever grant permission for a Wikipedia photograph. Royalbroil 14:55, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

what to do about MPS documents whose readability is browser-dependent

I may have mentioned the issue here before. I raise it now at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Help re: references to NRHP documents readable in Microsoft Edge but not Chrome or Netscape. Please feel free to comment there! --doncram 22:20, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Pony Express Museum and Pony Express Stables

As I was doing some research on a road that passes by the Pony Express Museum, including the Pony Express Stables, I started wondering if the two articles should be merged, and if so, how? My thoughts have been somewhat in the manner of the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning being merged into the Office of the Register, but I'll consider other options. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:10, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

A merger seems appropriate to me. Even more so for this case than for the other example, because the museum is about the same topic. I think it is so non-controversial that you could just implement the merger yourself. The alternative to be more diplomatic is that you could post a merger proposal at the two articles for a while, first. --doncram 22:20, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
Go for it ... cheers--Pubdog (talk) 01:22, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Images without reference numbers revisited

Who else is still having a hard time waiting for Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Images without refnum‎ to load up? The only times I'm able to see any images from there, let alone try to tag any of them is when I'm at my local library... if I'm lucky. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 11:55, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

It does take a relatively long time. Internet Explorer is much poorer at loading large pages than other browsers, or perhaps ones with a large number of links. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:40, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
I've converted all of them into links. Revert if you need to see the images instead of the filenames, of course. Nyttend (talk) 01:51, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, but I think I'll look at the images when I click the links. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 11:41, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Weekly List

The NPS hasn't released a Weekly List for a couple of weeks. Does anyone have a clue as to what is going on? Einbierbitte (talk) 13:48, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Its not unusual for NPS to have a period of serious Weekly List delays early in each calendar year. I don't know why, but I suspect it has something to do with tying up loose ends from the previous year. Anyhow, that's what I'm telling myself to avoid getting concerned about a deeper issue behind the delay. — Ipoellet (talk) 16:24, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
I feel like it's not always the beginning of the year, but the NPS does this from time to time. The folks who manage the NRHP never quite seem to have their business in order; even when they aren't outright skipping weeks, I feel like the weekly list comes out midway through the next week half the time, and the response time on nomination requests has been a bit of a crapshoot lately. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 00:46, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
A list covering 2/16 to 3/3 has been published. It includes new National Historic Landmark designations. Magic♪piano 21:22, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

The boats...they move! (revisited)

Harkening back to an earlier discussion, here's another twist on the editorial challenges posed by mobile NRHP listings. On the Weekly List of 2/17 was a delisting announcement for Huntington (Tugboat), which stated the boat's original listing location of Norfolk VA. However the boat had apparently been relocated at some point to Talbot County MD, and we had moved its list row along with it. But what to do now that it has been scrapped and delisted? Move it to a Talbot County former listings table, or Norfolk, or both? What I did was move the row to Norfolk former listings because that's where it always was in the NRHP records, and left no mention of it at Talbot County. Does anybody else think that was the right or wrong move or have any opinions? — Ipoellet (talk) 00:44, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I disagree, but of course it's not some "hard-and-fast" disagreement. The last time it was together in one piece, it was in Talbot County, so to me it makes sense to leave it there permanently. See Mississippi III, which when listed was located in Ohio; after being moved to metro Pittsburgh, it sank in a collision, and it was soon thereafter dismantled. It still appears on National Register of Historic Places listings in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and since its last pre-destruction location was Allegheny County, if it gets delisted in the future, it will make sense to leave it on the Allegheny County list than to put it back onto National Register of Historic Places listings in Washington County, Ohio and create a new former-listings section there. After all, unless the boat got moved back to Norfolk, it didn't get relocated there upon delisting. And finally, see President, which someone dismantled and moved from St. Louis, Missouri to St. Elmo in central Illinois; several years after the dismantling, as the pieces still sat in St. Elmo, the boat was delisted. We have it in the former-listings section of the Fayette County, Illinois list, not the former-listings sections of any of the St. Louis lists. Nyttend (talk) 05:01, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
The USS Cabot (CVL-28) is in the delisted section of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, where it was berthed 1990-1997, but is not in the list for Cameron County, Texas, where it was berthed 1997-2001 when it was waiting to be scrapped. 25or6to4 (talk) 06:36, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Charlottesville downtown

This involves the Albemarle County Courthouse Historic District and the Charlottesville and Albemarle County Courthouse Historic District (listed in 1972 and 1982, respectively), which appear on National Register of Historic Places listings in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Should these be considered separate listings, or should 1982 be considered a boundary increase of 1972? The later nomination (page 2) says "Contained within the district is the Albemarle County Courthouse Historic District, a two-block area placed on the National Register of Historic Places in June 1972," so 1972 is definitely included in 1982. Charlottesville city historic preservation officials list just one district (see map), while the SHPO offers separate listings for the two places. I've seen occasional districts with overlap (e.g. File:Potters National Bank, East Liverpool.jpg is part of two districts), but I don't remember any other situations where one district includes all of another district, at least in an urban setting; I suppose a rural district could include a farmstead that's listed individually as a district (because it includes a bunch of buildings), but that's quite different from here. Nyttend (talk) 01:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Having two separate articles wouldn't be unprecedented, especially considering the difference in the size of the districts. This discussion has a few other examples in it; I swear I remember there being another case of a small-ish district centered on a courthouse being part of a much larger district, but I can't think of it right now. (There are also cases where single buildings are inexplicably listed as districts, such as House at 1141 North Chester Avenue, but I suspect that's not what you're looking for.) TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 04:09, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
Another case I can think of is in Burlington (Des Moines County), Iowa, where the Snake Alley Historic District is completely encompassed within the Heritage Hill Historic District. Snake Alley itself is yet a third listing, categorized as a structure. — Ipoellet (talk) 19:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your input; your words and reasoning make sense to me. I suppose this is closer to the "farmstead within rural HD" than I had considered, since the courthouse HD isn't a ton more than "courthouse and associated resources". I wish I'd understood the Snake Alley situation better when last I was in Burlington; I thought the HD was just at the top of Heritage Hill and didn't realise that it extended down the hill to the south. Nyttend (talk) 17:36, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Ste. Genevieve Historic District

There are some interesting issues surrounding the Ste. Genevieve Historic District that affect the article of that name. Full background for those interested is in this 10MB planning document published by the NPS (see pp. 14ff for district info). The basic facts appear to be these:

  • A National Historic Landmark District by that name was designated in 1960. It was one of the earliest such designations, had no formal boundaries, and mentioned several discontiguously placed buildings. The designation is in recognition of the area's French architecture and history, pre-1800. It was listed on the NHRP in 1966 with refnum 66000892.
  • A NHLD boundary is approved by additional filing in 1970. This covers some 1200-1400 acres, but only describes a few specific buildings and enumerates more. Versions of this boundary appear in the above NPS and in the MO DNR nom (17MB).
  • Later attempts to further expand the NHLD or update its documentation to be more comprehensive either failed evaluation or were not submitted.
  • In 2002, another NRHP district with the exact same name ("Ste. Genevieve Historic District") is approved (refnum 02000357, MO DNR nom (15MB)). Its period of significance is 1790-1951, basically covering the city's entire history (post flooding of the 1780s that wiped out the first settlement). This district appears to be entirely within the 1970 NHL district bounds and is about 1/3 the size. It contains a large number of the larger district's built features, but not all of the pre-1800 French buildings.

Separate or single article? If separate, how should they be named? Magic♪piano 18:09, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the 1975 filing (your 17MB link) is functionally an "additional documentation", while 02000357 is basically a boundary increase of the original that includes a good deal of resources not NHL-worthy. See pages 7-8 of its nomination, which refer to 1951 as the cutoff date; obviously something from 1950 won't matter for the French Colonial context, but it's old enough to be an ordinary NR site. It's a single district in which some, but not all, components are NHL-designated, the result of an ordinary NR district with some drastically-above-ordinary components. I'm surprised that this same approach hasn't been taken with other NHLs that I've seen, e.g. the New Harmony Historic District, which excludes some (seemingly) NR-eligible commercial and residential neighborhoods (example) that obviously postdate the Harmony Society presence and thus the district's period of significance. Nyttend (talk) 12:23, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
The 2002 listing cannot be read as a boundary "increase". Its size is 250 acres, that of the 1975 NHL filing is 1,200 acres (or 1,400, depending in which source you read). Much of the difference in area includes NHL-significant landscape features, which the 2002 district explicitly excludes because it is focused on architecture generally, and not on French colonial history. It also cannot be considered a decrease, precisely because the omitted features are still NHL-significant. I read these as overlapping districts with differing focus and statements of significance. Magic♪piano 13:17, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
Boundary increase in the sense of "here are these places that weren't included before, but we're now including them". It seems rather unreasonable to say that there are now two HDs with the same name, the newer smaller than the older and entirely within its boundaries, especially since they share the same name; if there were different names, one could argue that this had been done in order to distinguish separate districts with related boundaries, but anyone writing a later nomination would be familiar with the older nomination and its chosen name and would be aware that picking the same name for a separate district would be badly confusing. Basically, the 2002 listing merely added American-built components to the existing district in such a way that they wouldn't become part of the NHL designation; even an "Additional Documentation" status (which wasn't the case) would have included them in the NHLD. Nyttend (talk) 17:39, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
I've never seen a boundary increase that didn't actually change the physical boundaries, but that's to me beside the point. The 2002 nomination uses language like this, which I have a great deal of trouble squaring with your interpretation (see PDF page 131): "The National Register historic district boundary does not coincide with the National Historic Landmark district boundary." This to me is an unambiguous declaration that one is not a modification to the other, that they are in fact considered independent of one another by that nom's author. This sort of language is repeated in the NPS planning document. Magic♪piano 02:05, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Waverly, Iowa

I have no idea how these properties should be listed. While working on an artist for Art+Feminism, I came across this listing for the Commercial District of Waverly, Iowa, which approved 40 properties for addition to the National Register. I don't know if those should be listed separately or as one entity, in the chart on National Register of Historic Places listings in Bremer County, Iowa. I cited the information on Waverly's page, with reference to their post office with the painting of interest to me. I was unsure of whether someone from this project regularly updates the lists and would be interested in doing so. Reference: Full, Jan Olive (October 2013). "National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Waverly East Bremer Avenue Commercial Historic District" (PDF). National Parks Service. Washington, D. C. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 22, 2017. Retrieved 14 March 2017. SusunW (talk) 18:17, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

There is already a listing for the Waverly East Bremer Avenue Commercial Historic District on the county list. That list should only include historic districts and individually listed properties; it does not include contributing elements of historic districts. (This is something you could add to the page on the historic district, if you are so motivated.) Magic♪piano 20:11, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
Yep - see Williamston Commercial Historic District for another example of a post office within a district that contains a mural. (That's how I handled it, at any rate.) --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 20:32, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
It's worth noting that significant buildings within districts are often notable in their own right, even if they're not individually listed on the National Register. If we have enough info on the post office that it starts dominating the article on the district, it might need its own article (though that doesn't appear to be the case yet). TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 00:01, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

OCR errors in scanned NRHP documents?

Hey, I puzzled overnight about what is a tripped roof (a redlink), which I learned yesterday is a kind of architectural feature in Louisiana. Perhaps it is like French Creole cottage architecture (currently a redlink, as is Creole cottage architecture, French Creole architecture and Creole architecture), for which an article is sorely needed. This comes up because I am nearing completion of a goal I set for myself of revisiting all the pages I ever started that were "NRIS-only", and expanding them with NRHP document references where those are now available. Some articles that I created in Louisiana lasted the longest, because the NRHP documents are mostly not available in NPS Focus (now NP Gallery), which contributes to Louisiana's state list of NRHP listings being among the least-developed. Here is how I left the article "City Hotel (Marthaville, Louisiana)" last night.

Today, it occurred to me that it is probably an OCR error in the portion of the site's NRHP document that Louisiana's Division of Historic Preservation scanned and made available. I was otherwise enjoying the fact of NRHP info having been made available by the state, albeit with problems (lacks author, date, other information). It seems like a new source of error in Wikipedia coverage of NRHP sites to me. Or are there other state or local sources where OCR'd text is all that's available? --doncram 16:15, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

From the pics, it looks to me like your building has a hipped roof. It's plausible to me that OCR could mistake an "h" for a "tr". — Ipoellet (talk) 17:52, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, that's what I figure now too. I listed it along with apparent NRIS errors at wp:NRIS info issues LA, to support my now using hipped roof in the article. Thanks! I'll say further that Louisiana's document system is among the most frustrating I have tried to work with, because of its omission of all title, author, date information in the documents. Other states like Texas posted short summary information that was incomplete too (mitigated by full documents becoming available in National Archives Catalog recently), but this is different because it is so close to being complete! They just needed to post the actual scanned document, not just the OCR text from what is probably sections 7 and 8 on standard NRHP registration forms. I wonder if corresponding with the state could lead to some improvement, i.e. to their posting of the scanned documents themselves. --doncram 18:56, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
Surprising that they don't provide images, which are seldom very useful except in cases of doubt. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:18, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

NRHPstats script help

It's been quite a while since I did any NRHP-related editing out here and I'm having difficulty recalling what I need to do to get the NRHPstats script to work properly. I was finding that the useful yellow box with the stats in it showed up on some lists but not others. In fact, it sometimes showed up and sometimes didn't when I opened any given list. So I decided to do some digging in the talk archives here and it looks like there may have been some updates to that great tool since I last actively used the lists a few years back. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out what I need to do (it took me a ridiculous amount of time just to find my vector.js page ... is there somewhere to find a link to that darned thing if you've not even thought about it in a couple of years?). I've added the following lines to the end of vector.js:

var NRHPstatsAuto = 'false'; // per wt:NRHPPROGRESS#Untagged articles, line 1 of 2
importScript('User:Dudemanfellabra/NRHPstats.js'); // per wt:NRHPPROGRESS#Untagged articles, line 2 of 2

Now I never get seem to get the yellow box. From what I read, I expected to see a new link under Tools on the left, but it's not there.

