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Automatic duplicate stats on Progress page

The WP:NRHPPROGRESS page has slowly become more and more automated in its gathering of statistics about the state of things related to articles under the scope of this project. Via scripts, we can now find information about each and every county list in the country in about two hours total, and we can generate the maps automatically as well. In fact, up until this point, the only thing that wasn't automated was the tallying of duplicates; we still had to gather information about them and input it by hand. Because of this, much of the duplicate information on the Progress page is woefully out of date. Well I've been working on getting that last little thing taken care of, and I think I can finally say it's working. Using my bot which scans for NRIS-only pages, I have compiled a list of all duplications across county and state lines here, which I then use to create the tables found here (that page will be moved eventually, but I wanted to make sure it worked before moving out to a permanent location). The information in these tables is encoded in a hidden table at the top of the page (viewable if you click to edit the page) and can be transcluded directly into the tables on the Progress page. As an example of this transclusion, I have put the national table and the Alabama table here and used the automated duplicate information in the relevant rows.

What I'm asking is for people to go over the information in the tables and see if it is indeed correct. If there are any duplicates included that shouldn't be, that is probably due to an error in the reference number included on one or more of the relevant county lists. I have already found one incorrect duplication in Colorado that I have fixed, and I expect there to be more in other states. It is also possible, comparing to the manually entered duplications on the Progress page, that my code has missed some duplicates. If this is the case, could you let me know here? I will try to see what is wrong.

After we verify that the information is correct, I will edit the Progress page to transclude the information in these tables, and the entire thing will be automated.. finally. Thank you for your patience with this project. I will probably still tinker around with it, but as far as I can tell, it is as automated as it is going to get!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:09, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

In Michigan, one of the dupes (Copper Peak) is not really a dupe, but was assigned the wrong refnum in the Gogegic County list. I fixed the county list, and presumably it will fall off the dupe list. Andrew Jameson (talk) 19:31, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
I corrected the following Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Hampshire entries after seeing this data in your sandbox:
To the best of my knowledge, all of the other duplications in Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island are legit, including all uses of Blackstone Canal. Magic♪piano 20:29, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
The dups in Wisconsin are both correct. Royalbroil 21:08, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
The Nebraska dupes are all correct, but there's one missing: Site No. JF00-072, which is located at the four-way intersection of Thayer and Jefferson counties in Nebraska and Republic and Washington counties in Kansas. Ammodramus (talk) 21:19, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Cocke-Martin-Jackson House (#97000799), listed as being in both Rankin County, Mississippi and Rhea County, Tennessee, is invalid. Neither of those counties is anywhere near a state line. Elkman shows that property as being located in Rankin County. The other Tennessee items on that list appear to be correct. However, I haven't yet checked for omissions. --Orlady (talk) 22:56, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
The in-state Texas listings are correct. One listing between Texas and Louisiana, the Burr's Ferry Bridge #98000563, is missing from the multistate listing. 25or6to4 (talk) 22:58, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
I found a Tennessee-related omission. Jesse Whitesell House (#06001199 or possibly #77000619) is missing from this list. It is listed on the Progress page as crossing the Kentucky-Tennessee line. Apparently the initial listing was for the building, which is in Kentucky, and a boundary increase called "Jesse Whitesell Farm" added surrounding land located in both Obion County, Tennessee, and Fulton County, Kentucky. --Orlady (talk) 23:20, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

@Andrew Jameson, Magicpiano, and Royalbroil: Thank you for fixing/verifying those duplicates. The ones you fixed were removed after the latest bot run.

@Ammodramus: Site No. JF00-072 is included on the list. It is included in the multistate section (halfway down the table; one of the only redlinks), the Kansas section (last in the table), and the Nebraska section (also last in the table). It was even there before the last update. Maybe you just missed it?

@Orlady: Thanks for fixing the MS-TN incorrect duplicate. As for the Whitesell house, the reason it is not included is that the site is listed with two different refnums in the two counties. My guess is this is because only the boundary increase is actually in Kentucky Tennessee, not the "original" listing. This is a kind of peculiar case because, while it is technically the same property in both counties, the listings are not really duplicated.... so should we count it as one? My opinion is yes, we should count it as a duplicate, and the Kentucky list should be changed to have the old 1977 refnum. Either that or change the Tennessee list to have the 2009 refnum (which strangely starts with 06.. must have been a delay in the listing process). Regardless, if two sites on different lists don't share a refnum, my code won't count them as a duplicate.

I've done more digging on the Jesse Whitesell House. The first listing was for the house, which is only in Kentucky. The second listing, which was recorded in NRIS as a boundary increase, was for a historic district (described as Jesse Whitesell Farm) and it spans the state line. The fact the the first listing was for a stand-alone property and the boundary increase was a historic district, combined with the use of a different name for the boundary increase, probably accounts for some confusion in the coding. I am starting an article for the site. --Orlady (talk) 15:28, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
I see you did start the article, but the reference you included to the nomination form for the 77 refnum shows the PDF not yet digitized. Do you actually have it? What about the 06 one? That would help to sort out the confusion. Either way, whether or not it should be counted as a duplicate is still up in the air. In order for my code to work, though, they both have to be given the same refnum in the county lists. Should we do that? Or no?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:11, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
That's strange. The ref that I cited (this) for the 1977 listing is most definitely digitized. The images for the 1977 listing are not digitized; nor are the files for the 2009 boundary increase (HD). --Orlady (talk) 21:25, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
You had originally cited the wrong refnum in the form. I fixed it and was able to access the form. I also used the parameters in the infobox for the boundary increase. I was going to expand the article, but the nomination form only talks about architecture, not history, and I'm not really that interested in architecture.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:27, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Ah, now I see that you fixed the URL. That was a bad mistake on my part (I blame it on the fact that my Firefox browser no longer opens PDFs within a browser window, so in order to copy a URL, I have to go back to the page I got the link from.) Thanks for the fix. I also see that you were linking under Tennessee on the Resources page for a link, and probably discovered how deficient Tennessee's resources are. BTW, I like to save old URLs from the state website, as they sometimes have helped me find old content via archive.org. --Orlady (talk) 22:33, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

@25or6to4: Burr's Ferry Bridge is another peculiar case. It seems the bridge was listed twice in two different states on the same day with two different reference numbers. Using Elkman's tool as the source, the refnum 98000563 shows up as in Louisiana and 98000562 in Texas. Those are the two reference numbers used on their respective lists here as well, and just like Orlady's case, because they don't have the same reference number, my code won't county the as a duplicate. This is a little more tricky to deal with, though. I don't like the idea of using one of the two reference numbers as the primary because it's technically two different listings.. but then again it's obviously the same bridge listed twice. I'll defer to others' opinions on this one. I'll just say the folks at the NRHP never cease to amaze me with their illogical antics.

I'll continue to look over these for the next few days and refine the code if necessary, but all the errors so far seem to be human rather than coding. Keep them coming if you find anything else, though; especially if what's already on the Progress page doesn't match my output. Thanks for all the help!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:31, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm with Ammodramus on this one. Site No. JF00-072 isn't showing up in the Kansas and Nebraska sections for me, though it is showing up in the multi-state section. If I try to edit the Kansas and Nebraska sections, nothing for that site shows up in the wikitext, so it's not some kind of weird formatting issue; I'm really curious as to how you're seeing that listing. I suspect this is an overall issue with multi-state duplicates that span multiple counties in a state, as neither of the two listings for the George Washington Memorial Parkway is showing up in the Virginia section either. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 08:48, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Let me be clear. Site JF00-072 doesn't show up in the state sections of the list of duplications at User:NationalRegisterBot/AllNRHPPages/Duplications. It does, however, show up correctly in the tables at User:Dudemanfellabra/Sandbox. Is this true for everyone? Because if it isn't, something really weird is going on here. The tables are what we should be checking, not the raw list. Hope that clears up any confusion.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 09:18, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Ah, I was looking at the list. The site shows up fine in the table. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 11:06, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
JF00-072 shows up fine for me in the tables at your sandbox. I was looking at the NationalRegisterBot page. Thanks for clarifying things, DMFB; hope that my confusion didn't cause you too much extra work. Ammodramus (talk) 17:35, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Ah yea sorry if I didn't make that clear. The list is just a dump from the bot. It was easier to include anything that spanned state lines in the multistate section instead of trying to put it in several lists because that would have made the bot even slower than it already is (~6-7 hours to do one run). I then use another function after that list has been generated that combs through the multistate ones and finds duplicates inside individual states. It also gets quality information and generates the tables/info that can be transcluded. The latter is what I plan to make "publicly viewable" as it were by linking to it from the Progress page. The raw list will still be a bot subpage.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:11, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Duplications on Progress page but not on bot output

The following are listed on the Progress page but were not picked up by the bot output. (Feel free to add more by adding a new numbered list item; discussion about each can follow that item.)

  1. I added #85002664 Farmington Canal into New Haven County, Connecticut. It is listed on the Progress page as being duplicated in the New Haven city and county lists, but it only shows up on the city list. There are two other listings related to the canal on the county list, but those are individual locks outside of the city limits. In order for the canal to make it from the city of New Haven to Hartford County, where it is also listed, it must pass through New Haven County, so I added it to the list. If this was an error on my part, feel free to revert.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:56, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
    The Farmington Canal spans several jurisdictions in Connecticut. It should show up in both Hartford and New Haven counties, as well as in the city of New Haven and at least a couple of the Hartford County cities/towns that have separate lists. --Orlady (talk) 22:29, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  2. All of the duplicates in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, are missing from the bot output. This is due to an input error in my code (I spelled it "Alleghany" by accident). The code is fixed now, so all these should show up correctly on the next run. In fact, they all show up down in the statewide list anyway, so they'll just be moved up.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:09, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
  3. Lehigh Canal in Pennsylvania has several different sections listed on the Register. Two are shown as duplicated in the county lists on the Progress page, and the bot code had just one giant duplication for all the sections. This is because whoever put in the refnums on those items put all the refnums for the canal on every listing. I went through and put only the correct refnum for each section in its respective row on the county lists, so I'm hoping after the next update everything is working there. This is something to keep an eye out for, though.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:34, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
  4. Manassas National Battlefield Park is shown on the Progress page as being duplicated in Fairfax and Prince William Counties in Virginia. I can find it with refnum #66000039 on the Prince William list but no others. Querying the refnum, I get two results in Elkman's generator, but both are located in Manassas. Deferring to someone with more local knowledge than I have on this one.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:34, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
    This was a duplicate listing, but somebody removed Manassas National Battlefield Park from the Fairfax County list a year ago. It looks like the original listing was entirely in Prince William County, but a 2005 boundary increase extended into Fairfax County; both are in the Manassas vicinity but not actually in Manassas. I added the park back into the Fairfax County list, so it should show up on the next bot run. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:04, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Duplications in bot output but not on Progress page

The following were returned by the bot but not listed on the Progress page. (Feel free to add more by adding a new numbered list item; discussion about each can follow that item.)

  1. Tangle Lakes Archeological District (#71001091) in Alaska. Looks like a legit duplicate that was just missed manually.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:20, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  2. Edgerton (Hamden and New Haven, Connecticut) (#88001469). Also looks like a legit duplicate.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:20, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
    Yes, that's a legitimate duplicate. --Orlady (talk) 22:34, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  3. Hammonasset Paper Mill Site (#96000128) in Connecticut. Looks legit.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:20, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  4. Mansfield Hollow Dam (#03000194) in Connecticut. Looks legit.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:20, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  5. Fort Dupont (#99001275) in Delaware. This one is a little weird. The listing dates are different on the two different lists. I can't find anything about the September date, so I think it's just a typo. But then again, the two addresses are different, so maybe it's a refnum error. I can't find any other "Fort Dupont"s using Elkman's tool, though.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:20, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
    Likely a typo Fort Dupont Historic District was listed October 28, 1999 (#99001275) Weekly list for Nov 5, 1999 Einbierbitte (talk) 22:47, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
    This one's complicated, but I'm pretty sure it's a legitimate duplicate. There's only one Fort DuPont historic district in the September/October 1999 weekly listings, so I think the date on the northern list was just a mistake (like how its coordinates were for Fort Delaware instead). Both addresses are within the district on opposite sides of the canal, so that checks out. The nomination form itself mentions an archaeological site south of the canal, but then gives a map of the rest of the district which is entirely north of the canal (and for whatever reason, NRIS apparently used the archaeological site's address for the whole district.) It's pretty clear that the district spans the canal, though, so it belongs in both lists. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:47, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
  6. Fort Boise (#74000736) in Idaho seems to be two different listings. I changed the refnum in one of the lists to what showed up in the Elkman output, so it should disappear on the next bot run.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:33, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  7. Fort Hall (#74000732) in Idaho also appears to be two different listings. I changed the refnum here too.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:33, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  8. County Line Bridge (Morristown, Indiana) (#94001356) also looks like a legitimate duplicate.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:38, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  9. Bridgeport Bridge (Denmark, Iowa) (#98000533). Another legit one.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:42, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  10. Mitchell-Estes Farmstead (#95001528) in Kentucky. Legit.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:46, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  11. Port Hudson National Cemetery (#99000591) in Louisiana. One listing was for the cemetery, one for the port. Two listings show up in Elkman. I changed the refnum for the port.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:50, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  12. Cathedral Hill Historic District (Baltimore, Maryland) (shown as #92001285 but actually #87000622) had a refnum error which was causing it to show up as duplicated on another Baltimore list. This error had propagated as far as the article itself. I fixed both the article and the county list for this one, and it should be removed on the next run.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:07, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  13. Same story as above with Northwood, Baltimore (shown as #80001784 but actually #98000596). I fixed this one as well.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:07, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  14. Yet again same story with John Eyler Farmstead (shown #06000817 actually #10000829) in the statewide Maryland section. Fixed too.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:07, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  15. Alewife Brook Parkway (#04000249) and Mystic Valley Parkway (#05001529) in Massachusetts are both missing from the Progress page (but the again, so are the entire counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Worcester.. someone has been slacking off), but they look legit.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:27, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  16. Dodd Road Discontiguous District (#03000520) in Minnesota is new but looks legit.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:34, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  17. R.A. Long Building (shown #80002366 actually #02001683) in Jackson County, Missouri, was a mistaken duplicate. Fixed in the county list and the article.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:47, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  18. Upper Bridge (Warsaw, Missouri) (#99001159) was a fake duplicate. Fixed the refnum of the other property. As an aside, the other property is #05000929 Will Mayfield College Arts and Science Building in Bollinger County, Missouri. There is only one other property listed in that county, #12001176 Will Mayfield College Campus. The county list links both to the same article, Will Mayfield College (without a redirect, mind you), which is a very short stub that doesn't really say anything about either listing. Since, however, these are the only two listings in the county, it shows up as 100% articled. That doesn't seem right to me.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:47, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
    I assume "Will Mayfield College Campus" encompasses the entire campus of the former college, so that link makes sense. The other link should point to the actual building, though, since the college article doesn't actually say anything about that building. I'll change that if nobody objects. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 05:03, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  19. Lake McDonald Lodge (#78000280) in Montana was repeated inside Flathead County. The other listing was called "Lewis Glacier Hotel". Elkman shows that as an alternative name for the Lake McDonald Lodge, so I figure someone just added it mistakenly thinking they were two different listings. I removed it from the county list.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:53, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  20. Abbott Farm Historic District (#76001158) in New Jersey looks like a legit duplicate. So does Route 1 Extension (#05000880).--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:59, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  21. Albany Felt Company Complex (#14000001) in Albany County, New York, was just listed and is the first duplicate in Albany County.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  22. Hudson River Heritage Historic District (#90002219) in Dutchess County, New York, looks legit (and is already included as a statewide duplicate on the Progress page, just not a county-level duplicate). So does Riverside Park and Drive (#83001743) in New York County.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  23. Old Croton Aqueduct (#74001324) and Bronx River Parkway Reservation (#90002143), both in New York County, look legit as well.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
    There's no possible way that the Bronx River Parkway Reservation belongs in New York County. I was ready to say the same for the Old Croton Aqueduct until I remembered it goes directly into the city. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 02:02, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
    @DanTD: Oops. When I wrote that I meant Westchester County, not New York County. Looking at the various sublists, it appears that both of these span sublists of Westchester County. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:24, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
  24. Chancellor (tugboat) (shown #00000050 actually #10000554) and Taylor Center Methodist Episcopal Church and Taylor District No. 3 School (shown #10000515 actually #10000513) were both fake. Fixed both.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  25. Taconic State Parkway (#05001398) in New York looks legit. So does USS Spitfire (1776 gunboat) (#08000694).--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  26. Ohio and Erie Canal (#66000607) in Ohio looks legit.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:07, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
  27. Hayden Bridge (shown #81000483 actually #79002034) in Oregon was incorrect in the county list. Fixed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:07, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
  28. Union Street Railroad Bridge and Trestle (#05001520) in Oregon is legit.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:07, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
  29. Richardson L. Wright School (shown #86003272 actually #86003348) in Philadelphia is a false positive. Fixed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:32, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
  30. Smith's Fort Plantation (shown #69000341 actually #70000827) in VA was incorrectly duplicated. Fixed now.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:32, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  31. Kenmore (Spotsylvania County, Virginia) (shown #69000325 actually #93000569) now fixed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:32, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  32. Christ Church (Lancaster County, Virginia) (shown #72001408 actually #66000841) now fixed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:32, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  33. Fall Hill (#73002062) in VA is a little weird. In both lists it's included on a note saying it is historically part of Spotsylvania County but was annexed by Fredericksburg is present. That doesn't say if currently the hill spans the two lines, though. If not, I don't think it should be a duplication. The fact that it isn't on the Progress page makes me lean toward it not being a legitimate duplicate.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:32, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
    I checked the county boundaries, and it's definitely not in Spotsylvania County anymore, so I took it off the Spotsylvania County list. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:09, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  34. Fort Nisqually (#74001971) in Pierce County, WA, is not a legitimate duplicate. Fixed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  35. Mount St. Helens (#13000748) is legit. Probably too new to have been included manually on the Progress page.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  36. Adventuress (schooner) (#89001067) in WA looks legit, but I'm not sure about boats. Anyone else want to take a look at this one?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
    This one looks a little tricky. It can't be in Seattle and Port Townsend at the same time, because they don't border each other, so I'm guessing the boat was moved from one to the other at some point. According to the ship tracker linked from the owner's website, it's based in Port Townsend now, so it should probably be removed from the Seattle list. The Lake Union Drydock is in Seattle, though, so somebody needs to update the address on the Jefferson County page. Unfortunately, the boat has two ports of call in Port Townsend, and I'm not sure which one is the primary one. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:24, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  37. Hawks Nest State Park (#10001225) in WV looks legit.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  38. Refnum #72000144 (listed in elkman as being for Boston Common and Public Garden) was showing up twice in northern Boston. This was in error, because of how the listing for Boston Common (supposed to be refnum #87000760) had the refnum field populated. Now fixed. Magic♪piano 12:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Finishing up

