Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 47

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tranches and rotation of maintenance for NRHP articles

I'd be interested in rotating out of the maintenance stuff i do on NRHP-related disambiguation pages and list-articles in some parts of the country that i watchlist. I wonder sometimes if Sanfranman59 or Nyttend or others with a lot of NRHP list-articles on their watchlists would also like to rotate out. I've thought that we could split up NRHP material by geographic areas and allow an annual or other periodic changeover, like WikiProject Military History does, but maybe not with its formal elections process. One technical difficulty is that it might be hard to transfer responsibility to a new volunteer, who might not take on a full watchlist that you have built up.

For addressing Biography of Living Persons issues, a new innovation has come up: "tranches" of articles to watch. See User:Tony Sidaway/Living people/tranches. A volunteer can take on a swath of listed articles to watch, easily. This method, with a bot run, could be used to set up NRHP watchlists that could be divvied up differently and rotated. --doncram (talk) 16:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Aside

(this was a subsection within "Please change the standard citation to omit the link" --doncram (talk) 18:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
In the above "There are 36,000 articles in WikiProject NRHP now though," answers a question I've had for a long time - What percentage of NRHP sites have articles? The 36,000 may be a bit high for NRHP sites, as there are a few non-site articles in the Project. The number of sites is about 84,000 (?), which would give 3/7ths or about 42%. It seems high - maybe all the county lists make a big difference (2,000 or -2.5% ???).

The other long time question I have is how many of the sites are illustrated. This number could be more or less than the number of articles, since many sites are only illustrated on the county list articles, and not all articles are illustrated. Any idea on how to get this percentage? Smallbones (talk) 19:37, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

The number of articles is 36,420 plus any without wikiproject NRHP banner, minus 3,147 disambiguation pages, minus 2,274 list-articles, minus some other types, in color-coded assessment table at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places#Collaboration and review. But, there's no easy way to get number of illustrated articles. I manually counted up 2,059 pics for 5,140 New York state articles, in table at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in New York#NYS articles status, as of 1/2/2010, and the percentage is perhaps up to 50% by now. NYS is the biggest state but has Pubdog and Daniel Case and Lvklock and DanTD and others adding pics, including Dmadeo who completed out List of NHLs in NYC as one of the first big fully illustrated lists while back, so its percentage is relatively high. --doncram (talk) 00:41, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

That brings a question to my mind too. Is being on the NRHP list alone enough to warrant notability? I have to say I am more of an inclusionist and tend to follow the mantra that most things are interesting to someone but I am curious of the historical determinations. --Kumioko (talk) 19:50, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

This has been discussed before, most recently at the Village Pump here. Every NRHP nomination form I've ever seen has a list of sources that I believe would satisfy the GNG. So if you can find enough to say about a property, any of them could have its own article. Ntsimp (talk) 20:30, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks and no problem, I figured that was probably the answer but I wasnt sure. --Kumioko (talk) 20:42, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Fully illustrated and Address Restricted

I know it's rather vain, but I like to finish fully-illustrated lists. See National Register of Historic Places listings in Gloucester County, New Jersey, with 1 missing photo.

We had an extensive discussion recently about Address Restricted sites and photos of them, but I didn't understand the advice on this matter as being practical or specific.

I don't know that this is an archeological site - in fact New Jersey makes learning anything about their sites difficult to find anything about - but it is AR. Should I list this county as fully illustrated? Smallbones (talk) 18:53, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

If I might make a suggestion: whether or not lists with unphotographed Address Restricted sites "count" as fully illustrated, IF the concensus is, in general, not to photograph AR sites, someone should make a little 100X100 "Address Restricted" image to go in place of the photo. I think that would be more visually appealing than leaving it blank or, as Smallbones did, graying the space out, because it would make the image column look continuous. It has the added benefit of filling in all the listings with an appropriate image, so the list "feels" fully illustrated, even if it technically isn't. Andrew Jameson (talk) 21:18, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I made such an image - see the upper right corner - and will be glad to tweak it as suggested. I also added it to a sample list sp you can see how it looks there. If people like it, I will upload the tweaked version on Commons and delete this version. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:37, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

This is nit-picky, but I'd prefer a non-white background--light gray would be fine, or some reasonable pastel--so that the image visually fills the box it's in. Take a look at the other images in National Register of Historic Places listings in Gloucester County, New Jersey; there's a white one- or two-pixel space between the image and the table border which would be nice to mimic. (edit: Looking really close, the table background isn't quite the pure white of the image, so technically there is a small border, but the colors are so close on my monitor that I can't tell the difference without looking really obliquely.) (And thanks for leaping on my suggestion. Yay cooperation! :) Andrew Jameson (talk) 21:56, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I have added a light grey background. Is this better? Please nitpick away ;-) I originally tried putting the words on a red circle with a diagonal slash, but that looked silly. May have to WP:BYC to see the new version. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 22:11, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Nitpicking - I'd prefer a lighter shade of gray, smaller letters, and 100w x 80h. My reasoning is that the "AR picture" should jump out at you a bit less - part of the Great AR Debate was that our blank spaces jump out at editors and make folks want to fill them. A little subtler "AR picture" should do the trick. BTW, I am far from arguing that all AR sites should have this - but if they are subject to looting or just impossible to get info on, this seems the best way. And my original question (vain as it may be): Does it "count" as a fully-illustrated list? Smallbones (talk) 22:44, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely, yes, it counts! --doncram (talk) 23:05, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree it counts. I made the AR image lighter grey, with smaller letters, and only 100 by 80 pixels. Is it OK or does it need more tweaks? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:39, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I like it, and I agree with pretty much everything else said above. Andrew Jameson (talk) 01:01, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Like it. Ego properly soothed. I've listed Gloucester County on the FI list as:

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Gloucester County, New Jersey: 31 listings + 1 AR, November 2010

BTW totaled up the FI list and there are exactly 100 counties (or other geographical areas) and 3120 pix on all these lists. Smallbones (talk) 01:11, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

(out) The image is on Commons now. I had to rename it as File:Address restricted.PNG‎, as there was already a file named File:Address Restricted.png. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, team! :) Have to look thru the Florida lists to see which ones can be considered "fully illustrated" now. Next month, prolly, after my photo roadtripping binge of late will have settled down. And the pics resulting therefrom have all been sorted, uploaded, categorized, and so on. Allons-y! --Ebyabe (talk) 06:42, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank, Ruhrfisch; I'm looking forward to doing my fully-illustrated dance for some Nebraska counties that've hung up on AR sites.

Could I suggest, though, that we not use the AR graphic too freely? I'd propose that it not be used unless and until a serious effort has been made to get a photo for the site. Otherwise, photographers like Smallbones and I, who get an ego-boost from adding a county to the fully-illustrated list, might be tempted to skip some sites that we might otherwise be able to track down and photograph. Ammodramus (talk) 23:06, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Here i disagree. I'd rather put the AR graphic everywhere it applies, and remove the implicit call for local photographers to search for and reveal the locations of the address restricted places. Only if there is positive documentation that an archeological site is publicly revealed, documentation which meets a pretty good standard (e.g. state SHPO says the place is publicly known), should we remove the AR graphic. Use it freely, remove it rarely. --doncram (talk) 23:17, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Applying the AR graphic by default would place it on a great many non-archaeological sites. Too-free use of the AR graphic removes much of the incentive for WP photographers (at least for shallow, ego-driven photographers such as I) to find and photograph sites that really shouldn't be address-restricted at all. Ammodramus (talk) 01:45, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

How about - for archeological sites - apply the graphic freely, remove rarely; for obviously non-archeological sites apply rarely, remove freely; where it's unclear apply if there is no good info after a good search for sources, use your judgement in removing. Smallbones (talk) 02:06, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Is there a list of NRHP articles that still need to be created?

I noticed on the NRHP that there appears to be 85,822 properties listed on the website but only about 36000 have articles in WP. Is there a list or something somewhere that shows which ones still need to be created? --Kumioko (talk) 18:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Look at the red links on the state, county, or other geographical lists, e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in Nebraska, National Register of Historic Places listings in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, National Register of Historic Places listings in Northwest Philadelphia.

Smallbones (talk) 18:52, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Im building a list of US related articles that need to be created and adding it to the WPUS page. If you take a look in a couple days there should be a bunch there. --Kumioko (talk) 18:58, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I have a question regarding these missing articles. If a way could be devised to create these articles in an automated or semi automated fashion (they would probably only be stubs though) would that be of interest to the project. To create 50K articles manually over time (assuminng that all NRHP articles are notable that is) will take a long time and after looking at the fairly consistent structure of the content of the NRHP site I think this might be possible. This would allow at least something to be said about them and allow others to expand on them. --Kumioko (talk) 19:23, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

There was an attempt to do that (see User:NrhpBot); I believe it wasn't a great success. I'm personally opposed to the mass creation of stubs (IMO a redlink is a greater to incentive to write an article than a stub is). ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 20:04, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, the problem with red links is that most users wont create one (or cant) but if a stub for something exists they are much more apt to jump in and edit it or expand it. Based on the conversation developing below though I am less inclined to think its able to be done. --Kumioko (talk) 20:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Template:NRHP-PD and NRHP PD material

I noticed the following dated from this summer Template:NRHP-PD which gives

which would be useful if we were copying anything directly from the NRHP to avoid plagiarism problems. I'm just wondering whether there is any useful information that can be copied directly from the NRHP that is public domain?

The obvious question is whether the nomination forms are PD. I'd argue that the are since they are administrative rulings of the government. The principle is essentially the same as for why court cases can't be copyrighted. The nominations themselves ARE the National Register, and the National Register itself is a Federal government document that everybody has the right to access, copy, etc. Nevertheless, I've tried this argument before regarding photos in the NRHP and it has been rejected here. (Are photos somehow different?) The counterargument was that the photos were produced by individuals who had copyright before they submitted them to the NRHP. Does the same reasoning apply to the written government form (the nomination)?