Can someone offer me some guidance? --sanfranman59 (talk) 21:38, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Glad to see you back! I recently got those yellow boxes working, whenever I was at an NRHP list-article, by adding those lines to vector.js. And by the way I found that the DYK-check tool did not conflict with that, i.e. both worked. But then subsequently the NRHP stats yellow boxes stopped working. I think it stopped when I added a line to my commons.js file:
importScript('User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js'); // User:Dr pda/prosesize
in order to be able to use a "Page size" tool that shows, among other statistics, an article's prose size in bytes as well as words. I have started documenting this at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Resources#Tools to install, where I hope this can be properly recorded eventually. But what is going on? I don't know what the solution is. We could try deleting common.js? Perhaps I dimly recall there being advice somewhere that some of these conflicted with each other. --doncram 23:20, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
Hmm, my deleting that line from my common.js file, and closing Chrome browser entirely and reopening it, did not fix anything, it just dropped the "page-size" tool. :( --doncram 23:42, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
I've always found the java script stuff here pretty mystifying and never seem to be able to find anything that explains vector.js. Since I usually got the yellow stat box before I started monkeying with things today, I tried reverting my vector.js to what it was before I played around with it. But I'm still not getting the yellow stat boxes on the NRHP list articles. Although I spend my work life as a statistical programmer and usually can figure things out on computers, I have no background in Java and only know it from apps that don't always work quite the way I expect them to (or at all). Any other suggestions out there? --sanfranman59 (talk) 23:57, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
lol ... So now the yellow box is coming up again on a few of the lists that I was working on yesterday. But I'm working with the Massachusetts lists today and can't get them to show on the Barnstable or Bristol County lists. However, when I clicked on the Essex: Andover list, there's that pretty little yellow box. Is it possible that something is missing from the Barnstable and Bristol County list articles themselves that is necessary for the yellow box to appear? [And, no sooner did I type this than I tried the Andover list again and, you guessed it, no yellow box this time. Hmmm) --sanfranman59 (talk) 00:06, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
Is no one else out there besides me having this issue? --sanfranman59 (talk) 18:24, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Request for article class review

Hi,

I've been working on improving the article Pawnee, Kansas, and while I'm sure it is no longer a stub, I don't want to re-rate it myself. I would appreciate someone taking a look and redoing the rating. While you're at it, you are welcome to take part in the merge discussion there as well. I will be improving the other article too, and any merge would likely go the opposite direction (but right now it looks like no merge will happen).

Thanks so much! RM2KX (talk) 23:47, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

I added NRHP reference at First Territorial Capitol of Kansas which they seemed to appreciate; they developed both the articles; the merger discussion was congenial and got closed by User:RM2KX's withdrawal of the proposal, in effect. WikiProject NRHP rating request for Pawnee, Kansas article is resolved by my removing NRHP banner there. Others' attention to give First Territorial Capitol of Kansas a higher rating than "Start" would be appreciated. --doncram 22:10, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, Key West Station

Would someone check U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, Key West Station? I've listed some objections on the talk page, but my edits have been reverted by anon users (more than once). Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 18:39, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Smells of a hoax to me. I deleted it all straight away, as you did. I'll keep an eye on the article - if the stuff keeps appearing I'll protect it for a bit. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 19:22, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
I added a bit. --doncram 21:58, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:07, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

help needed on few new NRIS-onlies

Help needed on articles caught up, correctly or not, in NRIS-only tagging (just 7 cases, in first run since March 12):

  1. St. Paul's Church (Fairlee, Maryland) had its NRHP reference and/or other work by User:Pubdog removed in this I.P. editor's changes, but the changes added other information, maybe not all bad. Including that maybe it is better characterised as Chestertown than Fairlee. But maybe copyvio?
  2. St. John's Episcopal Church (Cleveland, Ohio), where recent edit properly IMHO removed "NRIS-only" tag and took care to support specific new content in text, but the references are not properly formed. New-to-Wikipedia, not just new-to-NRHP, editor should be encouraged, not slammed, right?
  3. Harris-Chilton-Ruble House, where a different brand new editor's changes developed article well, probably all from NRHP source, but lost the source.
  4. Twinsburg Congregational Church. I just reverted an NRHP editor's removal of bulk of article putting it into NRIS-only status, although they asserted it is "self-published" source. I see nothing wrong with self-published sources about non-controversial historic/architectural content. Others' attention would be appreciated.
  5. Old Piqua High School, similar.
  6. Old Union School (Coshocton, Ohio), similar, site of some past contention.
  7. The Crawford-Dorsey House and Cemetery is the only other article just NRIS-only tagged, where I had experimented by removing the tag (what the tag asserts is in fact false), but it gets tagged again because it does not have inline references. No particular reason to focus on this one of about 900 ones arguably miss-labelled [by the bot].

I had only ever previously edited at the last two, myself. Thank you Magicpiano for operating the NationalRegisterBot runs which turned these up. --doncram 21:58, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

I took a look at a few of these. The first one sure looked like a copy-paste job, though I couldn't confirm it; I reverted it until we can figure out where that info came from. For the second one, I fixed up the inline links, so they're all citations now (and the template is gone). As for the ones with self-published sources, the reason we don't allow those has nothing to do with the topic they're about and everything to do with their reliability; I agree with removing them. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 23:51, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
Thank you! That's a big help that you entirely fixed up the second one. Your shared concern about the first one encouraged me to go further on it myself. I have now tried and can't find duplicated text by Googling a couple text strings. And I can't find it in HABS or at Maryland Historical Trust or in the NRHP nomination document (which was not directly linked yet in the article) or in the church's official website. There's "A Tricentennial History of St. Paul's Church, Kent" available from the church, which is a possible source for copy/paste. But looking more carefully at the first edit's diff and comparing it to the NRHP nomination document, I am convinced it is a good writer's honest effort to rework the article's content and add more. The rearrangement of existing material is good editing (besides the fact that formatting and a wikilink were messed up), and I want to AGF that the new additions are in their own words too. I think the informal style of some of the writing (like it almost has smiley faces in places) can be fixed. So while I appreciate your taking action, I have gone ahead and restored their edits and have begun revising it to add inline citations and will plan to add "citation needed" tags or otherwise address it all. Please feel free to help with this. I think it is a new editor who is worth encouraging along, though it will be hard to reach them as they wrote from two I.P. addresses not from an account. I think I will try calling the church tomorrow to see if I can make friendly contact with the editor, on chance that it may be the NRHP document writer or some other historian there, and anyhow order a copy of their Tricentennial history. I'll reply about other items later, thanks. --doncram 02:05, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Duplicated listing...

Howdy, Is there a procedure to follow regarding a possible duplicated listing in the same county? National Register of Historic Places listings in Minnehaha County, South Dakota has 2 listings for Dell Rapids Bridge. Looking at the nomination forms, they appear to be for the same bridge, and both of the nom forms are duplicates of each other, except for the signatures and dates. The nomination photos also display the same photo. Can someone doublecheck it for me? 25or6to4 (talk) 23:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Wow... it's almost like they submitted two drafts of the same article. There are slight differences in the wording of the nomination, but that's it. Usually the procedure for these is to just condense them into the older listing and make a note of it in the notes column, though if I'm right about them being different drafts we may want to use the slightly-improved later version. (Not that it matters all that much, just as long as we stick with one.) TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 00:26, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
See the listings for Twin Oaks (Wyoming, Ohio) and Robert Reily House, including the conclusion of the "Historic site" section, and search for either name at National Register of Historic Places listings in Hamilton County, Ohio. I think I've run across this situation once somewhere else, but I can't remember where. Nyttend (talk) 02:17, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Trip of a lifetime

Someone figured out the quickest route to visit a very large number of NRHP sites. Where did they get the data? Read the article and see. ;) --Ebyabe talk - Inspector General06:30, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

It may be a lot shorter trip. I tracked some of the listings in SoCal and I noticed the researchers included the Ontario State Bank Block which was demolished. Einbierbitte (talk) 01:06, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Well, they probably need to redo it because today I corrected two sets of coordinates in Bulloch County, Georgia that were off by more than 0.1 degree. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:10, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Make sure headers of tables remain in view as long as the table is in view

Preferences -> Gadgets -> Testing and Development -> Make sure that headers of tables remain in view as long as the table is in view (Requires Safari or Chrome). --doncram 12:49, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Definitely helpful for looking at the Progress page. Thanks! Ammodramus (talk) 13:52, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Members of this Project...

...may be interested in this discussion]. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:11, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

"Fair use" for demolished buildings?

When a person dies, you can claim "fair use" of their photos. Can you do the same thing for buildings that have been demolished or destroyed? And is it worth the effort? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 18:26, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think your first sentence is correct. Can you supply a reference regarding fair use of photos of dead people?
I think you might be confusing copyright and libel here. It's not possible to libel a corpse, so photos of dead people can be used for purposes that would bring down a lawsuit if the subject of the photo were living. This got the now-defunct supermarket tabloid Sun in trouble some years ago, when they used a photo of a very old woman to illustrate a made-up story, "Pregnancy forces granny to quit work at age 101", assuming that the subject of the photo was no longer among us. As it turned out, she was still living, and won a million-dollar judgement against the Sun. (See NYT, WaPo, and Chicago Tribune.)
But this is a different animal from fair use as it applies to copyrighted works. The death of a photo's subject doesn't diminish the photographer's rights in the photo, nor does it give others the right to use that photo without the photographer's consent. Ammodramus (talk) 02:12, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
The first sentence is correct; according to WP:NFCI, non-free pictures of dead people can be used, with the reasoning that it's generally difficult to obtain a free alternative after the person has died. I'd be careful about extending this logic to buildings, and particularly historic buildings, though; non-free images can only be used when it's unlikely that a free image can be found, and in most cases we can find an old out-of-copyright photo or ask permission to use a photo from a state or local preservation agency. There are probably exceptions, but those should be handled on a case-by-case basis rather than by a blanket guideline. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 02:33, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
I was thinking along the lines of Wikipedia:Non-free_content#Acceptable_use - under images, #10. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:03, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
Pinging User:Daniel Case, whom I recall several years ago used the reasoning about no free alternatives and unlikely a free image can be found for demolished building photos, and could perhaps be well-informed about how those arguments have held up at Commons. I am not an expert in this at all, but looking at the criteria, wouldn't it be clause #8 under images, which applies? That reads in part: "Images with iconic status or historical importance: .... Iconic and historical images which are not subject of commentary themselves but significantly aid in illustrating historical events may be used if they meet all aspects of the non-free content criteria, particularly no free alternatives, respect for commercial opportunity, and contextual significance." --doncram 03:17, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Va. Photos etc on Public Domain

Wikimedia commons recently deleted a photo file for Wigwam (Chula, Virginia) for copyright issues. I have obtained an email from staff at the Va. Dept. of Historic Resources (the source of above file) stating that all photos, maps, forms etc associated with its registry are in the public domain. I would be glad to cooperate in making this available if desired. This may potentially effect a significant number of photo files for this project. Hoppyh (talk) 19:58, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

That would be huge! It has been unclear which states intend for their photos and text documents to be put into the public domain. Virginia's Dept of Historic Resources system has a huge system, and it would be truly of great value to get their approval/clarification for their works to be made public. It has to be clarified which works in their system are covered. Many of the VA NRHP nomination documents were prepared by VA state staff, and the state of VA can choose to put those into the public domain. But often in other states at least, and perhaps sometimes in VA, a property owner or a private consultant working for an owner will prepare an NRHP nomination, and it has generally been assumed by this WikiProject that copyright stays with them. The National Park Service is very clear that for NRHP nominations and photos which it posts in the wp:NPGallery system, copyright remains with the authors. Perhaps in Virginia the submitters might be required to release their submission into the public domain, but that would be unusual and would have to be verified. (IMO the National Register itself ought to require that, but it does not, it only requires that submitters allow it to post the works in their webpage system.) FYI, a while ago the an editor arranged for the corresponding office of Puerto Rico to go through the wp:OTRS system to arrange for release of NRHP works that its staff and contractors working for them had produced. This is what VA will have to do with your help. Great that you have started on this! --doncram 03:34, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Massachusetts nominations available in the National Archives Catalog