I have now gone through all states and compared the bot output to the manually entered duplications on the Progress page. I will run the code again and hopefully everything will match now. I encourage people to look over what I did, especially in those that I left unchanged. I hope to have the duplicates transcluded on the progress page by the end of the week. Thanks for your patience and for bearing the 234342342 edits I made to this page while I went through!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

The bot has now run again, and the output is updated. Of the missing/extra duplications mentioned above, the only ones that remain unaltered are the Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia, Fort Dupont in Delaware, and Adventuress (schooner) in Washington. I have not looked through the list of multi-state duplicates, but I'll probably find some time to do that in the next few days since I'm on spring break this week. Any help in that area is appreciated, and help with those last three remaining in-state duplicates would be welcomed as well. Thanks again!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:36, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I've now moved the tables out to Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress/Duplicates and will soon transclude the information onto the Progress page itself. Before doing so, though, we need to sort out the following that I found in the multistate listings. Thanks to User:TheCatalyst31 for the help with the ones I pointed out above; now all of them are taken care of except for the ship in Washington. I tend to agree with TheCatalyst that it should be removed from the Seattle list, so if no one objects, I'll do that soon. In the mean time, here are the multi-state inconsistencies I found:

On Progress page not in bot output
  1. Bourne Mill is included on the Progress page as spanning Massachusetts and Rhode Island but isn't picked up by my code. Looking at what links to that, it's only included on the Newport County, Rhode Island list, with a note that says it's entirely inside Rhode Island. I didn't look too far into it, but it seems someone has done enough digging to show this isn't an actual duplicate?
    It looks like that decision was made after this discussion. There's one outbuilding that may or may not cross the state line (if the line in Google Maps is correct), but I'm willing to leave that one as it is. As an aside, that article was apparently started as two separate substubs before another editor noticed something was amiss (sigh). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 08:35, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
    According to the nomination form, this listing does cross the state line. The map (on page 21 of the pdf) shows an extremely small portion of the listed property is in Massachusetts; the text does not discuss exactly what is on the MA side, but suggests all of the buildings are in RI. Magic♪piano 12:36, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
    So should we include it as a duplicate or no? The Progress page lists it, but it isn't actually in two county lists (unless one of you has added it.. I haven't checked), so I'm leaning toward a no on this one.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
    Personally, I'd say to count it as a duplicate if and only if someone re-adds the listing to the Massachusetts list. I'll leave it up to others to decide if that should be done, though I'm leaning towards yes. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
  2. Burr's Ferry Bridge was mentioned above and has two different refnums for the two states (LA and TX) it's listed in. I really don't know how to handle this one, and others' input would be appreciated.
  3. Newport and Cincinnati Bridge is included on the Progress page as spanning Kentucky and Ohio. It is the same as the above Burr's Ferry Bridge in that it has two refnums for the two different states–#01000363 and #01000364. Maybe this is more common than we thought?
    As ugly as it sounds, would it be possible to hard-code these three listings in so the bot knows they're duplicates anyway? If not, perhaps we could just do what was done for the North Entrance Road Historic District and put both refnums in each listing. This will unfortunately cause the "wrong" one to show up first half the time, but it might be the best compromise that won't throw off our count. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 08:52, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
    Actually, although it sounds troublesome, I think I found a way to hard-code these with just a minor extension of the code that can easily be adjusted for other troublesome cases if need be. The way my code works is to scrape the title, refnum, and list name of all listings in all counties as it visits them, then at the end compare to see if it can find any listings with different list names but matching refnums. As long as whatever is stored in the refnum spot is the same in both cases–no matter what is actually stored–the code will mark it as a duplicate. As such, I simply modified the part of my code that scrapes the refnum to say if it is one of the above, store it as the concatenation of the two states' refnums, e.g. if the refnum it finds is 98000562 or 98000563, store it as "98000562,98000563". Then later when the giant list is compared, those two refnums will match, and we get a duplicate without any extra work! :). I'll rerun the code soon, but I'm fairly confident that this will work, so as far as I am concerned, these three duplicates are taken care of now.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
  4. South Omaha Bridge is listed as spanning Iowa and Nebraska, but the article shows that the site was delisted in 2011 (and links to the weekly actions page, so it's reliable). This explains why my code didn't pick it up; it only looks at active listings.
In bout output not on Progress page
  1. Blackstone Canal (#71000030) was mentioned above as well and looks legit.
  2. Lock and Dam No. 18 (#04000178) looks legit as well.
  3. Mullan Road (#90000548) is a little complicated. It shows as duplicated in three counties, two in Idaho and one in Montana. In NRIS, Montana has the refnum 75001080, but our list shows the 1990 refnum. Technically it's not a multistate duplication in the NRIS, but I think we should count it as one anyway. What do others think? This is kind of the same as the Whitesell House mentioned by User:Orlady before, where we could view the 1990 refnum as a boundary increase of the original 1975 listing.
    After looking at it, this looks more like a refnum error to me. Cascade County, Montana doesn't even border Idaho, and the road segments were listed fifteen years apart. This looks like a similar case to all the listed segments of the Natchez Trace or Route 66; while they're parts of the same road, they're separate sites and should be treated as such in the lists. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 08:45, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
    Ah, I didn't even think to look at geography :P. Haha yes I agree with your changing of the refnum on the MT list. This one will disappear on the next run.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
  4. North Entrance Road Historic District (#02000529 and #02000530) is another case like Burr's Ferry Bridge and the Newport and Cincinnati Bridge, leading me to believe that the folks at the NRHP do this quite often.
  5. Osgood Ditch (#01001151) looks legit.
  6. Portsmouth Earthworks (#80001534) shows as duplicated, but the article says the Ohio section has the refnum 74001621 and corresponds to a different section of the compound than the 1980-listed section in Kentucky. The Ohio list still has the 1980 refnum, though. I think it should be changed and this shouldn't be a duplicate since it appears to be two sections with no overlap, but I'll let someone else make that decision.
    I agree with you, so I changed the refnum. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 08:49, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
  7. Shiloh Presbyterian Church Cemetery (#11000954) looks legit.
  8. Wheeling Island Historic District (#92000320) looks legit.
  9. William E. Ward House (#76001294) looks legit.

Any help with these is appreciated. Thanks!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:26, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The Progress page has now been edited and the counts have been updated to include the automatically generated duplicates. Thanks for all the help during this project! Now off to find something else to do!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:55, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Statewide duplicate counting issues

In looking over the statewide duplicates for Massachusetts, I find that Alewife Brook Parkway and Mystic Valley Parkway are on this list, even though they don't cross county boundaries. Middlesex Canal (#09000936) is counted as having 2 duplicates, even though it is only in two counties (= 1 duplicate). 1767 Milestones is in 4 counties, but is counted as having 4 duplicates. Others look fine, including the county lists. Magic♪piano 02:11, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

@Magicpiano: Though I did my own check, I was mostly relying on info above, included in which was

"To the best of my knowledge, all of the other duplications in Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island are legit, including all uses of Blackstone Canal." Magic♪piano 3:29 pm, 15 March 2014, Saturday

so I didn't really pay much attention to those states. (Now that I read that last sentence, it sounds very sarcastic and bitey.. I didn't mean that to offend but rather to simply state my reason for not paying as much attention to these. No worries!) Now that you bring these up here, though, I've looked more thoroughly. All of the problems you mention here (except 1767 Milestones, which I talk about below) are rooted in a simple typo in my code that didn't properly recognize Somerville as part of Middlesex County. Instead of "Somerville" I had "Somervile" (notice only one l). For example, The Alewife Brook Parkway is present on the Cambridge and Somerville lists, and since my code didn't recognize Somerville as in Middlesex County, it made it its "own" county and thus erroneously said this listing spanned two counties. The same goes for the others you mention. Since Somerville was counted as its own county, these were all off. I fixed that typo now, so these should all be fixed on the next bot run. Thanks for pointing that out.
As for 1767 milestones, it's included on Springfield (under Hampden County), Middlesex County (a county itself), Brookline (Norfolk County), northern and southern Boston (both in Suffolk), and eastern/northwestern Worcester plus Worcester County (all three under Worcester). That means five total counties (Hampden, Middlesex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Worcester), so 4 duplicates is correct. I don't profess to have any knowledge of MA geography, though, so correct me if I'm wrong here...--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:24, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
No problem; we're all (at least somewhat :) human here, which is why we (at least I) check and double-check. I realized I had got the milestone thing wrong well after I posted the above, but my bed is a lousy place to edit WP from. (I really appreciate the work you put into this, by the way.) Magic♪piano 12:26, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

An image difficulty

Using the state of Michigan resource on NRHP properties, we have the Stafford, W. R., House (listed on NRHP as Stafford House [comparing addresses]) and the Stafford, Frederick H. and Elizabeth, House. (County list). The difficulty is that both pages show what looks to be the same house, just from a different angle and with different paint jobs. The site is known for not being perfect with images (I found the Calumet Theatre shown on some downstate property), and I suspect, based on the descriptions, that Stafford, W. R. has the correct image. The thrust of this is that there is a CC-BY-SA image of the structure in question of flickr that I'd like to get attached to the correct listing. Chris857 (talk) 12:06, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

PS. The two properties might be adjacent given their addresses, and this image might be the Stafford, Frederick H. and Elizabeth since it seems at a blush to match with the description, and is next door since both images share a gazebo. Chris857 (talk) 12:12, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Have you looked at the area in Google Streetview and in Bing's birdseye view? Sometimes those images are helpful in sorting these situations out. --Orlady (talk) 12:56, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
Street view has nothing in the area, but I'd be certain from the description that these are two separate houses with the actual website making an error in the photographs attached. First of all, the description doesn't match. While I wouldn't call it an "Italian villa" the description of a " three-story central tower topped by a flaring pagoda roof and finial" is clear. There is no mention of a tower or anything for a third story, much less the distinctive pagoda roof. So you know the Stafford, W. R., House has the pagoda roofed tower and the other is lacking the accurate picture. I noticed this with Ashlawn, but since neither record is digitized currently, you'll have to be a bit more resourceful here. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:43, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia Summer of Monuments proposal

Hello, everyone! Based on the "Getting to 100% illustrated" discussion last January, I have submitted a proposal for a Wikipedia Summer of Monuments program. It's basically Wiki Loves Monuments but longer and more specifically focused on getting pictures from places where there are not a lot of pictures on Wikipedia. As part of the project I hope to hire a project manager who will help keep everything on task, including helping out the WikiProject with its work. Please let me know what your thoughts are on the proposal. Harej (talk) 18:11, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

One thing that the DC group could do to accelerate photography, at least in my state, would be to get the National Register people to provide access to the NRHP nomination documents that aren't digitally available now. A goodly number of the unillustrated properties in Tennessee (where, BTW, the percent illustrated has gone from 42.9% in your proposal to 47.8% on the current "Progress" page) cannot be photographed because volunteers don't have enough information to help them figure out what the historic property is (or is supposed to be). Access to the documents would make it far easier to get pictures of the properties (not to mention writing articles about them). Some of these documents were online at one time, but have disappeared. (For example, most of the listings in Meigs County, Tennessee are covered, at least briefly, in a multiple-property submission that was on the National Park Service website at one time, but is no longer there.) Folks in DC are in a good position to visit the National Register staff and ask for help for volunteers nationwide. --Orlady (talk) 19:04, 26 March 2014 (UTC) Eureka -- it turns out that part of the Meigs County multiple property submission is in this file, appended to an NRHP document about an entirely different property. Still, access to more documentation of listings would be a huge help. --Orlady (talk) 19:12, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Going to have to agree with that, I desperately need some nomination forms in particular in order to proceed with getting a bunch to GA. I've noticed that having even stub articles facilitates pictures and the more precise the details the better, but some are just outright bizarre and historical districts are the chief sufferer of this. Some of the historic structures have been already destroyed in the last couple of years and knowing where and what they were would probably help quite a bit. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:27, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
Is there anything we can do to try to recruit people in some of the more rural areas? Perhaps some sort of Flickr-contact process? Eastern Kentucky, eastern North Carolina, western Tennessee, the Ozarks, Kansas in general, and South Dakota really need work, and they're really too far for any of us regular photographers to reach with anything more than a passing-through-on-long-trip visit. Nominations aren't the only issue: North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma all have nearly all of their nominations online, whether state source, Focus, or both. Nyttend (talk) 04:49, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Some of those rural areas are places that lack broadband service. That's a challenge if you want to get local residents to upload digital photos. Anyway, those rural areas typically don't have a high density of NRHPs. Meanwhile, I note that more than 25% of the unillustrated properties in Tennessee are in just 3 counties that include the state's two most populous counties (Shelby and Davidson) and its wealthiest county (Williamson). --Orlady (talk) 20:06, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
That's why I suggested attempting to work with Flickr photographers, who obviously have the capability to upload photos. Kentucky's a rather annoying exception to your comment about low site density; Boyle, Scott, and Shelby counties have 315 locations and just 53 photos (just 8 of 138 in Shelby), and this is typical because of Kentucky's heavy use of countywide MRAs. Anyway, I think percentage illustrated can often be at least as significant as raw numbers: high percentages for low-density areas, such as what I've gotten in southern and eastern Illinois (see the map), can help to even out our coverage, rather than restricting it to the cities. Nyttend (talk) 21:50, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your input, everyone. We will be looking into digitizing nomination documents. We will also be reaching out to Flickr photographers as part of the project. Also, any recommendations to overcome the issue of low-bandwidth would be greatly appreciated. Harej (talk) 18:59, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beatriz Colomina

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Beatriz_Colomina. --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 11:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Connecticut historic districts

In order to complete this state's coverage before attempting something even more insane, the historic districts are the subject of a major issue for me. I simply do not know how to produce a proper map from the the NRHP list and make a useful Wikipedia map for these areas. Is anyone good at this and want to try and train me in it, or just team-up in the complete coverage of the area? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 22:30, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not clear what you're talking about. Are you referring to a district-boundary map such as File:Bridgewater Historic District map (Pennsylvania).png, or are you trying to get a map showing where different districts (and/or other listings) are located in relation to each other? The former takes a little work, although it's not hard; the latter is simply a matter of clicking the "Map of all coordinates in Google" link in the {{GeoGroupTemplate}}, which we typically place above the table at the far right. This is where it's located at National Register of Historic Places listings in West Hartford, Connecticut, for example. If you want boundary-map help, I'll offer suggestions; just don't want to bury you with instructions for that if you wanted something else. Nyttend (talk) 04:45, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes, district-boundary maps. These are sorta essential for laying out areas and while not really necessary for a GA... should still be fairly standard for these articles. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:01, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
I've only ever made a few of these, so hopefully I'm not deviating from a better method that someone else has followed. I start with the district boundary map in the nomination form, go to openstreetmap, take a screenshot that embraces the entire district at a reasonably high zoom, and save it in Windows Paint. This done, I set the draw-lines feature to draw fat lines, and then I simply draw the boundaries already given in the maps, save, and upload. It seems cheesy, but the nomination maps typically are just pen on USGS quads or worse; see page 7 of this nomination for an especially bad example. If your nomination doesn't have a map, check the photos file quickly (who knows, they could have made a mistake at upload), but then you'll have to try to use the verbal boundary description. Nyttend (talk) 06:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
A method that is possibly slightly more elegant is to take the OpenStreetMap screenshot and use it as a background in Inkscape to draw boundary lines, and then export the resulting combined image to PNG. If it is possible in OpenStreetMap to draw lines as it is in Google Maps, even using Inkscape may be avoidable (I've not tried to use OpenStreetMap in that way, but have created private Google Maps when I needed to have reasonably precise district bounds for doing photography). Magic♪piano 10:53, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
I've made a few myself, and I mainly use the OpenStreetMap+image editor route. One thing I noticed the last time I made a map but didn't take advantage of due to time constraints was that OpenStreetMap can generate an SVG image rather than PNG. Then you can use inkscape or some other SVG editor to add the district boundaries and keep everything SVG, which is preferable to the other formats since it scales for thumbnails nicely.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 13:17, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Updated NRHP state maps

Good day all, I am beginning the process of updating the state NRHP maps, and have decided to make a few changes and wanted to get some input. Reference the File:NRHP_Alabama_Map.svg to see the changes, mainly to change the color scheme for better colorblindness availability. I have also discovered a significant glitch in how ArcGIS renders a text product that increases the manual processing time for me, so it will take a bit of time once the design is approved. Let me know what you think... 25or6to4 (talk) 21:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Looks good to me. The one thing I don't understand is why the key has decimal points and the text on the counties themselves don't. Or are the numbers on the counties the actual number of listings? If the two numbers are different, I feel like there needs to be some explanation, if not in the image then in the description.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 13:13, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes, the numbers on the counties are the numbers of listings; compare the numbers on File:NRHP Indiana Map.svg with the list as it was when the map was made (map with county names). I agree, however, that an additional explanation would help. Meanwhile, I think this map is useful: blue versus purple is always a potential problem (with some shades, I can't see the red in the purple, so it's the same as blue), but because the purple is darker than the blue, I can tell the difference. Let me see if I got things correct: 0 in the southeast is <0.5; 5 immediately north of it is 0.5-1.0; 10 immediately west of it is 1.0-2.0; 21 farther west (most of the way to Mississippi) is 2.0-4.0; 58 just south of it is 4.0-8.0; 35 a good ways north (halfway to Tennessee) is 8.0-16.0; and 130 in the southwestern corner is >16.0. Is everything correct, or am I wrong somewhere? I only have one other suggestion: forget color changes and go strictly on darkness. Imagine if everything were different shades of the same color, with counties going from darker to lighter as site density changed. Is that more workable? It would definitely be easier for me, but maybe not for most people — I've learned to rely heavily on dark/light, so maybe it wouldn't be easier for people who can see the color shades easily. Nyttend (talk) 01:04, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
I completely missed the comment a couple days ago, sorry. Yes, the number on the county itself is the count of NRHP listings, while the color scheme would indicate the density per 100 square miles. Nyttend, your color analysis is a bit off, but close. 0 in the southeast is <0.5. 5 immediately north is 0.5-1.0. 10 immediately west is 1.0-2.0. the 21 further west is the same as the preiuosly mentioned 10. Instead, the 58 due south of the 21 is the 2.0-4.0, the 35 "a good ways north" is 4.0-8.0, the 130 in the far southwest is 8.0-16.0, and the 162 center-north is >16.0.But doing a same-color density curve would work well, too. Preference on that single color? 25or6to4 (talk) 12:39, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
No real preference. As long as we know that everything's strictly a function of darkness, the color doesn't matter. Nyttend (talk) 12:43, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
Map updated to use just shades of blue. 25or6to4 (talk) 13:47, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks a lot! I really appreciate the consideration for the colorblind, especially since I'm nowhere near as bad as some people. Nyttend (talk) 00:47, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Free access to Oxford University Press online references during Library Week

