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• WT:NRHP

National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park, Virginia

I created National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park, Virginia (cities in Virginia are county-equivalents), it probably needs some cleaning up. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 21:13, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I see that many of your recent edits to NRHP lists in Virginia are based off of the coordinates shown in the lists not lining up with the city/county that the list says they're in. See WP:NRHPHELP#Coordinates issues. If you are basing these edits on the coordinates included in the lists, that's not advised. The city/county in all of these lists comes from the National Register Information System (NRIS), and they're usually correct, although the coordinates may not be for reasons explained at the link I just gave you. I personally don't think the article you have created is necessary, as all of the listings there are also included in other county lists. I'll let someone else weigh in, though.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:24, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Legally speaking, any listings in Manassas Park aren't actually part of Prince William County, so they shouldn't be in the Prince William County list. Unfortunately, the NRIS doesn't make it very clear what's where. It lists three properties in Manassas, none in Manassas Park, and everything else in the three areas as Prince William County, but some of the Prince William County listings are clearly wrong; for instance, Prince William County Courthouse is in the heart of Manassas (unless the courthouse is an enclave of Prince William County for legal reasons). I also suspect a few places were in the vicinity of the two cities (and therefore part of Prince William County) when they were listed but got annexed later on, though I can't really prove that. At any rate, we're probably best off trusting the NRIS as to where places are, which would mean there aren't any places in Manassas Park proper anyway. TheCatalyst31 21:55, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Emmette Hernandez Coleman's effort seems helpful. I would absolutely NOT trust NRIS as to the locations. I would tend to agree with strategy of looking at where coordinates show the place to be located, and agree that bringing up the item here at wt:NRHP is a good idea, as EHC did. Items should indeed be moved out of the county lists if it can be established that they were incorrectly included. Note there are could be similar other fixes needed in Virginia where there are independent cities which are not part of counties that surround them. Recently archived discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Register_of_Historic_Places/Archive_55#Swannanoa (mansion) covered another example, where NRIS correctly reported independent city Waynesboro as being the nearest city, while including it in Augusta County and we verified/clarified it is located in Augusta County (which surrounds but does not include Waynesboro). So, we should focus now on trying to verify where the several items are actually located. Probably best to start articles on each of them, and bring in the NRHP nomination documents that Virginia makes available, and examine the locations on sometimes-included maps in those documents. --doncram 22:13, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)As for the article I created, any other state, and you'd probably be correct, but Virginia has lists for it's incorporated cities (see National Register of Historic Places listings in Virginia) This is probably because, due to a quick in Virginia law, incorporated cities in Virginia aren't legally part of their counties (see cities in Virginia).

As for the coordinates and the city/county source, I had no idea. Still, most of the ones I fixed are probably not in Manassas. Two of the entries explicitly say that they are "NW of Manassas", they all had Manass postal addresses according to their coordinates, and the Manassas National Battlefield Park article itself says that it is outside of Manassas. The Manassas postal addresses extends well outside of Manassas, and it's a common mistake, even among otherwise reliable sources, and even the locales, to list all places with a Manassas address as in Manassas.

Is it possible that the NRIS bases it's city data on postal addresses rather then the city something is in, I had assumed that the "false" Manassas in National Register of Historic Places listings in Prince William County, Virginia were the result of some editor who mistakenly thought they were in Manassas. That would also explain why the Fairfax County list had entries that listed their city as Manassas Park and Manassas (which are in Prince William County, not Fairfax County) and Arlington (which is itself a county). Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 22:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Given some doubt as to the information in NRIS for these, it is good that the state of Virginia provides specific lists for each (can find by lookup at wp:NRHPhelp). Specifically:

• City of Manassas Park should have just one, i guess, per http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/register_ManassasPark.htm
• City of Manassas should have just 3, i guess, per http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/register_Manassas.htm.

BUT, hmm, big caveat: even state registers are wonky and don't perfectly identify which counties are relevant, especially where an item spans county lines. I recall that the state of Oregon's official list of national register listings often includes just one county, for multiple-county items, and had other problems, which caused confusion (sorted out in big reconciliation and discussion at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Oregon#Reconciliation of wikipedia tables vs. Oregon PDF and Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Oregon#Development. So just because the Virginia Department of Historic Resources lists them one way, it is not a sure thing that their info is precise enough for us. --doncram 00:00, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

For Conner House, its NRHP nomination document includes a USGS quadrant map in its last page, page 7, that shows the location precisely. Happily Mapquest shows county borders (while Google and Bing do not), and in fact seems to distinguish between independent cities vs. counties within Virginia. Comparing, it is clear that Conner House is within the city of Manassas Park. And not in Prince William County. --doncram 00:18, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Another caveat about the Virginia website: I've found that if the Virginia DHR doesn't have the nomination forms online, they just don't list the site in their listings, which might be a problem for the Address Restricted sites. TheCatalyst31 00:30, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Since the 3 others, besides Conner House, are Address Restricted ones, I am guessing our best info is that the Manassas Park list is best with those 4 items, exactly as EHC created it. So I'm gonna proceed and remove those 4 items from the Prince William county list-article. I will say it is really quite extraordinary that EHC has found a new list of NRHPs to create. Congratulations! The NRHP wikiproject regulars, me included, have been pretty darn confident we had them all set up, though there are always new additions of items, and though we know we have to make changes/corrections/occasional moves as fuller information comes forward. And we subdivide lists sometimes due to article size problems. But it is really surprising to find we completely missed the need for a list for this specific city. --doncram 01:24, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I rechecked the ones on the Prince William County list that I identified as not Manassas, using thiar addresses instead of their coordinates, thiar not in Manassas. I did however mistakenly identify Ben Lomond as in Sudley, it's in Bull Run. The Manassas ones with a {{citation needed}} I was unable to check, they didn't have addresses, or even coordinates. The remainder I've confirmed as being in Manassas, except for Prince William County Courthouse which is otherwise well within Manassas, but tough I'm not sure of this, it appears to be PWC enclave for legal reasons, as TheCatalyst31 pointed out. Even if it is I think we should still count it as in Manassas though, tough clearly state it's enclave status. I've added them all to the Manassas list, but put the unconfirmed ones in their own clearly marked section.

To clarify, my creation of the Manassas Park list was not intended to get the Manassas Park ones off the PWC list. Right now the scope includes PWC's independent cities, rather that should change is a separate matter. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 03:10, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, both the Mayfield Fort and Cannon Branch Fort are described in this document. The two sites and the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth are precisely located, by address, by the Manassas Historical Society (I assume in Manassas, but I'm not familiar with the area). Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:59, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The Cannon Branch Fort, then, appears to be located in Manassas, as street address "10611 Gateway Boulevard" (per the latter reference the manassascity.org one) shows, in MapQuest, to be in Manassas, though if the listed property extends far enough it could go into Prince William. It depends how far off Gateway, and in what direction off, it goes; the "Located off Gateway Blvd. near the Manassas Airport, this site is part of the Manassas Museum System" (at first source the The Civil War in PWC") is not precise enough to absolutely rule out the property extending into Prince William. ) --doncram 13:10, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary edit point

About the PWC list's scope, many VA county lists include their independent cities, and at least a few don't. I've amended a the leads of the lists I've come across that include their independent cities to state that they do, for example PWC's "... in Prince William County, Virginia (including the independent cities of Manassas and Manassas Park)". There's no dispute that the independent cities aren't legally part of their counties, however for many non-legal purposes they are counted as part of their counties. For example, as the Manassas article says: "The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Manassas (along with Manassas Park) with Prince William County for statistical purposes." I think it makes scene to include the independent cities on the county lists, but we should decide this on a Virginia-wide bases, and not for any one list in particular. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 03:30, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I commented already at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Prince William County, Virginia already about this. I think overall we don't want overlapping lists, and I was trying to follow your lead in splitting out the National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park list. If Manassas Park is separate, we should drop the 4 entries from the Prince Wm list, and edit the lede (define the scope) accordingly. If we want the Prince Wm list to include the Manassas Park (and city of Manassas) ones, then I think it should include two (or three) separate tables, in 2 or 3 sections, one for each city or county, and National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park should be changed to a redirect back to the Prince Wm list. See, for example, National Register of Historic Places listings in Spokane County, Washington which contains one table of the city of Spokane NRHPs and one table of the rest of the county.

I agree it is somewhat arbitrary and it doesn't really matter if one list contains both a county and the city it encloses. It does not have to be the same everywhere in Virginia; it just needs to be clearly presented in each case. --doncram 04:13, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

As a general policy, it's not clear to me what the benefit is of splitting out small lists into different articles. If anything, I think it would be better to combine geographically contiguous short lists, so that the reader can more easily find or compare historic properties in a certain locale. What, exactly, is the utility to the reader of creating a list article containing only three or four entries? Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:41, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that splitting out small lists usually shouldn't be done, unless the main list is simply too big to keep together. One reason is that splitting prevents us and readers from seeing all the locations in one linked Google or Bing map. It's better to be able to see them all, sometimes, as was preferred for Spokane city and the others in Spokane County. Too many short town lists were split out in Massachusetts and in some other states, IMO, and some shold be recombined. But here, the fact is that the sites are not correctly included in an article titled NRHP listings in Prince William County. They are not in fact in Prince Wm county. If one wants to include them all in one article, then I say put them into separate tables within one article to give proper clarification that they are not in the same entities (and this allows all to be seen in linked Google or Bing map). And I guess rename/move the article, too, to National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas, Manassas Park, and Prince William County. Or keep them in 3 separate articles. --doncram 13:10, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

In view of the fact that several listed properties are address-restricted, and most of them seem to be related to Civil War battles, Wouldn't it make more sense to create an article about the National Register listings associated with the Battles of First and Second Bull Run (a.k.a. First and Second Manassas)? IMO, that would be far more informative and useful to most readers than a bunch of formatted lists that are slavishly tied to jurisdictional boundaries, but don't have much content. --Orlady (talk) 19:54, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

continuing

The Virginia DHR statewide list, mentioned in another discussion section, and now linked from wp:NRHPhelp#Virginia, shows 4 items in Manassas and 2 items in Manassas Park:

CITY OF MANASSAS
Liberia Manassas 12-18-79 03-20-80 155-0001; Liberia, mapping update Manassas 02-15-07 Pending 155-0001
Manassas Historic District Independ. Hill, Manassas 02-16-88 06-29-88 155-0161
Manassas Industrial School (44PW505) Independent Hill 04-20-94 08-01-94 155-0010
Cannon Branch Fort (44PW227) Nokesville 03-20-96 08-26-99 155-5020

CITY OF MANASSAS PARK
Conner House Manassas 01-20-81 10-06-81 152-0001
Louisiana Brigade Winter Camp Manassas 08-15-89 11-16-89 152-5001

Since it is pretty few items, and there is some agreement (not unanimous) above that it's better not to split out smaller lists when not needed for size reasons, I am inclined now to merge back or redirect back the separated National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park, Virginia and/or National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas, Virginia, combining/directing them back into National Register of Historic Places listings in Prince William County, Virginia and moving/renaming that list article to be clear about it. I may just proceed with some edits, and maybe comment more at Talk page of the last-linked. --doncram 19:51, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to wait six days before voicing my objection. The title is way too clunky. No other Virgina list has a title that lists the cities, and the lead does a good enough job of explaining that the list includes PWC's independent cities. Placing independent cities in their own section isn't done on any other VA list ether, and aside from being clunky, it damages the ability to use the table to organize the list by date listed, or alphabetical order.