Before anybody goes and tries to copy a nomination directly, I have to say that this would in general make for an awful article. Too much editing would be needed to make for a readable article. But in some cases it could be useful, particularly info from summaries. I'll put a particular case below, which some may think muddies the water for the general issue. Smallbones (talk) 19:16, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Typically all works legal or otherwise generated by the US government are freely usable. However I think it is very bad form and just plain lazy to copy paste information from any site, even government for use in WP. As far as the images go, IMO if they are displayed on the NRHP site then they should fall under the Govt distribution clause unless stated explicity otherwise or are works done by an artist not working for the gov (such as paintings or statues). Im not a lawyer though. --Kumioko (talk) 19:23, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

(ec)"Generated by" might be controversial here, and I dont know about the "Govt distribution clause." There has been (and probably should be!) fairly direct copying from the General Services Administration site, with proper attribution and good editing to put it in our format. I support this copying in that it gets a very good article up and running right away, and provides a platform for further writing, editing, photos, etc. that Wikipedia can be very good at. The key to avoiding bad form is the attribution - which is what the above template is all about. Smallbones (talk) 19:45, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Specific example - the Dorrance Mansion is covered fairly well at http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/delaware/dor.htm which at first glance appears to be a NRHP website. No such luck - it is done by a consortium or some such - of which the NRHP is the leader. So no direct copying with attribution - which could easily get rid of dozens of red links if all the material from that website could be used. It turns out that the site's article on the Dorrance Mansion is just a summary of the nomination form - done by an intern AT a local college, not a NRHP intern FROM a local college. My biggest problem with using the material from that website is that I would be plagiarizing the Nomination form (word-for-word in most paragraphs). If the material was PD i wouldn't have that problem (there were other problems, however, such as the accuracy of her summary). Smallbones (talk) 19:45, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

In general consensus has been to avoid using either text or images. Both are in many cases prepared by private individuals, consultants or state officials who are not working for the Federal government either as employees or as contractors. Therefore, regardless of what's posted by the NPS in the fine print at the bottom of the screen, their work is not PD because the NPS has no authority to waive their rights. I've made specific inquiry to the NPS about images, and their answer is that it's the responsibility of the end user to determine copyright/public domain status, and that it is very unlikely that material posted at NPS Focus can be used in a free-content environment; the same condition would certainly apply to text. Acroterion _(talk) 19:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting thanks for clearing that up for me. --Kumioko (talk) 19:43, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Which would mean that the template is essentially useless - it implies PD material where there is essentially none.!?

I came to a similar conclusions back when this template was created (see Archive 41). Send it to WP:TFD maybe? ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 19:58, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Note that nomination forms completed by federal employees (this is often the case with listings located within national parks) are in the public domain. But I agree, it's poor style to merely copy text from a nomination form. Bms4880 (talk) 19:59, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear - I don't think that articles such as United States Post Office and Courthouse (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), which is taken with attribution from the GSA website, are in any way "poor style." We could use many more of these articles and have a link to the source at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/GSA federal building links. We should understand that we've got over 50,000 articles to go - see above thread - and can use all PD sources available to us. One similar situation involved copying the PD biographies of all US Congressmen, that was done a long time ago on Wikipedia. I find those copies to be an invaluable resource from time to time, and note that many of these bios have now been much improved. To the extent that we can use PD sources - I think we should, at least as a start to articles. Copying a NRHP nomination verbatim, however, would certainly be bad form - if only because they are nearly unreadable to a general audience. Smallbones (talk) 22:13, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Fully Illustrated Lists

This has been a banner month for fully illustrated NRHP lists (see project page). I count 7 FI lists completed in November. Dear to my heart is National Register of Historic Places listings in Central Chicago completed by User:Alanscottwalker with 113 listings (6th largest among FI lists). Central Chicago is one of America's architectural jewels and certainly deserves a FI list. User:Bobak topped up large lists in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, MN (which have a couple of nice grain elevators!). New York State has several - too many to track down all the attributions - probably by User:Pubdog and the usual NY NRHP mafia. User:Ammodramus is keeping up his usual pace in Nebraska. User:Royalbroil completed National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Wisconsin#Green_Lake_County. Apologies for anybody I left off. Smallbones (talk) 17:46, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Monadnock Building at FAC

The NRHP/NHL article Monadnock Building is now a Featured Article candidate. People on this project may be interested in the review. --Nasty Housecat (talk) 21:42, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

NRHP-Gov image links

Where is everybody getting the links of images of NRHP sites from the official NRHP website? Because every time I try, I keep getting the error message "The PDF file for this National Register record has not yet been digitized." I really need this for two sites; Wakefield Upper Depot, and any historic district that Wilson (Amtrak station) might be in, assuming the station is in a historic district. ----DanTD (talk) 00:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