Massachusetts has been added to the growing list of states with nominations available through the National Archives Catalog. That's one of the states that didn't quite have complete coverage at the state level, which means we're getting closer to having all nominations available for every state. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 16:10, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

The Massachusetts file set may appear there, but it is not searchable and no PDFs appear to be online. AFAICT, there is only top-level metadata present. Presumably this will be changing... Magic♪piano 20:38, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Blah, that's what I get for not looking closely enough at these things before posting. Hopefully it will be changing soon though... TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 01:37, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Ellamae Ellis League house

Is the new article Ellamae Ellis League sufficient to link to for the Ellamae Ellis League House at National Register of Historic Places listings in Bibb County, Georgia? It does have the NRHP box and a photo, but very little about the house. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:14, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Excellent point. I'm new to the whole NRHP thing, though I've written about buildings before (Variety Playhouse and The Tabernacle). I figured incorporating the building with the bio made the most sense, seen it on other bios before (like Charlie Parker). We could certainly add a section about the house specifically, the NRHP nomination document for it (cited as "Brock 2004" in the article) has tons of good info. There are also a couple of other sources in the article (currently footnotes 12 and 49) that talk a bit about the significance of the house. --Krelnik (talk) 21:28, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
ETA I was bold and created an anchor and a redirect so existing redlinks to the house will take you to the NRHP infobox in the article. We can expand it to a dedicated section in the existing article, or pull it out and turn the redirect into an article. But at least folks clicking around will find what we have already currently while we decide. --Krelnik (talk) 00:16, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
I think that's a good arrangement for now; while it would be ideal to have articles on both, in the meantime it's better to have a link to what we do have than a redlink. And as a dual member of this project and WikiProject Women in Red, thanks for writing that article! It's probably better to have an article on League but not her house than the other way around, and I've seen the latter happen a lot (I'm guilty of it too sometimes). TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 02:50, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks and ditto! I'll give it a minute to simmer, but the more I think about it the more I like the idea of adding a dedicated section about the house in the article, which should make everyone happy. The house does have some interesting characteristics and so on. I just need to work out how to do it so the NRHP infobox won't totally mess up the layout of the text. --Krelnik (talk) 12:23, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
  Done I gave the house its own section right above the list of her other works, with the infobox next to it. Shifted the other photos around and added one more to keep the flow of the text working. Let me know if you see any problems, see it here: Ellamae Ellis League House --Krelnik (talk) 03:10, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:24, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Transclusion of NHRP templates

I was surprised to see the protection information on {{National Register of Historic Places in Maryland}}: "Highly visible template (over 1000 transclusions)" – in fact, there are between 1500 and 2000 transclusions.

Why are so many pages transcluding the templates (assuming it's the same for other states' templates)? Per WP:BIDIRECTIONAL, templates should only be transcluded from pages that are linked from the template (and not necessarily always). Only 30-something pages are linked from the above template.

HandsomeFella (talk) 09:36, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

It's not your ordinary navbox: it's meant to provide a bunch of NR-related links for NR articles, and the links to Maryland lists are thrown in to make it more convenient for use on Maryland NR articles. It's basically the same idea as {{See also Kansas counties}} (although in a different field, of course), just in a box instead of a bulleted list. Nyttend (talk) 03:05, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
It is categorized as a navbox, and it sure looks like a navbox. I think they need to be reworked so there can be navboxes for each level: county, state, and nationally, each transcluded from the appropriate level of articles. HandsomeFella (talk) 11:05, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Wrong county for an address-restricted place

This one should be interesting. I had just finished moving Susitna River Bridge from Denali Borough to Matanuska-Susitna Borough (as the property is in Matanuska-Susitna, even if still comprised within the Denali National Park), when i realized there is also a specific Denali National Park and Preserve list. On that article i've found the Teklanika Archeological District, which was missing from the Denali Borough listings.
The archeological district is of course address-restricted (even if some user gave gps position), and on NRHP papers just the city of Toklat, the Yukon–Koyukuk Census Area and the Denali National Park is mentioned. Informations about the site are not so difficult to get on the internet, and its real location is inside the National Park and in the Denali Borough. At the moment the place is listed in Denali National Park and Preserve list and in the Yukon–Koyukuk Census Area list, as for NRHP form.
Due to geographic boundaries, though, a normal-sized property can't be simultaneously both in the National Park and in the Yukon–Koyukuk area, and such district is indeed deep inside Denali borough (not a matter of a few miles from the border). The NRHP form probably has included just the most easily reachable city from the site (which is not the nearest one in a straight line, and, by chance, is in a different district). The fact the property is address-restricted complicates things a little... what's the best thing to do in these cases? Should i move the listing to Denali Borough, or stick to NRHP info and left everything as it is now? ProprioMe OW (talk) 10:28, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Considering Denali Borough was established in 1990, after that site was listed, moving it from the Yukon-Koyukuk to the Denali Borough list seems entirely appropriate. New borough establishments and boundary changes have affected a number of Alaska listings in this way. Magic♪piano 12:34, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
Thank you very much Magic♪piano! I had not check borough creation date (doh) - didn't know Denali was so recent, another thing to keep in mind while editing - or the whole issue would have been pretty more clear. Will move the listing immediately. ProprioMe OW (talk) 13:06, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Inconsistency and form not on Focus

Item 3 (NRHP #13000240) at National Register of Historic Places listings in Fulton County, Georgia is named "696 Peachtree Street Apartments" but the address is "826 Peachtree". How can I get the correct building (the NRHP form isn't on Focus and my google search didn't find it. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:15, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Ooo, a puzzle! I love puzzles! Take a look at the Google Street View at the coordinates given in the Fulton County list. Google gives the address at that Street View location as 815 Peachtree (an odd number, so presumably the lot across the street), which means the building shown in the Street View should be approximately 826 Peachtree. The Street View shows an apartment building; if you look carefully at the horizontal stone cap above the two-story entryway (zoom in if you must), carved into the stone is "696 PEACHTREE ST" Bingo! this must be the "696 Peachtree Street Apartments," now located at 826 Peachtree. (Also note what looks like a NRHP plaque beside the door.)
So why the discrepancy? Well, the building in the Google view is what is now the "Peachtree Manor Condominiums," some info about which can be found here and here. It was constructed in 1924 as an apartment building, then converted to the "Peachtree Manor Hotel" in 1947, and then later into condos. Now, according to this document, Atlanta renumbered its street addresses in 1926, so it seems that 696 was probably the correct address in 1924, when the building was constructed, and it was changed to 826 a few years later. Note also that the building was constructed as an apartment building apparently not named "Peachtree Manor," so as a guess, "696 Peachtree Street Apartments" is the actual historical name of the building, not just a locational description, which is why it's used in the NRIS database. Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:26, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:58, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

  Resolved

Template:NRHP header and Template:NRHP row

If I remember correctly those templates had been designed to be used in NHRP county listings. For that reason once I transferred the both templates to the German Wikipedia NRHP project, and it is widely used (atm. we habe about 1000 county lists created, and most of them use the templates) but some days ago I was questioned if the template could also be used for the statewide NHL lists. My first impulsive answer was: sure, why not.

Err, the statewide NHL lists have a column for the county but the county is not displayed in the countybased NRHP lists – there is no need to display the name of a county when all list entries refer to this county. A user came up with a creative solution: he put all county names in the town/city column and changed the column title in the header template. Additionally he added the town or city names to the address in the adress column. But I don't like this workaround, and after some thinking about the following solution seems possible:

We have the parameter nocity which can be used to remove the city/town column for those lists which must be splitted at least partly in lists for specific towns or citys, eg. the list for City of Los Angeles. My idea is to set nocity=county so the county column is displayed additionally to the city/town column. (Additionally: I wondered why in most NRHP county lists I saw there is included an entry county=Blabla County though it never is displayed in the tables. Do we include the county for bot reasons?)

Comments, please? --Matthiasb (talk) 10:17, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

User:Matthiasb, it's great you're continuing to support coverage of historic sites in the DE wikipedia and elsewhere.
Looking at the contents of one NHL list-article, the one at List of NHLs in NY, it seems to me that the programming is already done, in the EN wikipedia templates anyhow. The NRHP header and NRHP row templates already do handle NHL lists, with a flag for NHL set, e.g. with use of {{NRHP header|NHL}} and {{NRHP row|NHL. I wasn't active when this was programmed into the templates, in 2014. Hope this helps! --doncram 02:16, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Addresses in Location

Hi there. I was checking and adjusting NRHP places in Alaska and many (if not all) enlisted places have their address specified in the location field of the infobox (see, for example, Igloo Creek Cabin No. 25).
Template:Infobox NRHP clearly states that location should contain just the city name, and other State's articles comply with that guideline, therefore i've removed addresses (generally - but not always - still contained in the article, in the general NRHP listing page, and of course in the NRHP paper). An user, though, who had edited those articles in the past contacted me, and asked not to remove the info. I'd have no problem in replacing addresses in all the places i've corrected, but i'm uncertain about what's the correct thing to do. ProprioMe OW (talk) 08:04, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I routinely put the full address (if it is readily determinable) for a property in the address field. I'm no longer surprised by the number of articles I read/work on where previous editors have managed to write (sometimes extensively) without providing such basic information in the text of the article. Perhaps the documentation should be revised? Magic♪piano 13:00, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Alas the "address" field is not available in Template:Infobox NRHP (or i wouldn't have hesitated in moving there the information)... maybe it should be? ProprioMe OW (talk) 13:29, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
@ProprioMe OW: About "clearly states that location should contain just the city name" I'm not sure how clear this really is. It is true that the first time location= is described, it says just put city there. But it does not prohibit putting street addresses, and if you scroll down to where contributing properties are described on that very same page all of the examples there show full street addresses! Why would we want a full street address on a contributing property, but just the city on a fully listed property? Doesn't make sense to me. I think either a city or a full street address is fine here. I prefer the full street address if known, as it is clearly useful info to a reader. --Krelnik (talk) 20:11, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
@Krelnik: Thank you! I had missed that example (and i've read the template back and forth before and after posting here, but i was looking for location usage and did not pay attention to contributing properties, as they're a quite specific case). I was indeed quite uncertain about removing those infos, and will replace all addresses i've stripped. I was a little misleaded also because in other state's articles the address was most oftenly missing from that field... therefore i took it - my fault - as a general rule for the infobox. Maybe, then, the template page should be edited in that field description. It's true it does not prohibit adding other things, but asks specifically for the city, and this could be read as "only the city" or "the city and everything you see fit to describe property position" ProprioMe OW (talk) 21:01, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
@Magicpiano: I actually avoid putting a street address in the article text. If the infobox is present with the street address (in the |location= field), then I consider that to be the preferable location for dry, directory-like information such as an address. Similarly, I'll put the year of NRHP listing in the text, but the full date only in the infobox, and the refnum only in the infobox. — Ipoellet (talk) 02:15, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I've edited the template documentation to say that more than just the city name is permitted in |location=. — Ipoellet (talk) 02:53, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

A bit late to this party ... I actually do not like using the address in the article unless it's the name of the listing or it's necessary to explain something (example from my own work: Lustron Houses of Jermain Street Historic District). Most properties listed on the NRHP are houses, that people actually live in. They deserve a little respect for their privacy than to have their home addresses on Wikipedia where the world will see them. Anyone who really wants that information can go look in the nomination documents for it. Daniel Case (talk) 18:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Some urban NHLs now on US WHS Tentative List

I happened to be looking at the UNESCO page for "Tentative Lists", basically the "pending nominations" page for World Heritage Sites, and saw that the U.S. list was updated last month to include some well-known purely human-made modern structures, mostly already National Historic Landmarks, mostly in cities, in addition to the protected-area sites that most of our WHSes, either inscribed or tentative, have been.

New York City's one WHS listing, the Statue of Liberty, would be joined by three more (well, one, like the Statue of Liberty itself, technically in New Jersey):

  • Brooklyn Bridge (nomination), in recognition of both its importance to the history of bridge design as the first suspension bridge to use cables, the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its construction, and as an internationally recognized symbol of the city, on a par with the previously inscribed Sydney Harbor Bridge and Forth Bridge as symbols of Australia and Scotland respectively.
  • Central Park (nomination), as one of the earliest modern parks built during industrialization, and in recognition of Olmsted and Vaux's innovative and intricate landscape design.
  • Ellis Island (nomination), as the well-preserved choke point of so much emigration from Europe to not just the U.S. but the Western Hemisphere as a whole during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Not an NHL in its own right although it is part of the Statute of Liberty NHS).

About a hundred miles west of New York City, it seems that the NPS is hoping to add the recently NHL-designated discontiguous Historic Moravian Bethlehem Historic District in Pennsylvania to the inscription for Denmark's Christiansfeld to make it a transboundary "Moravian Church Settlements" WHS.

And a group of "Early Chicago Skyscrapers" is also proposed. Initial components are (although more could be added):

Not all of these are NHLs ... I wouldn't be surprised, though, if as part of the process the ones that aren't are eventually so designated.