The Manassas and Manassas Park lists should not have been redirected. Every VA independent city gets it's own list, even when it overlaps with a county list. While I wouldn't necessarily be against removing these city lists, to redirect just these two is WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 23:19, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Why would overlapping lists be a problem? Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 23:28, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

This is partly about the current title of the combined list-article, which is National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas, in Manassas Park, and in Prince William County, Virginia. I agree that is a mouthful. I repeated the preposition "in" to clarify that the three items are different areas. Perhaps it could be renamed; I am certainly open to a different name for the combo list-article. It is accurate and descriptive though. Or i am open to them being split back out to 3 lists in 3 separate Misplaced Pages articles (but there is advantage to being in one Misplaced Pages article, including that all locations can be seen in a linked Google/Bing map). My view about "overlapping" lists, is that it is a problem. One way is that it calls duplicatively for descriptions to be created, and it is perhaps calling for more maintenance. I think nowhere within our nation-wide system of geographical lists do we keep duplicate lists of any area.

About this being possibly different treatment than for any other Virginia or other cities and surrounding counties, I am not sure. Could people point to any other examples? It is often not an issue, say for Waynesboro and its surrounding Augusta County. National Register of Historic Places listings in Waynesboro, Virginia is a long enough list to have a separate article for it; I don't feel tempted to combine it into National Register of Historic Places listings in Augusta County, Virginia. But Manassas has just 4 and Manassas Park have just 2, so I am tempted to include them in a combo with their surrounding county. Are there any other similar examples? --doncram 23:43, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

redundant?

Is there a need for National Register of Historic Places listings in Winchester, Virginia since it's very similar to National Register of Historic Places listings in Frederick County, Virginia? (not sure what List of historic sites in Frederick County, Virginia is all about...) Winchester isn't that large of a city and the list for the county is only 25, although judging by the city-specific list, some appear to be missing on the county list. 204.111.20.10 (talk) 05:44, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing that duplication. This indeed seems to be another example of a Virginia city-county situation, as discussed in above subsections. Assuming that Winchester is an independent city, not included in Frederick County, I think one good option is to remove the Winchester items out of the Frederick County list-article, and have two list-articles. The other option is to have two sections in one list-article, titled perhaps National Register of Historic Places listings in Winchester and in Frederick County, Virginia. --doncram 06:08, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:NRHPPROGRESS question

Any chance that we could get a set of statistics on how we're covering sites with non-stub articles? It would be a useful supplement to (or potentially a useful replacement of) our current stats on how many bluelinks we have in our lists, since it would show the parts of the country with articles that are substantially useful to readers. Shouldn't be that hard to judge (and could presumably be done automatically), since by "stub" I simply mean "a page with a stub template". Nyttend (talk) 00:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

There's been some discussion of this on the talk page here and here, though it ultimately turned into a debate over differentiating two-line stubs from more substantial articles that are tagged as stubs and didn't accomplish anything. TheCatalyst31 01:26, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I could work something up in a few days time that could give us quality stats for every county, including which articles in every county are not tagged with the {{WPNRHP}} talk page template so we could tag them. I envision adding a # of Stubs, # of Start, # of C, etc., and then a %Start or greater column which IMO would be more indicative of quality than quantity. As TheCatalyst31 said, however, I would really like to get the sub-stub vs. good stub debate settled before we start to look at any kind of quality stats so that 1-sentence stubs with no information are separated out from actual quality material.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

To show that this is technically possible, I've just edited the NRHPstats script which makes the little yellow box appear on list articles to show stats about how many articles are stubs, how many are start or higher (with a percentage), how many are unassessed, and how many don't have the talk page tag on them. It is very simple to extend this code to the full Progress page, but as I said, I would prefer to wait until the whole sub-stub vs. good stub debate is settled.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:37, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The script appears to be doing strange things with articles that are tagged by other projects but not NRHP. For instance, at National Register of Historic Places listings in Creek County, Oklahoma, it's claiming there are three stubs, three start-class or higher articles, and one untagged article. However, there are three stubs, two start-class articles, and two links pointing to U.S. Route 66 in Oklahoma, which is C-class but isn't tagged by this project. TheCatalyst31 12:40, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, this seems to be a quirk with the API where if you query the same page twice in a single call, it only returns one result. That means my script is only counting US Rt 66 in OK as being untagged once, then when it calculates start or higher, it subtracts one less than it should (my script gets the start or higher bit by taking bluelinks - stubs - unassessed - untagged). Adding the project tag to the Rt 66 article fixed the list-article in question, but you're right that this is a flaw that I'll have to see if I can patch. The fact that it is related to untagged articles, though, is actually a blessing because that datapoint was meant to get people to add the NRHP tag to those articles' talk pages. It appears that once a page that is linked multiple times from the same list is tagged, there's no problem.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:32, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, this isn't really addressing my exact proposal — do all of you understand my idea and think there's a better plan, or do you misunderstand what I meant? My primary concern was with the data for File:NRHP Articled Counties.svg, and I was suggesting that we judge purely based on the stub template so that (1) we could avoid debates over substubs and (2) we wouldn't need to worry about article ratings. I'm pretty sure we'll have to accept my idea or reject it and stay with the status quo, since I can't see how we could reflect everything from stub to FA in a single map. Nyttend (talk) 17:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, the only way I know currently how to check if an article is a stub is to check the article quality rating on the talk page. It's much harder and takes much longer to find out if there is a stub template on the article page itself, unless there is some feature in the API that I'm not aware of. And even so, the two should overlap exactly.. If an article has a stub template, it should be rated stub on the talk page, and if an article is rated stub on the talk page, it should have a stub template. Any discrepancies between the two should be fixed.

As to your concerns about a map, I would imagine a map that showed the percentage of a county rated start or higher would be pretty informative as to the quality of articles in that county. It isn't perfect, but it will definitely distinguish "stubbed" counties from those with extended information about each site. Of course the map we have now would still be useful as an idea of the quantitative coverage in each county. Both have their niche.

Parenthetical: I fixed the code, so it should take duplications into account now.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:40, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

(1) I guess I was the one misunderstanding, since I assumed that checking for the presence of a stub template would be at least as easy as checking the quality rating. Completely agree thahat the "stub" rating should be given if and only if the article has a stub template. (2) I thought you meant a map reflecting how many starts, how many Cs, how many Bs, etc., rather than one showing how many starts-and-above. Apparently you meant exactly what I did, yet I didn't realise that. Nyttend (talk) 22:43, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Previous discussions foundered upon interest/insistence that short articles be identified with a derogatory label, e.g. "sub-stub", clearly a non-starter for participating in the Misplaced Pages project, where any started article is a "stub" or higher. If the primary purpose is to be insulting, then please let's extend that courtesy towards new and old contributors of photographs that we all may choose to follow vindictively. :) Let's create a "sucky photo" category and a WikiProject Talk page rating to insult snapshot quality pics, or to insult pics that turn out to omit key features of an NRHP listing (once that can be determined from a real article-writer finally building an article about a given listing). :) --doncram 12:08, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Any started article is not necessarily a stub and not necessarily useful. Newly created articles are frequently deleted for having no context of notability.. that's kind of the whole point of Misplaced Pages and it's the reason why there isn't an article about you or me or any of the other 7 billion "common" people out there. The only reason NRHP sub-stubs have previously gotten a pass is because it has been assumed that listing on the NRHP makes a topic notable enough for its own article. Part of the consensus before was that since there existed a nomination form for each site, there would probably be ample sources for each. This was, however, before many forms were digitized and uploaded, and now we're beginning to get a better sense of the quality of them. Please tell me how I'm supposed to write an entire well-sourced and helpful article with this. The idea that listing on the NRHP alone is enough to warrant the creation of an article is, in my opinion, incorrect. At the very least, there should be some "claim to fame" if you will about WHY a property is listed on the register that isn't just a lazy longquote from the nomination form as you're so inclined to do.

As to pictures, yes there are some horrible pictures, some taken by me a few years ago with an old non-digital camera then scanned in with a crappy scanner. It would be great to mark these pictures for improvement, but the fact is there is no "rating" scheme already available for pictures. The idea of adding a new category to the article scheme is a lot more feasible than adding an entirely new image rating scheme.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:24, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Lots of articles that I've put together in Ohio, such as the Leftwich House, are derived from sourcing that's no more extensive (and perhaps less extensive) than the Dabney-Green House, and anyway mini-forms like this one are submitted with MPS forms that have additional information. Sometimes photos are bad because nothing better can be done, e.g. Kintner-Withers House and Elm Spring Farm, but stub articles can be expanded, whether by spending more time with nomination forms or by using non-nomination sources like county histories. We can do better than stubs, while the higher ratings are more subjective than simply length and tracking them would be much less benefit for the amount of work it would take — that's why I've asked for us to track better-than-stub articles. Nyttend (talk) 18:32, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

(In reply to Nyttend) As to the Dabney-Green House, yes this nomination form was submitted with an MPS form, but nowhere in the MRA document is the house even mentioned other than in the list of properties being considered for listing on the register. The only information about the house I can find is what is in that nomination document.

The reason it is named "Dabney-Green" is because, according to the nomination form, it is the former resident of former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi John Milton Dabney. The "Green" part is simply added on because the owner of the house at the time of nomination, 1979, was Hilda Woodward Green, someone who as far as I can tell is not notable in the slightest. It's even tough to find any information about the former mayor Dabney. The only thing I've been able to find about him (and that was from a printed book, mind you.. not online) was that he served one term from 1917–1921 during WWI. Nothing about his accomplishments or anything that would make him notable beyond his title. There is literally nothing out there about this structure that would warrant an article.