As a thought, have you also looked at the HABS/HAER photos here]? Einbierbitte (talk) 17:11, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the files containing nominations and photos for NRHP listings in most of the U.S. have not yet been added to the NPS Focus website. --Orlady (talk) 18:08, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

In the past I have had good luck with contacting a user in that area and asked them to take a picture and upload it. --Kumioko (talk) 18:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Einbierbitte, I took your suggestion and none of the HABS/HAER photos had anything to do with either location. I still don't know if Wilson Station is part of any historic district. Rocky Mount (Amtrak station) is apparently part of one, but I forgot what it was. ----DanTD (talk) 04:30, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Version 0.8 followup

Hi, and thank you for your feedback on the Version 0.8 selection. Unfortunately, I can't see any of the articles being added for now - we look at a lot of stats for judging the articles, but they usually have to be pretty major/mainstream topics to be included. The FAs listed all seem to be fairly specialized. If you know of any specific reasons that the stats may be wrong, or if I've overlooked something, please let me know. Likewise, with the articles you propose removing: These are often crosslisted with other WikiProjects, and may well have been included for those projects' reasons. That means we typically need a strong, specific reason for removing an article, such as gross copyright violations (that occurred on some Wagner operas) or a technical glitch on our part, etc. Please let me know if any of these "to be removed" articles fall into that category. Sorry I couldn't be more positive this time, but I still appreciate the time you've taken to look over our selection. Thanks again, Walkerma (talk) 05:48, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

A consideration for cross project consolidation of talk page templates

I have started a conversation here about the possibility of combining some of the United States related WikiProject Banners into {{WikiProject United States}}. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please take a moment and let me know. --Kumioko (talk) 04:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Ackerville Baptist Church of Christ

This short NRHP stub, by me, is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ackerville Baptist Church of Christ. Altairisfar 17:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

It was speedily kept - with almost all 8 commenters saying that NRHP sites are (almost) automatically notable. Smallbones (talk) 04:00, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

A civil discussion about sources

Hi there. We're having a discussion about a few sources including letters by the National Park Service (regarding eligibility and/or listing on the NRHP) as well as letters and photos by a state historical society and their status in articles about historical buildings. These are sources that were found at the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office and will impact future NRHP articles in Minnesota. It would be nice to set a consensus policy now, as this could easily be a problem elsewhere. If you find this of interest, please take a look at the discussion at Talk:Salvation Army Headquarters (Saint Paul, Minnesota) and let us know your opinion. Thank you. --Bobak (talk) 07:53, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Suggested policy change to the tagging of non article items

I have submitted a proposal at the Village pump regarding tagging non article items in Wikipedia. Please take a moment and let me know what you think. --Kumioko (talk) 02:00, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

One percent of Wikipedia

We have 36,640 articles tagged by the WikiProject now, including 2,000 list-articles and 3,000 disambiguation pages. There are some NRHP list-articles and individual articles lacking Talk pages and Wikiproject tagging, and there are many articles tagged by us that are not primarily about NRHP-listed places. But, notice this is 1% of 3,483,756 articles in the English wikipedia (per Template:numberofarticles). I think that's pretty amazing, that we have this many articles in progress, where local editors can arrive and add pics and develop material.

We're being translated into Portuguese now, too: see Anexo:Marco Histórico Nacional na Dakota do Sul for the South Dakota NHL list. --doncram (talk) 00:24, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

1% of Wikipedia articles is pretty amazing. It's probably not 1% of text since our articles are often stubs or otherwise quite short. On the other hand, we do have a lot of nice photos ;-) Yes 1% is pretty amazing. Congrats to (fill your name in here). Smallbones (talk) 04:58, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Compare to WikiProject SHIPS, with 41,442 now per its stats. It has 1,000 fewer lists, 1,000 more disambiguation pages, but has 7,000 more category pages than we do. So about the same number of basic articles + list-articles. They have many more featured articles and lists than we do, however. --doncram

Thats not even inlcuding the 30,000+ NRHP related articles that havent been created yet. --Kumioko (talk) 16:57, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

glad I could help .... I think I've done abt 3,000--Pubdog (talk) 03:12, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

omissions and incorrect inclusions

I just discovered that 5 NRHP listings during 2008 were omitted from one county list-article, because its March 1st table-izing used the NRIS version then available, and didn't capture items covered in the March 13, 2009 and still-current version of NRIS. I detailed this out at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Douglas County, Nebraska#Park Avenue Apartment District. How many of our list-articles would the same problem apply to? Also recently Nyttend found several list-articles, including National Register of Historic Places listings in Poughkeepsie, New York which erroneously presented as NRHP-listed, places that in fact were not NRHP-listed in the end due to owner objections. I surmise those are cases where table-izing was done prior to our knowing more about the NRIS codes for owner objection. I think overall we've been rather conscientious, but can't stop all errors. I suppose there are other types of errors of omission and incorrect inclusion that we could have made. Sanfranman59 reports that a new version of NRIS is coming available soon. Is there some way we could use the new version to audit the accuracy of some of our county lists? Should we? --doncram (talk) 18:32, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

More NRHP infobox shrinkage

I just found out that the NRHP portion of the infobox in Bayport Aerodrome has shrunk in half. Can anybody fix this? ----DanTD (talk) 02:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Construction equipment on the Register

Having just finished Marion Steam Shovel (Le Roy, New York), and having some pictures of Dipper Dredge No. 3 that I will at some point upload, I'm wondering if we have enough old construction equipment listed on the Register outside of upstate New York to justify a "Construction equipment on the National Register of Historic Places" category (and, by extension, enough created articles). There's got to be a few more out there.