It may be a while before these are inscribed ... UNESCO, unlike the NPS, only announces about a dozen or two new inscriptions a year, and there are plenty ahead in line. But it would, from my perspective, certainly be nice for New York to have as many WHSes on its tourist itinerary as London does. Daniel Case (talk) 18:20, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

"May be a while" is right. For context, the previous U.S. tentative list was released around 9 years ago, and in that period only 3 entries from it were inscribed on the World Heritage List. The nomination process is (expectedly) far more intensive and lengthy than for the NRHP, depends entirely on the political willingness of the executive branch to allow the nomination to happen (i.e. don't count on it in the current administration), and even then the World Heritage Committee only considers a maximum of 1 nomination from each country each year. About a third to a half of the places on this new tentative list were on the last one (Civil Rights, Dayton Aviation, FLW, Hopewell, Mount Vernon, Okefenokee, Petrified Forest, Serpent Mound, TJ), and I don't know how many years before that. Point is, although I too am excited to see this new tentative list, I'm not holding my breath. — Ipoellet (talk) 00:45, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Interesting article with insight into NRHP nomination process

I thought project members might be interested in this article I just found about a current nomination-in-process. It's based heavily on an interview with the Oregon Deputy SHPO, and includes lots of detail on the different players and considerations in the nomination process, at least in this one state. — Ipoellet (talk) 00:56, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Looking at how extensive nomination forms are now compared to decades ago, it seems harder to get NRHP status than it used to. I've also noticed a few that took 5 years or so from the time it was nominated until it was approved. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:17, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
The 5 years isn't indicative of much beyond this specific case. The field has been at the center of a local political controversy over development and open space, and the owner (the local school district) has been trying to sell for development and resisting the nomination. All very complicating. — Ipoellet (talk) 02:44, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

New listing duplicates existing listing

Has anyone run into this before? The 5/12 Weekly List includes a new listing for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company Depot--Dayton in Dayton, WA. However, there's an existing listing for Dayton Depot that appeared to be the same property. I also found the nomination form for the new listing from WASHPO that pretty clearly states (p. 8) that they're the same. As far as I can tell, this new nomination should have been treated as "additional documentation" for the existing listing rather than being set up as a new listing.

So what do we do? Ignore that NPS created a second listing an treat them as a single row in the county list (and infobox when someone creates an article)? Or set up duplicate rows? — Ipoellet (talk) 03:19, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Quite curious... the only difference in the two listings seem to be a change in the level of significance, from Statewide to Local, with the second listing, as you pointed out, a pretty huge addition of historical information.
I'm a newbie here though, therefore it would be better to wait for considerations from other experienced users. I'd say there should be just one listing, physical building being - well - just one. If there are no other issues maybe we can put multiple nrhp references in the various infoboxes and listings fields, with an editor footnote explaining the additional listing, and use the last available information for the property (name change, significance). ProprioMe OW (talk) 07:16, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and implemented this advice in the county list, with both a footnote for the reader and wikicode comments for editors. Thanks. — Ipoellet (talk) 18:51, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
This post just got archived, so this isn't even the first time this year this has happened. (My advice from that post is basically what you already did.) I'd say the NPS is getting sloppy, except that's hardly a new development. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 19:37, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, Community Tech bot will post at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 65/Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of WikiProject National Register of Historic Places.

We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:

  • The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
  • The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
  • The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to Mr.Z-man for his original Mr.Z-bot, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Note that only the most-viewed 500 articles are reported (per above) and that the total pageviews for the entire project is 23,142,919, which ain't too shabby. Does anybody know what the monthly pageviews for en_Wiki are? Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:22, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
Oddly enough, all but one of the stubs on that list were long enough that I reassessed them as start-class or higher. (And the one outlier, Isaac Jenkins Mikell House, is probably start-class too but is borderline enough that I skipped it for now, lest someone think I was inflating the assessments.) TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 00:52, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Probably a lot of the time the class doesn't get updated when the article is expanded (stating the obvious). Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:24, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Speaking of stubs, The Grove Plantation was rated stub until I changed it to C a few minutes ago. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 23:59, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

A NRHP property contributing to a NHL (which is not a district)

While reviewing Alaska listings, i've come to something which is a little puzzling me. In the listing page of NRHP - Kodiak Island Borough there's an entry for Fort Abercrombie State Historic Site. The entry has the usual type=NRHP. In the article, though, the infobox is marked with nrhp_type=nhl field, probably just to make the dark blue label to appear.
In 1985, 15 years after its NRHP addition, the area was added to the Kodiak Naval Operating Base and Forts Greely and Abercrombie NHL, present in the same listing page of Kodiak Island Borough, therefore it is actually part of a NHL.
Also the Fort Abercrombie State Historic Site is *not* listed in the List of National Historic Landmarks in Alaska.
So what would be the best thing to do in this case (since there's nothing as an nhlcp)?

  1. Remove the nrhp_type=nhl from the article infobox (along with other relative data), leaving however all and every notes and references about its inclusion in a NHL.
  2. Modify the listing page so to mark it in blue as a "real" NHL, and add the place to the List of National Historic Landmarks in Alaska (but it would count as a +1 nhl - i'm not convinced).
  3. Leave everything as it is now, just adding a note in the listing page (already added it anyway). ProprioMe OW (talk) 18:02, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

footnoting coordinates

More cumbersome approaches to beginning to indicate sources for coordinates in NRHP articles have been discussed previously, but have not led to any widespread usage. Here's a streamlined approach:

  • Use "source:USERNAME" or "source:NRIS2010a" in NRHP articles:
    • If you improve the coordinates in an NRHP infobox, where {{coord}} is used, indicate yourself as the source, using the "source" option in that template and your username, e.g. I have been inserting "source:Doncram", as in {{coord|45.4545|N|70.7070|W|display=inline,title,source:Doncram}}. I think the coord template does not allow spaces, so contract your username if necessary.
    • If you are creating or editing an article and know that the source of coordinates is NRIS, e.g. from the NRIS 2010a version which still comes into many new articles, then indicate that right away, using "source:NRIS2010a" within {{coord}} within the infobox.
  • Use "coordsource=USERNAME" or "coordsource=NRIS2010a" in NRHP list-articles:
    • If you improve the coordinates in an NRHP list-article, within a {{NRHP row}} entry, after "latitude=" and "longitude=" rows, add a row for "coordsource=", e.g. I have inserted "| coordsource=Doncram" in some that I have improved.
    • And usages of NRIS coordinates in list-articles can be marked, too. E.g. I just inserted "| coordsource=NRIS2010a" for First National Bank of Haxtun, within Phillips County, Colorado's list-article in this edit, after verifying that, with my display settings, the displayed coordinates in DD:MM:SS format match the 2010a NRIS coordinates, despite the fact that the actually entered coordinates are in decimal format.

Taking this easy step allows one to take a tiny bit of credit, and will help in future cleanup/review of all the coordinates. In the future, some bot will be able to come by and detect that the coordinates in one place or the other were improved, and update the other place. It may be able to detect that sourced vs. unsourced info in two places is the same and mark the source in the other place. And most importantly it will help narrow down which coordinates have not been improved from original NRIS-based (often inaccurate) coordinates. wp:NRHPPROGRESS will be able to show how many coordinates have been improved, vs. are suspect, in each state and county. Specifically, a bot request would be supported and approved, for a bot to see where there are NRIS coordinates in one place vs. sourced-to-someone coordinates in another place, and then replace the NRIS coordinates. Likewise editors for related list-articles having some NRHP-listed places, like List of round barns, could manually update unsourced coordinates there which are likely from NRIS, if they can see that sourced coordinates are available.

In the future your username as source might or might not be retained or replaced by something else, if it is judged that individual claims for credit (although they are invisible to regular readers) should be coded differently, or if an individual's use of Google satellite view, say, should be credited to Google instead (although we add more value, we are comparing the Google satellite view to what we see in personal visit to the site or to maps or photos in the NRHP document or other sources). It will be easy, anyhow, to find all such entries by a bot or by any user using wp:AWB browser or otherwise, if there is any updating or counting to be done. --doncram 21:51, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

A potential issue, which I think can be managed, is that USERNAME attribution may seem to suggest to other editors that the sourcing is wp:OR. This just came up by action of User:BilCat to revert User:ProprioMe OW at Pilgrim 100-B N709Y; BilCat used Twinkle to revert as they thought the edit adding "source:ProprioMeOW" was a "test edit". In followup discussion at User talk:ProprioMe OW#May 2017, BilCat stated: "I'd suggest using an attribution name other than that of the user, assuming the user isn't the source, which would be OR. If another name can't be used, then a detailed edit summary needs to be used, which was not done in the edit I reverted." On the other hand, I have not seen a peep of interest by anyone else in my own many insertions of "source:Doncram", although mine were not isolated edits doing only that. Knock on wood, i think just an edit summary with a link, say to this discussion here, or eventually to an anchor in wp:NRHPHELP or wp:NRHPMOS, will suffice in avoiding concern by reviewing editors. It's just like any new thing. It 100% has to be the position of wp:NRHP that revising coordinates is not wp:OR in any bad way; it is like our use of information conveyed by photos that we contribute. NRHP editors have been improving coordinates for 10 years or more, in a truly huge number, perhaps a majority, of NRHP articles, and this can easily be defended in any forum. To ProprioMe OW, please do continue to add your attributions while your recent changes are still fresh, although you could consider citing wt:NRHP#footnoting coordinates in edit summaries, and we'll just see if anyone else gets concerned. --doncram 13:41, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
Will do doncram, and i'll be careful to add wt:NRHP#footnoting coordinates in edit summaries. Thank you. ProprioMe OW (talk) 14:54, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Confederate monuments

Relating to controversy about Robert E. Lee Monument (New Orleans, Louisiana) and three others in New Orleans, there is increased readership of List of monuments and memorials of the Confederate States of America. Recent pageviews are over 1,500 per day on a couple days for the list-article, and over 6,500 on 5/19/2017 for the Robert E. Lee monument. The list-article started as a disambiguation page for Confederate Monument, the NRHP listing name of many individually listed ones. Many more Confederate monuments are included in courthouse listings and in historic districts, which are mostly not included yet. It includes Stone Mountain. It was suggested on the Talk page a while back that the list article could be expanded to cover monuments to individual Confederates such as Robert E. Lee (see Robert E. Lee Monument (disambiguation) and List of memorials to Robert E. Lee), Jefferson Davis, Beauregard, etc. This suggestion seems reasonable to me but which has not been implemented. There are a lot of these, but the number is finite and all could be listed IMHO, and the topic is of considerable public interest, and Wikipedia could be helpful about informing the public discussion. Some editors are contributing at the list-article and linked articles (others more than me), but more attention would be very welcome. --doncram 15:15, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I've worked some on the List of Monuments article - mostly for the ones in Georgia (where many of them are at courthouses on the NRHP). Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 15:25, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
If anyone needs a reference, I have the book Confederate Monuments by Ralph W. Widener. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 16:46, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
Do we have a List of Union Civil War monuments and memorials or similar? If not, that would be obvious improvement to make. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:49, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

About a title

Hi! Sorry for my bad English. I asked a question here. I hope someone will give an answer.--Rehtse (talk) 22:13, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of the use of "theatre" in American English, it seems rather pretentious. But I guess theater folks can sometimes be a pretentious lot, and they do use "theatre" quite often in the names of their workplaces. Article names come down to what is used in reliable sources. The NRHP nomination is for "Million Dollar Theater". It's also part of a NRHP historic district which also uses "Million Dollar Theater" in the nomination. However, the building's website uses "Theatre" and pix in Commons show that "Theatre" was used in 1920 a couple of years after the theater was built. I'd still recommend "Theater" per the nomination forms. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:20, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Ok, thanx for the answer. I don't realy understand what the fact that you suppose "theater folks can sometimes be a pretentious lot" is accurate here. In fact, this "theater" was a "movie palace". Maybe it became a real theatre after, I don't know. It's not easy to find the right way of writing these titles : the NRHP let appear Pomona Fox Theater, Golden Gate Theatre, Million Dollar Theater, but also Alexander Theatre, Rialto Theatre, Warner Brothers Theatre, and also Boulevard Theatre/West Coast Theater (Theatre and Theater for the same building...), and, finaly, Broadway Theatre and Commercial District AND Broadway Thater and Commercial District. Ok, the NRHP is for Million Dollar Theater, so do wikipedia. Thanx again for the answer.--Rehtse (talk) 21:03, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Google doodle Susan La Flesche Picotte today

 
Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Memorial Hospital pic by Ammodramus

I'm curious what viewing statistics will be today for the NRHP article on Susan La Flesche Picotte House in Walthill, Nebraska, and for the NHL article Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Memorial Hospital, given that today's Google Doodle is about Susan La Flesche Picotte, and the Wikipedia article about her is the top hit it suggests. The bio article links to the two places via picture captions, so there may be some traffic. Traffic otherwise is only 1 or 2 or 3 views per day. By the way I think the pic of the hospital here, which is in the article on the hospital, is nicer than the one in the bio article, so readers who click through get that as a reward. Too bad there's no NRHP nomination available for the house article, which is pretty short. --doncram 18:19, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