The same goes for the Porter-Crawford House, which was recently created by Doncram, although I would tag it as one of those "sub-stubs" we've been talking about above. In its nomination form, it lists the current (i.e. 1979) owner as Dr. M. Crawford, and it doesn't even include the name "Porter" in it. There is seriously no way one could write an informative, better-than-sub-stub article with this kind of sourcing.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Photos

On the sucky photos theme: I have observed lots of photos in various states where it is pretty clear that the pic was a "drive-by", where the photographer didn't bother to get out of the car to take a better pic. And many taken in poor light, probably at dusk, where they likely were trying to complete out the pics in a county. And many of replacement buildings or empty lots where there was a listed building that has been demolished. These are all sucky in different ways. We oughta have a way to mark them as sucky. :) Okay, that is meant as sarcasm, i don't really want to add a photo rating scheme and give them derogatory labels. But actually on the last type, I do believe that photos of a vacant lot or a replacement building really should not "count", should not be included in the NRHP list-articles. I rather think they can/should be included in an article about the NRHP place, but not included in its NRHP infobox, and that we indicate that we want a proper photo of the historic building by showing a blank in the infobox and in the list-article. And, I actually really do think that photo quality is an issue of concern. --doncram 23:14, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

My opinion is that the photos of empty lots and replacement buildings definitely should not be in the lists. On the other hand, drive-by photos and photos at dusk, if they clearly identify the building, and if there are no other photos available - why not? We should just need to accept that if a photo in the list in of an inferior quality, it can eventually be replaced by a better photo. For example, last March I was in Dublin, NH, where I went on purpose to take missing photos. For a number of reason, I took my last photos at dusk (in my opinion, they are still of acceptable quality, but day photos could be better). I added them to the lists, since I was not sure that any other Wikipedian in the next 15 years would get to Dublin, NH, which is in the middle of nowhere to take the pictures. As a matter of fact, User:Magicpiano did it the same year and replaced a couple of my articles with theirs, which was perfectly fine with me.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:50, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I have to differ with Doncram and Ymblanter on this. I agree that in the case of a demolished property, it'd be better to use an old photo or drawing than a shot of the vacant lot or the Applebee's currently on the site. However, such a shot definitely illustrates the site. As Doncram points out, it'd be used in an article of any length, which would presumably cover the removal of the historic structure. In the case of a building that's still listed despite being demolished, it serves to document the fact of the building's absence; in fact, it may be the only such documentation we can get, if we can't find media coverage of the demolition. Including it also warns photographers that there's nothing to shoot on the site today, which could save them wasted trips and allow them to focus their efforts in more useful places. I'd say: use such photos, but try to replace them with something that actually depicts the historic structure, just as we'd use a poor-quality photo of an existing structure until we could replace it with a better one. Ammodramus (talk) 12:04, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree with Ammodramus on this one (sorry, Ammo). The pix of empty lots may be some of our most valuable photos because they do 4 things:

• lets our readers know that the building is no longer there (the NRHP does a terrible job of this)
• lets photographers know not to waste time trying to snap them
• lets "archivists" know that we're looking for old pix of the site
• lets the NRHP and SHPOs know that they should remove the listing for the site.

Done right - and I think most people take incredible care in photographing these empty lots - these are also some of the most difficult photos to take. Given the inaccuracy of some of the coords a long search through the neighborhood, the nomination, and the internet is usually needed. A couple of examples: Jayne Estate Building was extremely difficult to find because streets had been rerouted due to the construction of a new boulevard, and ramps for 2 interstates and a bridge, resulting in 3 "pocket neighborhoods" that had to be searched. The building was listed in 1987, demolished soon after, and delisted several months after I posted the photo. The Jewel Tea Company building in Lake County, Illinois was almost as frustrating. It was clearly somewhere in a 55-acre park consisting mostly of clumps of trees and big empty lawns. Turns out it was listed in 2003(?) during a break in the demolition, and somebody on Flickr managed to post a photo and give the full story. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:45, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if there's need for a placeholder image, like Address Restricted.PNG, for properties that are demolished but not yet delisted. Just something that says "Believed demolished" or "Not at location" or "Demolished, archival photo needed." I agree that something in the image column will help alert other editors not to waste their time on that property. However if I casually see an image of a vacant lot, I might assume some building in the background is the intended subject, and instead prioritize that as a property in particular need of a better photo.-McGhiever (talk) 16:42, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

There's something to this proposal (even if I'm very proud of my photos of empty lots). FWIW you shouldn't use the word "placeholder" on this page! The x-image proposal does all the 4 things I mentioned above, perhaps in a better way than the empty-lot photos. But perhaps not. The counter arguments will be that it uglifies the page (well, let's see it first) and that appropriately detailed text like "Believed demolished, archival photo needed" would be especially ugly or unreadable. Maybe "See comment" and then put the above text in the comment column. Obviously a discussion needed. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:10, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd put moved-or-demolished information in the "Summary" cell: with a citation if we've got a source for the building's fate; otherwise, a statement like "Apparently no longer extant: see photo".

I'll add a use for a vacant-lot photo that's not included on Smallbones's list: it provides a pointer from the list article to the Commons category for that and any other photos taken at the vacant site. This is particularly useful when a site's official NRHP name isn't very specific (e.g. "Bridge"), and the Commons category has to have a more specific name. In such a case, it might not be easy for an editor working on an article to find the photo(s) at Commons. An archival-photo-needed graphic analogous to the AR graphic wouldn't be much help to an editor looking for an illustration. Ammodramus (talk) 19:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

What type of readers are envisioned, who want multiple pics of an empty lot? It's hard to imagine readers to serve this way. If the point is to serve editors / potential photo contributors, that seems like a non-encyclopedic, Talk-page like function that perhaps we shouldn't cater to, very much, in mainspace. Anyhow, one photo of the vacant lot can/should be included in the article for the site, and can be found that way. I think we can/should begin to plan on photographers having smartphone access to the information, and a photographer would properly be alerted to all the available info by an article. Any photographer would naturally be looking up what is the info about a site, in its article.

This version of Jayne Estate Building, edited just now puts its nice photo of a vacant lot as I would prefer, outside the NRHP infobox, and with clear caption about it being a vacant lot. A key visual clue is that there is no pic in the infobox; an archival pic is wanted, implicitly. That edit is my suggestion for the J E Building which I'm gonna revert right now and let Smallbones or anyone else choose to accept it, or not. --doncram 19:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll accept the Jayne Estate Building for now. Doncram may have a useful convention there, but I'd think it all depends on how it appears on Mobile - does it confuse things over there? Anybody should fell free to revert my reversion of Doncram's self-reversion. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I think "Apparently no longer extant: see photo" in the description cell is a fine solution. I withdraw my placeholder image suggestion (and humbly request that someone PM me about why that word is verboten). -McGhiever (talk) 22:04, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, Doncram—I must've expressed myself poorly. My point re. Commons was that if we've only got post-demolition photos of a site, and if we don't put one in the list article, then editors interested in writing an article on the site might not be aware that we've got photos at all. It was actually a talk-page conversation with you that made me realize that not all WP editors were as familiar with Commons as those of us who regularly upload photos there: see this diff and its context, in particular: "IMO your work is not findable, is not really available, from just being in commons; it needs to be linked from a wikipedia article."

I'm not suggesting that multiple vacant-lot images should be incorporated into an article. However, it's better for an editor to have a choice of photos. Multiple images are also more likely to include different backgrounds, which might matter in verifying that the Applebee's in the photo is actually on the site once occupied by the Smith-Jones Building.

I get along very nicely without a smartphone, and suspect that I wouldn't get coverage in some of the places where I go searching for NRHP sites. Beside, I enjoy my solitary photographic expeditions, and don't really want the NSA for company... Ammodramus (talk) 23:32, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Could t6here please be a better descriptor for a photo than sucky please? There are times when, I must gree, ANY photo of a place is better than none. How about Jenkinjones WV buildings?? The photo is OK, but look at the buildings. They are heavily mistreated. Now how about a great photo of them , in their prime etc etc? Well, I could MAYBE get a few people to let go of a copyright and get a dated pic, that is NOT the current reality. OR, I could just let them get bulldozed, OR I could not do anything and show up at the spot have locals tell me its gone and OF COURSE there is nothing in Wiki to let me know. I am sensing a bit of sucky, great, better, worse here and that really is a 100% way to drive away efforts on a volunteer project. If I want drama and self important criticism, I can just go to work and get paid for it. Also the places I go to are remote and I would be stunned to see 10 people, much less hundreds flocking in with great cameras and nothing but time. I drove 400 miles to get the shot, dont like it? Get one yourselfCoal town guy (talk) 01:37, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

CTG, I am sorry that you are seeing all this. It is not really my position that photos should be rated "sucky" or other ratings. My suggesting that, sarcastically, above, is like a "counter-attack" in response to various calls to classify articles as "sub-stubs", similar to classifying editors as "subhumans". It happens that at least some of the NRHP commentators who most criticize article contributions focus on contributing photos, instead. That's okay, but it is hypocritical for them to rant on and forever about articles they want to stop, when the same arguments could be applied to photos they want to keep contributing. I did say, above, several times, that I did not really want to rate photos as "sucky". It was to make a point. And there is some agreement, above and elsewhere, about the point made. The main conclusion that everyone should take, is that it sucks for everyone, if some persons are going on and on forever about how they want to set a quality standard and be King Of Misplaced Pages and punish persons they don't like, etc. etc.

I am sorry that various other editors have come and seen the contention here, and have gone away, too, or that they were harassed even more directly by being followed and criticized and then have gone away. CoalTownGuy, I appreciate the contributions you are making, including in this conversation and in dicussion further below. I hope you won't be driven away, too. Sincerely, --doncram 03:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Its not a huge deal at first glance but soome locations offer very very little to capture. As a noteI chose B&W in the pic because IMO, it captures what was and shows what is within the scope of that specific location. That small remote place has mined well over 6 million tons of coal and was at one time, a very very developed town, theaters, schools, reident halls, multiple churches, gas stations etc etc. Now, its only because of old maps and SLOOOOOOW driving a person can see anythingCoal town guy (talk) 14:32, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Half-way

Hey, we're almost halfway there, in terms of creating articles about NRHP-listed places. :) Per wp:NRHPprogress, out of 87,834 current NRHP-listed places, 43,718, or 49.8%, have articles. It's a moving target, but 199 more right now, for a total of 43,917, would hit 50.0%.