Oxford University Press is giving U.S. users free online access to a number of useful reference works this week only -- see http://global.oup.com/academic/librarians/national-library-week/ for details. They don't have resources directly related to NRHP properties, but resources like American National Biography, the African-American history resources, and the music and art reference works could be helpful in fleshing out some related articles. --Orlady (talk) 14:31, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

FYI, this ended early - today. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:03, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Virginia ostensibly done

Pub's tracks now go from Virginia to Pennsylvania. Not sure about New York Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:05, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi all: I've worked through all counties and independent city listing for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Most unstubbed articles are for archaeological sites for which the Virginia Department of Historic Resources does not include the NRHP nomination forms. I'll go back and look at the gaps or any other additions made since I started in May 2013. For each listing, I include the Virginia Landmarks Register reference and added them to existing articles, as well as links to the nomination forms available at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources website. Maybe on to South Carolina? Cheers--Pubdog (talk) 17:28, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Excellent. I've been trolling Flickr and a couple of other sites looking for images, too - I've managed to add about twenty to the lists that weren't there before. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 18:19, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Absolutely outstanding! I put the map up to show how important Pub's contributions are to the project. If you're going to do South Carolina, note that the SC Dept Archives and History has a summary of the NRHP nomination for each site (eg), and a link to their copy of the nom. Delaware and NJ fit in with your Mid-Atlantic concentration. Maybe California or Texas if you are looking for a really big challenge. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:05, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Excellent work! If you're looking at the Carolinas, you should note that North Carolina also has all of its nominations online (except for address-restricted sites). They can all be accessed from this PDF on the North Carolina SHPO website. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:39, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Cool --- since I started with Prince George's County, Maryland in October 2008, I've managed to work my way through Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, and now Virginia. Keeps me out of trouble ... thanks and cheers.--Pubdog (talk) 23:00, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Help would also be appreciated for Kentucky: it has fewer articles, a larger percentage are substubs, and like California (but unlike Texas) pretty much everything is on Focus. Nyttend (talk) 05:16, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
I've mentioned this before, but does anybody want to get more images of sites in Emporia, Virginia? The list for that city has two images now, one of which is mine, and I passed up the chance to snap a picture of one site, when I drove through there back in November 2013, and I've been kicking myself for it ever since. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:40, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I'd like to, but it's a bit much of a drive for me. Nyttend (talk) 02:38, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
I decided to build on User:Pubdog's work, and have brought Maryland to 100% article completion, and Virginia very nearly so. It is the latter where some assistance could be used. There are five listings in Virginia that presently do not have articles: Hidden Valley Rock Shelter (Bath County), Reedy Creek Site (Halifax County), Madison Farm Historic and Archeological District (Montgomery County), Leesville Dam Archeological Site (Pittsylvania County), and Oak Spring Farm (Rockbridge County). All of these appear to be written up (in 1-2 paragraph summary form) in the 1999 edition of the Virginia Landmarks Register, but not the 1986 one, which is the only to which I have convenient access. This edition is in Google Books, but the pages where these properties are written up are not available there. If someone on this project were so motivated, they might track down a copy of the 1999 edition and write these up. (My Google-fu has not turned up any other useful sources for these listings.) Cheers! Magic♪piano 14:14, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
Another way to get information on these sites would be to request the nomination forms from the National Park Service. If you email nr_reference@nps.gov with a request for a specific nomination form, they'll send you back a copy (with the location information redacted for address-restricted sites). That's how I was able to write Fred A. Perley House, the last missing article in West Virginia and another site with little useful information available online. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 18:55, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
I've gotten papers from the NPS before, but I didn't realize they'd send bowdlerized versions of the restricted ones. That should make some other things easier... Magic♪piano 18:52, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, what's the usual turnaround time for getting forms sent? I requested some a couple of weeks ago and haven't gotten a response. Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 22:25, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
When I've requested them I've always gotten a response within the next business day or two. I'm not sure what's taking so long in your case - maybe try making another request? TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:41, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
I requested 9 that were all "too new" to be digitized (which seems backwards to me - surely they're received via email?), but no ARs or anything funny. I'll have to try again... Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 22:46, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
I asked for two forms on Monday, got them Wednesday (one was AR, has bits blacked out, but informs one of my lingering mysteries); I've had responses take close to a week, though. It is strange that recent forms are actually scanned from paper. Magic♪piano 23:30, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Revisiting Commonscat

In Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 57#Commons category links adding a commonscat parameter to Template:NRHP row was discussed but never implemented. I had started working the list Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Missing commons category links without realizing that the parameter was not active here unlike at the other historic building templates for other countries. I have started a discussion at Template talk:NRHP row#Commonscat. P.S. maybe we can ask @Multichill: in the process to change the list by removing the space after the pipe and sorting it by list rather than ID. Agathoclea (talk) 06:08, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

From what I see in that archive, the idea of adding the link below the image was opposed because it would make the tables taller than necessary. It looks like an extra column was the way people were leaning. Personally I would prefer the link in the image column as you have proposed, but it seems most others don't agree with this view. I have an idea on how to appease both sides. Give me a little bit to get something coded in the sandbox.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:50, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
What does everyone think about this design?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:31, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I like it Agathoclea (talk) 21:25, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm not fond of it: first, it's hard to see if you don't know where it is. It took a few minutes of looking around and checking the source code before I found the link. Secondly, it obscures part of the image — not a huge problem with the Beth Israel Cemetery image, but I can imagine images with significant elements in the top right. What if you put it in the summary? Most entries have nothing in the summary, and most of the exceptions have just a little: there are very few entries whose height will be at all affected, and they're the ones that already have lots of text. You could add a reference in the summary column: basically, something saying "When the Commons logo, [miniature image here], appears in this column, it indicates that the Wikimedia Commons has a dedicated category for this location. This category can be viewed by clicking the image." Nyttend (talk) 21:57, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
In an attempt to make the logo easier to see, I've used a different image with a white background, which stands out more than before. I also made the image semi-transparent so as not to fully obscure the underlying image. Does that address your two concerns? The reason the image column is more attractive to me is that is a very natural place to include a link to more images. Who would look in the summary/description of the place to find more images?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:29, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I tested the design with an image that has a significant upper-right visual element, and IMO the Commons logo is visually distracting over that image. I'd prefer to have the link under the image than on top of it, so it doesn't obscure the image. Personally, I don't see a problem with making that column a bit taller, especially since we already do so for WLM one month a year. I feel like putting the link in the summary column would work in states where that column is underused, but in certain states (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota come to mind) the summary column usually has information and is occasionally taller than the image, so I'm not sure if that would work universally. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:44, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
On the findability side, I like the semitransparent idea (far harder to miss), but on the distractability idea, I agree with TheCatalyst31. The point about WLM, however, I find significant. What if we trashed the Commons logo and replaced it with a variant of File:Small upload photo button.png, the previous WLM button? Have the button read "Other images" and send the clicker to the Commons category, and have a note at the top of the column explaining what's going on. Nyttend (talk) 01:12, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I also dislike the arrangement that overlays the Commons icon on the image. Regardless of whether there's other content in the "Summary" field, it seems like that would be a good location for a Commons link, and Nyttend's idea of creating an "other photos" button seems far more helpful for encyclopedia users than the Commons icon (except I'd call it "other images", since some images aren't photos). --Orlady (talk) 02:21, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
How about what's in my test subpage now?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 09:16, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I like the combination of icon and text. I personally do not mind the extra height online, but I can see the problem with the extra height on printed lists, an issue that I have pondered on before on the existing lists which use the feature. As the text "More images" does not provide any value in a print context could it be div-ed into a noprint style? Agathoclea (talk) 10:17, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I added the noprint class to the more images link, so it shouldn't print. This can be verified by checking here.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 11:05, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Agathoclea (talk) 17:46, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I do like the combo logo-and-text. Everyone can understand it easily (unlike an isolated Commons logo), while it conveys additional information to us frequent users than we'd get purely from a button saying "More images". As long as nobody raises any objections, I think we're ready to add the code to the template itself. Nyttend (talk) 00:47, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
Since no one objected, I added the code to the main template. You can see it in action on National Register of Historic Places listings in Lauderdale County, Mississippi.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 12:49, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
Would anyone object to having a tracking category to include those pages with at least one |commonscat= parameter filled? I put a tracking category into the sandbox, tested it out here (successfully, I think), and confirmed that it doesn't appear when there are no entries using the |commonscat= parameter. Nyttend (talk) 19:31, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
I think the category should be named with the singular form of the word "list", i.e. Category:NRHP list with commonscat, rather than the plural. This would make it match already existing categories such as Category:NRHP list missing refnum, Category:NRHP list missing county, etc. As far as the encyclopedic/administrative value of adding the category, I don't really see much haha, though the category's existence doesn't hurt anything per se. What is the motivation behind this, though?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:40, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
Don't see why any of these are "list", but I agree that it would be silly to have one "lists" and the rest "list". The idea was simply to give us an idea of how many lists used the parameter. Imagine that you're going through a lot of the Commons categories to add them to lists; if we had this tracking category, you might start with lists that aren't in this category, since you'd know that they didn't have any Commons categories. It's more of a non-maintenance category than a maintenance category, since pages lacking this category are the ones more likely to be improveable. Nyttend (talk) 19:47, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
It depends in what you want to achieve. The bot list is sufficiant to match existing categories to lists. A list down approach would mean to go to commons to find all pictures of a given parent category and create them. Sounds like a lot of effort. I'd rather tackle that once the 2100 existing categories are in their respective entries. Agathoclea (talk) 20:33, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
Botlist: what are you talking about? Is NRHPbot producing a list of Commons categories? I had no clue a bot was available to help on this stuff. Nyttend (talk) 20:36, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Look up to the first post in this thread. Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Missing commons category links.

Really, looking at that list, I could probably modify my bot to automatically add the links to commons categories to all the lists where they are missing by scanning that page, loading each list, and attaching the parameter to the relevant row. I would need approval for an extra task, but I'm not opposed to the idea since it would save some time and manual labor... I don't know how long the approval process would take, though, so maybe we can manually knock it out before then. Either way, that option is on the table.

That, or I could make another script similar to User:Dudemanfellabra/ReorderNRHPlist.js that one could click on when visiting an NRHP list that would automatically find missing commonscat links, even if they aren't on that bot list. I could query the commons API to see if any category exists with the name of the site (to which it would probably be limited unless I could figure out a way to query the reference number through the API) and if it does, add that parameter to the relevant row. That, I'm pretty sure, wouldn't need bot approval, and I could get it written up in about a day or so, assuming I have free time later tonight. Would either of these options be useful?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:30, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, which I'd overlooked. As long as the refnum on the category is correct, it would be good for the bot to do that task, although please note that tons of categories don't have any refnum template. I can't understand how this script would work, due to the possibility of false positives. Take an example: East Second Street Historic District is two different districts in Ohio, and yet Commons:Category:East Second Street Historic District is a local district here in Bloomington, Indiana, as I wasn't thinking of similarly named places when I created it. How would the script know to ignore this category? I mean, if you can figure out how to avoid the false positives, I'll welcome it; I just don't understand how that would work. Nyttend (talk) 00:32, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
This page shows an example API output for the first 500 members of commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places with known IDs. Each member of this category (which is a category itself thanks to cmtype=subcat in the URL) is given a "sortkeyprefix" of the reference number via commons:Template:NRHP, which was added during WLM (in other words, it's actually easier to query a listing's refnum than its title, contrary to what I initially thought above). What I can do in my script is generate the full list of subcategories and compare the refnum included on each row of the table with this sortkeyprefix. If I find a match, I get the corresponding title of the category and add it to the row if it is not already present.
TL;DR: It can be done pretty easily.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:45, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
Ah, okay. I thought you meant that you had some way of getting any relevant category, not just categories with Template:NRHP. This, too, I fully support, now that I understand better; thanks! Tons of categories don't have Template:NRHP, so I've just gone through Indiana and added all relevant categories. Nyttend (talk) 03:05, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Be careful though with adding automatically: Some categories are templated but are duplicates as they break down a larger structure ie with a category manor house you will have manor house interior, manor house gardens and manor house outbuildings. When manually adding the category you will be able to notice if there is no image on the list that could be used or if there is a better one in the category. Agathoclea (talk) 05:54, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Yea, I thought about multiple matches to a single refnum, so I was going to create an interface where the user could select a category manually out of the multiple matches. Something akin to "ARTICLE_NAME matches CAT1, CAT2,..., CATN [all with links so the user can click to investigate]. Select one to add." I also planned on making the code recognize if there's an image in the row or not, and if there isn't, give the user the option to add one.
The thing is, I had a really large chunk of this thing coded last night after working on it for about an hour and a half. I had made the code download the full list of subcats with their sortkeys, find the refnums of the places in the current table, determine if there were any matches on Commons, and output what those matches were... All I had left to do was to code the interface for selecting which match to use and to do the actual editing. Stupid me, though, was working in my sandbox and not saving my progress, and my Firefox suddenly decided to freak out and crash, losing all my progress. I had planned to get it at least mostly working by the end of the night, but I got pissed off and stopped after I lost everything haha, so I'm still at zero now. I probably won't have any free time until at least Wednesday now to get this coded--maybe even not until next weekend.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 13:44, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
I just got my code to do this. It is still in a very early beta stage, but I think it is somewhat useable. It adds a button to the top of the page to check for commons categories. Click it, and it loads up the commons data then finds any matches that may be on the page. It gives you the option for each one to select the category you want to add or not to add a category at all. I haven't made it check to see if an image is present or not, but that IMO is a secondary feature that can come later. The main point of the script is to be able to add commonscat links, and it does that as far as I can tell. I'd appreciate it if someone would install the script and test it on a few county lists to see if they can find anything wrong with it.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:53, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
@Agathoclea and Nyttend: I've just gone through and used the code to add commonscat links to a handful of counties, which you can see in my contribs. I corrected one big error where if a row didn't end in a "usual" way, i.e. with a certain style of line breaks+end template, my code would mess it up. I had to revert the script once and re-run it to get it to work. I also corrected a smaller error where the script would freak out if a category had an apostrophe in it and not display it correctly. Other than that, though, everything seems to be working fine as far as I can tell, even on full state lists (e.g. Washington). Would you guys mind trying it out?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:41, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
Certainly. Will give it whirl tomorow when I am back in my desktop. Agathoclea (talk) 20:08, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't seem to get beyond "Downloading Commons data" Agathoclea (talk) 17:04, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Could you tell me which browser you are using? If you know how to access the Javascript Error Console in your browser (The "Step 3" section on this page is helpful), could you let me know if there are any errors popping up for you? The script is supposed to take a couple of seconds to download the Commons data, and progress on the download is shown by the number of periods at the end of the sentence growing over time. Could you tell me how many periods are after that text for you? That can help to tell me when it's failing. It shouldn't take more than about 10 seconds, depending on your internet connection.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:16, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
I am using Iron (sort of Chrome); one dot.
 [blocked] The page at 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Westmoreland_County,_Pennsylvania' was loaded over HTTPS, but ran insecure 
 content from 'http://commons.wikimedia.org/enwiki/w/api.php?action=query&list=categorymembers&fo…lback=jQuery18301628174379002303_1398015311909&format=json&_=1398015330708':
 this content should also be loaded over HTTPS.
makes sense. Agathoclea (talk) 17:39, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Bypass your cache and retry the script. I changed it to use https instead of http for the requests, which was a dumb error on my part. My browser is set to be fine with insecure connections, but I think it's awesome that yours won't even think about allowing it. Great security feature.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:45, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Two dots - Line 94 I think:
 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'replace' of undefined

Agathoclea (talk) 17:47, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Apparently Chrome (and Chrome-like browsers I assume) are a little more picky with URLs than Firefox. Try one more time. Sorry for all this :\.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:59, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
No change, Tried Firefox with no luck either, but don't know how to get the Javascript errors there. Agathoclea (talk) 18:08, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Line 128
 GET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/https%3A%2F%2Fcommons.wikimedia.org%2Fw%2Fapi…back=jQuery183043841838743537664_1398018213789&format=json&_=1398018220513 400 (Bad Request)

Agathoclea (talk) 18:24, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

I've just tried on Chrome and got it to work (and obviously on Firefox). I didn't try Chrome before I made this most recent change, so I don't know if anything has changed for me, but could you try one more time? The error you show above looks like it's not properly redirecting to commons and just trying to take the URL as a page name on en.wikipedia, and that probably has something to do with your security settings.. Not sure how to fix that since it's working fine for me in both browsers. Hopefully this latest change will work for you?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:32, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Now it is back to the error on line 94- I have a look at my security settings. Agathoclea (talk) 18:41, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
I've just added in an alert for error-checking. Could you copy/paste the contents of that alert to me? Also, it may be better to have this conversation at my talk page to keep from bugging everyone here. I have to go do some stuff at the moment, but if you copy/paste that alert to me on my talk page, I'll see what I can do when I get back. Sorry for all the trouble.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:54, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
For anyone that's wondering, we finally figured this out. There was another script conflicting with this one. Everything is fine now!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Embedded infoboxes revistied

I know we've had trouble embedding NRHP infoboxes into others such as at Bayport Aerodrome (Davis Field), but is there away we can do it with bridges without any trouble, just like we can do with train infoboxes? I recommend merging the ones in the Stillwater Bridge (St. Croix River) for starters. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 18:41, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

I just fixed the Bayport Aerodrome article by changing the code of the NRHP infobox to better embed itself. As for the Stillwater Bridge example, the reason it wouldn't work there is because the last displayed parameter in the bridge infobox is coordinates, and the coord template does weird things. I just semi-hacked it to be able to display the way you want it, I believe.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:06, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
Good. Can the same be done for Western Gateway Heritage State Park (Freight Yard Historic District)? Because I just tried to use the same markups for the Stillwater Bridge, and it didn't work for me. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 21:04, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
How's what's there now?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:37, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Pretty damn good, if I may say so myself. Certainly better than my attempt, which expanded the NRHP infobox... on the other side of the page. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 21:53, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Folsom Powerhouse State Historic Park assist with Afc/Rotating Armature Alternators

I want to help the Article Folsom Powerhouse State Historic Park or make a new article on the generators.
Please find my article for creation and my credentials in user: Douglas Nelson Turner (talk) 14:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I have worked out how the generators are wired and the three phases developed. I would like to add a table of Contents and a "heading" about the generators.