The nomination form for the house article is available online through the Nebraska SHPO, if anyone's interested in expanding the article. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 18:25, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
Wow, hey, I know I had looked for it when I worked on the article in December 2016, and I did try searching again a bit now, and I am surprised you can just find it like that. Hmm, I do see there is a little "New" button on the link for the document at Nebraskahistory.org page on Thurston county now, so maybe it was not available back in December. Anyhow, great, thanks! --doncram 18:41, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
the house got 770 views; the memorial hospital, which is linked from the text as well as from a photo caption, got 2491 views. --doncram 05:28, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

File:Address restricted.PNG in county lists

 
Address restricted.PNG

I recently reverted an edit where an editor had inserted Address restricted.PNG repeatedly in the image column of an NRHP county list. In my edit summary I suggested that there was something of a consensus at WP:NRHP that we aren't using that file like that. However in looking for past discussions where this topic has been addressed, I came up with very little - certainly less than a consensus. So either my search was pretty ineffective, or my memory of past discussions is incorrect. Can anybody identify the past discussions I'm missing, or provide a fresh opinion on this topic? — Ipoellet (talk) 23:51, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I believe there are those with strong opinions each way. I've wavered myself. It's annoying to have a county list that can probably never get to 100% due to an AR. On the other extreme, National Register of Historic Places listings in Carbon County, Utah has over 300 listings, nearly all of them ARs we're not likely to learn more about. It looks like there hasn't been a project-wide consensus, with inconsistency between states and even counties. Is total consistency desirable? Ntsimp (talk) 03:28, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

NRHP navigation templates

If this has been discussed before, my apologies. My understanding of navigation templates is that they should only be added to the bottom of articles if the article is displayed as an entry within the navigation template. At the same time, I am guilty of adding NRHP navigation templates for specific states (see Canterbury Castle, for example) to articles, even though these templates never display links to specific NRHP sites. I always remove Template:National Register of Historic Places from articles about specific NRHP sites, because I think this template is way too general to be helpful, but does this project have a preference re: inclusion of state NRHP navigation templates? ---Another Believer (Talk) 15:14, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

This has been mentioned before: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 65#Transclusion of NHRP templates
The Wikipedia style guideline at issue is at: WP:BIDIRECTIONAL
I'm not sure it was discussed adequately before, so I'm glad you brought it up again. Yes, it is the general practice of members of this project to include {{National Register of Historic Places}} on the articles for each individual listed place. I personally had been previously unaware of WP:BIDIRECTIONAL, and I've been mulling whether we should make a change, or whether there's a case for WP:IAR with regard to the NRHP nav box(es). — Ipoellet (talk) 16:37, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. Yes, I think more discussion would be helpful. I already said this above, but I think the main NRHP template is way too general to be included on articles about specific NRHP sites, but I'm on the fence about the inclusion of state NRHP templates. I could see how readers might be interested in viewing NRHP sites for counties within the state, but at the same time, I also think following WP:BIDIRECTIONAL is important. ---Another Believer (Talk) 16:46, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
Whenever anyone chooses to develop a state-, county-, city-, or neighborhood-level navigation template they go around replacing the national-level template, which is fine. But the national-level template does work well in giving some links for more info about NRHP stuff, in a "see also" way, and it includes links to the state-level lists, so a reader can indeed browse to other NRHPs in the same city or county if they drill down through that. I think it looks better than putting explicit "See also" links to the city- or county-level list-article, which is also done. And the good thing is that the national-level template is maintenance-free, while lower-level ones would require updating. I don't know if anyone does systematically update the ones that do exist, and we don't have any bot to support that or any tool to monitor it. I would be wary of creating a lot more low-level ones if there is not a process for updating supported by a tool (like wp:NRHPPROGRESS tabulation supports creation of separate articles). Maybe there should be some decision, though, about including or dropping "See also" explicit links when any level template is present. --doncram 18:32, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
These are not navboxes: they're basically like a sidebar information template with a different format, or in other words, like a chunk of See alsos compressed into a collapsible box. There's no significant difference between this and just listing all of the links in a See also section, except for the fact that this template doesn't occupy much space, while the other would. Nyttend (talk) 03:47, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

requested moves for 4 Denver NRHP lists

National Register of Historic Places listings in Denver was too large and was, properly, split, into sections. It was split into four sections that now have 143, 70, 43, 45 items, using, among other reasoning, major boulevards/highways as dividing lines (see Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Denver#Splitting into several pieces, which included input from editor(s) who are locally knowledgeable). However sections were termed with phrases ("Northeast Denver", "Southeast Denver", "West Denver", "Downtown Denver") that I think did not exist previously, i.e. the phrases were coined at the time, and these should not be presented as being named, existing regions. The requested move is to clarify that by downcasing to "northeast Denver", "southeast Denver", "west Denver". Please consider commenting at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Northeast Denver#Requested move 4 July 2017. --doncram 18:53, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Categories for delisted places

There are a small number of articles on delisted places in Category:Former National Register of Historic Places. Many of these articles are still in other categories such as "NRHPs in xxx" and "Houses on the NRHP". Should they stay in these categories once delisted? MB 02:40, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I think NRHPs should be categorized by geography and type, even if delisted. I'm not opposed to the creation of some categories to note their former status, but I kind of think "once an NRHP, always an NRHP" in terms of how we group NRHPs by geography and type. ---Another Believer (Talk) 02:44, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
But if you wanted to find all the "Ranches on the NHRP", would you want delisted places included? I can see both sides. Assuming Old Mill District was in the such categories before, we are doing it both ways. There are so few delisted places it's probably not a big deal but we should pick one and be consistent.
Looking at the history of Old Mill District, one editor added it to a "geographic" and "former" NRHP category at the same time (clearly believing it should be in both), and another editor removed it from the "geographic" category. MB 03:14, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
McElwain House is also only listed in the "former" category. MB 03:16, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Recruit new editors for the project?

Hi, just wonder if there is any template or program in the project to recruit newcomers or new editors to join the project? Bobo.03 (talk) 22:26, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Merging/splitting county lists

Previous discussions touching on this topic:

Earlier today, I merged the listings in National Register of Historic Places listings in Syracuse, New York into the Onondaga County list (150 total county listings), then cleared and redirected the Syracuse article to the county list. A few hours later User:Doncram contacted me on my talk page to disagree with my edit. I think the issues raised in this matter merit a community discussion.

I did the merger with the thought that I was implementing a consensus that came out of the discussions linked above. However, upon re-reading the earlier discussions I'm less sure that a consensus was actually reached. The principle that was in my head and that I was acting on was (in my own words):

WP:NRHP's primary grouping point for lists of NRHP listings is the county (or equivalent), and we prefer county-level articles/tables unless there's a IAR-style reason to do otherwise. We generally decompose county lists to a sub-county level when the overall county exceeds 200 listings (for reasons in the earlier discussions), but only to the extent necessary to keep individual articles under 200 listings. Each county with under 200 listings should be consolidated in a single list.

Doncram's concern with regard to the Syracuse/Onondaga lists was that the merger lost analytic information in the lead and data identifying the specific neighborhood for each listing in Syracuse (which was in the table's city column). He also suggested he has thoughts about broader principles with regard to list length, but didn't specify in detail on my talk page.

Would other project participants please offer their perspectives? — Ipoellet (talk) 03:06, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

First, note the "Washington County, Utah" discussion left the split between listings in Zion NP vs. other Washington County ones; there was NOT a consensus to force merger of the Zion list or of other well-defined National Park lists into corresponding county articles. The salient principle governing then was "Definitional quality/recognizability/notability" discussed below.) The other discussion did mention a 200-maximum cap on NRHP list-article size, one salient reason being that the corresponding Bing maps accessible through {{GeoGroup}} template had a cutoff for display of coordinates at 200. That Bing constraint is no longer relevant, as Bing no longer appears on the GeoGroup template (OSM and Google maps have no limits). --doncram 15:24, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, the Syracuse NRHP list has a descriptive intro (including "There are 98 listed properties and districts in the city of Syracuse, including 18 business or public buildings, 13 historic districts, 6 churches, three school or university buildings, three parks, five apartment buildings, and 41 houses. Twenty-nine of the listed houses were designed by architect Ward Wellington Ward; 25 of these were listed as a group in 1996", which was lost in the merger) and was organized with a "Neighborhood" column using Syracuse's official neighborhoods which allowed readers to see the many "Strathmore" ones, the many "Downtown" ones, and those in about 20 neighborhoods in neighborhood order. In the merger, all 98 are lumped as "Syracuse", not allowing locals or anyone to see what is near what. It was also a pretty decent list-article showing care and attention of local editors: all rows at one time had descriptions; it had a footnote for each of the Ward Wellington Ward-designed ones up through this 2016 version (which was inappropriately IMO dropped but could/should be restored). Its table was one of the 5 or 6 original models of list-tables for NRHP list-articles developed and discussed within WikiProject NRHP back in 2009 or so. It got a peer review and was on its way to nomination for a featured list. An Onondaga County-level list would not be attractive for editor investment in bringing to Featured List status.
Some general principles to consider:
  • Counties are not universally useful at all. For Hawaii, the initial WikiProject NRHP-imposed county organization was fiercely resisted because legal counties are unknown there, and because they bizarrely split and combined Hawaii's islands. Reorganizing by island made peace. For Rhode Island, counties have long had no meaning/relevance, and all economic development and tourist region planning and all other discussion in the state uses municipalities. An editor or two has sought to reorganize Rhode Island that way but has been confounded by discussion/bureaucracy here at wt:NRHP in the past. For Puerto Rico, there are no counties, only municipalities which are treated as county-equivalents by NRIS but are too small. "Northern" vs. "southern" vs. "eastern" vs. "western" vs. "central" vs. "San Juan" are well enough defined for tourism purposes to be used instead. In original 13 states, counties are often defined as areas that are no longer useful administratively (e.g. too small geographically now) or might have very slight usage (such as I think Connecticut's counties have semi-correspondence to judicial areas). In great swaths of the Midwest, counties are relatively uniform in size and usually have one well-defined central city as county seat; county judicial areas correspond well to economic/population areas and be meaningful administrative groupings. But in California and elsewhere, counties are huge and include multiple major cities and need to be broken up. We should not be unduly influenced by the bureaucratic convenience of NRIS' grouping into county equivalents.
  • Geographical coherence: The corresponding {{GeoGroup}} link to Google maps should bring up a sensible geographic area, not a patchy / disjointed / gerrymandered and split up collection. In the past, for expedience' sake, there were some list-articles like "Georgia counties A-Ce", "Georgia counties Ch-F", etc. which were not geographically coherent. State level lists which include just small counties and have all the bigger counties split out are accepted so far but are not ideal. Donut shapes e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in Marion County, Indiana excluding its Center Township NRHP-list may not be ideal but seem to be acceptable.
  • Definitional quality/recognizability/notability. Any very distinct area (e.g. City of Syracuse, or Spokane, or Downtown of many cities, or Zion National Park) can usefully have a dedicated NRHP list, corresponding to what readers might expect, and look for, and like. Grouping like things together, e.g. all the National Park ones which are generally similar rustic CCC-built things, say, vs. Victorian houses elsewhere in a county, may achieve good definitional coherence. Lumping disparate things together, like disparate rural places out in a county with listings in a very distinct urban area (it may be hard to tell from afar when this is going on, vs. when the city boundaries seem arbitrary and are not important to locals), can undermine the quality of a list-article for "local" editors and for readers. Less preferred, though acceptable, are groupings like "southeast North Dakota" (which might be a Wikipedia-only formulation, or which might be proposed in one or more statewide economic development or tourism regions mapping but not be widely known). Divisions of too-big city lists into separate neighborhood list-articles has sometimes been necessary, for Boston, Philadephia, Washington DC, others. We have gone with official partitions into legal neighborhoods where possible, but have often had to define groupings based on highways or other means. We have always done much better deferring to local editors' views about which groupings/definitions of neighborhoods make sense to them. (In Syracuse, the neighborhood groupings both are official and make sense to locals, by the way.)
  • Multiple tables within one list-article are often okay or good. E.g. "Syracuse" table vs. "other Onondaga county listings" tables could both be included in one "Onondaga County" list-article. Like National Register of Historic Places listings in Spokane County, Washington includes a table for the formerly separate Spokane city NRHP listings. Editorially, it may be good to have multiple sections and tables, by neighborhood or city or other area or perhaps even by non-geographical themes (National Park ones vs. other ones), in one list-article. It is NOT important to make all the information sortable within one table. Usually, the only plausible reader preferences are to see the listings in geographic groupings (e.g. neighborhoods within a city) or alphabetical order. If a list-article is sectioned into neighborhood or other tables which are alphabetically ordered, it may still be very easy for a reader to find any given place by checking by alphabetical lookup within the several tables, or by using their browser's "Find" search feature. It is NOT necessary to provide single-table sortability on NRHP listing date or other non-important characteristics.
  • Not too big. More than some number is unwieldy, makes the page load too slowly and/or is bigger than readers like to browse. There is no consensus within WikiProject NRHP on how big this is. Maybe the Featured List editors would have some perspective on what is "sweet spot" size, or there should be academic-type studies of when "Reader Fatigue" sets in. More than 100 is a rule of thumb I would suggest as too big, reader fatigue-wise. I certainly like many list-articles which cover 15 to 30 places and make a satisfying read. Separating out very well-defined, coherent groups, such as "Syracuse" or National Register of Historic Places listings in New Haven, Connecticut is good, and allows their corresponding GeoGroup Google maps to be useful. Pushing "Syracuse" or "New Haven" into corresponding county list-articles loses something, makes them less nice / useful for readers.
  • Not too small. There are currently many (hundreds?) of 1-place or 2-place or 3-place lists which have been split out from state lists and should be combined back into the state lists or into new regional groupings like "National Register of Historic Places listings in southeast North Dakota" to get a decent area covered and make the corresponding GeoGroup maps make sense.
  • Geographic subdivisions within the list-article are often good, e.g. providing a "Neighborhood" column to allow sortability that way, or simply grouping into smaller sections/tables by neighborhood is good, because readers like to navigate this way and/or see the nearby ones together.
  • Groupings across county or state lines are not much observed in the current NRHP list-article system (I think), but could be justified, e.g. if there were Zion National Park NRHP sites outside of Washington County (which there are not, although the NP area goes out further).
About Syracuse, I think it was very good as it was, and I don't like the too-big, reader-unfriendly current county list. I would accept as a compromise having the Syracuse table as a separate section within the Onondaga County list-article, if there were a compelling reason that it must be merged into that, but I don't see one. Besides avoiding reader and editor fatigue, definitional clarity supports the split. The non-Syracuse listings in Onondaga County are more like those of surrounding counties than they are like the Syracuse city ones, and would better be merged into a Central New York region (but that wouldn't work well with any state-wide partition, as the state-defined tourism region is "Finger Lakes" spanning part of CNY, so just keeping the 50 or so non-Syracuse Onondaga County ones as a separate list seems best). --doncram 15:06, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I would like to note that mergers and splits should be reflected in the table structure at WP:NRHPPROGRESS. It is also possible that these actions may have impact on the script that updates that page (there are some odd cases hard-coded into the script, and it is a bit picky about how it recognizes sublists and multiple lists in a single page). People who run that script need to do sanity checks to recognize that these sorts of changes have been made.
They also have impact in the code that NationalRegisterBot runs -- it has hard-coded data structures that map to how things are broken down. It would be a kindness if project members who make splits or merges notify the bot operator (currently me), since these things are not always readily detectable in running the bot.
None of this should be read as a reason to not make these sorts of changes -- I'm just pointing out additional actions may be required that are not immediately obvious to the editor doing the split/merge. Magic♪piano 15:57, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Another principle in practice has been Counties get split out in descending size order to size of 10 NRHPs or whatever is necessary so the state list is not too big. This is not a good principle for permanent sorting. It has created many smallish lists which IMO would better be grouped together in regional areas covering maybe 50 or so, like "southeast North Dakota", along with even small counties. There are many such cases where the size is obviously suboptimal for readers and editors IMO, and proceeding with sensible mergers there is far more important than tackling marginal-at-best cases like this proposed merger of well-defined coherent Syracuse list of 98 with well-defined other Onondaga County list of 50 or so (which I personally think are pretty much optimal groupings now, though at least one editor disagreed). --doncram 21:54, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
The merger of Syracuse table into Onondaga County table does in fact cause error in the wp:NRHPPROGRESS tallying system. In recent weeks i have been the one running a weekly update, and this diff from running it just now shows double-counting at the Onondaga County level now, displaying 299 (= 150 times 2 less one duplication) and I think then overstating the nation-wide total by 149 now. I would now prefer to revert the merger for now at least and re-update that. Merger could be reimplemented of course if there is a consensus that it should be merged, but so far here there has been just one for merger and just me against merger. Honestly I would summarize this as no consensus for merger, but obviously I am involved as one of main developers of the two list-articles. Would anyone else comment please? --doncram 06:04, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
I generally agree with doncram. I would revert the merger of Syracuse. I prefer lists of under 100, and logical grouping by geographic area - that is a county with just 100 listing, and 50 of those in one city, should still be two separate lists. MB 19:41, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