Hmm, 4 yrs from wp:NRHPprogress tableization July 4, 2009 to wp:NRHPPROGRESS, a different page, now. --doncram 04:21, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if any "halfway" image is suitable for a barnstar or some other celebration. FYI, "halfway house" NRHP items (about half having articles as of time of this note, maybe more links will turn blue soon) include:

• Plainfield Halfway House, Plainfield, Illinois
• Half-Way House (Parkton, Maryland) (and boundary increase)
• Half Way House (Chatham, Massachusetts)
• Daniel O'Sullivan House/Halfway House, Flushing, Michigan (was redlink)
• Halfway House (Columbus, Montana) (was red)
• Halfway House Archeological Site Bloomfield, New Mexico (was red)
• Greyhound Half-Way House, Waverly, Tennessee (was red)
• Halfway House (Ansted, West Virginia)
• Halfway House (King, Wisconsin) (was red)

Some other half items:

• Half-Chance Bridge, Dayton, Alabama
• Methodist Episcopal Church at Half Moon Bay, Half Moon Bay, California
• HALF MOON (shipwreck), Miami, Florida (was redlink)
• Halfway Creek Site, Carnestown, Florida
• High Point-Half Moon Bluff Historic District, St. Marys, Georgia (was red)
• Halfway Rock Light Station, South Harpswell, Maine (was red)
• Halfway Diner, Red Hook, New York
• Halfway Lake Dam, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (was red)
• Half-Moon Inn, Newtown, Pennsylvania

Attaining a halfway point for WikiProject NRHP, by this measure, could easily be reached by July 4. --doncram 12:56, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

The latest update as of June 18 brings us up to 43,752, which is 34 more than we had on June 16 (which was the update you saw). At that rate (~17/day), we should hit the 50% mark in about 10 days, or June 28. Looking back to May 18–one month ago today–we had 43,041 articles. That means over the past month, we've averaged ~23.3/day. At that rate, we would hit 50% in about 7 days, or June 25. The minimum rate of creation to hit 50% by July 4 is ~10.3/day, so we're pretty much assured that we'll get there, assuming everyone doesn't stop creation all at once. How should we celebrate?

P.S. It should be noted that the Progress page will show "50.0%" before we actually cross the halfway point of 43,917 articles because of rounding. So technically when we get to 49.95%, which is 43,873 articles, the Progress page will claim we're halfway there. If we take that as a benchmark instead, the numbers associated with the average over the past two days and past month are 7 days (June 25) and 5 days (June 23) respectively, and the minimum rate of creation to get there by July 4 is ~7.6/day.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. Suspicious similarity btwn our "alpha" site and newly redirected Halfway Lake Dam; progress? (Aside: R. B. Winter pk has long been linked from National Register of Historic Places listings in Union County, Pennsylvania, but oddly with no explicit treatment of the NRHP; should it be a redlink or should it be covered there in a new section?) --doncram 04:21, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

I redirected it since it didn't make sense to have a redlink there when the county list pointed somewhere else, but if someone wanted to write an article about the dam I'd be fine with (and probably encourage) it. TheCatalyst31 04:59, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

One more day, 16 more articles to put the total at 43,768.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:18, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Do your projections take new listings into account? There are 18 new listings in the June 14 new weekly listings of the NRHP, for example. It is reasonable to assess 50% achievement off what we have covered in wikipedia, but then our chief editor/updater of the NRHP list-articles, User:Sanfranman59, might have something to say about whether or not we seem to achieve that... Sanfranman59 keeps our list-articles updated by adding new NRHP listings, I think usually every week but sometimes with a couple of weeks lag, which is fine of course. I dunno how recently the current List of RHPs was updated. Addition of a bunch of new NRHP listings would change the apparent achievement of 50%. Perhaps effort could be expended to bring the lists up to date very promptly, for the next couple weeks?

Also, I wonder about achieving a subgoal of bringing coverage of articles in every state and territory to 10%. I am trying now with an article that would take care of 3 Guam NRHPs, currently drafted at User:Doncram/As Sombreru Pillboxes, which, if moved to mainspace (and redirects set up for the 3 Japanese Imperial Army fortifications that it covers, would bring us close to achieving that. List of RHPs in Guam is the only remaining state or territory under 10%; it currently needs 4 articles to be brought to 10% I think. --doncram 18:17, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

No, I didn't take into account new listings, but even with 18 new listings (or more), we are still very likely to hit halfway on or most likely before July 4 because our rate of creation is much faster than the rate of new listings. Going back to that May 18 diff above, there were 87,789 total listings then and today there are 87,834, giving a rate of new listings as ~1.4/day, and we're creating an average of ~23.3/day, so we still get a net of ~22/day even with new listings. With today's update, we're at a total of 43,777 articles, 9 more than yesterday and 140 from the current half-way point. At 22/day, 140 articles would take ~6.4 days, in which time approximately 9 new listings will have been added, meaning we would have to create 4.5 more, which is within a one day margin of error. Accounting for all of that, if we keep going at our average rates, we should get to halfway even with new listings by June 27. We would have to average a measly 11/day not to make it by July 4, which is highly unlikely.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:02, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, I've not been nearly as active out here over the past two or three months. The last time I updated the lists with newly announced listings were those announced by the NPS 4/5/2013. --sanfranman59 (talk) 16:59, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The June 21 update shows 10 new listings added to the lists since yesterday and 12 new articles. That means we netted two yesterday. The halfway point now is 43,922, and we have 43,789. We need 133 more.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:50, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

It appears that over the past 2 days several users have been updating the county lists with new listings. As of the June 23 update (from which the map was updated.. I was busy Friday and Saturday), there are now 87,879 listings, 35 more than before, meaning our halfway point has moved forward to 43,940. We currently have 43,837, 48 more than 2 days ago, so we still netted 13 over the past two days. We now have 103 to go to make halfway, which should take no more than a week, so there is still no need to worry about making it by July 4, assuming there will be no more days of 40+ listings added between now and then.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:34, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

June 24 update: 1 new listing, 33 new articles, 76 to go before July 4.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:29, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I have drafted about 20 articles that I hope will be in mainspace soon, and I have a scheme to take care of a further 165 listings at once...by redirects to one common article. If interested, see Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Utah#summary treatment of NRHP-listed archeological sites. This discussion section initiative(?) to get to "half-way" isn't seeming like much of a collective, collaborative push, this doesn't qualify as a collaborative editing drive, there's nothing different going on right now. Halfway seems more like just a milestone that's gonna be passed no matter what. It's probably worth mentioning in that Misplaced Pages newsletter though. A short news blurb, to effect that WikiProject NRHP, which began in year X, which completed "tableization" of all NRHPs on July 4, 2009, has now hit the half-way mark of creating articles describing each one (some being combo articles, some being sections in articles about bigger topics, but most being individual standalone articles about individual historic sites. This brings American history to the people blah blah blah (all of which I believe in). This represents Y% of all mainspace English Misplaced Pages articles, and leaves the wikiproject in good position to support the September 2013 WLM photo uploading campaign. --doncram 16:59, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

It also doesn't help that several of the state lists are still two months out of date, so if we don't update them soon we risk going over the halfway point and falling right back under it as soon as someone updates them. I'm trying to do it now so that's not an issue, but depending on how long it takes, either it could happen anyway or the new listings will make it harder to get to halfway by the Fourth. (Though if we can take care of 165 listings at once, we probably won't have that problem.) TheCatalyst31 00:11, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Signpost draft about halfway milestone

I submitted a Signpost announcement. I dunno if one negative comment will torpedo Signpost coverage, but it might. Our 44,000 articles created is about the same as the number of articles addressed in the big Unreferenced BLP drive that I participated in, a couple years ago, now, which got positive coverage. I think ours is a pretty amazing, major milestone that can properly be covered as a great positive for Misplaced Pages. Please consider a positive comment--or suggested changes to the drafted submission--at the Signpost suggestion, Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#NRHP at 50% news, for July 3 signpost. --doncram 03:18, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Update: As I noted in the #User:KLOTZ milestone, Happy July 4th thread below, the Signpost did make a simple positive announcement, including mention that our NRHP articles make up more than 1% of the English Misplaced Pages, at Misplaced Pages:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-03/News_and_notes#In_brief. In general it seems hard to get positive mentions of Wikiproject NRHP out there, while it seems rather too easy to trash the project. It's worth trying to get the positives out, because the cause of creating coverage of all the NRHP is really worthwhile, isn't it? And the cause keeps attracting new people all the time, more than most editors here are aware of, because new editors are keeping their heads down. I expect that we can get a lot of new people contributing during the 2013 WLM, assuming it will be run the same way as last year. It would be nice if we could maintain some positiveness about the NRHP wikiproject out there, and manage here not to treat the new and old editors too poorly. :) --doncram 10:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Experiment - feedback requested

At Swigart's Mill I've included a slideshow masquerading as a video. I think the general idea is better than many galleries and that there are other things we could do with video/slideshows, but this is obviously still a first-stage experiment. Other things might include a full house tour, highlights of county lists (with maps), or photos showing change over time. Does anybody know how to make better slideshows or videos? I'm very much a newby on this.

Any comments appreciated. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:31, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

After uploading, I found that the quality looked much worse here, made a few changes (just learning all of this) and uploaded a new larger (5 MB) version.

Basic feedback question - Is this as good or better than a gallery? Or is it better to just let good-enough alone? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for creating that, Smallbones. I liked seeing multiple views of the property, but I don't think the slide show worked real well. For some reason, I saw blank screens for seemingly long periods (in the transition between images). Also, when I saw images, I often wanted them to change faster or slower than they were changing for me. IMO, a static gallery is preferable. Congratulations for thinking creatively about how to improve Misplaced Pages, but I don't think this idea is ready for "prime time". --Orlady (talk) 22:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

It might be related to your downloading speed, but 5 MB isn't that much. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:21, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

However, video tours of some sites might be a good idea... --Orlady (talk) 22:11, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

While it's not something directly in the article, Commons has a slideshow feature for categories. Chris857 (talk) 22:26, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

That's the 1st thing I tried, but I can't control the order of the slides. If you know how to do this, please let me know. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:21, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't appear that there is a way to custom order images there. There are Mediawiki extensions for slideshows, but it doesn't look like any are enabled on Misplaced Pages. Chris857 (talk) 19:58, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for making this. I tried it in Internet Explorer and got the message that a video player was needed. Firefox played it without any issues. My guess is that more people use IE, so that would be a problem. If something like this is implemented, I think a note that the images can be found on Commons should be part of the video (last image - would be great if it were clickable). I would much prefer if the reader could click on a frame and see multiple images in succession (with each linked to the original on Commons or en). There is something sort of like that on the French Misplaced Pages (for two images). See the bottom map in the French article here on Black Moshannon State Park - there is a link below the map and clicking on it switches between two different maps (PA and the USA). Overall I like the idea in theory, but am not so sure in practice. Ruhrfisch _><>° 01:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

And thank you for all the responses. I would have thought that with YouTube so popular everybody could play videos on their computers, but it's interesting that IE can't play it. Could people try it from a few other setups to see if this is a common problem? It looks like there are many technical solutions for a simple slideshow tool, but nobody has implemented it here yet. Who would be the best person to contact to get it implemented? What kind of Wikiprocess would be needed? I'm sure lots of folks could use a simple ordered slide show on lots of articles.