If we do create this, maybe we can also create a higher-level cat along the lines of "Heavy machinery on the National Register of Historic Places" to hold the construction equipment and the locomotives, all to be part of a general "Industry-related listings on the National Register of Historic Places" topic cat I think we could have eventually. Daniel Case (talk) 23:50, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

A general "Industry-related listings on the National Register of Historic Places" topic cat might be too big - as there are a lot of industrial buildings, which I don't think you had in mind. Train freaks might object to mixing steam shovels with locomotives lest their thoughts get derailed.

BTW, I just saw some great grain elevator pix in Ramsey and Hennepin Counties, MN. Smallbones (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Grain elevators are agricultural facilities, not industrial ones. I didn't mean that the "industry-related" cat would contain actual articles, just other cats (save for any oddball listings that probably couldn't fit into other categories, the way San Francisco cable car system is in Category:Listings related to transportation on the National Register of Historic Places). My idea was that since locomotives and construction equipment are both heavy machinery, a cat for both those cats might make sense. I really don't care what foamers think. Daniel Case (talk) 22:02, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Just FYI, Smallbones might want to check out the page List of grain elevators. --Orlady (talk) 18:13, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Neat, see Zip Feed Mill for a particularly dramatic photo. BTW Canada kicks US butt on this list, I'll suggest that anybody who knows of an NRHP grain elevator add it to the list. For those of you who don't think that a grain elevator can be beautiful or industrial (or even beautiful and agro-industrial at the same time) I'll suggest taking a look. (Sometimes US east coasters can be so provincial!) Smallbones (talk) 01:22, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Franklin Feed Mill in 2009

The Franklin Feed Mill makes the list at National Register of Historic Places listings in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin and I took a photo. I didn't find it to be a particularly interesting or unusual structure so I was surprised it was on the register. Royalbroil 03:46, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Having fixed the link above, one can see that the locomotives already have their own category; if you want to make that a subcategory of your proposed heavy machinery category, that's fine, but I don't think it would be just the foamers who would object to losing that category. Mangoe (talk) 17:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Two listings for one property?

A few minutes ago, User:Ebyabe addressed a problem to me; Apparently the Opa-Locka Railroad Station and the Harry Hurt Building have the same address. I have a strong feeling that they're the same place, especially since the picture he took of the Harry Hurt Building looks a lot like a railroad station. ----DanTD (talk) 17:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

They aren't, though there are a bunch of people out there who think they are. If you follow the geohack for the railroad station, the pointer is almost due west of the actual station, which is the longer building on the north side of the tracks just eastbound of the present station platforms. The pointer for the Hurt building by contrast is directly south of the actual building. The confusion is that the they have the same street number, but on different streets: the train station is 490 Ali Baba, and the Hurt building, while one side of it is also on Ali Baba, is on 490 Opa Locka Boulevard. It would help if the coordinates were a bit more accurate. Mangoe (talk) 18:02, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I just went through Geohack, and I looked at GoogleMaps Street View, and I saw a "490" on the northwest corner of Opa-Locka Boulevard and Ali Baba Avenue(which is not along the tracks). When I zoomed in on it, I found it had the name "Logan Executive Center" over the door. I think we should bring Ebyabe to this discussion. ----DanTD (talk) 18:42, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I updated the address on his list of addresses and directed him back here. I'm not sure how to go about getting the picture renamed since I'm not active on Wikimedia. Mangoe (talk) 18:57, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, this book says the Hurt Building has a second floor. The building I thought was the Hurt Building has no second floor, but does have 490 on one of the doors. I'll look at this more later, when I've got more time. I can always have the photos deleted and re-upload them with corrected names, if it comes to that. --Ebyabe (talk) 19:02, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean now. Dang, I drove right by that place! I'll do the delete and re-upload the old RR building pictures. I'd hoped not to have to go back to Opa-Locka, it's gone so downhill since I used to live in Miami. Oh well... --Ebyabe (talk) 19:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Well before you go back, can't you just do a mass-renaming of the existing pictures? I recommend "Opa-Locka SAL Railroad Station," or something to that effect. ----DanTD (talk) 21:08, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Let me know if you need a rename done for the pictures at Commons and I'll take care of it. I'm an admin at Commons. Please leave a message here on my talk page at the English Wikipedia. Royalbroil 03:55, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I happen to have some ready-made renaming tags for each pic. Unless Ebyabe has a reason to object to them, I'll post them on each one. ----DanTD (talk) 16:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Dan. Ebyabe had left a message on my talk page and I already did the rename before noticing your comment. Royalbroil 01:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

