Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Fall 2011 Photo Contest

Please leave any comments or questions on the Photo Contest here, or at

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Fall 2011 Photo Contest Best Photo

Question

If a photo replaces an older, black & white HABS photo, does it count as a new photo? Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 21:41, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd say no, if I were the judge, but other judges might view it differently. Smallbones (talk) 19:39, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I would also say no, unless there's some reason (i.e. a proper historical renovation) why a new picture would be superior to an older one. Teemu08 (talk) 19:13, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Distances

The "State Traveler" contest calls for the distance calculated by Google Maps. I assume that this means the shortest road distance offered by Google Maps. Is this correct, or is there a means of using GM to calculate the great-circle or straight-line-through-the-earth distance, and should I be using that instead? Ditto for the "Road Trip" contest: Google Maps shortest road distance? Ammodramus (talk) 15:52, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Shortest road distance from Google Maps sounds pretty simple to me - in your case 456 miles (I just checked). If somebody comes up with a trip of 455 miles, we can then look into some of the fine points, but road distance is pretty easily confirmed and shouldn't be at all controversial. BTW, I've just cancelled my trip to Eire, PA because of you! (Less than 420 miles!). Smallbones (talk) 00:53, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Simple in some ways; but I was trying to figure which of about 20 sites in Omaha was the farthest from Ft. Robinson. If it'd been a matter of straight-line or great-circle distance, I could've done it with a spreadsheet. However, with road distances, I have to enter each one, because one that's closer in a straight line might require backtracking by road...

Sorry about doing you out of your trip to Eire. Did all of the green dye flowing downstream from Chicago's St. Patrick's celebration change the ethnicity of the second-smallest Great Lake and the city that shares its name? Ammodramus (talk) 01:37, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

You're risking my ire here, but I'll just point out that the green dye goes down the Mississippi, not the St. Lawrence. Never trust a spell-checker! Smallbones (talk) 03:02, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

What about an overall winner (longest distance) and then honorable mentions (or state winners) for each state? That way we would encourage someone in Delaware or Rhode Island to make as long a road trip as possible, and not just limit ourselves to Texas or California or Alaska? Just an idea, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:15, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe we need a "Most States" contest, which would give an advantage to people in small states with lots of neighbors. Number of states might be a better metric for the "Road Trip" contest, too, since somebody could cover lots of distance with one photo at each end of a bicoastal flight. Ammodramus (talk) 21:04, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, this is getting silly. I uploaded photos of a new Nebraska site, and used Google Maps to calculate the distance between that and a second site for the "State Traveler" contest. Google Maps came up with a distance of 577 miles. Then, just for grins, I switched the origin and destination. This time, Google Maps came up with two routes: one of 580 miles, and one of 552 miles. I'm using the smallest of these distances as my entry in the contest; but if I hadn't checked, I'd have blithely entered the 577 miles, and then someone who'd happened to check up on my points in the other direction would've accused me (politely, of course, but nevertheless accusingly) of cheating to the tune of 25 miles. Just a warning, should one of the distance-covered contests come down to a difference of a few miles... Ammodramus (talk) 01:50, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

(Accusingly) I don't think anybody is going to come within 100 miles of you. But actually, shouldn't your total mileage be cut in half, because the one site is only half inside Nebraska? :P Ruhrfisch is too late, he shoulda come up with the "most states" challenge before we started. A "most counties" contest might also work. Maybe next year? But more seriously, should we do this again and try to make it a really serious contest, or is having fun the main idea? I'd go either way, but usually on things like this I try to have fun on things I take too seriously, and try to take seriously things that most people just have fun at. Smallbones (talk) 04:00, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I apologize - it looks like you've been bested by about 11 miles on the state list. If you want to calculate the distances "as the crow flies" (or purely from coords) please do, and present them to the sponsor/judge. It'll be up to him, of course, on what to do with the info. A more useful change to the rules probably has to wait until the next time we do a contest like this. Could you describe how to do the calculations just from coords, so that everybody would be able to do it? I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't do these calculations without a lot of research, and even then I'd want to have somebody check my work. Smallbones (talk) 16:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

If only I hadn't shot the Sioux County Courthouse (Nebraska) on an earlier Panhandle expedition... Still, I made User:Visitor7 work for it; it sounds as though he had to parachute into a roadless corner of the coastal mountains, ford a couple of rivers waist-deep in rushing snowmelt, battle a pack of sasquatchi, and then wait for the light to be right...

I'm content with Google Maps distances, for all the weirdness involved. Great-circle and chord distances aren't hard to calcluate on a sphere; unfortunately, the earth's an oblate spheroid, and the U.S. covers enough of a range in latitude that assuming a spherical geoid might cheat Wikipedians doing east-west trips across the southern part of the country; and in any case, I don't know how you'd calculate the great-circle equivalent on a spheroid. Ammodramus (talk) 22:09, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Interesting find

Don't you love the interesting places that you find while photographing these places? I had an afternoon off yesterday and I drove around in a city that I had lived in for over 10 years. I photographed a bunch of listings and was driving near my former employer. I noticed there was an effigy mound listed with Address Restricted and I had a hunch that I might know where it was. I drove to this park in a minor neighborhood and couldn't find the mounds. I thought that someone had mentioned there were mounds at that park during a company picnic. I drove back to the main drag and noticed a sign for an Indian Mound park. I had driven by it daily for 14 years but mustn't have paid attention well enough to visit it. I discovered a great park within a dozen blocks from my former employer! 15 acres with a neat trail between those mounds -- right under my nose. Has anyone else had a similar experience of discovery? Royalbroil 13:59, 10 December 2011 (UTC)