After working with it a couple of days though I'm starting to like the movies. This is just the simplest thing in the world to do in iMovie - actually the hardest work was figuring out how to turn off the fancy effects (e.g. pan and zoom) and converting it to the right format. A major source of inspiration for me is a woman I only know thru her videos on YouTube, but who does many movies (really fancy slideshows) on sites where I've taken a few pix, see Woodmont and Dolobran (which does not actually seem to be on the NRHP despite the plaque) What I found out this weekend - those are all done in iMovie, and give me a few days, some good photos, and the right to include music - I could do something just as good. I guess it all comes down to what is "encyclopedic." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:29, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I like the movie (only got a chance to run it just now).--Ymblanter (talk) 12:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. With just a little more encouragement (I'm easy), I'll try experiment 2 in a few days. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:28, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Port Gibson Battlefield / Battle Site, Mississippi

We have an old worklist Misplaced Pages:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRHP articles needing attention covering various old problems. One is about proper treatment of Port Gibson Battle Site, an NHL, vs. Port Gibson Battlefield, an NRHP, which seem to overlap but not cover the same areas exactly. At this point, i think they should be merged and treated in one article. Does anyone have the energy? It was an interesting Civil War battle, in which Grant's army landed below Vicksburg and pushed inland, leading to the July 4, 1863 capture of Vicksburg. --doncram 19:59, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Interesting problem! The one article about this topic that is reasonably well developed is Battle of Port Gibson. As one option, these two articles could be merged (and redirected) into that one (that is, by creating a new article section about the NHL and NRHP designations, and adding information about the designations in the lead section of the battle article). Since Battle of Port Gibson gets a whole lot more pageviews than either of the other articles, a merger would give these topics a lot more visibility than they are getting now. --Orlady (talk) 20:33, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

We should have a discussion about how to treat the separate articles Port Gibson Battlefield and Port Gibson Battle Site, both of which seem to cover the same general topic. What should we do about them?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:30, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I've put all three of this thread's comments in their chronological order; it's quite confusing when you remove a question after a reply is posted. Nyttend (talk) 14:51, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I removed a comment by me, above, which Dudemanfellabra replaced in a way, and then Nyttend restored my comment. And I just removed my comment again. I retract my question about Port Gibson. Also, I am offended by the use of vulgar language about me within an edit summary of this thread, language which I have to look up to understand but which basically means that the commenter expressed contempt for me, in a particularly vulgar way. I don't want this. I wish that administrators would take appropriate action--to warn and/or to block, the responsible party--rather than seem to condone and encourage such behavior. Please don't harass, follow, insult and so on. Please stop. --doncram 15:03, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

No. Do not refactor talk pages. Nyttend (talk) 15:26, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

IMHO: Dudemanfellabra - that particular edit summary was unnecessary, regardless of what you thought of Doncram's actions. Doncram - you asked a great question and people responded in good faith. If you didnt want to participate after that, fine, don't. No need to delete the original (very good) question. dm (talk) 01:53, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree, dm. However, Doncram, if you wish to delete a comment after someone else has responded, the better way is to use the strike-out markup: <s> at the start of your comment and </s> at the end. That shows you've retracted your comment but allows the response to make sense in context. 69.95.203.110 (talk) 19:27, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

User:KLOTZ milestone, Happy July 4th

User:KLOTZ who started uploading during WLM last September has recently blown through the 2,000 photos milestone. About half of these are NRHP sites - he usually uploads just one photo per site, for sites that were not previously illustrated. The other half of of his uploads are for similar historic sites spread throughout the world. He's been to places that nobody else in this Wikiproject has ever been - I guarantee it.

In lieu of a barnstar, I've made the video at the right to present to him. (Comments on the video would be appreciated)

Happy Independence Day to all!

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:55, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Wow! That's an impressive diversity of buildings and locations. - Thanks for pointing this out. dm (talk) 06:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks User:KLOTZ! This is a great way to honor his many photos - thanks for putting the video together (and for all your work adding categories to his photos and adding them to Misplaced Pages articles). Ruhrfisch _><>° 04:12, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Happy 4th of July, late. I didn't see it until just now, but the July 3 Signpost's "News and Notes" page included mention of WikiProject NRHP getting "halfway". The full text published:

NRHP: The halfway mark has been reached in the National Register of Historic Places WikiProject's goal of having an article on every listed place. The register is the United States' federal government listing of various locations that are considered worthy of preservation. The current total number of NRHP-related articles is just over 1% of all articles on the English Misplaced Pages.

Congrats, all! --doncram 16:46, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

And it is great to see the Klotzes' work (and maybe the Klotzes, or friends, themselves) in photos available for new articles about faraway places like Japanese Hospital (Saipan) and Japanese Jail Historic and Archeological District. It makes the process of creating new NRHP article coverage a lot nicer, when there are pics to use, for at least some of the NRHPs in a given area. :) --doncram 10:48, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Cities that don't seem to exist

According to National Register of Historic Places listings in Menifee County, Kentucky, the nearest city for the Red River Gorge District is Menifee, Kentucky. However, as far as I can tell there is no such place as Menifee, Kentucky. It doesn't have a listing in the Geographic Names Information System, it's not marked on any of the three county highway maps in the area, and it's not on any USGS topographic maps of the region. If there was ever a place named Menifee, Kentucky, it probably hasn't existed for several decades. However, the site's address is restricted, and the coordinates in Red River Gorge suggest it's a few miles away from any other community. What should we list the city as for places like this? It doesn't make sense to list it as a nonexistent place, but there's no other clear "nearest city" to list. TheCatalyst31 04:13, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The National Register is known to contain errors -- this could be one of them. Also, rural Kentucky is known to contain many locations that are not clearly identifiable with any named "place". My guess (and this is only a guess) is that that the person who filled in the form was entered the name of the county in the space for the city -- perhaps because they couldn't find any particular named place to list on the form. --Orlady (talk) 05:38, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Have to agree, UNfortunately, finding an old map with what could have been an older community NOT listed in GNIS yet (been there and done that) will be a challenge........Coal town guy (talk) 15:39, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Being about 30,000 acres, the district is kind of big enough to be treated as its own entity if you ask me. I would either just leave the city column blank or include another link to Red River Gorge or possibly Daniel Boone National Forest.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:21, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I've expanded the Red River Gorge article to include some information about the NRHP district and its archaeological resources. Since the district is about 30,000 acres (as Dudemanfellabra notes) and is located in three counties, it is not meaningful to attempt to identify it with a particular city or town. (The "Address restricted" entry in the county list also is, at best, quaint. The location of the district is very well documented; it's the locations of the 664 known archaeological sites in the district that are "restricted".) --Orlady (talk) 17:56, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Please do not leave the city column blank; it will confuse the bots that use our lists for Wiki Loves Monuments and other purposes. If you don't include the name of a city, please put in something like "Not applicable", like what we're doing for the Delaware Boundary Markers at National Register of Historic Places listings in northern New Castle County, Delaware. Nyttend (talk) 19:55, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I changed the entry in the list to "Daniel Boone National Forest" -- not a city, but an unambiguous indication of where the district is. I have not yet tried to figure out why the historic district isn't also included in the lists for Powell County and Wolfe County. I also haven't added latitude-longitude to the list. --Orlady (talk) 21:45, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

It's only listed in Menifee County because the National Register only lists it in Menifee County, though I suspect that's another error. TheCatalyst31 22:54, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Clintonville in Clark County, cant find it there at all. Stupid question, do we know if these places cross multiple counties??Coal town guy (talk) 23:54, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I determined that the Red River Gorge district crosses county lines from documents such as the Memorandum of Agreement (which I cited in the Red River Gorge article) regarding the management of the district. Although a lot of Misplaced Pages content about National Register sites was written solely on the basis of NRIS (which is just a computer database), every site has other documentation ... somewhere. --Orlady (talk) 00:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I think that would be the most logical. Turns out that Clintonville is in Bourbon County or rather JUST at it, and from Clark, SO, while the Registry says, oh yes Clintonville in Clark, GNIS says, Clintonville in BourbonCoal town guy (talk) 00:19, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Nothing says the "nearest city" has to be in the same county as the National Register property. --Orlady (talk) 00:38, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey, thats a good point and I honestly did not think about that.........HOWEVER, a consideration, in all of the county li8sts for any of the states I have looked, do we, yes or no, have a disclaimer or descriptor that would state something along the lines of what you just said?? Example, NRHP is near or in the city or town of, as opposed to city and town which we have now in the article lists?Coal town guy (talk) 02:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

It's not in the lists right now; there's sort of an implication that the city listed is the nearest city for rural listings. It's not perfect, but changing it to "nearest city" wouldn't make sense for urban listings. There's a box on each NRHP nomination form that indicates if a listing is in the vicinity of the nearest city rather than actually in it, but unfortunately we don't have access to nomination forms for every state yet (and besides, looking that up for all ~90,000 listings would take far more time than it's worth). TheCatalyst31 21:46, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

EGAD, thats a HUGE dataset isnt it? Oh well, one could always, note tha the specific place is in the vicinity of place x, where plae x is in a different county etc etc. However, I very much appreciate the reply.Coal town guy (talk) 00:18, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Kentucky

All- I have started to create articles for the unincorporated communities in Kentucky that have a place on the NRHP. As KY has over 100 counties, I have found quite a few places in need of a basic article for its location. Clark County is on my to do list. IF any of you out there know of a specific county which should be addressed, feel free to drop me a line.Coal town guy (talk) 16:50, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Changing NRIS numbers

What happens (if anything) when we change the NRIS number in a list's |refnum= parameter? I've just found an error for site #7 at National Register of Historic Places listings in Portland, Louisville, Kentucky — two sites have similar names, and the same refnum was assigned to both on our list, even though NRIS gives different numbers. Once I finish uploading and adding a batch of photos, I'll change it to the correct number (please don't edit the page in the next couple of hours, lest we edit-conflict), but I'm unclear if this might have some sort of problematic effect. Nyttend (talk) 19:58, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