Answer at my user talk, please. Thank you
Douglas Nelson Turner (talk) 14:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Now hiring: Summer of Monuments project manager

Hello everyone! Now that funding has been approved, Wikimedia DC is now hiring a project manager for the Wikipedia Summer of Monuments campaign. For more information about the position, see our blog post. Feel free to apply, or if you would like to be an interviewer for the position, let me know. Harej (talk) 19:09, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I've just added a photo of a recent listing to its list article. While there, I noticed that each refnum in the lists is EL'd to the Focus search result for the number. Unfortunately, recent listings don't appear to be in Focus, so the link leads to a no-results-found message. The EL seems to be an automatic feature of the template, with no way to turn it off for individual properties in the list; moreover, when I tried to add a citation to a source that gave the refnum for this particular property, it apparently wasn't compatible with the template syntax. Any way that this can be fixed? Assuming that NPS doesn't plan to add recent listings to Focus, the situation's only going to get worse as more properties are listed. Ammodramus (talk) 14:04, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Why would you assume NPS doesn't plan to add recent listings to Focus? The record will eventually be in NRIS, so the link will eventually point to the right place. Would it suffice to modify the note for the listing date/refnum column to include something along the lines of

"If the link returns a 'no results found' screen, that does not necessarily mean the property is not listed on the National Register. The NRIS database only includes a skeletal record of properties listed through August 2012. To verify that a property was listed after this date, check the weekly listings posted by the National Park Service."?

It may also be desirable to use {{NRHP Weekly List}} to link the date to the weekly list instead of the refnum to the database in listings after August 2012. For example in your Farmers State Bank case, we could drop the link to the refnum and include instead December 31, 2013. This link is not always accurate, especially since the NRHP gets lazy on Fridays and sometimes includes that day's listings on the next week's list. It's pretty accurate for most listings, though.
I've also just found a page to search through the 2013 weekly lists, and this link seems to bring up a record for Farmers State Bank. Unfortunately, it appears that still leaves a gap for properties listed between August and December 2012.
I personally would be fine with just adding the note to keep it less complicated, but any of the above can be done if consensus sways that way.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:30, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Agree with Dudeman. NPS is getting more and more behind with recent stuff as they scan old stuff in more and more states (the newest KY nominations on Focus are several years old), but presumably once they get done with all the states, they'll be able to go back and catch up, getting everything into Focus. Mentioning the newest listings in Focus is a matter of updating the database, which happens irregularly, but they've still done it year after year; we should expect it to get updated. And finally, they occasionally have holes for far-older properties; for example, location 80001629, a fire station in Louisville, has just the generic "The PDF file for this National Register record has not yet been digitized" page. Nyttend (talk) 00:50, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
I've considered raising this question before, since a new editor thought a new listing I added wasn't listed since it didn't have a working Focus link. I think the footnote is fine, since linking to an incorrect weekly listings page might be even more confusing than linking to a "no results" page. My other thought is to disable the link entirely for any listings after August 2012, assuming that's technically possible, and only add it back once Focus is updated; the footnote would probably still be a good idea in this case. As an aside, it seems like NPS is getting more behind about things in general, not just for recent stuff; they haven't updated the status page since last spring. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 01:09, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
I'd be inclined to support TheCatalyst's suggestion of disabling the link for post-Aug2012 listings; I assume that this would allow us to insert citations manually, which we can't seem to do right now. (I was planning to cite this page rather than the weekly listing in support of the refnum for this property.) Assuming, of course, that this wouldn't cause too many headaches for DMFB, who's been doing valuable work for this project. Ammodramus (talk) 02:22, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Is everyone happy with this? The relevant test cases are the second and third ones on the list. Anything listed after August 31, 2012 will not have a link. When Focus is updated, we can simply change the cutoff date in the template. To add a citation to the refnum, use the |refnum_extra= paramter, akin to the |date_extra= that already exists. Also I added an option to remove the link on any property by setting |nolink=yes. If that's ok with everyone, I'll make the change go live soon.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:01, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
This looks great to me. Many thanks to DMFB for his work on this. Ammodramus (talk) 12:07, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Can the Focus linking please be disabled for the states (such as Tennessee) for which there are no files in Focus? It is profoundly unhelpful to send people to thousands of URLs that we know have no useful content. I'm hoping for coding that would allow these links to be disabled now, then enabled if and when the records get digitized. --Orlady (talk) 14:46, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
The point of the Focus links is to send readers to the database to verify that the number we claim is in fact the reference number of the property, not to send them to the digitized nomination forms. The links to the nomination forms (be they in Focus or some state source) should be found in the articles themselves, not the lists. If you really think the Focus link is unhelpful for states such as Tennessee (I disagree with you), then you could make use of the |nolink= parameter that is in the works now.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:54, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
OK. I concur that the links to Focus aren't totally useless, so I guess it's OK to keep them. --Orlady (talk) 17:55, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

So... No objections? I'll give this another day.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:25, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

It looks good to me. I say go for it. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:05, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Changes implemented. If you still see a link for a site listed after August 2012, WP:PURGE the page and everything should work. Thanks!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:22, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Former listings

Apparently my edit caused some errors with former listings that included more than one date (i.e. listing date and removed date) in the date parameter. While I've taken care of that now, it begs the question, why do we include two dates in one column? Shouldn't we just have two separate columns, one for listing and one for delisting? Also, I'm pretty sure no delisted sites have records in Focus, so we should probably disable the Focus link if type=NRHP-delisted.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:05, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Would that even work with our current coding? If you want to produce new code to add an extra column, I would have no objection — it takes additional horizontal space, but we don't generally have extensive notes in the Summary field for delisted properties, so the space shouldn't be a problem. Nyttend (talk) 02:33, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
If we moved to two columns, we would have to add a second parameter, e.g. |delisted_date= and move the delisting dates to this parameter in all the existing former listings templates. It would be quite a task, but there aren't that many delisted properties... definitely not as many as there are listed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:21, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
I thought it would be a lot more work than that; I'd be willing to help with the grunt work. Could you have the bot produce a complete list of lists in which {{NRHP row}} appears with |type=NRHP-delisted? It would seem like an easy starting spot, since we wouldn't have to check all 3000+ lists before working on it. Nyttend (talk) 13:22, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
From the database:
mysql> SELECT type, COUNT(type) FROM `monuments_us_(en)` GROUP BY type LIMIT 100;
+---------------+-------------+
| type          | COUNT(type) |
+---------------+-------------+
| HD            |       13671 |
| NB            |           8 |
| NBP           |           2 |
| NHL           |        1958 |
| NHLD          |         406 |
| NHP           |          19 |
| NHS           |          67 |
| NMEM          |           9 |
| NMON          |          29 |
| NMP           |           8 |
| NRHP          |       72340 |
| NRHP-delisted |        1386 |
+---------------+-------------+
12 rows in set (2.20 sec)
The list of delisted items is available here (here). Multichill (talk) 17:17, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Awesome! Thanks for that list, Multichill. I'll work on coding a change to the template which shows the extra column if |delisted_date= is set. Then we can go around and move all the dates to that parameter and there will be no breaking in the interim. I'll let you know when I get that working in the sandbox.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:03, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Took less time than I thought. I put code in the sandbox that you can see in action on the test cases page. The relevant case is the second delisted property at the bottom of the section, which you can compare to the case above it. I've taken the delisting date and put it in |delisted_date=, which caused a new column to appear (and also turned off the Focus link). To handle the new column, I've added |splitdate=yes to the {{NRHP former header}} template (which is strangely unprotected btw), making it split as well. This is the procedure to follow for updating all the county lists. When all have been converted, I'll simply remove the splitdate parameter and default to being split... that is, unless some tables want to remain unsplit for some reason. As an aside, I also added |delisted_date_extra= so that we can put any references for delisting there. If there are no objections I'll make the code go live in the next day or so.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:45, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I've made the change to {{NRHP row}}. Now we can start going through the counties in the above lists. I won't have much time for the next few days/weeks (and most of that will be spent working on another project I have in the works). I'm more than willing to help, but I just won't be able to do so until I get some more free time.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:57, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


Implementation

Dudemanfellabra, I decided to start implementing these fixes in Ohio, so I made this edit and this edit. Look at the mess that resulted. What did I do wrongly, and what should I have done? Nyttend (talk) 02:03, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

I edited the first list to have the correct format. The |date= parameter cannot be left blank, but since the original listing date for these properties was unknown, I just added the year based on the reference number along with a {{cn}} tag in the |date_extra= parameter since we need a source for those dates. The general procedure to fix a table is to add |splitdate=yes to {{NRHP former header}} and then move the delisted date to |delisted_date= in each row. The |date= parameter cannot be empty, so something needs to go there, thus my addition of the listing year. It has been my experience, though, that most delisted properties have original listing dates already in the tables.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:04, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
Can we get the delisted date column centered like the listed date column? 25or6to4 (talk) 14:59, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
I've added the extra column to everything in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The issue of listing date in tables varies from state to state: most Indiana locations had the original date, while most Ohio lacked it. I've put in "Unavailable" instead of a facttagged year: it doesn't presume anything, whether a specific year or the idea that the date has been lost, and it does nothing except for telling the reader "We haven't found it yet". 25or6to4, I tried, but I can't figure out where the <center> tags should go. Would you mind doing it? If you dump the code into a sandbox and notify me, I'll be happy to copy it over to the template. Nyttend (talk) 18:21, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
Done--Dudemanfellabra (talk)
All done. Whew. All the former listings should be converted to splitdate now, and have had their dates checked on the weekly/yearly lists. There are a handful of owner-objection listing tables that use the delisted flag that were not converted. Now I wil be going through the rest of my delisted database and cross-checking the weekly/yearly lists for more additions to the tables... 25or6to4 (talk) 04:34, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
I ran across an instance of a split listing (listing plus boundary increase) that is very ugly and needs fixing by somebody smarter than me: National Register of Historic Places listings in Tennessee#Decatur County (DMFB?) --Orlady (talk) 16:25, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Better? Any time multiple refnums are used, they should be separated by commas (or comments) with no other formatting.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:48, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

2014 National Historic Landmark designations

New National Historic Landmarks were announced on April 23; there are four new listings. Magic♪piano 20:38, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Edits to one state list

Trolling by sockpuppets.

Extended content

There has been a series of edits to NRHPs in Colorado that I'd like someone else to look at. Specifically, moving the delisted properties from county level to their own sections seems out-of-the-norm, and something that might affect the various update scripts. Chris857 (talk) 20:43, 5 May 2014 (UTC) PS, similar edits at New Mexico. Chris857 (talk) 20:44, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

The delisted properties should definitely be grouped with the rest of the county listings. Grouping them all together is inconsistent with how the listed properties are sorted and creates issues when a county is split off the main list. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:34, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Why can't each county be a separate list? It's been done that way in some states, but not all. I think it's better. Ntsimp (talk) 21:45, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
I like that system better myself for consistency's sake, but it does have the drawback of creating separate lists with only one or two listings. I agree that there should be a lot more splitting, though, if for no other reason than to get rid of slow-loading 100kb+ lists (which are even slower if you're using the NRHPstats script). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:56, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
I see nothing wrong with a short list. In Utah we have Piute County and Rich County, with 2 listings each. They seem fine to me. Ntsimp (talk) 13:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm going to ping User:‎LimeyCinema1960 because (s)he seems to be the person responsible for these recent changes. I too think grouping all state delisted properties into one big table is not the way to go, but having a discussion without the person making the changes is not going to get us anywhere...--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:38, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Pinging User:SharpQuillPen too, because (s)he made the changes in New Mexico. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:10, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss this issue. Let us get back to the fundamentals of WP. 1) Information should be true. 2) The title of an article should adequately descript the idea or concept. 3) The intro should explain the contents of the article. 4) The article format should be in way that the general reader can easily understand. For the sake for clarity in this discussion, let me use the term "NRHP" instead of "listing" since I have been scolded for using that term. As long as two different formats are used to denote current and former NRHPs you have two different lists. Not every WP NRHP list has them mixed. Whether it is personal preference or local consensus has to be determined but there currently exists two different article information content styles; both current and former NRHPs mixed using different table formats or in a separate list each using the table format that best fits that status. Fundamentally, if an NRHP has been removed from the "protection" of the National Register, it is no longer an NRHP. I am not saying that the former NRHP should be wiped from the memory of the world or that it is no longer of significance but that it is no longer an NRHP. But we already have a block of information, maybe even a site article, on something. It would be a stupid move to banish that information merely because an NRHP has been removed from the National Register. All that does is create additional effort if needed in the future to recreate that block. So, we keep it, in a different table format in with the current NRHPs. But it is no longer an NRHP. And the article title style is "List of NRHP Listings in ......" Well, the removed NRHP is no longer an NRHP and that status it seems to be noted with a different table format. Again, I am not saying that any significance of the former NRHP has disappeared and should be banished from our memory; just that an article title reflect its intent and information of the same be put together for a better format and the ability of the general reader to follow. Some may say, well what do you do when an county or city or neighborhood article is developed? The logical thing; you take the information with you to the new article. Well, if the policy is to keep former NRHPs with its main article then the information will always be there to be moved. Will one potentially have to move information from two places? Yes, but then again, a former NRHP is no longer an NRHP. If the article is of current NRHPs then it should reflect current NRHPs. But, again, it would be a stupid move to make that information disappear so put it in a location where people can easily get to it. That will give people the opportunity to easily understand just what may cause an NRHP to be removed from the Nation Register. And if you have former NRHPs with its main article then you will easily determine if there are any former NRHPs to be moved if a more concentrated geographic area main article is developed. Some may say that, well there is only one. Consider the geographic area lucky but how many examples are there in these articles that counties are grouped instead of individual tables merely because there is only one NRHP for that county? Now that the end has been reached there will be those that call for "tradition" or "status quo". Well, the status quo is that not all NRHP articles have mixed tables. So status qui really is irrelevant. Status qui does not hold to only mixed status style. Tradition? There are many things in history that have the cache of tradition that no one is clamoring to bring back. Information is going to change and there is no stopping it. NRHPs will, hopefully, continue to increase in numbers but then it is inevitable that removed NRHPs will increase in numbers also. Someone may say, then we will have to change all these articles? No one is forcing any one to change any thing. But, information is going to change and at some point if there is a new style to accept then maybe it should be done at that time. Just do not go imposing your choice on others that have accepted another format with the reasoning that "tradition" carries more credibility. As far as I know there is no grand dame imposing her will at the tea party when it comes to etiquette.LimeyCinema1960 (talk) 20:18, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