North Dakota proposal

 
Counts of NRHPs by county in North Dakota as of 2009

There are maybe four big geographic areas of North Dakota (Missouri Slope, Missouri Coteau, Drift something, Red River region) but those don't correspond nicely to counties. Searching "North Dakota regions" yields this NDTourism.com map which divides the state nicely into six regions by county lines. That gives groupings (per nice map by User:25or6to4 from 2009) of:

  • Southwest: 2+2+2+10+5+5+3+8+10+4+0+4+1 = 51 56 NRHP places
  • Northwest: 5+7+4+3+3+2 = 24 places
  • South Central: 6+24+3+11+13+18+2+2+7+8 = 94 81 places
  • North Central: 4+3+1+2+15+12+7+7+14+7+2+5+4 = 83 81 places
  • Southeast: 4+3+22+13+35+2+9+8+1+12 = 109 99 places
  • Northeast: 2+11+15+3+66 = 97 places

out of 2009 2016 total of about 457 438 places (except I probably made an error or two jotting those down and/or adding them in my head).

I suggest reorganizing the list-articles in North Dakota into those six regions. The current 14 list-articles are

  • Barnes 13
  • Burleigh 34
  • Cass County 36
  • Emmons County 17
  • Grand Forks County 67
  • McHenry 12
  • Pembina 11
  • Ramsey 15
  • Richland 12
  • Stutsman 11
  • Traill 22
  • Walsh 15
  • Ward 15
  • Subtotal is 280
  • All others apparently 159, in List of RHPs in ND
  • grand total of 439 currently (again maybe there is some error in my tallies because current total is significantly lower than 2009 total. But, hmm, there were major Red River floods which wiped out a lot of properties causing delistings.)

I suggest this recombination to get meaningful/good geographic coherence and make all list-articles within a reasonable range of 24 to 109 places each. This eliminates 10 existing list-articles having suboptimal sizes from just 11 to 22 places, and it eliminates disparate/non-geographically coherent leftovers in the statewide list-article. I personally am happy to hang my hat on the ND Tourism's partition of the state to use its regions' definitions for Wikipedia. Does this seem okay? --doncram 05:07, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I made a few tweaks on your numbers. Found a few double-counts and 2 missed counties. Also, all maps are updated as of January 2016. Working on new ones now...25or6to4 (talk) 05:55, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for all that! So that's even a bit better: the recombination would yield 6 list-article pages ranging in size from 24 to 99 listings then. To be clear, I personally would keep each separate county table intact; I am just proposing grouping the ones within each of the 6 tourist regions together on one page, enabling the linked GeoGroup maps to work well, and I believe better serving any would-be photographer or tourist or other reader. All the individual links like National Register of Historic Places listings in Ward County, North Dakota will still bring one right to the separate counties' individual tables.
An extreme opposite alternative, I guess, would be to split out the smaller counties from the state-wide page so there would be 52 separate list-articles with one county on each page. --doncram 06:17, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Very bad idea. Aside from Hawaii, where the geography is obviously quite different (and despite what's said above, counties are relevant; they're the only local government in the state), there's no good reason to have anything other than a statewide list with counties split out of it when appropriate. How will the reader know where to draw the line? Lacking an infallible boundary, which outside of Hawaii exists only in legal definitions, this will be unambiguously unhelpful. Just put everything onto the ND state list unless it's in a county that we're splitting out for size reasons. Nyttend (talk) 03:45, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Huh? That's way overstated ("very bad", "unambiguously unhelpful"?!). We agree that a single state-wide list is too big. We agree that parts need to be split out. I fail to see how readers could be confused if the parts split out are coherent, geographical regions, especially ones that are the state's own official tourism regions. On the other hand, if the biggest list-article is (as currently) the smallest 39 counties, I do see how readers looking at the corresponding GeoGroup map will be missdirected into believing that there are no NRHPs in various empty areas of the statewide map. And I see how readers who are prospective visitors to any region in the state, say, now are frustrated that they cannot see the NRHPs in the region. NRHP editors who plan to visit and take photos in a state often set up worklists in their own userspaces in order to group the nearby counties together (which is perfectly fine to do, but demonstrates something).
And what line do readers need to draw? I sincerely hope that we do not need to explain to readers or to other editors in Wikipedia what our secret system is, that in ND we split out counties larger than 10 because Doncram or Nyttend or someone else split them out that way because they thought the remainder was then not too large, in MN we split out counties larger than 7 because its remainder when 10 was the cutoff was unwieldy, in MT someone split out counties larger than a certain size except for Granite County because it was smaller before recent addition(s). That in SC we split them all out because the smallest ones are big enough (smallest four have 6, 8, 9 and 9) so none of us are very much bothered. And in GA and TX and some others we split out all counties including many with just 1 item without consideration of having any remainder statewide list, even though it does very much bother some of us. I doubt that non-NRHP editors in Wikipedia, much less readers, can understand our having list-articles of 1 item, linking to a separate article about the item, and linking to OSM/Google "map of all coordinates"! The remedy, as with splits of Puerto Rico and of various cities, is to use recognizable regions. --doncram 17:38, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Are tourist regions really recognizable though? A lot of the time those are created as much for PR purposes as anything else, and people who've never looked up tourist info for the state may have never heard of them. And while North Dakota has neat regions that don't overlap or leave places out, other states may not; for instance, Illinois has four tourism regions but doesn't give borders for them. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 02:15, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
This seems perfectly reasonable to me, someone who doesn't think lists that are either too big or too small work well, for a variety of reason already stated. As far as the regions needing to be "recognizable", I really don't see the point. If they serve to organize in a logical, geographical way, they are helpful. New York County (New York City) is already broken into sub-lists of areas that I don't recognize being used elsewhere. But it prevents a single county list of over 500 and seems to be a useful way to handle this situation. Dividing a state similarly could be useful too. MB 04:11, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
My wording, "use recognizable regions", was not quite right. How about "use understandable regions", allowing for the fact that we do create regions where necessary for purpose of dividing areas. Like for the division of Denver (covered in recent requested move, now closed), I myself commented in requested move that the goal was to "Avoid coining neologisms for "Northeast Denver", "Southeast Denver", "West Denver", which I believe are not phrases in use, and are not defined, recognized areas," but I don't object to the use of "northeast Denver", "southeast Denver", "west Denver" where we define those terms. "Recognizable" is too high a standard; of course if region terms are Wikipedia-notable and widely recognized that is all for the better.
For Illinois, the four regions that have no boundaries defined cannot be used, I agree. That doesn't prevent us from using the best possible partition in that state and everywhere else, which in some cases may be nicely defined economic development or tourism regions. For Louisiana, there was discussion how to divide it back in 2009 and I am pursuing discussion there again (see Talk:List of RHPs in LA. In discussion, I considered use of Emergency Preparedness regions which have numbered names, which might be an example of "non-recognizable" and effectively "non-understandable" regions; it is better to go with terms like "southeast Louisiana" which turns out to be a region name defined as an economic development region and in other usages. --doncram 11:21, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Emergency preparedness regions, vaguely defined tourist regions, random other state partitions... if only there were some universally recognized sub-state division that has functioned well for us for an entire decade, has innumerable ready-made maps all over Wikipedia, and already has an entire system built up around it on our Progress page. Yea... If only that kind of thing existed.  --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:52, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Issues with North Cascades National Park listings and template

The National Register of Historic Places listings in North Cascades National Park and corresponding template Template:NRHP in North Cascades NP seem to have a few issues with listed properties.
As we can read in the North Cascades NP article and the North Cascades NP map, the North Cascades NP itself is a part (comprised of a northern and a southern unit) of the North Cascades National Park Complex. The complex contains the NP and two NRA (Ross Lake NRA and Lake Chelan NRA).
Some NRHP properties (like the two Backus-Marblemount Ranger Station Houses) from the Ross Lake NRA have been included, while most of the properties from Lake Chelan NRA are not.
I'm a little uncertain if i should add missing ones, considering the template and listing page being about the NP Complex, or should remove properties that are not belonging, considering the template and listing page being strictly about the NP. ProprioMe OW (talk) 12:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I created most or all of the park lists. Given the interlaced nature of North Cascades with Ross Lake I think they should be combined. Some of the properties were ambiguously located, and the list could certainly be updated and revised. Lake Chelan is less certain to me, since many of the Lake Chelan properties area across a divide and have little to do with the North Cascades units. Acroterion (talk) 01:01, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

80% illustrated soon

I just noticed at WP:NRHPPROGRESS that as of July 14, 79.6% of the sites are illustrated, up from 79.5% on July 3, and 79.0% on May 30. Quick calculations and/or guessing says that we'll hit 80% around Sept. 1. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:04, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Titles

Per WP:Listname, "A common practice is to entitle list articles as List of ___ (for example List of Xs)." So, I moved National Register of Historic Places listings in Glacier County, Montana to List of properties on the National Register of Historic Places in Glacier County, Montana. User:Magicpiano reverted, advising that I start a discussion here. I don't see any problem with following WP:Listname in this instance. Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:50, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

First, WP:Listname is a guideline and explicitly allows for exceptions; there are plenty of lists that don't start with "List of". Second, there are several thousand lists that follow the present naming convention for National Register lists (see WP:NRHPPROGRESS), so renaming one isn't doing much good. Third, this has been discussed here before; the present naming appears to date to 2008, in which debate the logic behind the current naming is given. Lastly, nitpickers will observe that "List of properties on the" elides districts, which are not properties but collections of them. Magic♪piano 18:11, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Agree with the Piano guy. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:04, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
NPS uses the word "properties" to cover districts since the districts are owned by some individual or group. See, for example, "The National Register of Historic Places documents the appearance and importance of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in our prehistory and history. These properties represent the major patterns of our shared local, State, and national experience." Regarding the talk page discussion in 2008, I don't see a consensus for the current wording; one commenter even said, "a small number of people seem to be hell-bent on getting their way". WP:Listname does allow for exceptions, but I don't see why one would be needed here. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:08, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
The "common practice" of this project is to use the current naming format. I think that the usage of this format by a large and active project for a considerable time denotes consensus. I see no reason to change anything - what benefit would there be to readers or anyone. MB 03:02, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
It's not a big deal. I was reverted with a suggestion that I comment here. I prefer following the project-wide common practice described at WP:Listname absent a reason to do otherwise, but do not intend to edit-war about it. Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:38, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Notability tag on NRHP properties

Hi,

There was a notability tag placed on the Smith-Bontura-Evans House article. I thought that NRHP properties were considered notable. Am I wrong?