NRHP Zorro wuz here

There's a lot more involved than 3 Zorro-like rapier strokes, but pls. note the backwards-"N" swath of "fully articled" counties in all of the Western states of the lower 48. :) Thanks due to multiple wp:AFC editors and to The Catalyst31, also to Cbl62, and others, truly, thanks for your help in the face of arguably nasty bullying treatment over recent years. Also kudos to Pubdog for awesome, continuing contributions in the Mid-Atlantic area, and to Altairisfar for pushing AL. :) Hey, will anyone in New England step up? Cheers, --doncram 09:43, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I think there is an error in your second fully articled map. I downloaded the SVG file and was not able to open it in Inkscape. Niagara ​​ 14:23, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I fixed the second one; @User:Doncram, SVG comments are like HTML comments, i.e. they use the <!-- comment here --> syntax. The reason the /* comment here */ syntax was used in the top of the file is because you were inside style tags for the CSS classes, and style code uses the latter syntax.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:18, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't be too hard on New England. All of MA and RI are over 90% thanks to Swampyank, and I think they were at 100% a few years ago before new listings were added. (Upper New England is another story, but VT and ME are almost as bad as South Dakota when it comes to online resources.) TheCatalyst31 21:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd advise you to color in the counties with no listings. Seems to me that the point of this map is to show counties where we have no un-articled listings (e.g. there's no more page creation left to go), and that's the case with counties with no listings; as is, it looks as if we have listings with no articles in those counties. Nyttend (talk) 04:22, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

shorter is better

Suicide Cliff, new NRHP article, would be rated poorly by the automaton-evaluation system at wp:NRHP's new Articles announcement site, wp:NRHP#Articles. No offense meant at all to editor Daniel Case, author of the one recently created article listed there, Knickerbocker and Arnink Garages, but really, don't we want, as a group, to ensure some coverage of everything in order to ensure that really important places are covered, and isn't shorter coverage really better? I am sure that the new Suicide Cliff article could be improved, including by proper linking to Battle of Saipan, but in just a few minutes it is already good, if i do say so myself. It is good for it to be linked from the Battle of Saipan article, as I did link just now, to communicate appropriately that the U.S. has officially honored/recognized the site. It is good that the article is short. It is good that it is not merged into the Battle of Saipan article, in order merely to "get more visibility". I think in this wikiproject that the fringe views of some weirdly-anti-NRHP people have had too much sway. Do let's go forward and get some coverage of everything, sooner rather than later. And then, do let's develop some editorial courage and reduce down the sometimes-excessive, beyond-encyclopedic treatment of some relatively unimportant topics that happen to be NRHP-listed. And, the new articles announcement system is stupid, frankly, capturing a tiny fraction of new, great coverage by numerous NRHP contributors. :) --doncram 01:29, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the Suicide Cliff article is better than a lot of the stuff that comes out of this project, but that isn't something to celebrate. If anything we should be dismayed that an article less than 2000 bytes long (including the infobox, mind you.. the prose is only 695 bytes long) is considered "decent" by our project's standards. Should we seriously settle for this kind of mediocrity?

As to the title of this section, I wholeheartedly disagree, and if the entire encyclopedia felt that "shorter is better", Misplaced Pages would not have become the massive library of well-documented knowledge it is today. Are you seriously suggesting that less information about a site leaves the reader more informed?! I've always wondered how/why you've been ok with settling for mediocrity rather than the best effort you could give, Doncram, but from your comment here suggesting that we should actively reduce the size of articles, I fully understand now why you've been at the heart of so much trouble in this project and in the encyclopedia as a whole.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:22, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

FA is better than GA, which is better than average, which is better than a stub, which is better than a redlink. It's surprising that this principle is controversial.--GrapedApe (talk) 02:26, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe the word we are striving for is concise as opposed to shorter. Albeit, concise data tends to be brief. I am new to the NRHP process and documents. However, as far as I am able to see, IF and I stress IF the language is sparse BUT informative, thats just fine. HOWEVER, to state oh, it should be shorter for all articles in general, possibly not the best statement. As to what is or is not important on the NRHP, I cant see a set of criteria that anyone on Misplaced Pages should use. My experience has been that while yes, small articles can be a great start, they do need to grow.Coal town guy (talk) 03:36, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The original argument here just seems odd, and somewhat contradictory, to me. While I have absolutely nothing wrong with starting short articles as long as they're substantive (to say otherwise would be hypocritical), how is there anything wrong with writing longer articles to add more content? The argument seems to imply that on the one hand, every NRHP-listed site is notable and deserves coverage, but on the other hand, some of them aren't notable enough to deserve more than a paragraph or two of coverage. While I mostly agree with the first point, the second point seems contrary to the goal of writing a good encyclopedia. If a topic is notable enough for its own article, why not write the most comprehensive article that we can on the topic? The work of editors who write longer articles is absolutely to be commended.

As for the rating system itself, the only thing off about it is that it's missing most of the NRHP-related articles that get written. Though since most of those are shorter articles (many of them my own) that wouldn't rate above 1 dot anyway, that may not be a huge loss. TheCatalyst31 04:18, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The original argument here contains continued attacks on other people, which Doncram is banned from making. The article referenced in the original argument had gaping holes: no live categories (but a nonexistent one), a nonexistent stub template, and an unhelpful overemphasis on the NR designation to the exclusion of information that's relevant on the site. TheCatalyst hits the nail on the head — this is a good example of why our project has rightly gotten the derision of nonmembers. Nyttend (talk) 04:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

There are some fantastic points here that are positive from Doncram, Catalyst and Nyytend, as a "newish" editor here, and as a person who creates populations of geostubs, there has to be a line drawn. Example, to be utterly frank, some of the more rural or remoe locations I document are yes, there is a NRHP there. Of course. However, it is also true from my limited experience (just over a year now) that these small articles do grow. Not fast, not quick, BUT they do grow. The idea of having a grading standard, meaning, oh this place is better than or more notable than this place, does not sit well. BECAUSE, human behavior dictates, oh, its not notable or important, yawn, and the topic becomes a red headed step child. I am not in any way finger pointing or beijng negative, its just my limited experience speaking here. UNLESS there is some official statement telling me, hey CTG, these small places in rural location are yawnsville and nobodu gives a dried rats behind aboutr them and oh yes, dont documet them, I will continue to do so. The idea, IMO, that a place is on the NRHP is in my mind, somewhat notable. UNLESS I have missed a train and I hope someone here gives me the clue I seem to be missing. Otherwise, long articles or short ones, must in some way impart information. The entire quality versius quantity arguments, DO NOT apply here as far as I am reading. I also must state that the perception of oh, here is whats wrong with Misplaced Pages due to a specific editor speaking their mind, is at best troubling. Reagardless of agreement or disagreement, every editor has a contribution to make Coal town guy (talk) 12:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, short articles do grow. No one is arguing that they don't.

Like Nyttend, I perceive that Doncram's comment was intended primarily as an attack on certain other users, including Nyttend and me (I know he includes me when he refers to "weirdly-anti-NRHP people"). I also see it as an invitation for other users to chime in to stroke his ego by saying nice things about Doncram and consoling him about things like his experience at Arbcom. I specifically detected a jab at me in reaction to my comment on this page regarding Port Gibson Battlefield and Battle Site. As personal attacks go, this (like the comment earlier on this page regarding "arguably nasty bullying treatment over recent years") is pretty small potatoes, so I didn't comment on it at first. However, just as experience indicates that short articles often grow over time, experience shows that misbehavior often escalates if minor incidents are ignored. For Doncram's sake, I hope the outbursts stop here. --Orlady (talk) 14:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Concur. I would however ask that as I create these types of articles, (which I will lets face it, WV and KY have a pile of these) I hope that it is understaood that my desire will be to create an article,and hope it does grow. I am thus far very appreciative of the help I have receivedCoal town guy (talk) 15:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

One has to be careful if one is creating "sub-stubs" because of the potential introduce egregious errors if one does not bother doing a little research on subject they are creating an article for. I just corrected and expanded upon Japanese Lighthouse (Garapan, Saipan); the title and map indicated a lighthouse in the Northern Mariana Islands, however everything else (references, infobox) pointed towards another lighthouse hundreds of miles away in the Federated States of Micronesia. Whereby before it was contradictory and incorrect, now it should be possible to get a DYK out of it. Though I sort of enjoy finding stubs like that (and with a neat photo) because I work on subjects I normally wouldn't. Niagara ​​ 17:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Morbid curiosity; was the data for the listing correct at the HP site? OR was it just a user error?Coal town guy (talk) 18:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Most curious, the nomination form has the following coordinates 15° 12' 48

LONG! TUDE

Degrees Minutes Seconds

145o 43 58Coal town guy (talk) 18:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Had to be user error, both NRHP listings are correct. If you're asking why the coordinates are different in the article than the nomination form; I physically located the structure on satellite images and updated the coordinates (most coordinates in nomination form were calculated without the benefit of GPS and, thus, not as accurate). Niagara ​​ 19:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Niagara. Yep, it's apparent that i used the wrong NRIS info for creating the Japanese Lighthouse (Garapan, Saipan) article, hence got to the wrong NRHP document. I did not consider there were two identically named NRHP listings as I worked. The pics accompanying the NRHP doc seemed consistent with the Klotz pic of the Garapan lighthouse, contributing to my not seeing any problem at all. All coordinates from Elkman's system in Micronesia, Guam, etc. seem completely off, by the way, so i have learned to use coordinates in the NRHP list-articles, instead; there is effectively no warning value information in the coordinates being bad. Have moved the info about the Micronesia one to to Japanese Lighthouse (Poluwat, Federated States of Micronesia) (if still a redlink, has not yet been moved to mainspace). I am only very mildly embarrassed not to have noticed the potential for error here. I myself apparently tried to head off error, by my creating or revising the Japanese Lighthouse (disambiguation) page some time ago (which I had long forgotten). But this kind of confusion on sources is gonna happen from time to time. And IMHO the best solution is to start all the articles sooner rather than later, with sources as usual. --doncram 19:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

If you don't mind, I might work on this one before it is moved to the mainspace. Also the article title (if we consistently follow the "City, State" precendent) should be Japanese Lighthouse (Poluwat, Chuuk). Chuuk is a state of the Federated States of Micronesia. Now the question is...does KLOTZ have a photo? ;-) Niagara ​​ 20:02, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Seems not, but Klotz does have a 2007 pic of Sadie Thompson Building in Pago Pago. That and Mataguac Hill Command Post, in Guam, are a couple more examples of NRHPs that turn out to be more obviously significant than run-of-the-mill ones, apparent once their articles are started. Thanks for developing the Poluwat lighthouse article, too. :) --doncram 19:14, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I am in occasional email contact with User:KLOTZ and asked him if had a photo of the Japanese Lighthouse (Poluwat, Chuuk) - he did not. By the way, using a reductio ad absurdum argument, if shorter is always better, then no article would be best of all, and stubs are better than GAs, which are better than FAs. Ruhrfisch _><>° 01:38, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh well...that lighthouse would be neat to visit, though. The length of Sadie Thompson and Mataguac Hill are good for stubs, long enough to establish, beyond a doubt, notability, but short enough to pique someone's interest (and hopefully encourage an expansion). Niagara ​​ 02:10, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Elkman generator stubs debate settle for good

It's time we settle this debate for good. Maybe even get an RfC out of this because I'm tired of arguing back and forth about it. On WP:NRHPHELP, there has been a note about using the infobox generator created/maintained by User:Elkman in some form for more than a year, and on the main project page, a similar note has existed for more than 2 full years. The note on NRHPHELP says in its entirety,

Note: There is a consensus, accepted by most project participants, not to use the Elkman tools to create sub-stub articles en masse but rather to use the tool output as a starting point. It is desirable to at least include a paragraph or two in new articles explaining why the site is listed on the NRHP and/or any other major details, if you can ascertain such.