LimeyCinema, I don't understand one thing you say: "Not every WP NRHP list has them mixed". By "mixed", I assume you mean putting a county's current and former listings in the same section. This isn't the case for the majority of lists — simply because there aren't any former listings in most places. Here in Indiana, there are 92 counties, and only 38 of them have any former listings; in Ohio, there are 88 counties, and again only 38 of them have any former listings. In the states' other 104 counties, no site has ever been delisted. Moving delistings to a separate section, away from their counties, is horribly confusing — dividing the state by counties and then by status within each county is simple and easy to understand, but dividing the state by status and then by county is confusing, because it separates geographically close locations and puts them with other places that are far away from them. It's much better to have the Bent County delisting with the current Bent County listings than with a site in Adams County. Nyttend (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Talk about a tough audience. I just followed and understood having read a few articles. But I can see by Nyttend reaction and expression that this is already getting dirty. If this discussion is to be about the facts then let's keep to that. Please do not exclaim to everybody that you do not understand, and is the interpreter for the group, as if in an attempt to discredit the ideas presented as being unintelligible because by your very reaction you exhibit that you understand. If that is to be your tactic at dominating a discussion then I'd rather it be done elsewhere because I do not do well with B.E. like that. We are not here to be bullied. Ok? I can clearly understand the reasoning behind what LimeyCinema said. It's confusing saying that the article is in effect current listings and interspersed in that "list", which really is a table, are delisted listings. These delisted listings are such different information from the current listings that the format is different. There are two types of information mixed in what is commonly titled "Current Listings". Delisted listings are not listing and if the title of the article is listings and the subtitle is Current Listings which just reinforces just what logicially is being set up to be found--current listings. And what do you find there? Delistings which aren't listings. If it said "Current and delisted listings" then it would be correct. It doesn't so it isn't. If the status' are mixed then there really is no other way of describing that they are mixed. The subtitle and the contents are inconsistent. You have, despite the first declaration otherwise, understand that. The next question is that should they be separate? If you want to use logic in order to better guide the general reader through the article then yes. If the subtitle is "Current Listings" and you have mixed listings then you are misleading and confusing the general reader with a subtitle of current listings. Now I do not know just what emotionalism there may be in the issue but just where does LimeyCinema say that if the consensus of the group is separation is permissibility that EVERY list has to follow that. LimeyCinema says that not every current National Register article has a mixed "Current List". You say that there is for many articles not the need for a delisted listings section. Just tell me where is it that these two different styles, which already exist in National Register articles, cannot co-exist? I am not here to present LimeyCinema's rebuttals but I am not about to stand clear and let someone mislead others into a us and them argument. LimeyCinema already said as such and if that is not understood then I would suggest that maybe there is just too much insularity involved. Is this group governed by a one or nothing mentality?SharpQuillPen (talk) 22:14, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Nyttend, is the statement fact or theory? Is it with just Indian and Ohio that separate lists would not work for those two states and those that share the same characteristics, just absolutely is not needed for those two states and those that have the same characteristic or not wanted for those two states and those with the same characteristics? And if so is that the same experience and state of usefulness for every other US state, county, city? I say no because every place is not the same but it seams that WP NRHP articles are very driven by the policy that one style fits all when in fact there are already current and former NRHP lists. Maybe there are in the US places that have characteristics that are best served by a separate format? Are those places to be denied the option of separate lists merely because "most" places do not have any current or the possibility of delisted NRHPs? If there is never a delisted NRHP then wonderful. If NRHPs are of such number of current and delisted NRHPs that managing the list is not cumbersome then wonderful. A situation that never develops does not need to be addressed. BUT, if there is a mixed list and it is subtitled "Current listings" then it is not correct. Plain and simple. If Madame Curie were to be here today and find that a previously accepted element was in fact two elements that had greatly differing atominc weights that did not numerically follow the other they would not be put onto the table of elements side by side just because previously they came from the same "element" of before. We have two elements here that are being thought of as one. Separate lists would enable those long lists to be broken up yet still remain with those from the same main article. Those people that seek out the number and reasons for delisting can find them when in a separate list more predictably. If delisted NRHPs can have removed date columns added to their information then there is a way of handling them electronically. If there is a way of isolating former NRHPs then they can be managed electronically whereever they are on the list should subsequint changes occur. But WP users are not definitively capable of isolating removed NRHPs electronically.LimeyCinema1960 (talk) 00:48, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
I have read and re-read what you've said, but I cannot understand your reasoning: you have consistently failed to define what you're talking about, and the same is true of SharpQuillPen's statements. Contrary to what you say, no list in any state, nor any list in any non-state area (DC, insular areas, Morocco), mixes current and former listings: they are always presented separately. Mixing current and former listings wouldn't even work technically, since we have separate templates for the two: you'd get a "Date removed" column in the current listings, or the cities and towns for the former listings would end up in the Summary column. What you've done is to mix items from numerous counties in a single list, and by removing the former listings from their counties' sections, you've made it appear as if there are no former listings in those counties. Nyttend (talk) 01:21, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
Sorry to have lead you on a wild goose chase. If a section is titled "Current listings" and contains former NRHPs that is a mixed list because current and former NRHPs are not the same especially if different templates are used. They share the same association but they are not the same thing. One is current and the other is not. In fact, using different templates tells us that they are different things. If they are listed in the same section it is a mixed list and to title that section as "Current listings" incorrectly describes the section. Now, if there is identified that former NRHPs are listed separately then the reader can then go to that section to see any pertinant former NRHPs for the area for which they have an interest. No WP article has remained the same since the time it was created. Two different things listed together is a mixed list even if it is broken down by county. Maybe this will clear up any misperception about "no mixed list" in a section that says it is of current listings.LimeyCinema1960 (talk) 03:37, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
If you're referring to the heading that says "Current listings by county", we could solve the problem by renaming it "Listings by county" rather than restructuring the entire page. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:03, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
There is also List of delisted National Register of Historic Places properties, which (in theory but not practice) includes delisted properties from all states. How about let's leave the county-level delistings in their respective county lists and link to this national list for a more broad overview of delisted properties?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't think we need to provide such a link on individual county pages, but such a link might be helpful on state-level lists. For example, in Ohio, we might put it just below the links to the NHLs and bridges lists. Nyttend (talk) 23:05, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
For the record, the editors responsible for the original series of edits (and the complaints here) have been confirmed as sockpuppets and blocked. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:17, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Collapsing this, since it was all a farce and nobody has supported this in good faith. If you do support this in good faith, feel free to open a new discussion. Nyttend (talk) 03:30, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For National Register of Historic Places At Wikimania 2014

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We are offering to design and print physical paper leaflets to be distributed at WIkimania 2014 for all projects that apply.
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Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 10:21, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposed new NHLs (Spring 2014 meeting)

Also on the NHL front, the NPS is having its Spring 2014 NHL meeting at the end of the month. Only five new ones are proposed, but there's some amendments to older ones and one for which the designation will likely be withdrawn.

We seem to be in good shape here with photos and articles.

New nominations
  1. Brookline Reservoir (officially "Brookline Reservoir of the Cochituate Aqueduct"), Brookline, Massachusetts. Nomination and executive summary. Oldest remaining largely intact U.S. water supply infrastructure; Principal Gatehouse is an early use of wrought iron in architecture. Already on Register; we have a bare-minimum stub.
  2. California Powder Works Bridge, Santa Cruz, California. Nomination and executive summary. Regular readers will remember that this covered bridge, an example of a post-Civil War mass-produced wooden bridge that briefly helped wooden bridges remain competitive with iron ones, was supposed to be discussed at last fall's meeting but was taken off the agenda. Whatever problems had arisen, I gather, have been fixed. I don't think we have an article although I seem to recall that someone had mentioned it was a contributing property to a historic district.
  3. Marjory Stoneman Douglas Home, Miami. Nomination and executive summary. Home of prominent and influential environmental activist responsible for helping to protect the Everglades. Not on Register yet, although Miami designated it a city landmark.
  4. Lake Hotel, Yellowstone National Park. Nomination and executive summary. Oldest hotel in a national park. Already on Register; we have a bare-minimum stub.
  5. McGregor Memorial Conference Center, Detroit. Nomination and executive summary]. Marks the beginning of architect Minoru Yamasaki's move from the International Style to New Formalism (I suppose this is the least the US can do for an architect most famous for two building complexes that got destroyed in spectacular fashion). Already on the Register; Start-class article with plenty of pictures already.
  6. Samara, West Lafayette, Indiana. Nomination and executive summary. Exemplary late-period Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian-style house. Listed; Start-class article with several pics.
Existing NHLs being amended
  1. Cliveden, Germantown, PA. Updated documentation.
  2. Fort Smith National Historic Site, Arkansas. Updated documentation and boundary adjustment.
  3. Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, Montana and North Dakota. [Nomination] and [executive summary]. Updated documentation and boundary adjustment, based on research since 1982.
  4. Mountain Meadows massacre site, Utah. Updated documentation and boundary adjustment. I should note that even though this was designated three years ago, and noted in the article, and there's a picture, we still don't have a separate article about the site (although per the Kent State NRHP listing, I'm not sure the need for a separate article has been demonstrated yet).
Withdrawal

Daniel Case (talk) 03:48, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Did you want me to work on those and get them to GA in short order? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:05, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
If you want to, if you think you can ... nobody sets anyone else's agenda here. I usually go over these when I find them so that people have a heads-up, and to make sure we have at least an article and photo. Daniel Case (talk) 19:34, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Any idea how long they typically go from posting these proposals until actually designating the new NHLs? Several months ago, you mentioned that they were considering designating a canal bridge at Metamora, Indiana, but it's not in the list of new NHLs, and I'm not sure whether to think that it didn't get designated or that it's still in process. Nyttend (talk) 03:02, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
As a data point, this year's listings were last on the agenda of the Spring 2013 meeting. Magic♪piano 03:10, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
@Nyttend: Just as with regular NRHP noms, you really can't tell. As suggested above, it seems like it takes a year or so, if all the ducks are in a row. But that's a big if. There are some noms that wre discussed in 2012 (or earlier) that we haven't heard anything about since. The NPS is hardly a rubber stamp for the Register or NHL status. Daniel Case (talk) 00:17, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
The California Powder Works Bridge is documented in the Historic American Engineering Record, so there are plenty of pictures of it (and several technical drawings). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:06, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Crazy ideas

Is there any way to get a popular page-like set of view counts for the NHRP projects and a way to basically make a bot updatable list that follows our GA/FA progress for articles? Lastly, is there a way to get the records of "has this been digitized" with a simple Y/N? Why am I asking these three things? Because these things are constantly getting in my way and I like to know where we are with great accuracy. And yes, I've gone a wee bit off the deep end with pushing for good articles, but I think it would be a great idea to finish up the red-links and push all our articles to GA/FA standards asap. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:02, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

  1. For the first one, check Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Popular pages, which is linked from the project page.
  2. For the second one, it's not a list, but this table, which is also shown on the project page, shows how many of our articles have achieved GA/FA status.
  3. As for the third one, there isn't really a site-by-site database other than Focus itself, but there is this (also linked from the project page), along with the information farther down that page, which includes a map and helpful links to tell you which states are mostly on Focus and which states have state-specific sources, etc.
Maybe you should check the main project page more often ;).--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:31, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Duh on the first, I thought I seen it somewhere! The 2nd isn't so helpful when you are plowing through a state with the intention I have to get it to GA or higher. Though the 3rd is indeed helpful, there definitions are not entirely accurate, but its better than nothing. I suppose though that I have some thousands of e-mails to send out after I finish working on the available ones. Thanks for the quick reply. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:38, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
In regards to the second, I've had some ideas for a while to address that, though I'm not sure we're ready to implement them quite yet. The first would be to add GA and FA columns to the progress page or the statistics script; while this seems like the sort of thing that would be nice eventually, I'm not sure if it would be useful or clutter given how low the percentage of GAs (and even non-stub articles) is right now. The second would be to add a "state=" parameter to Template:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, sort of like the one in Template:WikiProject U.S. Roads, so we could get quality statistics by state; it might not be as precise as you want, but it's better than the current setup. (Longterm, I've thought about using the progress page to implement a variant on WikiWork that accounts for redlinks; however, I'm not sure we're ready for it yet, what with 85% of the properties having redlinks or stubs.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 07:48, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Percent Illustrated/Articled/Start+/Net Quality
Total counts of listings/articles/pictures/Stub/...
Virginia percentages, indicative of other states' graphs
Yea I like the idea of adding FA, GA, and even B and C-Class statistics to the Progress page eventually, but as you said, I don't think now is the time. I think it's great that Chris wants to bring a state (which one, btw?) to mainly GA level, but we're having trouble getting things to just Start-level at the moment in most states, so Chris is way ahead of the game on this one. If we were to add all of the different levels of stats, the page would just be full of zeros... only about 200 out of the total ~50,000 articles we've created is at GA or FA status at the moment. When that figure rises to about 5000 or so (roughly 10%), maybe then we could justify adding all those zeroes. The extension of the code for the Progress page is minimal, so no worries there. As for the |state= parameter in the talk page template, I wouldn't oppose the measure, but I also think it's a little over-kill seeing as how we have the Progress page. I think just waiting for the higher classes to be included on the project page would cause less interruption to the site as a whole (~50*8=400 new categories would have to be created).
Finally for the graphs over time and other stats that WP:USROADS has, I could probably put those together even now. Just going through the old revisions (via code, of course) and picking out the total number of articles, images, etc., I can generate graphs by the boatload if we want them. For statistics that came in late like Start+ and even more recently Net Quality, I can just make the lines pick up when those statistics became available. Would this be desired? I currently am working in my free time on coding some stuff for the Commonscat discussion above, but after I get that finished, which I hope to do this weekend, I could start working on the code for making graphs if that's something people want me to do.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:46, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Oh, so if you want to have a thousand GAs or so before we do this... I suppose so. I've been kinda going slow at the pace of 1 GAN a day, but I've been slacking and really holding back since I didn't want to crush the process. I'm working on Connecticut, which is between New York and Massachusetts, which are major projects. I'm not having a hard time finding which articles to get to GA, but I believe that we should be going all out and catch up to the NRHP... ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:31, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

@ChrisGualtieri and TheCatalyst31: What do you guys think about the graphs to the right? I put something together last night to extract data from old revisions of the Progress page (raw data here) and graphed the data using gnuplot. Right now the data only shows the total country stats, but I'm going to try to make a graph of state by state progress as well. Before I did that, which would be much more complicated, I wanted to see if there was any feedback that could head off problems now.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:30, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

The general format looks fine to me. @Nyttend: you're our resident expert on color-blindness, so can you check if that color scheme's OK? (I feel like anything using both red and green should be double-checked for that.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:31, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
The color scheme was just gnuplot's default. I can change it if desired. I can also change thickness and dashed/dotted/etc. I hope to have time soon to get a state-by-state chart, but that'll have to wait at least for the next two weeks until my classes are over. After everything is collected, I can make it pretty and put it on the Progress page.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:39, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
I think I can tell everything on the Percent table: top to bottom, it's Illustrated, Articled, Net Quality, Start+. The quality and start+ are easy, and while the illustrated and articled look somewhat like the same color, the darkness difference makes them easy to tell apart. On the other hand, I'm rather confused by the Total Counts; if you can change thickness, it would be really helpful. Nyttend (talk) 12:59, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
I like it, seems to work well. An easy to read graph is always a good thing. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:59, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
So another pile of GAs up, many more in the pipeline. How's it coming? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 03:39, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Graduation today. After this weekend I'll have a lot more time to devote to this. Haven't forgotten about you :P--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:28, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
I've updated the maps above to use different line types to distinguish them from each other. I've also made the maps SVG to scale more readily. I am working on writing up something about these graphs and how to create new ones with the (now by-state) data at User:Dudemanfellabra/AltSandbox (soon to be moved, probably to something like Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress/History). I tried to produce a graph with all 50 states' history last night, but it was way too cluttered. I think the best way to go about this is to make individual state maps, which I plan on doing in the coming days and posting at that sandbox. In the mean time, can @Nyttend: comment on the update?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
Just as an update, I've now written a kind of "documentation" at the Progress subpage I linked above on how to produce graphs from the data as well as included a graph for Virginia (also included above now), mostly because I knew User:Pubdog did a lot of work there recently, and I wanted to see the graphical depiction of progress in that state. The same can be done for any state, though, including Connecticut, mentioned above.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:57, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
I like the new graph format; it's easy for me, and if you can't tell the difference between lines with different-shaped boxes, there's nothing we can do for you. Nyttend (talk) 03:27, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Total number of FA, GA NRHP articles over time
Is there a way we could get a GA and FA progress chart? Even for the whole NRHP, it would be good to see our progress. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:29, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Actually, GA and FA progress is tracked already, but without graphs. All of the project's FAs and 100 of its GAs are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Recognized content and both additions and subtractions can be found in that page's history. Because the number of FAs and GAs is small compared to the numbers in the graphs on this page (there are still more untagged articles in the project than there are FAs and GAs combined), you wouldn't see any progress in FAs and GAs if they were added to the graphs on this page. However, statistics for a separate graph could be generated from the page history of /Recognized content. --Orlady (talk) 18:24, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I'd like a separate chart for GA and a separate chart for FA. Just to see how we are improving and at what pace. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:44, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Genius idea, @Orlady:! I didn't think of that! I was going to respond saying I didn't have any historical data for GA/FA stats, but apparently I do! I'll see what I can put together using that page as the source and post here when I have something. I am working on another project at the moment, and I will be packing/on a plane for the next few days, so it may take a few days, but I'll get something for you soon!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:08, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
@ChrisGualtieri: The map of FA/GA articles over time is included to the right, as well as here. Awesome job with the recent spike in the number of GA articles!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:01, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, but let's see how high it can go! Still not satisfied with that increase rate. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 03:51, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Opportunity to visit a normally off-limits NHL

The Joy Farm in Madison, New Hampshire, a National Historic Landmark that was the summer home of E.E. Cummings, will be accessible as part of a barn tour organized as a fund-raising effort by the local library on July 12, 2014 (details). We currently only have a c. 1971 black-and-white NPS photo of this property, so photo hounds who might be in the area could take note. This property is (if the satellite view is to be believed) not at all photographable without access. Magic♪piano 18:49, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Weird cat via parser function?

I ran across this today Category:Historic district contributing properties in USA Portland downtown. I can't figure how this has been parsed from the infobox but the wording is clunky and I'd like to fix it. It should be something like Category:Historic district contributing properties in Portland, Oregon. An most of the properties aren't really downtown, like Francis R. Chown House. Can someone help? Valfontis (talk) 03:04, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

That category is populated automatically from articles that use Template:Location map USA Portland Downtown. This issue has come up in the past with similarly-named maps, and it seems like the best way to fix it is to set the parameter nocat=yes in the infobox to suppress automatic categorization and then add whatever categories you want manually. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 03:21, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
This can be fixed pretty easily with AWB, actually, and my trigger finger's itching for a workout. I can run this set tonight; any other similar categories cropping up? --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 14:53, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
@Ser Amantio di Nicolao Sorry, just saw this reply. Yes please fix it if you have time. And no, I haven't seen any others but I will let you know. Thanks! Valfontis (talk) 21:10, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Sorry - haven't been much in an AWB mood lately. I'll get to it soon - promise. :-) --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 13:41, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
OK. I tried to fix it, and outwardly the infoboxes look fine. But AWB screwed something up, for some reason; I'm not sure why, yet, and I won't have time to look into it until tonight. Let me look into it further and see if I can come up with an answer. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 13:15, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Petersburg, Virginia query

I have a strong suspicion that Union Station (Petersburg) is a contributing property to the Petersburg Old Town Historic District, which would mean that the district has one other railroad station besides the South Side Station on display in the infobox. Am I right? If so, does anybody want to add a new CP infobox before I do it? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 13:28, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Animated Progress maps

Percent illustrated
Percent articled
Percent Start+
Net Quality Rating†

Found a quick way to download all the old revisions of the Progress maps and combine them into an animated gif. The images are included above as well as as on the Progress History page (which also includes some graphs I made earlier). I quite like watching Virginia turn red on the articled map thanks to User:Pubdog and the illustrated map turn more red in general over time. I think the animated format is a good representation of our progress over time. Anyone agree? (Or disagree?)--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 10:39, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Pretty cool, especially Virginia. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:29, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Or the advancing red blob into southern Illinois (illustrations) and in northern Michigan (articles). Chris857 (talk) 03:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Indeed. Nice to have a visualization like this - excellent work! --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 05:19, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Speaking of Virginia, Smallbones, I just found a site in Appomattox that's a contributing property to the Appomattox Historic District. If you're interested, you could work on that. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 15:10, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Glad you've enjoyed the advancing red blob into southern Illinois, Chris; I have too :-) I'm hoping to advance it westward before long; I'm planning to spend my Memorial Day knocking out most of the remaining Metro East counties, and if I'm successful, every county partly or totally south of I-70 will be fully illustrated. Nyttend (talk) 02:03, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places listings in Sussex County, Delaware

In the Sussex County list, what looks to be a former listing was in HTML comments and was removed. Anyone know why this happened this way? Chris857 (talk) 15:39, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Feel free to put them back. They were commented out for more than a year and in line ~2,112 the comments were unbalanced. Everything is retained in edit history anyway. Any particular reason that they should remain inside the text? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:02, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

LGBT Survey

The NPS is surveying sites significant in the LGBT movement for inclusion in the NRHP Einbierbitte (talk) 19:19, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata

Hi everyone, I haven't been very active here the last couple of months. I have been more active on Wikidata and we're now at the point that it becomes feasible to create items for every monument/historice place, see for example Charlie Parker Residence. I'm now working on the Dutch Rijksmonumenten because the dataset is quite good and I know it very well (I'm Dutch in case you didn't figure that out already). If all goes well, that will be imported over the next couple of weeks. I would probably like to continue with other countries so I'm turning to you.