That's okay. As long as it was done. Now I'm just going to add them to the article, and even create a commonscat for it. ----DanTD (talk) 13:55, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

All Caps in ship names

Ever now and then I come across a NRHP list with a ship or shipwreck, and frequently the ship's name is given in ALL CAPS. This is because the ancient Federal database lists them that way, presumably because it was not capable of italic text. But is there any reason Wikipedia should copy this practice? If I correct these, will somebody jump down my throat or go around reverting me? Abductive (reasoning) 12:19, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

As long as you go with WP:MOSSHIP, I can't see a problem with that. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:35, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Discussed recently at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 45#ship vs. SHIP names. Please change to lower case italicized, e.g. show "USS Seattle (battleship)". Please post a note here if there is any contention or any reversions of your edits that way. This is a subject where i think there has been nearly 100% consensus out of editors participating in discussion on the topic. Any editor who disagrees should have to explain themselves and participate here, IMO. --doncram (talk) 03:06, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing of *all* infobox information

I was scrolling through my watchlist and saw that someone put a "citation needed" tag on The Kean--specifically, on the "year built" in the infobox. Adding a citation to the date would be trivially easy: not only is the year given in the NRIS, it's also given in *both* of the other references listed in the article. However, the "citation needed" tag got me thinking: what's the policy on providing a source for the infobox info? I've been assuming the NRIS citation on the NRHP Reference# kind of covers the whole box, but should each fact be seperately sourced? Alternatively, should each fact be mentioned in the article text and sourced *there* instead? Andrew Jameson (talk) 12:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, ideally, everything in the infobox should be mentioned (and cited) in the prose as well, but it's doubtful that will occur all the time. I only ever use the NRIS citation for the Refnum (as it's a unique identifier that is rarely used outside of the NRHP/NPS and there is no easy way of incorporated that into the article) and date of listing (in the prose). Personally, I'd just expand the article, instead of adding a citation for everything in the infobox. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 15:18, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

In this instance, it appears that the issue may be that the sourced statement in the article text says it was "designed" in 1931, but the infobox says it was "built" in 1931. Since the source says it was "completed" in 1931, it seems to me that the article text should be corrected -- and the "fact" template can then be removed from the infobox. --Orlady (talk) 16:09, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

General thoughts: I agree articles should stand alone without infoboxes. Similiar to lead sections, all information should be mentioned in the body and citations added there, with the infobox as a summary. In fact citations look odd to me in infoboxes. I like to put coordinates in the body too, although some editors have complained and even taken them out. Coordinates are redundant with street addresses, so one or the other in the article also makes sense. I often do put the NRHP id into the body, and cite an acessable source if possible, although agree that might look odd to some. As for the specific issue, as noted above, the single date in the NRHP just needs to be expanded upon in the body. That is, architect designed in X, construction started Y, building opened in Z. The problem is that these are sometimes hard to dig out. I find the LOC newspaper archive good for this kind of thing, although 1931 is too late, alas. W Nowicki (talk) 18:32, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I think WikiProject Ships tries to add a separate inline reference for each and every separate item within a ship infobox. See for example USS Becuna (SS-319), for a NRHP-listed NHL submarine in PA. That might be a hard and fast rule for their Featured articles, of which they have many. --doncram (talk) 02:57, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

"Address Restricted," Archaeological Sites, and a Special Case, I think.

There are ten shipwrecks listed in the National Register of Historic Places listings in Keweenaw County, Michigan--all of these are from the same MPS, they are all listed as "address restricted," and they're all off Isle Royale (and, I gather, within the boundaries of the Isle Royale National Park). They all have some archaeological importance, which I infer is why they're listed as "address restricted." However, the National Park Service pretty clearly has no objection to letting people know where the wrecks are located. This is the official NPS Isle Royale "scuba diving" page, complete with photographs and desciptions of all ten wrecks, as well as direct links to commercial dive companies one can hire to visit the wrecks. One of these companies is Black Dog Diving, another is Superior Trips; both companies list GPS coordinates of the dive buoys for each wreck. Given that the coords are publically available, and the NPS explicitly allows the public to dive the wrecks, I think it's reasonable to include the coords in the National Register of Historic Places listings in Keweenaw County, Michigan and on the existing individual ship pages. Is there a reason I shouldn't do this? Andrew Jameson (talk) 19:03, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I can't see any problem with giving the coordinates. Unlike a number of Native American archaeological sites, where they don't disclose addresses in order to prevent looting, I think the main reason they don't list addresses for shipwrecks is because shipwrecks don't have street addresses. (Then again, the Edna G tugboat doesn't have a street address, but it has coordinates. It's still above water and available for tours.) I listed the coordinates for four wrecks I've dove on, the Madeira (shipwreck), Hesper (shipwreck), and the Samuel P. Ely (shipwreck). Thomas Wilson (shipwreck) doesn't have coordinates, so I should add them. In general, if the location of a site is publicly accessible somehow, Wikipedia doesn't need to keep it a secret, even if the National Register marks it restricted.