So basically, don't use the infobox generator to develop copy-and-paste, low quality, sub-stubs; actually put some effort into making an article.

User:Doncram removed this note on July 9, saying that it was a "non-consensus passage." The original text was added to the Resources page on March 24, 2012 by me, an edit inspired by words which had appeared on the main page of this project since April 4, 2011, when User:Royalbroil added them. The note has changed several times since its initial form but the main point has remained. After Doncram removed the note, I re-added it shortly thereafter, and he just reverted me. I'm about to revert to what I see as a two-year-long consensus and direct him to talk here.

My question for the project is what is the consensus? Should we allow sub-stubs to be generated from nothing more than a database dump, or should we have some kind of minimum standard? I would like to have an all-encompassing conversation about this to put it to rest for good. My position is that if an article is sourced only to the NRIS (e.g. a copy/paste of the generator output), it should be deleted or moved to user/project space until it is developed to actually give some relevant information about why the site is listed on the register and not just the fact that it is listed. I would even support a lower limit on length for "mainspace-ready" articles, possibly at 2000 bytes, which is where Template:Alr moves from all red dots to one yellow one. Regardless of the specifics, we desperately need to address this problem. What do other project members think?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:36, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

IMO, an article should have at least one more reference in addition to the NRIS database, for a very practical reason: although I think being listed on the NRHP is a very strong indication of notability, not all listed properties are automatically notable, and an additional reference is required to establish notability with certainty. Granted, simply adding another reference won't automatically solve the "sub-stub" issue, but the incorporation of at least one additional cited fact ought to increase article content at least somewhat. Andrew Jameson (talk) 19:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that it was editor Orlady, in this edit referring to "blather", I believe during or just before arbitration, changed the statement in wp:NRHPhelp to something stronger than I support there.

The wp:NRHPhelp guide was created by me and others as a help to NRHP editors, not as a tool to be used to beat up editors. Of course, if one's goal is to create coverage in wikipedia of NRHP topics, then having more and more sources and info is good, for any given article. So general encouragement to get more sources is fine. It does not follow, however, that having NO coverage is better than brief coverage. It can be important and helpful for good reasons, such as to stop a stupid Edit-War about a disambiguation, page, to start an NRHP article using very little information. And the Wikiproject NRHP has no right to impose a different standard for notability than Misplaced Pages policy holds. So, some mild encouragement to get more sources is fine. But divisive language put in to support bludgeoning, is not. --doncram 19:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

WOW, folks there quite a few things in the wiki world that could improve I agree. However to decide, today is the day is NOT the style of help and growth in any environment. As to stubs, lets discuss that shall we? As many of you know I LOVE to create geostubs on remote places in West Virginia and Kentucky. IF I am lucky, I can get extra refs, a PO number and zip etc etc. However, thats not the case normally because there is not alot of data out there on some of the remote places. I say that after hanging out in the WV archives for a year or 2 and looking at ANY text data that is legit on the topic. Additionally, I have actually lived in some of these remote spots. Like it or not, there are times when the data that can be currently retrieved is sparse......that cant be changed. Imposing your idea of what you think because you dont like it, is not a great approach honestly. The guide is just that, its a guide. I happen to agree with the guide. However its a guide. There are remote places on the NRHP that do NOT have alot of data....Does this mean, the place does NOT get documented because it does not fit an arbitrary decision? I hope not. ON THE OTHER HAND, there are some articles out there which are literally a sentence with a title and no refs......and YES, it would be nioce to have every article out there chock full of refs. Of course, that would thin out the work for editors, wouldnt it??? IF the issue is, you have a few users who are wrong, often and without ANY intention of changing, thats another deal.Coal town guy (talk) 20:47, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Any attempt to stop people from writing short articles is going to be unenforceable and probably counterproductive. The project can encourage whatever it wants, but there's never going to be a Misplaced Pages-wide consensus to delete notable articles because they're too short or ban people from writing stubs. I really have a problem with the suggestion that all articles should be 2,000 bytes long. I've written several articles that fell a bit short of that for whatever reason but still explained why the property was historic and significant. They certainly could be expanded, but they're hardly terrible, and they're much better than a redlink that gives no information whatsoever about the place.

As for the two-line stubs that are entirely based on NRIS information, while I don't like them either, they're still marginally better than a redlink, and there's no enforceable way to stop people from creating them. I agree that every article should have a reference in addition to the NRIS, whether that be the nomination form, or a state database, or whatever local sources happen to exist. However, I'm also opposed to deleting articles which have useful information about the location and historic status of a place, even if they say nothing else useful. And telling people not to use the infobox generator for this won't help, since there are editors who have written these sorts of articles without the infobox generator. TheCatalyst31 22:51, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

• This is nonsense. If an NRHP site is notable (and without exception that I've ever seen, they all are), and there is a legitimate reference to the NRIS, then a stub is fine. It's not ideal, but a stub is supposed to be a start. Being hardass about "every article must be awesome up to my awesome standards before it goes live" is counter-productive. TL;DR: STUB>REDLINK--GrapedApe (talk) 03:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

• Sheesh, we're not talking here about Policies or Commandments. These statements are nothing more than advice that is provided alongside a helpful link to the Elkman tool. Here's a history of how the message evolved:

• Elkman automated tool] (optional) - can be used as a starting point for articles. Consensus against using to repetitively generate without enhancing to "pretty good standards"
• Note: There is a project-wide consensus not to use the Elkman tools to create sub-stub articles en masse but rather to use the tool output as a starting point. It is desirable to at least include a paragraph or two in new articles explaining why the site is listed on the NRHP and/or any other major details. The article doesn't have to start out as a featured article, of course, but at least do a little research before creating it.
• Note: There is a preference by some NRHP project members not to use the Elkman tools to create sub-stub articles en masse but rather to use the tool output as a starting point. It is desirable to at least include a paragraph or two in new articles explaining why the site is listed on the NRHP and/or any other major details, if you can ascertain such. Other members have also generated reports directly from the NRIS database.
• Note: There is a consensus, accepted by most project participants, not to use the Elkman tools to create sub-stub articles en masse but rather to use the tool output as a starting point. It is desirable to at least include a paragraph or two in new articles explaining why the site is listed on the NRHP and/or any other major details, if you can ascertain such.

In every case (including Doncram's version in September 2012) the thrust of the message is advising users not to use this tool for the automated mass production of stub articles. The salient difference between these versions is whether this message is presented as "project-wide consensus", "consensus accepted by most project participants", or "a preference by some NRHP project members" (while "other members have also generated reports directly from the NRIS database"). It is my impression that there is broad consensus across Misplaced Pages that articles should not be created solely by automation and that most participants in this Wikiproject would apply that here. I am the one who changed the language to "consensus accepted by most project participants", which I saw as a compromise between "project-wide consensus" (a consensus that I knew wasn't universally respected, as it was clear that Doncram rejected it) and "a preference by some NRHP project members" (which falsely implies that this is an opinion held only by a minority of fuddy-duddies). I hope this discussion of stubs doesn't mean that anyone seriously thinks that this advice should be replaced by a suggestion that new project participants should start using the Elkman tool for robot-style article generation. --Orlady (talk) 04:28, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

• Oh, goody! Doncram has created a new version of his "a preference by some project members" language and inserted it on the "Resources" page with an edit summary that declares his wording to be "Per consensus of "showdown" wt:NRHP". I definitely don't see evidence that consensus support for his wording emerged in this discussion.

Moreover, seeing that his new version is quite a bit longer than the previous version, and noting that Doncram quoted one of my edit summaries that included the words "trim blather", I would like to point out that when I said "trim blather" I meant "reduce excessive verbosity". "Shorter" isn't always better, but I believe that "more concise" is almost always better when one is trying to communicate guidance. --Orlady (talk) 18:06, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

OK folks, now that we are in the full mode of screwing the pooch, I would kindly request that we understand that no singular person or persons claiming a consensus is meaningful. I am honestly and sincerely asking that when I start these types of articles, AND its remote, AND there is NOT alot of data in the public sphere, we have to let it go until there is a policy that makes sense. Otherwise, we enter a Dali world of useless verbage because, hey, CTG wow thats a remote place with no published data, how about you tell us its remote. Now, I have provided data that is as useful as a screendoor on a submarine.....Coal town guy (talk) 18:37, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I concur with Andrew Jameson--Pubdog (talk) 01:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Isn't Doncram topic banned by arbcom from creating new articles? Seems objectionable and very inappropriate to me that he should be doing any edit that is even remotely related to article creation. It's very easy to create a decent article with a few paragraphs on 99% of NRHP topics and it should take less than 10 minutes! Royalbroil 20:18, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

biggest county-equivalent?

Hey, I think National Register of Historic Places listings in Yukon–Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska is about to become "fully-articled", by creation of articles for the last of its 17 NRHP listings, and I think it is the largest County-equivalent by area in the United States.