First thing is how to model the different kind of NRHP sites you have. I think we need a new item "National Register of Historic Places listing" which links to National Register of Historic Places. This would be a subclass of historic site. All the different types (like NHL) would be a subclass of this "National Register of Historic Places listing" item. Does that make sense to you?

On Wikidata we already have a Property to identify listings. For this property constraint reports are being produced. Before any data can get imported, that puzzle first needs to be solved. That sounds harder than it is. Most of it can be done quite fast and you end up with a couple of difficult edge case. I would also like to add a bit of code toe Template:Infobox NRHP so we can track down items that have an infobox (with refnum) here, but don't have the Property on Wikidata. Otherwise I'll end up importing duplicates.

Than we can start importing the data. Probably first slow (one county?) and all goes well, speed up.

Anyway, I hope you like it. We have a task force page on Wikidata in case you're interested. Have fun at your conference! Multichill (talk) 20:22, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places listings in Grand Canyon National Park

Anyone have a good explanation as to why this page exists? Everything on it is duplicated in National Register of Historic Places listings in Coconino County, Arizona. When the page was originally "split out" back in 2011, nothing was changed on the Coconino County list. The descriptions on the Grand Canyon list are not present on the Coconino County list, so I didn't just redirect it. I marked it as a merge. Anyone have any reason why they shouldn't be merged?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 12:54, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

There are similar lists for other US national parks. That one, like National Register of Historic Places listings in Cape Cod National Seashore, has all of its listings in one county. I don't think they're intended to result in an actual division of the county lists; there are also "List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in X". Magic♪piano 13:47, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I made most of those lists, in part to consolidate lists that spanned multiple counties, and in part as a way of presenting a consolidated list of places in individual parks in counties (some very large) with many other unrelated listings. They're not divisions of county lists, just an alternative way of looking at them for a particular destination without making readers sift out the other properties. They grew from an effort to generate consolidated park lists for several national park FAs, and aren't part of the county list hierarchy, they're intended more as daughter articles for the park articles. In particular, Grand Canyon has a complex hierarchy of overlapping NHLs, NHLDs, historic districts and NRHP listings, which the park-specific list has sorted out (with some trouble), and it's intended to complement the park article. I had some notions of writing a Historical buildings and structures of Grand Canyon National Park article, which is sorely needed, and this was to be a departure point, but haven't had a chance to do so. Acroterion (talk) 16:42, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Well the main reason I brought it up here is that there is information on this "secondary" list that is not on the main county list that needs to be copied/merged over somehow. Also there are several errors on the Grand Canyon list, specifically with the refnums of each listing. Several different places are marked with the same refnum, which cannot be true. Because of this, the page is incorrectly showing up on Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Missing commons category links as needing a commonscat link, but the row it's matching is not correct.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 11:59, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
And vice versa: the newly listed NHL 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision site isn't on the park list. I'll look at the numbers: there is a lot of overlap and a cycle of boundary increases, relistings as NHLs, NHLs in NHLDs, and so on. Acroterion (talk) 02:23, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

NRIS inquiry

I've never really learned my way around the NRIS, and I don't use it for editing much. Moreover, I can't find the NRIS files on the NPS web site any more. However, I'm now looking at one HD where I'm wondering what the NRIS has on it. Can anyone help out?

Specifically, I would like to know if the NRIS includes fields for the NR criteria applicable to each listing. If so, I'd like to know what criteria it lists for: Shaniko Historic District, Shaniko, Wasco County, Oregon, refnum 82003754.

Any help would be appreciated. — Ipoellet (talk) 00:19, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean the A, B, C, or D thing? If so, the NRIS says A - Event. If you mean the area of significance, NRIS gives 050 - Commerce. If you mean level of significance, it's ST - state. The database I have on my computer may be outdated, though, and it looks like maybe NPS may be updating it again? I get a "Download entire database will be available again soon" message on the download page at the moment.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:08, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
It was the A/B/C/D I was after. Thanks much. — Ipoellet (talk) 03:56, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually, while I'm bothering you, what does NRIS say for the level of significance for: U.S. Post Office, The Dalles, Wasco County, Oregon? I've been assuming "local", but confirmation would be nice. Thanks. — Ipoellet (talk) 04:01, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

NRIS actually says state level significance for refnum 85000545.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:01, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
Remember that you can always check Elkman's database, http://www2.elkman.net/nrhp/infobox.php. Nyttend (talk) 21:51, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet for Wikiproject National Register of Historic Places at Wikimania 2014

Please note: This is an updated version of a previous post.

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:
Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 09:48, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Saint Stephens Episcopal Church (Culpeper, Virginia)

I was trolling the Virginia DHR website for some information, and came across a nomination form for St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Culpeper. Here's the link to the PDF file, and here is a photo. The odd thing is that the church doesn't appear at National Register of Historic Places listings in Culpeper County, Virginia, that I can tell. I'm sure this question has been addressed before, but I'm curious as to why not. It's no big deal - I realize it can be added manually if need be (and created, for that matter...which I may do if I have a little time later today) - but I'm wondering if this is a potential problem with other county lists as well, missing sites.

Knowing me, there's probably an extremely simple explanation which I'm overlooking. :-) --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 13:20, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

The form says it was prepared in April 1995, but the property isn't found in the 1995 list of weekly actions. I'm no expert, but I don't think it was ever listed on the NRHP. Ntsimp (talk) 15:12, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
This page doesn't mention anything about the NRHP for St. Stephen's.. only the Virginia Landmarks Register.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:23, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
Interesting. I suspected as much, honestly - I wonder why? --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 15:58, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Converting NHL lists to use row templates

Is there any reason why our "regular" NRHP lists use row templates ({{NRHP row}}) and our NHL lists don't? Would anyone be opposed to converting them to do so? I think it should be possible to make the existing row template work with NHL lists with some special code for when |type=NHL, but maybe there would need to be a new {{NHL header}} template created.. We have an NHL list for each of the 50 states, plus some others.. not that many, but way more than I want to convert by hand. I might look into creating a script/some other application that will automatically convert these to use row templates, but before I expended any effort coding, I wanted to touch base with the project to see if there is some reason they don't use row templates. Anyone know of a reason/oppose converting them?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:13, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Multichill used a script to do most of the conversion of the NRHP lists from tables to their present form; perhaps (if he still has it) it can be adapted to convert the NHL lists into a similar form. Magic♪piano 15:14, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
I have no complaints with converting them, as long as the mechanics can be figured out. I don't think we ought to use NRHP row without modifications, since we'd have to merge the "locality" and "county" lines. Nyttend (talk) 21:51, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I have made some modifications to the {{NRHP header}} and {{NRHP row}} templates and copied my test code to User:Dudemanfellabra/Sandbox (header) and User:Dudemanfellabra/AltSandbox (row). I have made it such that if one sets the first unnamed parameter to NHL, e.g. {{NRHP header|NHL}} or {{NRHP row|NHL}}, the labels and colors of all the columns change to NHL format (based off of List of NHLs in AL but can be changed if desired). Setting this first unnammed parameter automatically hides the city column and adds a county column, whose name can be changed (e.g. for Louisiana, counties are "parishes") by setting |county=Parish or whatever you like. I have kept the "location" column, as opposed to a "locality" column to allow us to better specify the location of NHLs if we so desire. I personally think including an address followed by the city name would be more informative/helpful than just including a city like we do currently in NHL lists. I have also changed the "Summary" column for regular NRHPs to be called "Description" because it just makes more sense to me. All of the parameters have remained the same for NHL and NRHP rows, so it should be pretty familiar. I have transcluded test cases at User:Dudemanfellabra/Test for you to look at. Feel free to add to or modify what's there. Is everyone pleased with this extension? If so, I will see if I can create a script to convert existing lists to use the row template. It may be overkill, though, since there are only slightly more than 50 lists that need to be converted. That many could maybe be finished manually before I had time to code anything. Anyone willing to help if this addition is approved?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 10:36, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

It was actually easier than I thought it would be to create a script to convert the tables to row template format. I've run the script on Alabama–California and dumped the output to that test page for examination. There are tiny errors here and there, but nothing that can't be quickly fixed as far as I have seen. I haven't tried it on all the states, though. One thing worth noting is that for Alabama, the script does not add the daggers and such to the rows, but they can be added manually as shown in the table at the top of the page. Another thing to note is that the refnums of all these sites need to be filled in before copying the tables to the NHLs page. Anyone want to help? I will dump the rest of the states when I get the time to.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:15, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

NRIS-only in Massachusetts

This is awesome!

I just went through and updated all the maps, animated gifs, and graphs over time related to the Progress page and in the process noticed what's been going on in Massachusetts, as shown in the graph to the right. (I have graphs for all the states on my computer but have only uploaded this one and Virginia.) When we started tagging NRIS-only articles around November or December 2013, it was pointed out that Massachusetts was in some pretty bad shape with over 3000 of the total ~4000 sites in the state (roughly 75%!) having articles of NRIS-only quality. Though the state was nearly 100% articled, the net quality of the state was in the low 20%'s due to this abundance of substubs.

Well look at it now! Net quality of over 60% and constantly rising! The number of NRIS-only articles has dropped tenfold from over three thousand to just over three HUNDRED in the seven months since we have been keeping track of them. At this rate, the state of Massachusetts should be free of NRIS-only articles within a month or two! I didn't try to find out who is taking care of these articles (hopefully they're watching here?), but whoever these editors are deserve all the praise we can give them! This is really amazing!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:45, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

User:Magicpiano has been responsible for nearly all of the improvement in Massachusetts, as far as I can tell. I've noticed him/her improving Massachusetts articles for a while now, and I've been extremely impressed at how much they've gotten done in the past several months. If nearly eliminating the NRIS-only stubs in Massachusetts wasn't enough, Magicpiano is also well on their way to getting New Hampshire fully articled and is responsible for the red patch in southeast Arkansas on the article map. Thanks to an incredible article writer! TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 09:36, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I've been a busy bee. Magic♪piano 13:44, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
For the interested, I've finished my pass over the Massachusetts listings, filling in short stubs with available online resources. There are about 100 listings for which I could not find decent documentation online, for which I will eventually get nomination docs from the NPS (or await Massachusetts record digitization). Magic♪piano 13:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Article requests

Why isn't there a segment on the NRHP wiki for article requests? I'm looking to add The Bartlett House (Ghent, New York) as a potential request, among others. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 04:42, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

This seems like something which could be added to Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/to do. That list needs some serious reorganizing anyway - a bunch of those tasks are too generic to be useful, and I'm not sure some of them are really our top priorities (do we really need a 100% county in each state, especially since one of those states is >95% articled already?) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 07:40, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
Since nobody objected, I've added a line for requests to the to-do list, and removed the goal regarding 100% counties. @DanTD: feel free to add more requests, since the one request looks lonely right now. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 06:32, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Campaign upload button within NRHP list articles

Hey everyone. My colleague Monumenteer2014 is the project manager for Wikipedia Summer of Monuments, which is a new take on Wiki Loves Monuments. You may have seen me post about it here before. The model is basically the same as Wiki Loves Monuments but with more outreach to cultural institutions (particularly those in the Southeastern United States) and a longer upload period. The main portal for the contest is here on Commons.

The contest period will last from July 1 to September 30; pictures of NRHP sites uploaded in that time (regardless of where in the country they're from) will qualify. The banners won't go up until September 1, in keeping with past years, but Wikimedia DC (which has run the contest since 2012) has decided to allow entries for a longer period of time. This way, those who are eager to participate can get their pictures up right away, and their files can be sorted as quickly as possible. Uploaded pictures are automatically sorted into this category.

This leaves one unsettled matter: the photo-upload buttons found within NRHP lists (i.e. {{UploadCampaignLink}}). There are two options:

  • Have the buttons up for one month, in keeping with how it worked last year, or
  • Have the buttons up for all three months, which is a longer period but it allows for photos to come in at a more gradual clip, ideally resulting in a smaller backlog. (The site banners would regardless only run during September.)

What does everyone think? Harej (talk) 02:51, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd go with the longer period. It'll make for a smaller backlog, and will hopefully encourage more people to participate in the moment. (Much easier to plan out a set of monuments to visit if you know you can upload the pictures at once, instead of having to wait a month or two. Besides, people will have at least part of the summer for their photography, and that's a period when most people are off for some period of time.) --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 14:00, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
I would also be fine with the longer upload period, but for the month of September, could/should the campaign in the link be changed back to WLM? This will make no difference for the user, but on Commons it would change the categories added to the image upon uploading.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:15, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Longer is better, and the button does simplify uploading. You need to make it clear that the images uploaded in July and August are/are not eligible for the contest aspects of WLM. Many of the NRHP listings in my area tend towards abandoned structures in weed fields with nary a bit of red to catch a judge's eye (File:John_Corbley_Farm.jpg, File:John Minor Crawford House.jpg), but, still... Generic1139 (talk) 13:12, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
To clarify: Summer of Monuments is taking the place of Wiki Loves Monuments. The difference between this and WLM is the longer upload period and the incorporation of GLAM outreach. Harej (talk) 19:42, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Clarity achieved, thank you. If SoM replaces WLM, why are you saving the banners until September? Running them for three months does seem excessive, but if the intent is to get people uploading images sooner to spread out the load, then the advertising needs to start sooner. Think about at least running the banner for a week or two at the start of July. Generic1139 (talk) 21:55, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
If WSM is replacing WLM, why is WLM still a thing? Can you point to some discussion where WSM was named the alternative? From the link you included above, I see it is only limited to the US, a scope much narrower than WLM, so I don't really see how it is a suitable replacement. That said, if it is a replacement, I have no problem with changing the link.
I do have a question, though.. I have a script that adds unused images and commonscat links to NRHP lists (as well as lists of sites on other registers). It works by using categories added by templates during WLM uploads (the link above is documentation explaining the cats/templates in more detail). Will WSM uploads also utilize these templates/categories?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:18, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Hey, James - this looks good. Sorry that I won't be able to do anything behind the scenes this year. I agree with having the upload buttons from July-Sept, and also suggest some banner notifications spread throughout the summer, some at the start of July, and some at the start of September. As far as folks questions about how this was organized, the DC chapter is doing the organization since WP:NRHP or myself were unable to provide the manpower. I think we could organize ourselves to help them and get back a lot of influence on how it is run, but I'm happy with what they are doing and they do check in here from time to time. Good luck, I'll try to provide some pix! Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:50, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello people of WikiProject NRHP. It is good to see your very organized Wikiproject and I hope to be as helpful as I can to you in promoting "Summer of Monuments". We plan to solicit photographs of many hitherto unpictured Historic Places. I would love to hear advice, guidance, questions, or concerns from you regarding how this should be done. If there are particular Places you have long wanted photographed, maybe I can help you to get what you're looking for. Salutations, Monumenteer2014 (talk) 12:55, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The pictures are starting to roll in! Check out commons:Category:Unreviewed submissions from Wikipedia Summer of Monuments. Monumenteer2014 (talk) 12:35, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Category:Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register

I've been doing some work adding to this category over the past few weeks, and I see that it's now up to just over 500 articles. Given the fact that most of what I've added has been restricted to Virginia, that suggests that there's a possibility it could grow much larger. There's already a separate subcategory dedicated to properties in Minnesota; should we continue breaking out other states, then, or refold the Minnesota properties into the category at large? I'm in favor of the former, myself, given the potential size of the category. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 17:01, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

It's an interesting category. Just to repeat and clarify - it's not Category: Historic district contributing properties, but sites in HDs that are individually listed as well. Since they are "listed twice" we might think that they tend to be some of the most important sites we have (but not always). In fact some of this might be driven by different SHPO practices in different states,
One search recommendation. It seems like if we could pull off sites that have 2 reference numbers and are not themselves HDs, then we might get a full list for that category, perhaps including individual sites with expanded borders and with a few NHLs included as well. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:43, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Another question - in the event we do decide to create the by-state articles, how should the subcategories of Category: Historic district contributing properties be handled? Personally, I think the newer category should replace the older one. No sense in double-catting them; I'm concerned it would breed needless category clutter. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 19:04, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Re Smallbones' comment — sometimes they are the most significant ones, either because they're the core of a historic district, or because the SHPO supported someone's idea of individually listing something that was already in a district. This is the weird thing about the Crawford-Whitehead-Ross House; page 12 of its nomination is spent saying basically "it's already part of the Madison Historic District, but here's why we should list it individually". Lots of these aren't unusually significant, however; eleven of the individually listed buildings here in Bloomington are in HDs, and all of them got listed before the districts. Going by the rating system of the Indiana Historic Sites and Structures Inventory (Contributing, Notable, and Outstanding, from lowest to highest), some of them actually are deemed less significant than others; the Morgan House got a "Notable", and the Showers-Smith-Matthews House got an "Outstanding", but it's Morgan that's individually listed. Nyttend (talk) 04:46, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
Pardon my asking, but I don't think we came to a consensus on recategorizing these. Shall we keep the broad category as-is, or begin breaking things out into smaller by-state categories? I favor the latter, as the current category is at some 500-strong and is only going to get larger in the forseeable future. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 13:27, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
OK. Having heard nothing, I'm going to start recategorizing in a few days, as soon as I have the chance. Best to get this under control now rather than allowing the category to balloon out of hand. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 14:07, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, I did not see this thread until now. Some of the pages in the national category are added automatically via {{Infobox NRHP}} by using the parameter |nrhp_type=indcp. This is the same story as for the regular contributing properties recently split into state-level categories. As I did there, I can code the infobox to automatically sort these into state-level categories if you wish. I'm not sure how many use the indcp type (the same display can be achieved by using |nrhp_type2=cp, sans the category), but there's probably a non-zero number. It is also possible to manually turn off auto-categorization for those articles by setting |nocat=yes. Which would you prefer? Changing the infobox or manually turning off auto-cat in that unknown number of articles?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 09:09, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
Apologies for the delayed response - I've been busy enough that my head's been swimming for the past few weeks.
Generally speaking, I'm not in favor of auto-categorization for the reasons brought up here. When it works, it's great, but it can be a bit of a bear to sort out if something gets in the way of it working. Personally, I'd rather sort these manually - AWB makes it fairly easy to do and doesn't require a whole lot of time to set up. And it allows for a bit more manual control than we otherwise might have. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 15:08, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Ok, well I'm not sure how many of the articles in the category now are in there because of the infobox, and if I remove auto-categorization now, those articles will not be in the category anymore. How about I wait to remove the auto-categorization until all of the articles have been split out into state-level categories so we don't lose track of any? In the interim, some pages will be in both categories, but they should all clear out when I update the infobox. Sound good to you?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:34, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Works for me. I'll try combing through with AWB sometime in the next few days and add the category where appropriate. Probably won't happen tonight, but I should have some time tomorrow night. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 14:36, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Combing has begun. Don't know how long it'll take - hopefully I can have it finished by Saturday or so. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 05:00, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

National Park Service - Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Heritage Initiative

Sharing this link here, which provides an overview of the NPS's Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Heritage Initiative, including NRHP info.