Related, and I am not sure where to ask, Bernheimer Building is a state historic property. If you know, is that sufficient for notability?

Thanks!–CaroleHenson (talk) 00:56, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed the tag on the first one - I agree, it's on the NRHP and is notable.
My inclination is to say the same for the second, as it's been designated by the state of Mississippi, but I'm not 100% on that one. 95%, yes, but not 100%. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 01:03, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your help. I just found Wikipedia:WikiProject Historic sites and will try there.–CaroleHenson (talk) 01:08, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Buildings in Savannah Historic District (Savannah, Georgia)

This article is tagged for too much detail, and I agree, but am not quite sure what to do about it. My initial thought is to keep the intro section and delete all the subsections, which are essentially just lists. Your input would be very helpful.–CaroleHenson (talk) 08:37, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

On the first sight that appears to be a list of contributing propertys in the Savanna historic District including the year in which those buildings were build. --Matthiasb (talk) 23:00, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, it is from the inventory or list of contributing properties. there are 1767 items in the inventory so this is clearly too many for one article. (Note that a list of 2561 is technically possible on Wikipedia) It may not be too many for a gallery or category (which can be placed in some order) over at Commons, but you might want to check with the Commoners on that.
To cut lists of buildings in HDs down to some reasonable size I usually look for the nomination form (from Savannah Historic District (Savannah, Georgia)) but it only seems to mention about 20 individual buildings. One list I did like this in Colonial Germantown Historic District had the inventory broken down into significant, contributing, and non contributing buildings - I just used the significant ones, plus a few personal favorites, to get 579 (514 contributing or significant) down to 47 for the list.
Another big list I did like this is Cape May Historic District - in that case there is no inventory available, but there are lists of HABS buildings (obviously one of Jack Boucher's favorite places - he grew up about 50 miles north), and another list in a book written by the authors of the nomination. So 100 on the list.
If there is nothing like this, I'd suggest using a list or lists from (architectual) guidebooks. So a list of a hundred or so is possible, but not a list of 1767. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:52, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Charles B. Cluskey

I created a page for Charles B. Cluskey, who has 6 buildings accredited to him on the NRHP listing, mostly in Greek Revival Style,

  • Medical College of Georgia (later Georgia Health Sciences University) (1834-37), Augusta
  • Oglethorpe University (1837-40), Baldwin County near Milledgeville
  • Governor's Mansion (1837-39), Milledgeville
  • Mills House (1855), Griffin
  • U.S. Customs House and Court House (1861), Galveston
  • St. Simons Island lighthouse and keeper's residence (1869), St. Simons Island

and 2 buildings which are Georgia Historical Landmarks:

  • St. Vincent's Academy (1845), Savannah
  • Sorrel-Weed House (1853), Savannah

The "notability" of this architect has been questioned, and more than linking the sources stating the importance of his body of work, I'm not sure what I can do. The name was a red link in many Wikipedia pages, this is the reason why I created the page. Is there any other action I can put in place to prove notability?--Elisa.rolle (talk) 17:04, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Additional point to be considered, the three remaining houses not directly included into to NRHP listing,
  • Champion-McAlpin-Fowlkes House (1844), Savannah
  • Philbrick-Eastman House (1853), Savannah
  • Mary Marshall Houses, Savannah
are part of the whole Savannah Historic District, which is included into the NRHP as a whole.--Elisa.rolle (talk) 17:23, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
I'd say that the NRHP nominations are almost enough to show notability - just format them a bit more formally. Isn't there an article on him in the Georgia Encyclopedia? surely there must be some other reference. I see you edited Stephen Decatur Button who your article reminded me of. Architects can't all be Frank Lloyd Wright, and folks like Button and Cluskey are among the folks who created much of the fabric of American architecture. If you run out of ideas, I've got 2 more in case of emergency! Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:10, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
I see you already had the New Georgia Encyclopedia ref (please incude some of the info there!), but there are also HABs photos, an embankment archeology project, a book on Georgia Architecture [7].
When in doubt google (idea 1). Idea 2 - when in doubt google Google Books. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:20, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
Smallbones, I'm working on Buildings in Savannah Historic District (Savannah, Georgia) and then I will expand Charles B. Cluskey. May you please weight in on the talk page for Charles B. Cluskey with this position? "folks like Button and Cluskey are among the folks who created much of the fabric of American architecture", this is my same opinion but it's not shared by the two other users.--Elisa.rolle (talk) 18:23, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

This AFD includes a number of NRHP-listed sites. Making the group aware. --Ebyabe talk - Health and Welfare06:01, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

It's nice that multiple NRHP editors from here showed up at the AFD to put in our routine "NRHP=notable, so Keep" type !votes. And I think it is 100% fine and good that the articles were created originally. And no one individual volunteer editor should be required by anyone to fix them up. But... the NRHP articles were created 10 years ago with minimal content, and have mostly been tagged as "NRIS-only" since 2013, and I am coming around to thinking that it is fair for such articles to be deleted if they are not immediately improved. All of their valid content is included in corresponding county list-articles, anyhow. To make the NRHP WikiProject look a bit better, could others perhaps help out developing these a bit now? :)
The NRHP-listed ones, for which NRHP documents should be available, are:
I added NRHP reference and a bit more to the first of these just now. --doncram 17:55, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Deletion doesn't take the place of article improvement. Ntsimp (talk) 20:03, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
FWIW, I added full NRHP document and photos references to the 7 articles, and the AFD was closed "Keep" with suggestion the non-NRHP ones could be renominated for deletion. Currently Florida has the most "NRIS-only" NRHP articles, with about 780 in Florida out of less than 3,000 remaining nation-wide. --doncram 23:37, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Sagrada Familia de Lemitar Church, Los Dulces Nombres

Not sure whether this is being delisted or not. They had a wall collapse, and it's not entirely clear whether they made repairs or rebuilt the thing entirely. Mangoe (talk) 03:02, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Suydam House

Suydam House, an article related to this project, has been nominated for deletion. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 01:00, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Instead of just showing up to vote "Keep" at this AFD and others, could the NRHP project develop the article? (Right, you can just argue wp:AFDISNOTFORCLEANUP at the AFD, but still, it seems better to develop in response to criticism.
Suydam House is a New York State NRHP article, created with NRHP nomination document, and like probably the majority of New York State NRHP articles, the article focuses on descriptive information without much asserting/explaining historic importance. Also as with almost all NYS articles, the reference links no longer work and new permalinks to NYS documents seem not to be possible. After bumping around in the current NYS system, following advice at wp:NRHPHELP#New York, i find my way to the nomination document for it, and I find a quote on its page 9 that explains its importance which I would quote here and/or in the article but the interface won't even let me copy-paste from it. :( Does anyone have a magical way to permalink or any other advice about NYS documents? --doncram 20:32, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

NRHP nomination photos

It is my understanding that the photographs attached to an NRHP nomination, in general, are not considered free-use and therefore cannot be uploaded to the Commons. The exception would be, as I understand it, photos taken by a federal government employee as part of his of her work for the government. At this time there are ten NRHP nomination photos in the Commons' main NRHP category. One has been nominated for deletion, and there is a discussion between the person who uploaded the photo and the person who nominated it for deletion here. In this instance, the uploader credited NPS but tagged it as a photo taken by a government employee. I could find no evidence that it was. On the other nine photos, the uploader credited himself or herself for the photos. I have my doubts. I was going to nominate the other nine for deletion and give support for the other nomination, but I wanted to make sure I am on firm ground first. I searched for an answer, but I didn't find anything satisfying. Thanks. Farragutful (talk) 20:08, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Farragutful, I think you are spot on with your concerns. That user, like many before, incorrectly assumed that photos submitted with NRHP application are in the public domain. (Aside: we oughta press the National Park Service to change their requirements, so that submitted photos are put into the public domain!) I chimed in at the deletion request about the Alexander Plantation photo, and hope you will raise the other issues (did they credit themself for the uploading of photos they didn't take?). Glad you are on the case! --doncram 18:09, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

James A. Wetmore

Wetmore was the head of the office that designed federal buildings in the early 20th century. He was a lawyer/administrator who ran the office of 1700 (mostly architects and draftsmen) that designed thousands of federal buildings. His title was "acting" Supervising Architect (head of the office, which was usually led by an architect). He always used "acting" specifically because he was not an architect himself. So he didn't design buildings in any way except to specify things like budgets. As explained in the article lead, he is often incorrectly described as the architect of many federal buildings. We have this situation within WP, often in NRHP infoboxes. I propose that his name be replaced with the name of the office when the actual architect is not known. US Post Office-Racine Main is one example that already does something similar; most just list Wetmore as architect. MB 19:24, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

List of monuments and memorials of the Confederate States of America

List of monuments and memorials of the Confederate States of America and related articles are getting a lot of attention right now. I invite project members to help create standalone articles for many of the monuments listed here. I have created many redirects to this page, but I think there is potential for many new articles. --Another Believer (Talk) 15:37, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Delistings

Thanks to one editor whose name I forget, we have delistings on a great majority of county and sub-county lists on which they belong. These delistings are typically mentioned in the intro to the list, but inconveniently, the wording varies significantly from list to list. In some cases, this is good — rather than simply giving the ordinary barebones intro, someone's developed the list intro by a significant amount and included the delistings in a relevant location. See National Register of Historic Places listings in Downtown and Midtown Detroit for an example of a developed intro, although it doesn't include the delistings. Customising the intros is helpful, and I'm specifically not talking about such pages.

We still have a bit of variety in non-customised pages. Many of them use my typical format (often because I added the header and footer), e.g. Hinds County, Mississippi or Fremont County, Colorado — "Another X properties [or "Another property"] were formerly listed but have been removed". Pages using other formats include Garza County, Texas ("...listed on the National Register in the county, and one former listing."), at Winn Parish, Louisiana ("One property was once listed, but has since been removed."), Androscoggin County, Maine ("Six other sites once listed on the Register have been removed."), and Penobscot County, Maine ("Four properties were once listed, but have since been removed from the register.").

I think it would be helpful if we picked one style and stuck with it on all pages where the intro hasn't been customised. Once we pick a style, a bot can replace "my typical format" with that style, and then someone can run AWB to fix the rest. Any disagreement with that idea? If so, please explain why. If not, which of these formats, or what other format, do you believe best? I'm not fond of the Garza County text, because in some states the NHLs are mentioned in the same sentence (e.g. Woodford County, Kentucky: "There are 83 properties and districts listed on the National Register in the county, of which one is a National Historic Landmark."), and for myself I'd most support something like "Another [property/X properties] in the county that was/were listed on the Register has/have been removed."

So...your thoughts, please? Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 00:28, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't see this aspect of county-level list-articles as much of an issue, relative to others that could be addressed in editorial campaign/policy. And I would think an AWB effort could find and replace word strings that are disliked, easily enough without bureaucracy and concerns of a bot request. Uniformity is not required; some variety of phrasing is good just for relieving monotony.
It's a perfectly fine question; I hope others might make a suggestion.--doncram 16:09, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
IMO technically "X properties were once listed, but have since been removed" could be improved. It seems a tad awkward; it may be interpreted to suggest that buildings were physically removed which may or may not in fact be the reason for all of a county's delistings. "Removed" is a word now being used in a different way, for Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials. Removing a monument from a public space to put it in storage or in a different publicly-accessible location does not change the NRHP-listed status for many of the Confederate monuments that are in fact listed. So offhand I suggest avoiding simple "have been removed" phrases. Perhaps something like: "Another X properties were at one time listed on the Register but have since been delisted.<ref group=note>Delistings occur when a property's historic integrity has been lost or diminished, such as when a building has been demolished.</ref>? --doncram 17:22, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
I like the Garza County text because it is succinct. We talk about about "listings" and the converse would be "former listings" which matches the section headings "Current Listings" and "Former listings". It would be nice to include Doncram's footnote to explain as suggested above; can this be done with a template so the text can be changed in one place if there is ever a reason to tweak it. MB 16:37, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

How often is the NRHP list updated?