As an aside, the recreational scuba diving community has actively encouraged divers to leave wrecks as they found them and to avoid taking artifacts, in order that future divers may be able to enjoy diving there. Sometimes they have engaged in preservation projects, like the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society's projects to keep the Ely from falling apart after being beaten by Lake Superior's weather. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 21:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

It's always good to check here about adding things to AR sites, thanks. This is pretty clear that we won't be doing any damage by adding the coords, in fact why not add all the NPS pictures? I know A J wants to get all those photos too, but I'm sure that water will be pretty cold for another 6 months. Smallbones (talk) 23:20, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah; the pix on the NPS page are all individually and explicitly marked as NPS photos, so one of the things on my List of Things to Do was to snag the images to populate the list article (although if someone else wants to upload them, I'm fine with that). That would make the National Register of Historic Places listings in Keweenaw County, Michigan completely illustrated but for one site (which, if we're lucky, there might also be a NPS photo of). And since I'm unlikely to be able to drive to the wreck sites, I'm unlikely to be able to take a photo myself. :) Andrew Jameson (talk) 02:24, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

You could always do what I've done for Florida shipwrecks, and take photos of the water where it's sunk. It's not great, but not being a diver, it was the best I could figure. Some that I've gotten are the Vamar and the City of Hawkinsville. If they're publically used by divers, I don't see a problem with adding the coordinates either. --Ebyabe (talk) 03:42, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Completely illustrated counties if unphotographed shipwreck(s)?

A related question that I've been meaning to ask for a while is wondering if a county is considered complete if there are some unphotographed shipwrecks. It would take extraordinary means for an average Wikipedian to photograph a shipwreck that is several miles from shore considering that most of us don't own a boat or have deep-water diving equipment and cameras. Royalbroil 21:43, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Have you considered reaching out to local diving clubs (probably via local dive shops) to see if someone who does dive has a picture you could use? I have been trying that method to get pictures of the Land Tortoise on the bottom of Lake George, the only NHL shipwreck in the Northeast and (I think) the only one in fresh water.

Also, there are historical markers on the shore for these things. The Land Tortoise's NHL plaque is onshore as well, and at some point I'll upload a pic of it if I don't hear from the dive group I've contacted, the one whose members discovered it in the first place. Since it's a federal work, the NHL plaque wouldn't create copyright issues with the text. Daniel Case (talk) 05:42, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

In some cases, artifacts from a wreck could be on display in a museum. If so, one could ask for permission to photograph one or two, I suppose. --Ebyabe (talk) 05:52, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

You could also see if you can find who did the exploration of the wreck. Oft-times its a university, and you could try contacting their archaeology department to see if they can help. --Ebyabe (talk) 05:56, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Or get historical pictures of the ship itself. Smallbones (talk) 15:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Major infobox update

See discussion at Template talk:Infobox NRHP#Meta-template compatible.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:28, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Infobox maps for AR sites

I am slowly, very slowly, coming along with a major expansion of Pike-Pawnee Village Site, an address-restricted archaeological site in Webster County, Nebraska.

The AR designation is very valid, since shiny things have been recovered from the site, and I'll refer to those in the article. However, I'd like to have some kind of map in the infobox, just because the verbal description ("on the Republican River between Guide Rock and Red Cloud in Webster County, Nebraska") wouldn't convey much to a lot of readers.

My inclination is to use the Commons map showing the location of Webster County within Nebraska, and to use it like a district map in the infobox template, with a caption "Webster County, Nebraska" or the like. Does this seem reasonable, or can someone suggest a better approach?

--Ammodramus (talk) 22:05, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly what I would do. I was actually thinking of suggesting the |district_map= parameter as I was reading the beginnings of your comment, and I see that you were thinking the same way I was. If there is any image showing the Republican River, I might go with that, however. Just depends on how specific you want to be without endangering the site.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:51, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Adding sites to list articles

I've found a couple of sites that don't appear in their county lists, but that appear to be legitimate NRHP listings.

One is the Z.C.B.J. Opera House (Clarkson, Nebraska), which does not appear in National Register of Historic Places listings in Colfax County, Nebraska. It shows up when I look at Colfax County in the NPS Focus site; and it's on the Nebraska State Historical Society's NRHP in Colfax County page. Recent ground-truthing indicates that it's still standing and doesn't appear to have been degraded: see Commons:Category:Z.C.B.J. Opera House (Clarkson, Nebraska). The Elkman tool returns a note: "This property may not actually be listed on the National Register - listing code is DR".