Thanks, ----Another Believer (Talk) 15:06, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

My uploads from the NPS archives are 35% complete (hitting 70,000 images, see above) and should finish in a few weeks, so tying those to this list would be a cool little LGBT project. Perhaps one to discuss at the Hackerthon before Wikimania? --Fæ (talk) 15:41, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

"Additional documentation" in NRIS

When successful, do requests for "ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION RECEIVED" get logged in NRIS? The final page of the nomination for the Bell Court Neighborhood Historic District (Lexington KY) contains a request for name change to "Bell Place Historic District" (the neighborhood centers on the NR-listed Bell Place), and while it's not in NRIS, I'm not sure whether to interpret this as an unsuccessful request or a request that just doesn't appear in NRIS. Nyttend (talk) 13:40, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Additional documentation requests get logged in the weekly lists of actions, but since they don't have separate reference numbers I doubt they get logged in NRIS. You can probably look through some of the older weekly lists to see if anything's there (though good luck with that since the request is undated). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 06:59, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
In my (possibly outdated) version of the NRIS, it seems additional documentation is recorded, though for this property there doesn't seem to be any. The only date I can find is a listing date of 1980-12-08, and the name of the site is still Bell Court Neighborhood Historic District.
As an example of a site that does have additional documentation recorded in NRIS, refnum #66000928 (Alexandria Historic District) shows a "most relevant certification date" of 1966-11-13 (the listing date), but in the "other certifications" file I show the same 1966-11-13 as the NHL listing date, then there was additional documentation on 1969-04-02 and even more additional documentation on 1984-12-12. The nomination form only appears to include the first nomination, not the additional documentation, so it seems Focus does not include everything the NPS has on each site regardless. Reference number 5 on the article is in the Virginia state-level system and seems to date from 1984, which would correspond to the most recent documentation, but I can't get that file to open on my computer to verify that.
NRIS apparently records a lot of relevant dates, not just the listing and delisting. They are shown below:
AD	ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION
BD	BOUNDARY DECREASE
BI	BOUNDARY INCREASE
DC	DETERMINED ELIGIBLE/CERTIFIED DISTRICT
DD	DETERMINED ELIGIBLE/DOE PROCESS
DF	DETERMINED ELIGIBLE/RETURNED FED. NOMINATION
DI	DETERMINED INELIGIBLE
DO	DETERMINED ELIGIBLE/OWNER OBJECTION
DP	DATE RECEIVED/PENDING OWNER OBJECTION
DR	DATE RECEIVED/PENDING NOMINATION
DW	DETERMINED ELIGIBLE/WITHDRAWN
LI	LISTED IN THE NATIONAL REGISTER
NA	NATIONAL LANDMARK BOUNDARY APPROVED
NL	DESIGNATED NATIONAL LANDMARK
NX	NATIONAL LANDMARK STATUS REMOVED
PM	PROPERTY MOVED
RE	REMOVED FROM ELIGIBLE LIST
RN	REMOVED FROM NATIONAL REGISTER
UN	DESIGNATED UNIT OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Any way, my guess is that the additional documentation was either not approved or not recorded in NRIS, but I'm leaning towards not approved since other additional documentation has been recorded. You know as well as I, though, that anything with the NRIS should be viewed skeptically, so it's really anyone's call. It is also possible that the additional documentation was approved after my version of NRIS (I think it's the 2012 version?). Regardless, IMO your best option would be to email the NPS and see if they can figure it out.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 13:26, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Mass creation of redirects

I've always been annoyed that "National Register of Historic Places in [placename]" typically isn't a working redirect, especially since that's the format used by the categories. What would people think of having Dudemanfellabra's NRHPbot mass-create redirects for all counties? I was thinking that "National Register of Historic Places in PLACE" should redirect to a county list if it exists as a separate page, or if it is itself a redirect, it should instead redirect to the correctly-named page's target. For example, the bot would create National Register of Historic Places in Lauderdale County, Alabama as a redirect to National Register of Historic Places listings in Lauderdale County, Alabama, while it would create National Register of Historic Places in Wabash County, Illinois as a redirect to the current target of National Register of Historic Places listings in Wabash County, Illinois.

I already asked Dudemanfellabra, who liked the idea but reminded me (I'd forgotten) that we need to have a discussion here before doing a botreq. Nyttend (talk) 14:19, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. It's probably not been done before because there are so many potential redirects that would need to be created. But it sounds like the ideal bot task. --‖ Ebyabe talk - Health and Welfare ‖ 14:48, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
Having made that typing mistake a few times myself, I'm all in favor of this idea. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:54, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
I, too, have been guilty of this on more occasions than I'd care to remember - consequently I support this as well. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 14:51, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
Ditto. I support this! Einbierbitte (talk) 15:08, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
Seeing no objections, I've opened the bot request.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:24, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Just in case anyone is interested, I have written some code which has produced output at User:NationalRegisterBot/Redirects that outlines what the bot will create. I'm still waiting for approval, but in the mean time, if anyone wants to look over the output to make sure there are no errors, feel free to do so.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 12:54, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

The bot has been approved. I will create the redirects later today.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:58, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
The bot has now created all the redirects. There shouldn't be any that were missed, but if there were, there shouldn't be many, so they can be created manually.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:56, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

In come the images from Summer of Monuments

"Crossroads Presbyterian Church's Cemetery and Stainback General Store" submitted by Mebane Historical Museum (Alamance County, North Carolina)

You'll see a few hundred images each at commons:Category:Unreviewed submissions from Wikipedia Summer of Monuments and commons:Category:Images from Wikipedia Summer of Monuments. Almost all of these images depict hitherto-unphotographed places from the National Register. They can now be added to the listings by place and to the relevant Wikipedia articles if they exist.

Since submissions keep popping up in both places, maybe we should create a separate Category for those images which have been reviewed by a Wikimedian? I am open to any scheme proposed by this WikiProject, since you all clearly work most with the National Register.

I hope these images look good to you. Please let me know if you have comments or questions about the trajectory of this summer upload campaign. Monumenteer2014 (talk) 15:02, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I won't promise to review anything, however I've spotted at least several that were uncategorized, which could very easily be categorized, and I've added those categories. I urge other editors to join me in this effort. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 02:43, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Update project style guide

Once the location discussion has iterated to a conclusion, I suggest we look at updating the Style guide and/or FAQ with guidance on location in the article text, the article infobox, and in the location column on the nhl and nrhp lists. We might also update the information on coordinates to explicitly encourage corrections to the coordinates, using WGS 84 as the standard. The style quide currently says "It is not necessary to report coordinate errors to the project", but it doesn't say "go ahead and change them if they are wrong". And, for this purpose, is the location using google or bing maps sufficient as a verifiable source? Generic1139 (talk) 16:13, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

The style guide should probably also be clearer about (or mention) a few other things:
  • Older listings, particularly in rural areas, are sometimes vague and incorrect about the locality where the listed property actually is (e.g. "X vicinity" may mean the property is actually in locality Y, which is adjacent to X, or in an unincorporated area of a different jurisdiction).
  • Street addresses for older listings (>10-15 years) may be stale, and should be confirmed through sources other than the listing/nomination.
  • Coordinates acquired solely by entering an address into a mapping service are also not necessarily reliable, particularly in rural areas, and should be confirmed through other means (satellite views, street views, local historical societies, etc).
  • Districts, and any properties near jurisdictional boundaries, should be checked for overlap into other jurisdictions that have separate NRHP lists.
(Let's just say I've had direct experience with these recently.) Magic♪piano 12:41, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Perfect example of NRIS errors

Here's the perfect example of an NRIS error, and a resulting error in an article because of NRIS-only: for more than four years, we've been telling people that Second Presbyterian Church (Lexington, Kentucky) is an Art Deco structure, when it's definitely Gothic Revival. Feel free to mention to creators of NRIS-only articles. Nyttend (talk) 01:13, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

It also wasn't dedicated until 1924, so "built in 1922" is an NRIS-inspired oversimplification. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:32, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
I've investigated several NRIS-only articles that had errors of several decades in the age of the building. One that I specifically recall is Sabine Hill, which was listed in NRIS as being built in 1796, rather than the ca. 1814-6 dates given by every other source I found. But the difference between Gothic Revival and Art Deco is a bigger error than that! --Orlady (talk) 13:23, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
All sources (even the most reliable) can contain errors. If it seems that the NRIS entry is erroneous, feel free to use other, more accurate sources instead. If those other sources don't exist, just omit the erroneous information (ie don't mention any style or date of construction). We are not required to mindlessly repeat erroneous information. Blueboar (talk) 14:24, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
One of the issues with NRIS is that the information presented in is not necessarily wrong, for suitable definitions of "wrong". The date in NRIS is not unambiguously a construction completion date, and should never be treated as such until confirmed by comparison to the nomination form. In the above example, the 1922 date probably has some significance. The nomination form actually gives a "significance date" of 1922-24 (without further elaboration), indicating that the NRIS value probably represents either the start of construction, or the start of the design process. It is not NRIS that is necessarily the problem, it is the users of NRIS who don't realize these distinctions exist. Magic♪piano 14:48, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
Side Question... how does the NRIS deal with situations where the exterior of a building is in one style, but the interior is in another. For an example, a building might well have a Neo-Tudor exterior, and an Art Deco interior. How would the NRIS list such a building? Blueboar (talk) 14:24, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
Blueboar: When NRIS entries list an architectural style, it is usually the style of the exterior. However, when a property has multiple styles (as is particularly common for historical districts), the NRIS database typically lists the first couple of styles from a list (whatever fits into the data field), followed by "Other" (something like "Colonial Revival, Art Deco, Other").
As for how to use NRIS data, I believe that everyone currently posting to this page is very aware that we should use other sources. Unfortunately, thousands of article pages (as of several months ago there were nearly 11,000 such pages in article space) were created solely on the basis of NRIS database records. Much progress is being made on fixing those "NRIS-only" articles (we're down to about 7,300), but that's not something that happens overnight -- and many times it's not possible to find any other sources. Every now and then a new contributor shows up and enthusiastically starts creating more articles from NRIS data records. I believe that Nyttend's point was to highlight the reasons why no one should ever again repeat the mistake of creating articles solely on the basis of NRIS. --Orlady (talk) 16:54, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
That's correct. Years of significance, here 1922 v. 1924, are indeed more fuzzy, especially since the date of significance is sometimes long after a building was built when the significance isn't architectural: if the David Yeiser House were significant only because of its place in the Battle of Paducah, the NRIS year would correctly be 1864 (when battle occurred) rather than 1852 (when built). Many Criterion B houses are significant for the year in which the person was connected to the house, not the year of construction; the Bill Clinton Birthplace was apparently built in 1917, but NRIS correctly gives its significant year as 1946, the year when baby William Jefferson Blythe III first lived there. Granted, errors sometimes happen, but they're more often explainable than this church being Art Deco. This is like attributing a significance date of 1835 to the Price Tower — it's unambiguously wrong, it's clearly shown to be wrong by all non-NRIS sources, and it's solely the result of depending completely on NRIS. That's why I said "feel free to mention", since indeed people at this talk page are well aware; I want to use this as an example for gently reminding NRIS-only creators. Nyttend (talk) 03:18, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
To be the slightest bit fair to the NRIS, the nomination form does mention that "some of the details have an Art Deco quality", so there is an explanation for this one. I don't think the nomination actually calls the building "Gothic Revival" until the last page, so I'm guessing this was more a case of sloppy reading (and ignoring the photographs) than outright mislabeling. Of course, it's still a great example of why the NRIS can't be trusted in these matters. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 03:26, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
That illustrates a major reason why the template on NRIS-only articles says "Articles based solely on the NRIS may contain errors" (not "NRIS may contain errors"). That NRIS information isn't necessarily erroneous, but it's not a sufficient basis to make valid factual statements. --Orlady (talk) 14:51, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

What happened to the NPS's Pending List?

Two weeks ago, the NPS once again redesigned its index page for the weekly listings. From the looks of things I do not know if this is temporary or permanent.

One aspect of this that I do not like, however, is the apparent disappearance of a link to the list of pending nomination. It serves as a nice heads-up that a property may well be formally listed in the next couple of months or so. Anybody with any contact at the NPS know what's up, or can find out? Daniel Case (talk) 15:13, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

The link's gone, but the pending list is still there. I don't know whether or not it's being updated, though. Is it normal for the last update to be three weeks old? Ntsimp (talk) 18:20, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
It doesn't look as though it's being updated either. Going by their normal format, these pages (05/31, 06/07, 06/14, 06/21 should exist, but don't. The pending stuff should still be available, but for now, not through the NPS site. Weird. --‖ Ebyabe talk - State of the Union ‖ 20:18, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Here's the one for 5/31 [1]. --‖ Ebyabe talk - Welfare State ‖ 20:20, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
That link 404'ed on me. This works better. Pending list for June 2 here; it appears to be the most recent. Magic♪piano 21:14, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
I just go to federalregister.gov and do a search for "historic places pending". The pending listings are posted there. Sorting them by "newest" brings the recent lists to the top. The latest one posted yeaterday (the 25th). 25or6to4 (talk) 15:16, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

It's back

As of today's weekly list I noticed that "See what's pending" on the page now links to the old page. Daniel Case (talk) 00:49, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

It's still not entirely free of defects. I clicked on May 30, 2014, and got nothing. I had to go to this page to get anything. Meanwhile I clicked the PDF file for Scarsdale (Metro-North station) and got "The PDF file for this National Register record has not yet been digitized." ---------User:DanTD (talk) 13:28, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Can we depart from the NRIS on this property's location?

The owner of the Hammond House in ... well, for reasons that will become clear shortly I'll just describe as being in the Town of Mount Pleasant in northern Westchester County, New York, has contacted me regarding some issues with the article on the house that I recently completed and nominated for DYK (it should be the lead hook, in fact, as of noon today). The most prominent is the location we used to disambiguate the article, currently Hawthorne, New York, an unincorporated hamlet about two miles to the northeast as the crow flies. User:ɱ, who lives in that area of Westchester, and I have also discussed this. Indeed I myself felt compelled to add a a note on this to the article.

Basically, Hawthorne (well, officially, "Hawthorne vicinity") makes no sense to anyone familiar with that part of Westchester County. The surrounding area, not terribly residential but home to the county jail, Westchester County Medical Center and New York Medical College as well as lots of office parks and strip development, is known as Eastview and has been for a very long time, even before it was developed as it is now (like back in 1980 when it was listed). No, it's not incorporated either. The state used Eastview as the location in the NRHP application for the property, and the owner sent me a copy of the certificate, issued by the NPS, which also uses Eastview.

And even as nearby settlements go, Valhalla, also unincorporated, makes more sense. Not only is it a little closer to the east, its 10595 ZIP Code includes the house. Nearby properties get their mail addressed to Valhalla, and the owner thus uses it on his website for the house.

So, should we depart from what the NRIS says about this one? The NPS did use "Hawthorne vicinity" when it listed the house (see p. 24). We have been wiling to change these things in the past when there has clearly been a mistaken, but this one isn't as clear—there are arguments for doing it all three ways. To summarize:

Hawthorne

Pros:

  • It's that way on the NRIS.
  • It's how we're doing it already.
  • That's how the NPS initially listed the property, and this is verifiable (see above).
  • People looking at this from outside the area are not going to know or care about these local toponymic idiosyncrasies and will expect to see things listed the way the NPS does it

Cons:

  • Some distance away
  • Not how anyone local would describe it


Eastview

Pros:

  • Owner's copy of NRHP certificate uses Eastview
  • State used Eastview when it nominated the property
  • Would make sense to anyone else in Westchester
  • Owner prefers this one.

Cons:

  • Eastview is not only unincorporated, it doesn't even have a ZIP code and thus defining what is and isn't in Eastview is necessarily subjective.
  • Eastview is not generally thought of as a place to live, and it's better to use an actual settlement as a location.


Valhalla

Pros:

  • The 10595 ZIP Code extends eastward to include the house.
  • The ZIP Code has boundaries that are shown on the standard Hagstrom road map of the area, making it an objective criterion.
  • Its use on the owner's website.
  • It's an actual settlement.
  • It's a little closer than Hawthorne.

Cons:

  • It's never been used before in any official documentation relating to the house's NRHP status.