There was a press release on July 28 that a place near me was added to the NRHP, but the county listing hasn't been updated. Is this delay unusual? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:44, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

County lists have for the most part not been updated from the NPS weekly lists since sometime in July, mainly because the editors who typically do so (mainly me and Ipoellet) have apparently been otherwise busy. (I presently have limited opportunities and time to do internet-related things, a condition that will continue into September.) Doing the updates is more tedious than hard to do, and has not been formally documented. Magic♪piano 04:04, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:54, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
I updated the lists for a few weeks about 6 years ago, and it is tedious. Most of it is just copy-and-paste off the NPS weekly update, but then comes the editing of the tables. That was the most time-consuming part. Einbierbitte (talk) 03:37, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
It's not as tedious as it used to be; there's now a script that will automatically renumber the tables, which was by far the most time-consuming part back in the old days. (I don't think anyone did that part by hand if they could help it; when I updated the lists a few years ago, I had an offline Python script that could do it before the user script existed, and the editor who did it before me used Excel.) TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 13:53, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Confusing issue with Massachusetts Mental Health Center

Our article on the Massachusetts Mental Health Center says that the Massachusetts Mental Health Center is on the NRHP -- as indeed it is. But that listing] cites the architecture of a now-demolished building; the current Massachusetts Mental Health Center is operating out of a new building nearby.

So, today, if you follow our information, you find a mental health center which has the correct name, but not same building (or geographical coordinates) as the NRHP listing is actually referring to.

And we do have a separate article on the historical building, the Boston Psychopathic Hospital.

So should the NRHP listing be described on the Massachusetts Mental Health Center page or the Boston Psychopathic Hospital page (or both)? And what should the geographical coordinates on the Massachusetts Mental Health Center page be? Pretty clearly the current center -- except that the information then clashes with the NRHP designation, as long as it's listed on that page. (I have corrected the coordinates on the Boston Psychopathic Hospital page.)

See also Talk:Massachusetts Mental Health Center#Which article for NRHP listing?.

There's also the question of which name to use (and which article to link to) at the list of National Register of Historic Places listings in southern Boston.

A pretty fussy, inconsequential issue, I admit, but it's nice to get these things right, if possible. —Steve Summit (talk) 11:52, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

It seems both articles are primarily about the NRHP listed building and should be MERGED. Since there is only a sentence or two about the new hospital - I see no indication that it is notable and should have a separate article. Boston Psychopathic Hospital should redirect to Massachusetts Mental Health Center and the coordinates updated to the NRHP building. MB 14:37, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

AFD on 29 Idaho NRHP articles

  Resolved

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bert and Fay Havens House, an AFD for 29 articles on National Register of Historic Places sites in Idaho. --doncram 21:22, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

WLM-US 2017

Just a note - WikiLovesMonuments-USA is being held this year and starts in about an hour. See Commons:Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2017_in_the_United_States. I'm not involved, but probably the best thing for us to do is make sure photos at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images get posted to the correct lists and articles. We haven't quite got up to 80% coverage of NRHP sites, but we should get there in about a week. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:07, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I recently added non-NRHP landmarks to the New York list. I tried to check and see if other people were adding similar lists to the local sections, and thankfully, they are. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 12:41, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
The above link is one of the pages I and a few others here have been working off in adding pictures to the lists. My experience that there are always some oddities, so my request is, that if anyone establishes that a certain picture does not belong the the templated object to please remove the nrhp template from the commons image and adjust the description/categories there as well. This will also help the organisers of WLM in distinguishing eligible from ineligible entries, and will help us here from duplicating the checking work. Agathoclea (talk) 12:50, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
I just removed five images from that list, because they're already added... in some cases by me. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:40, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

  I posted about the competition at WikiProject Oregon, and was asked if there exists a list of most needed unillustrated sites. Would anyone here happen to know? Thanks in advance. ---Another Believer (Talk) 16:55, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
  Are single sites allowed to be added to the local historic sites list? Because if not, feel free to redirect my addition of a site in Shinnecock Hills, New York. Actually, there might be a nearby site that's on NRHP that has no recent image yet. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:49, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Template?

I've noticed a lot of NRHP articles being created, and they seem to be based off the same article template for consistency purposes. I plan on creating some NRHP articles soon, and I've been unable to find the template itself. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks. CJK09 (talk) 01:25, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Assuming you're talking about the infobox creator, the tool used to generate that template is here. Note that the data from that tool (which comes from the National Register Information System) isn't 100% accurate and should be double-checked with other sources. TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 04:21, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
User:CJK09, please see wp:NRHPHELP which provides other guidance about creating NRHP articles, including national and state-specific sources to get to the good NRHP nomination documents which are now mostly available on-line (but it varies by state). It is much appreciated if you'd find and use the NRHP nomination document for a site right away, if it is in fact available. The NRHP infobox generator is indeed one good tool, useful for creating articles on topics NRHP-listed before mid-2010. Otherwise you can create an infobox by adapting one from another article. Glad you're interested in the area, feel free to come back with questions, and any comments/requests on the NRHPHELP resources. :) --doncram 15:41, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
This is super useful, thanks. CJK09 (talk) 15:59, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Samuel Osgood House

There's a requested move for Samuel Osgood House open. The RM itself doesn't seem to be in doubt, but another editor has brought up the question of where the current article should be moved: Samuel Osgood House (Massachusetts) or Samuel Osgood House (North Andover, Massachusetts)? I'm agnostic on the question, but would like to follow whatever is the established practice.

Anyone with an opinion or who can document the established practice is encouraged to chime in. TJRC (talk) 21:59, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Kansas City delisting

I'm working through some of the recent listings, and noticed that the Kansas City Public Library and Board of Education Building was listed on July 24, only to be promptly delisted on August 1. My searching so far has revealed no reason why. Has anyone else heard why the quick delisting happened? 25or6to4 (talk) 13:51, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

I dunno, but Here is the NRHP nomination document for Kansas City Public Library and Board of Education Building found by searching within Missouri's Department of Natural Resources website. It was prepared by Rachel Nugent, Senior Historic Preservation Specialist, of Rosin Preservation, LLC, is dated March 2017, and it gives the preparer's phone number. --doncram 14:33, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
The best thing to do would be to contact the Missouri SHPO for an explanation. Magic♪piano 01:43, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
It looks like the school district was looking to sell the building in 2015, and was considering demolition as a possibility. It might be that the building was nominated for the NRHP in a last-ditch effort to preserve it, but it got demolished (or is scheduled to be demolished) anyway, though I can't find anything to confirm that. It's happened before, though; the Purple Hotel was demolished a month after it was listed, though it's still on the NRHP for some reason. (Maybe the real surprise here is that the NPS actually delisted a building without waiting years after its demolition first.) TheCatalyst31 ReactionCreation 01:49, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
See The Chadwick in Indianapolis, subjected to the wrecking ball in January 2011 on an emergency basis because it had experienced a massive fire on the day before, and delisted something like two months later. Exceptions exist, of course, but Indiana tends to be pretty good at submitting delistings promptly. Nyttend (talk) 22:01, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

tweaks for Georgia state-wide navigation template

I have used the {{Georgia county NRHP navbox}} and similar other templates at the top of county list-articles without paying attention to whether they have a standard format. In this 2-edit change I modified the Georgia one to include a link to the state-wide list-article, which is where you want to go if you have to see a map to figure out the next county list-article you want to visit. Is there a standard wording and formatting to provide that link, or a better example from some other state?

And, hmm, is there a category of NRHP-related templates that it should be included into? Category:NRHP templates (currently a redlink)? Also Template:NRHP date for lists and some other NRHP templates are in Category:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places so maybe there is a need for a new category. Anyhow I don't see a narrower NRHP templates category where other states' county NRHP navboxes might be located. --doncram 22:40, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

The awkwardness of this setup is that some of these navboxes are meant for use atop lists, others are meant for use at the bottom of articles and lists, and yet others are used for both. We ought to be uniform: either all of them should be used for both purposes, or all of them should be used for just one purpose. Beyond not knowing of a category that serves your needs, I don't see how one could really exist, unless it covers literally all project-related templates. Nyttend (talk) 22:49, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Scratch that — see Category:National Register of Historic Places templates. Nyttend (talk) 22:50, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

80% - 2 pix

It looks like we're up to the 80% mark for sites illustrated, or at least 79.999% according to the last numbers at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress on the 9th. A couple of years ago I said that there really wouldn't be a point having another photo contest ala WLM once we're above above 80% illustrated. That all we'd end up doing is getting more pix of the same 80% - the last 20% of the sites are different in many respects.

It might be useful to have another contest if we were to aim particularly at specific areas, or specific themes. Let's wait until October 10th or so to see what happens with WLM this year. If anybody has ideas how to do WLM differently we should discuss it then. We'd probably need about 5 editors dividing up the work and a long lead time if we were to do it. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:46, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

The total NRHP count went up by 19 and the number illustrated went up by 34 since then, so the current score at wp:NRHPPROGRESS is over 80 percent now. In WikiProject Oregon, at wt:ORE#Wiki Loves Monuments there's discussion about where pics are needed, including request "I wish there was a cat or other listing of most-needed monument pics." And it turns out that while 138 pics are supposedly needed state-wide (with Oregon at 93.2% mark), there are only 19 needed (less than 1 percent, only .937%) once archeological sites / address-restriced places are set aside. The "Address restricted" icon is not being used in Oregon's NRHP lists to indicate no photo is wanted. In some other states where that icon is used, I think wp:NRHPPROGRESS reflects the percentage needed more accurately, but I think overall wp:NRHPPROGRESS understates "progress" / overstates how many photos are wanted. I think the wp:NRHPPROGRESS tracking count should be changed to measure the percent wanted accurately, perhaps using a different indicator template which just displays an all-grey square or displays nothing at all in states where editors dislike the address-restricted placeholder image, but which the NRHPPROGRESS program can recognize.
One thing the WLM could do differently is identify the "photos wanted" better, directing photographers away from showing the locations of address restricted sites, perhaps linking to an information statement about wanting pics of artifacts from museums, say, which do not show the actual site. And about working with state SHPOs and the national NRHP about updating "address restricted" status where appropriate, e.g. in cases where a state park now makes an archeological site open to the public.
Along similar lines technically, the WLM could identify where improved photos are wanted. E.g. it happens that the photo we've got for Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association Mercantile Store is one of those photos at dusk, like some i myself have contributed, and we'd really like a better pic. And especially where photos are of not-the-topic, such as photos of a driveway when it is not possible to access the property, or photos of a former site after a NRHP-listed building has been demolished, when what is clearly wanted is a pic of the actual building. Use another template within the NRHP list-articles to indicate these. Here local photographers could be directed to work with state SHPOs about getting NRIS to be updated and/or to get delistings to happen. And using the state-level errors we think exist, documented in wp:NRIS info issues.
Could the 2018 WLM campaign be devoted to taking inventory / verifying / improving information on the NRHP listings, perhaps revisiting all the NRHPs to verify they're still there? It would take working with the national NRHP to get a new NRIS database to work with, beforehand, which may possibly have been updated to correct some of what we think are errors, and possibly to go through one round of improvement where the national level can fix errors with or without SHPO involvement. An effort to be in touch with each states' SHPO, asking for a contact person to be designated, towards being ready to work with the public in September 2018, would require very long lead time, and could be very rewarding whether it works or not in very many states.
Anyhow, with or without this info focus, I would be happy to be one of five doing whatever is needed in this WikiProject sponsoring WLM next year. --doncram 17:17, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Is it too late to reformat my suggestions and consolidate individual sites into my own personal list of requested photographs? Also, I see a lot of pics being added that have no category, which could easily be corrected and removed from the "Unused photographs" page. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 21:23, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Hurricane path

 
Ebyabe's pic of 91 Broad Avenue S., one block from the Gulf of Mexico beach, Naples Historic District

Possibly more NRHP-listed sites in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands will be destroyed than in any previous year while this WikiProject has been going. How are NRHP editors who have been active in these areas? Good luck to you. --doncram 01:28, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure which historic sites in Florida have been destroyed... yet. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 21:18, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
I saw on TV that the gardens at Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens had quite a bit of damage, but they will recover. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:30, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Robert E. Lee Monument (Richmond, Virginia)

I just forked Robert E. Lee Monument (Richmond, Virginia) out from Monument Avenue, in case any project members want to make sure the forked article is tagged with NRHP-related categories, templates, banners, etc. Thanks! ---Another Believer (Talk) 03:02, 17 September 2017 (UTC)