The other site is the East Riley Creek Bridge (not the same as the Riley Creek Bridge), which does not appear in National Register of Historic Places listings in Republic County, Kansas. Both Riley Creek bridges appear under Republic County at the Focus website; both are listed in the Kansas Historical Society's Historic Places in Republic County page. Both bridges are apparently still there, and match the descriptions in their nom forms, available at the KHS page; see Commons:Category:Riley Creek Bridge on 170 (Republic County, Kansas) for Riley Creek Bridge, and Commons:Category:East Riley Creek Bridge on Queen (Republic County, Kansas) for East Riley Creek Bridge. The Elkman tool returns the DR note for East Riley Creek Bridge, but not for Riley Creek Bridge.

Can I add these to their respective list articles, or does this require further investigation and/or discussion and consensus?

--Ammodramus (talk) 00:58, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

About the Z.C.B.J. Opera House one, the Nebraska State Historical Society page for Colfax County that you link states it was listed September 28, 1988. That is not inconsistent with the NRIS entry for it showing "DR" status, which means "DATE RECEIVED/PENDING NOMINATION", as of May 24, 1988. It was pending in May; it was listed in September according to a source. Why is the updated status not in NRIS? I dunno, but there have been a few other cases like this nation-wide, I am recalling one in California and i think some in Oregon. In the California case i was able to further find the NRHP Weekly Announcement listing of the place, also a few months later, which somehow did not get entered into NRIS. I for one would appreciate if u could please just put a note about the case into wp:NRIS info issues NE, to document why we are recording something into Wikipedia that is contradicted by NRIS, and then u should go ahead and add the entry. Note, the Z.C.B.J. Opera House item shows up in a dab page, because i accidentally or deliberately included such items whether they had LI = Listed status or not, while Elkman's county-list-table generator properly excluded them from the main county lists (I do wonder about adding subtables for county lists to show delisted cases, owner objection cases, and/or similar ones). Also, maybe we should look at all of the old "DR" status ones, nation-wide. --doncram (talk) 01:49, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Actually the September 28, 1988 listing for that Z.C.B.J. Opera House appears in the weekly announcement at the NPS, on page 156 of the big PDF for all 1988 listings, available by link over at left on NPS's Weekly Listings page. It is definitely NRHP-listed. It's an NRIS omission error. It still would be nice to document this. --doncram (talk) 02:04, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

About the East Riley Creek Bridge, also status "DR" in NRIS as of November 28, 1989, the Kansas site you link to states that it was listed in National Register January 4, 1990. Can u check the corresponding 1990 big PDF for that? --doncram (talk) 02:10, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for checking up on the ZCBJ and for pointing me to the Weekly Listings page. I checked 1990 and found both Riley Creek Bridge and East Riley Creek Bridge. They were apparently omitted from the lists in January; they appear on the listings for May 11, 1990, with their dates given as Jan 4, 1990. --Ammodramus (talk) 13:40, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

National Historic District as a phrase

I notice that about 50 usages of "National Historic District" as a proper noun, linked phrase have crept back into Wikipedia. I think these are all bogus and propose deletion of the term, currently a redirect, at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2010 December 5#National Historic District. Please consider commenting there! --doncram (talk) 14:05, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Whether the term is "correct" or not, people do use it... and that means it is a viable search term. I think having this title redirect somewhere is appropriate... the only question is where to point it to. What about: "Historic District (United States)"? Blueboar (talk) 15:51, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Rather than split the discussion, please discuss at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2010 December 5#National Historic District. --doncram (talk) 15:54, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

OK... I have done so. Blueboar (talk) 15:56, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

RFD concluded by User:JLaTondre with "The result of the discussion was Disambiguate. If there are remaining issues remaining with the wording (though there does seem to be general consensus), that should be handled at the dab's talk page.". --doncram (talk) 04:01, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Updated NRIS database files available for download

The NPS has released updated public data files. I'm not sure what date should be used in references for this version. The latest "CERTDATE" in the PROPMAIN table is July 9, for 5 nominations that were pending at the time (four of these were listed August 16 and the other August 23). The CERTDATE for the most recent listed property is June 25 (Main Street Commercial District in Little Rock, AR, announced July 2). I think we should probably use the July 9 date. What do others think?

I'm going to start going through and documenting sites that are listed in multiple jurisdictions, adding them to our list articles as appropriate and accounting for the duplicates in the tally tables. This is something we don't get from the weekly announcements where they only indicate the primary location. I plan to source my additions to this release of the database, so I'd like to come to some consensus on the date.

We may also be able to fill in some missing geocode coordinates using the "spatial" data file. The most recent CERTDATE in this file is May 28. According to the download web page, the Google Earth layers they have available are more accurate than the data in the "spatial" file, but they are only complete through the beginning of 2007. --sanfranman59 (talk) 02:02, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this info. New NRIS references using this can be defined as <ref name=nris>{{NRISref|version=2010a}}</ref>, which currently shows the July 9 date that you suggest.

"National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.

--doncram (talk) 02:27, 23 December 2010 (UTC)