Discussion

OK. What does everyone think? Daniel Case (talk) 04:50, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Strict adherence to NRIS is not always necessary. Many times the people filling them out are not locals and, to be honest, don't really know what they're talking about. If local knowledge is superior to NRIS info, I go with local knowledge 100% of the time. We already do this extremely often with coordinates. To me, not knowing anything of the area, I'd go with Valhalla.--Dudemanfellabra (talk)
In my opinion, the NRIS gets things either partly or entirely wrong often enough that I'll trust most other reliable sources over it. I've seen rural community historic districts that are listed as being in a different community, just because the other one was bigger/incorporated/had a post office. Based on the evidence you've found, either Eastview or Valhalla would be a better option than Hawthorne, and sources support either one; I don't know enough about the area or Eastview's history to say which one's better. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 09:41, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
We do change coordinates. I've changed some, usually when the coordinates have had me looking in the wrong place when in the field taking a pic. In some cases, the coordinates are just wrong. In other cases, the original data went through two or three coordinate system conversions. But, mostly, coordinates are objective - when you get to the field, and verify on google/bing, the place is either where the original article says it is, or it isn't. Changing it on our pages smells of original research, though, and I feel guilty when I make such a change but I make it anyway, especially after searching for a rubble pile on the wrong side of a ridge.
I don't have a problem at all with changing coords ... too often they are wildly inaccurate, reflecting the less sophisticated technology available in the past when some of our older listings were done, and vulnerable to transposition errors when being typed and entered into data bases. We owe readers accurate coordinates, and as long as the coordinates on the page show up in the right place on maps, corresponding to the property described in the nomination form, the coordinates given in the nomination form and the NRIS can be dispensed with.

Those are not the only obvious errors I've corrected in writing articles. Sometimes the wrong level of highway designation is given (for instance, the NRIS describes Perrine's Bridge in Ulster County, New York as being next to "U.S. Route 87". Well, if it truly were, it would manage to be in upstate New York and the Great Plains at the same time. It is, however, right next to Interstate 87.

Other times descriptions of the house have gotten sides mixed up, and things like that. The people who write these documents aren't perfect. Even the professionals who write most of New York's noms make mistakes. Daniel Case (talk) 19:29, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Location names can be fuzzy and subjective, in many cases the name used depends on the age of the person you are talking to. We should be careful in making name changes IMHO, when it makes the property harder to find on existing external lists, when those lists are based on what the nomination form says. When a case can be made for a error on NRIS, when we have the nom, I say take the nom - if we have reason to believe that the nom was the version that was accepted. I've found a few "draft" nom forms from non-official sources or even the original author (when trying to verify the ref number and other data in the Dudemanfellabra's NHL venture), with no indication of if it was the version submitted or accepted. If there was a vote, I'd vote for dispute resolution of using the location name on the nom form it we have it and a case can be made for NRIS being wrong, NRIS if we don't have the nom, and having a "local name" field for the cases like Hawthorne/Eastview/Valhalla. The article can/should discuss other accepted names for the location involved. We shouldn't use local information to replace the verifiable information. And now I'll go off and feel guilty for the sin of "fixing" coordinates. Generic1139 (talk) 13:20, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
I think we have two distinct scenarios here...1) when other sources give a location that differs from NRIS and 2) when an editor's personal knowledge differs from NRIS. In the first scenario, we can reach a consensus that those other sources are more reliable than NRIS (and base our location on what is given in those other sources). In the second scenario we have to go with the written source (per WP:V, WP:NOR, etc.)... and if the NRIS is all we have then that is all we have. Blueboar (talk) 14:44, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
I would point out that a property's actual location is trivially verifiable, and is not "an editor's personal knowledge". It can be objectively demonstrated to be within a particular zip code or municipal bounds using its actual location and reliable maps delineating those bounds. I would classify this property as being in Valhalla, and describe its geographic relationship to Eastview in the text. In this case the NRIS value "Hawthorne" appears to be at best a red herring, and might be mentioned in passing when the fact of listing is described. Magic♪piano 15:02, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
In terms of officially defined legal boundaries, the only one in which the house is located is the Town of Mount Pleasant. This is because, as I mentioned below, Mount Pleasant only has three incorporated villages within it and no cities, so the vast majority of the town is unicorporated. For this reason, official boundaries are of little help, and one must dig deeper to find out what an area is called. BMK (talk) 22:12, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
We have a reliable source, the official website of the house, that says Valhalla. Use it. If they say they're located in Valhalla, they're located in Valhalla.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:25, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
I don't disagree with using Valhalla under the zipcode premise and additional preponderance of the evidence, however, is the official website of a business a reliable source in the encyclopedic sense? Not trying to be pedantic here, just trying to learn. Generic1139 (talk) 16:25, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
Per WP:SELFPUB: "Self-published ... sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities". Daniel Case (talk) 19:32, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
The official website is not necessarily a reliable source. Many businesses (and non-profits, for that matter), will use a more recognizable location name in order to be more "user-friendly" and not scare away potential visitors who may not know where, say, "Eastview is, but are familiar with Valhalla. The Post Office doesn't really help, because ZIP codes, and the service area of a post office, do not necessarily align with official boundaries -- and as long as you use the correct ZIP code, the mail will be delivered to you no matter what location you write.

I'm familiar with this situation, since, as I mentioned below, I grew up in East Irvington, an unincorprated area of Greenburh, which also colloquially included parts of Tarrytown, went to Irvington School District schools, which also included kids from Pennybridge, part of Tarrytown, and got my mail from the Irvington post office. Thus we used "Irvington" as our mailing address, despite the fact that we did not live in Irvington, did not pay taxes to Irvington (although we did pay school taxes to the Irvington School District), got fire and police services from Greenburgh (although we often called Irvington's because they were closer and would get there sooner and, besides, Irvington was across the street (and Tarrytown was next door). BMK (talk) 22:21, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I have solicited the input of a couple of users who live closer to the area than I do, and might be able to give us that knowledge we seek. Daniel Case (talk) 19:30, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I am one of those users Daniel pinged about this. I grew up relatively nearby in East Irvington, part of unincorprated Greenburgh, and I'm moderately familiar with the area in question, through Grasslands Hospital, friends in Valhalla, relatives in Pleasantville, our supermarket in Elmsford etc. I don't say that to put myself forward as any kind of expert, just to let everyone know the level of familiarity I have, which I would say was pretty good, but not excellent.

Combining my own experiences with some searching on Google maps, I would note that both the Westchester Broadway Theatre and the Cross Westchester Executive Park, both of which are very close to Hammond House, describe themselves on their websites as being in "Elmsford". In point of fact, they are not within the Village of Elmsford, but I do remember quite distinctly that the area in question was colloquially referred to as "Elmsford" despite this.

As for Valhalla and Hawthorne, they are both considerably farther north, and I do not believe that residents of the area would think of where Hammond House is located as being part of either.

Eastview is another question. It's pretty close to the area, but it is, or was, a hamlet, which means it has no official boundaries, unless it's also a Census Designated Place. Unfortunately, I'm not at all familiar with Eastview -- we never really went up there, and, frankly, I don't remember the name ever coming up in family conversation. That may be because, according to this, John D. Rockefeller bought up the village lock, stock and barrel, demapped it and moved the train station elsewhere.

In terms of where the house is located by legal boundaries, well, the border between the town of Greenburgh and the town of Mount Pleasant runs right down 100C (Grasslands Road), and since the house is north of the road, that puts it official in Mount Pleasant. The only incorporated villages in Mount Pleasant are Pleasantville, Sleepy Hollow, and part of Briarcliff Manor, and the house is in none of these. That means it is in an unincorporated part of Mount Pleasant, which makes determination of location harder, because boundaries are more informal in unincorparated areas. Looking at this map from 1867, the location of the house (just to the right of where it says "School" and to the left of the brook) is in a section then called "East Tarrytown", but that name is not in current use. I cannot find any current name which covers the unincorporated area where the house is.

So, if I were to express a preference here, I would say that, given my own experiences (WP:OR, obviously) and the preference of both the theatre and the executive park, I would say that "Elmsford" would be the choice, even though the House is not in the village, or even in Greenburgh, the town where Elmsford is located. It's my belief that most people in the area would go with "Elmsford" to describe the area. If, however, the choice is to be limited to Hawthorne, Valhalla or Eastview, Eastview is by far the closest to the site. I have no idea, however, what the collequial understanding would be of what is considered to be "Eastview" by the residents of the area. BMK (talk) 22:04, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Just want to note that I updated my opinion in view of the information below, to prefer "Eastview", and not "Elmsford". BMK (talk) 00:27, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

How The New York Times has placed the house

It occurred to me to look at the New York Times articles I used as sources to see what they say:

  • 1983, Westchester Journal: "The real history—as well as the future—of an early-18th-century tenant farmhouse in Eastview may finally be determined with a $34,000 grant from the Norcross Wildlife Foundation."

So it would seem at first that the newspaper of record prefers Eastview. But then ...

  • 1989, again, Medical School to buy Historic Valhalla House: "After four months of negotiation, the Westchester County Historical Society has agreed to sell the Hammond House, the 270-year-old building it owns on the edge of the Grasslands Reservation in Valhalla to New York Medical College for use as a Lyme disease research center."

So it would seem the Gray Lady changed its mind sometime in '89. My guess is that the switch was triggered by the sale to the college, which uses Valhalla as its address. Daniel Case (talk) 19:46, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

The discussion continues

I am the other person Daniel pinged as a local. From my knowledge of the area of Eastview, it was a hamlet and is now a commercial area of the unincorporated section of Mount Pleasant. Most locals think of Eastview as largely between the Saw Mill and Sprain Brook Parkways (West to East), and between Hawthorne and Elmsford (North to South). So the house lies pretty much in the center of that, which is why I'd typically call it part of Eastview. (Historically, without a doubt, it was part of Eastview's original settlement.) Still, it may be better to indicate its current location. The most factual way to do that is to refer to it as part of the unincorporated area of the town of Mount Pleasant, with a Valhalla mailing address. A footnote could easily go into detail about the above technicalities.--ɱ (talk) 23:13, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
Coincidentally, my mother attended New York Medical College, and said that she considers the school and the house directly south of it as part of Eastview.--ɱ (talk) 23:21, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Late to the party, but I vote to change the location to Eastview if that's where local knowledge and the NY Times says it's located. As others have noted, there are quite a few problems with locations listed in NRIS. I've seen rural sites in which NRIS refers the location to the nearest post office city or the nearest incorporated municipality, even though that place might be as much as 10 or 15 miles away. NRIS is inconsistent, though -- sometimes it lists placenames that probably aren't recognized by any modern person more than 1/2 mile away (places that most certainly aren't "cities"). We need to describe reality, rather than regurgitating the NRHP listing. --Orlady (talk) 00:19, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
    • So, in summary, it looks as if the choices are "Hawthorne" if one goes by NRIS, "Valhalla", if one goes by the website of the business located in the house, and "Eastview" if one goes by the view of the residents. I think it's quite clear that "Hawthorne" is wrong -- it's too far away from the site, and, for the reasons I gave above, I don't put much credence in the website's use of "Valhalla". My own initial preference of "Elmsford" I'll put aside in favor of the views of people who know the area better, and the NYT, so perhaps Eastview is the way to go? BMK (talk) 00:25, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
      • Besides that, in some places with minor civil divisions we've simply gone with the MCD or municipality, which has the advantage of being unambiguous (unless something straddles a border, there's only one possible location in which it can be listed) and obviously in accordance with official boundaries. Couldn't we simply say that it's in Mount Pleasant? Responding to Orlady's comment, it can be worse; NRIS lists the Pisgah Christian Church as being in Wilmington, Ohio, which is more than fifty miles away, much farther away than Georgetown the county seat and the village mentioned in the address. And guess what, we have an NRIS-only stub, so from creation until October 2012 (two and a half years), we were telling people that it was located in Wilmington...Nyttend (talk) 01:50, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
And more importantly, AFAIK no one who lives in the town of Mount Pleasant would describe themselves as living there. For most residents they use it only twice a year, in the "Pay to the order of ..." field when they pay their property tax bills. Most of them—like people elsewhere in Westchester—identify with the hamlet or village they believe they live in.

For instance, no one in the town of New Castle to the north would say they live there ... almost everyone, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, is proud to call themselves a resident of Chappaqua, except for the people in the north of town who live closer to Millwood. And neither of those communities are incorporated, either. Daniel Case (talk) 19:06, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

          • Ohio, Indiana, and much of Pennsylvania (all? I can't remember) are set up so that we give townships, rather than populated places, for all NR locations that aren't located in cities/towns/villages/boroughs, even though many townships are larger than your 33 square miles. I can't remember exactly where, but the same thing has been done in parts of New England, listing all properties by the city or town in which they're located rather than by the nearest population center, and many New England towns are larger than 33 square miles. Nyttend (talk) 02:23, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Except that Westchester has many layers of municipal government and various zones and boundaries to determine a place's location, as well as a very high population density. So while just mentioning the town for an area like Dutchess County and perhaps other states may seem OK, only stating the town for the Hammond House is almost like using "New York City" as the only location information on the article Empire State Building, rather than describing that it's in Midtown Manhattan at the intersection of Fifth and West 34th.--ɱ (talk) 02:40, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
It's not just Westchester—this gets equally insane on Long Island, and even a little bit up where I live. Basically, any place settled in the 17th or early 18th century may have municipal boundaries determined by old land-grant disputes, something that was less of a problem as the country expanded westward, and often not all politically-relevant boundaries will follow the municipal boundaries. As BMK said, it's eminently possible to live in one town, have a nearby (possibly in another town) village's ZIP code as your mailing address, be in a third school district (Mark Zuckerberg grew up in Dobbs Ferry, which has its own school district but went to elementary school in the neighboring Ardsley schools due to a little quirk in the boundary that took in his neighborhood) and yet another fire or fire protection district. Daniel Case (talk) 19:06, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
See National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets. Right now, the "city or town" column for the Empire State Building indeed does read "New York". Nyttend (talk) 02:58, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Many NRHP articles are confused about what "New York, New York" means. It is primarily a postal address for places in Manhattan (New York County). Mail to addresses in Brooklyn and the Bronx go to "Brooklyn, New York" and "Bronx, New York", mail to places in Queens go to specific post office names, and the same for Staten Island. This situation is a historical relic: when Greater New York was created, Brooklyn and New York (Manhattan) were already cities, while Queens was a county with a collection of small towns, as was Staten Island. (The Bronx was created from an area that was split off from Westchester). So when the "city or town" says "New York", it really means "Manhattan". To confirm this, take a look at National Register of Historic Places listings in Kings County, New York, where the "city or town" fields all say "Brooklyn" even though Brooklyn is no longer a city and is not a town. The borough/county situation in New York City makes things complicated, so that using it for comparison to other places is perilous.

I would say that if we can do better than identifying where a landmark is than an area of 33 square miles, we should, and if other landmarks are similarly vague about location, they should be fixed to be more precise, and not used as exemplars to make other articles less precise than they are. BMK (talk) 03:16, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

[EC] Fortunately, Wikipedia articles are written in complete sentences. Thus, an article can say that (for example) a property is "in rural Podunk County, about 8 miles northwest of Smallville"; it's not necessary to rely on a single place name to describe a location. --Orlady (talk) 03:02, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
[Meant to expand my most recent comment, but Orlady responded in the mean time] We give the Empire State Building's address in the "Location" column, just as we're currently doing for Hammond's by giving "South of Hawthorne on Grasslands Rd." If that's wrong or completely unhelpful, it should be changed, with "east of __" or "south of __" (or whatever) being added. National Register of Historic Places listings in Coshocton County, Ohio is a good example of what I mean: sites in unincorporated areas have their townships in "City or Town", and their location relative to nearby towns is given in "Location", e.g. the Daniel Miller House is specified as being "West of West Lafayette at 52357 County Road 16", rather than simply "52357 County Road 16". We can use "City or Town" to give the legal location and "Location" to give more-precise details. Nyttend (talk) 03:06, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
If other articles are imprecise, I don't see that as a good argument for making this particular article imprecise as well, We should aim for more precision to help our readers, not less. Further, comparing the layers of one state's set-up of communities with another's is an apples and oranges things. So, leaving the gross anomaly of New York City out of it, because it is truly sui generis, comparison should be made only to other places in New York State. BMK (talk) 03:21, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
I wasn't fond of the Empire State Building comparison; I was simply responding to the comment by Ɱ (how do you type that character, anyway?), not seeking to raise a new issue. The problem is that it's always a judgement call and a point-of-view issue when we give the name of a nearby hamlet: why should we prefer one source's use of Eastview over another source's use of Valhalla, or a third source's use of Hawthorne? Nobody's going to disagree if we say that its location includes "[direction] from Valhalla" and that its city or town is Mount Pleasant — everyone will agree that it's municipally in Mount Pleasant, and the only way someone will dispute the idea that its precise location is "South of Hawthorne on Grasslands Rd." is if they say it's not on Grasslands Rd. or south of Hawthorne, and such a situation can easily be fixed by simply deleting the incorrect statement and writing a new one. Perhaps something such as "Grasslands Rd., [direction] from [community] and 0.3 miles east of State Route 9A", since that's a precise location. Please remember that the concept of minor civil division is not an apples-and-oranges thing; the concept was specifically designed to embrace both Ohio townships and New York towns. Nyttend (talk) 03:37, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) I agree, although one of the points I was making is that Westchester can be considered just as an extension of the city, rather than more northern counties and other states, so it helps to be very specific in a place's location; areas of Westchester can differ quite significantly. For example, if anyone knows Ossining, its demographics and average household income are very distinctly different from the bordering Briarcliff Manor. So it helps to make the distinction between Eastview/Hawthorne/Valhalla/Elmsford in the Hammond House article. Nyttend - that makes sense. Also, luckily I don't have to type it often.--ɱ (talk) 03:41, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

The Decision

OK, it's now been a couple of days since this flamed out. The consensus above seems to definitely favor dumping Hawthorne.

Now, how does it look for Eastview vs. Valhalla? Between the opinions expressed above and the record I see a slight tip for the former, especially if we take in that this is a historical property and Eastview reflects what was there when it was built, even if it has been completely replaced now. So I will be moving the article to "Hammond House (Eastview, New York)" with an additional redirect from "Hammond House (Valhalla, New York)" and an explanation that it uses the latter as a mailing address in the lede. Unless there are any objections. Daniel Case (talk) 05:17, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

I think it's better to include an explanatory note at the bottom of the article to indicate that it can be considered Valhalla by postal zone/mailing address, rather than in the lede. Perhaps you should mention Mount Pleasant in the lede (along with Eastview), that would be factual, informative, and indisputable.--ɱ (talk) 13:31, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
It's already sort of there ... I will probably have to move the note link that's already there to the lede, so the note itself is in the notes section still. And I will take the Mount Pleasant suggestion. Daniel Case (talk) 05:46, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
"Eastview, Town of Mt. Pleasant" BMK (talk) 09:35, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
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