National Register of Historic Places listings in Mohave County, Arizona, another big one per List of the largest counties in the United States by area (clearly a good source but which doesn't cover the Alaska county-equivalents), recently got to 100%, just this week, by the way. National Register of Historic Places listings in Nye County, Nevada is another one that would be good to finish soon. Help finishing these out, and improving the development of articles they index, would be appreciated. Cheers, --doncram 05:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Y-K is definitely the biggest by area; it's bigger than every state except Montana, California, Texas, and Alaska! If you care about getting "landmark" big counties, you might also want to try for North Slope Borough (Alaska's largest, and four times the size of any place named "County") and San Bernardino County CA, the largest place named "County". Why Nye — just because it's big? Nyttend (talk) 21:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, and now I see the Alaska boroughs and other county-equivalents are covered at a lower section, at List of the largest counties in the United States by area#Alaskan boroughs and Census Areas. Nye seems more feasible to complete than San Bernardino County, needing fewer new articles, and finishing Nye would bring the state of Nevada closer to completion. Though an editor recently mentioned intention to take pics in San Bernardino and develop articles, while I don't know of any editor imminently active in Nye. Anyhow, Nevada is doable; California is too big to complete out anytime soon. :) --doncram 02:24, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I've sort of been working on Nye - I got it from ~20% to over halfway completed a while ago, and I might do the rest of them for my next project. Most of that county is one big MPS, so there are a lot of connections between sites; I already know more about the history of Tonopah, Nevada than I ever thought I would. It's the third-largest county in the continental US, and IMO its odd shape makes it stand out a bit more than San Bernardino County or Coconino County do. It also doesn't have nearly as many address-restricted sites as San Bernardino County or North Slope Borough, so there's less of a chance of it getting stuck at 70% due to a lack of sources. (Besides, it's surrounded by red counties on the progress map, which makes it stick out a bit more.)

On a different note, I wouldn't say that California is too big to complete, or at least get to >95% completed. If Pubdog can finish Pennsylvania (and by the looks of it, Virginia too), California should be doable with time too, since it's already halfway done. I had a plan to work my way through California until I got distracted by other states and projects; maybe I'll get back to working on that. TheCatalyst31 05:46, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! It took me a while before I noticed that you were making quite a dent in Nye. I agree about it being easier and more salient in ways you describe vis-a-vis North Slope; also it looks a tad bigger on the "progress" map (because Alaska is shrunken relatively). I've done some more articles in Nye now, too.

National Register of Historic Places listings in Nye County, Nevada could use some attention about its coordinates. There are many street addresses given (and now also articles with even more information) for sites that oddly don't have geo-coordinates at the list-article or in the individual articles. Perhaps someone skilled with looking up coords could help out a little here? --doncram 17:56, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Criteria in infobox

I've thought of proposing this for a long time but never gotten around to it. It's always seemed to me to be important to mention in the text why a place got listed; my typical way of doing this can be seen at Barney Kelley House. What if we added a "Criterion" entry in the infobox? We already include lots of basic listing data, such as refnum, listing date, and governing body; giving a place to put "A", "B", "C", and "D" would be more helpful, I believe, than Area or Governing body already are. We could include a link to National_Register_of_Historic_Places#Criteria to assist readers who would otherwise be confused. Nyttend (talk) 21:57, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

If we do add it, it should probably be about as free-form as the other fields in the infobox, since some are listed under multiple criteria. Related to this is something that has been bothering me for a while; do older listings use the Criteria system, or am I misinterpreting the forms? Old Fresno Water Tower (circa 1970), for example. I don't see any explicit lettered criteria (unless I'm missing it). There is level of significance (national, state, local) and checkboxes for "Areas of Significance". Chris857 (talk) 22:29, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the older listings use "Areas of Significance" instead of the criteria. I'm not sure it will make a huge difference, since "Architecture" and "Engineering" correspond to C, the two Archaeology areas correspond to D, and it shouldn't be too hard to sort out the other two. There will probably a certain degree of subjectivity, though (for instance, if a historically significant business had a somewhat prominent businessman as its owner, does it fall under B or not?), and there's a certain element of original research in retroactively applyiing a set of criteria to nominations that never used it. We also couldn't apply it to any property that we don't have a nomination form for unless we just guess, since it's not in the NRIS and state lists probably don't mention it.

I'm also not sure how useful it would be, since most people won't know what the letter means without clicking the link. It's probably more useful than governing body or the area of a building, though that's kind of a low bar. TheCatalyst31 22:58, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Not a good idea, IMO. First, because this seems like a classic example of the phenomenon of infobox bloat that is the subject of the current Signpost article and discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2013-07-10/Dispatch. That article is reminding us that infoboxes are supposed to be a concise synopsis of key data from the article, not repositories for compendious detail. Secondly, I share the concern that the "Areas of Significance" aren't going to be meaningful to most people -- I estimate that 99% of the readership won't be familiar with the letter codes, and even terms like "Architecture" aren't necessarily meaningful because the NRHP definition doesn't always mean what the word means to the uninitiated reader. IMO, these codes are more "Inside Baseball" than they are encyclopedia content -- and they certainly aren't key facts. Rather than adding these codes to the infobox, let's encourage people to write article text that discusses the attributes of the property that were cited as reasons for listing it. --Orlady (talk) 02:24, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

"Area of Significance" is still included on current forms, at least for Indiana, while even the oldest listings have criterion/criteria indicated in NRIS (the APCRIT table in my copy of the database download); Elkman's generator already mentions criteria, as you can see here by searching for "Criteria". It's not original research to report what's in the database (and unlike with things such as coordinates, we should expect NRIS to be 100% reliable on this fact), so I don't think we need to worry about anything except "is it useful/a good idea". As far as that question, World Heritage Sites' infoboxes already have an entry for their criteria, and I don't see why we shouldn't do likewise; do you believe that our sites' criteria are less important than their governing bodies, or do I misunderstand you, Orlady? The method of qualifying seems to me important enough that it should be mentioned in the infobox, and since infoboxes are supposed to summarise what's in the article, it's a good way of providing a machine-readable summary of what people should definitely include in the article text. Finally, yes they're a kind of inside code, but that's why I suggested providing a link to the criteria section of the NRHP article — either you know what they are, or you can instantly find out. Nyttend (talk) 03:05, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I made this exact same suggestion way back in the beginning of this WP. I still think it's a good idea. As for "inside code", no one questions the refnum, and it's been in the infobox since day one. Einbierbitte (talk) 22:10, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

New England articles

I was wondering, is there any desire to begin a focused push for GA and FA articles in this region? I can pull up some sources, but I don't have access to a lot - I could probably pull something together, but I would need some guidance and mentoring on establishing the structure and form required for GA and FA level work. I have some contacts and can do some legwork, possibly in my upcoming vacation to gather a few choice materials in this area. If anyone has any desire to work on these articles - please give me some options to target and I will attempt to quickly gather off-line book sources and scans of documents as I make my way through New England. An FA or two would be a nice souvenir of sorts. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 03:43, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Quick clarification: do you mean Massachusetts and Rhode Island (where substubs were created en masse), or the other four states (where this isn't the case), or all six of them? Nyttend (talk) 03:52, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I can do Rhode Island and Massachusetts easily, I will be making my way up through New Hampshire, but I do not know how long I will be staying in that region. If I can stop by some historical societies and purchase materials or target information for photocopying at local libraries, I'd be quite happy to run a side project while I am in the states. I just need to know what kind of things I should be going for to maximize my efforts. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:20, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Totally misunderstood you. I overlooked your penultimate sentence and thought you were just talking about a normal "let's write some articles" project. Nyttend (talk) 17:16, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Since coverage is lacking and I'll be running around on my vacation, it'd make sense to have a secondary use for the trip. I got only a sub-par camera, but I'm sure it is fine enough for taking photos of buildings and things. I'll browse the lists and see if I can come up with some ideas; didn't know if anyone else had an interest in improving specific ones - something I could help out with. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 03:02, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I would be interested, if others are too (a bit of project collaboration, rather than bickering would be a nice change of pace). I would suggest something famous, but with an article that is lacking, like the Massachusetts State House or the Boston Light. Niagara ​​ 16:31, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Historic Districts

All- NHRP historic districts in cities tend to be comprised of several buildings. Would it be proper editing to include pics of the individual buildings mentioned in the district listing?Coal town guy (talk) 01:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes! These buildings are known as "contributing properties" and are the reason why the district exists! Take a look at the Russian Village District, a district I wrote up a couple years ago. Einbierbitte (talk) 01:28, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Dam good work EinbierbitteCoal town guy (talk) 03:16, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed! It's nice to get photos of different buildings, as a sort of representative sampling. In residential districts, I try to get not only houses, but churches or other possible contributing properties. That's the wonder of digital cameras, as long as you have enough storage, you can take hundreds of pictures, and cull out the best ones. --‖ Ebyabe - Border Town ‖ 01:42, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

It's definitely useful to have as many pictures of the individual structures as possible. How many and which ones should go in articles is dependent on the article, and should use common-sense judgement. Chris857 (talk) 02:30, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I just added a bit to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_National_Register_of_Historic_Places/Style_guide#Historic_districts, which links to about 20 good HD article examples, now mentioning Einbierbitte's suggested one. Yes, getting lots of pics, including at least one for each building in an HD would be great, to be included in a commons category at least, if not including all directly in the article. --doncram 02:33, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Do we really want pictures of every building? What if the district has upwards of 2000 contributing properties? Ntsimp (talk) 02:38, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

1,999 is GREAT but I agree, 2,000 is just crazy talk.Coal town guy (talk) 02:46, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Out of perhaps morbid curiosity, do you have some examples of such HDs? Chris857 (talk) 02:48, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes this one in McDowell County West Virginia and this one in Summers County West Virginia were you actually worried I was going to submit 1,999 pics.....Coal town guy (talk) 02:52, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I could contribute to a few of these I think! Actually, I'm sure if you had a whole set of CC-by-SA professional photographs of a district it could be perfect for other topics. I doubt we need more than a handful for each article though. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 02:58, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. I have to take another look at the Hinton District in Summers. I spent about 2 days taking pics there. The McDowell Welch District MIGHT be a bit more tough, I have only a few hours. As to the pro level pics, it would be funny , as in , ha ha, if many pro photographers took pics of some of these places on the NRHP, certainly in McDowell County, BUT, my pics I think are OK for quality, they should be fineCoal town guy (talk) 03:05, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm only familiar with Utah, where the Salt Lake City East Side HD has 2061, and the Ogden Central Bench HD has 2383. I assume these aren't the biggest in the country. I don't think an arbitrary limit makes sense, but I'm not sure a commons cat with every last building is useful either. Ntsimp (talk) 03:01, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

My own approach to photographing large HDs is: go through the nom form and see if any particular buildings are singled out, and make a particular effort to get them; and try to get a reasonable sample of the architectural diversity in the district. I think I can generally get a decent level of coverage, hitting 50-75 structures, in a couple of hours.

In articles about such HDs, I think it's particularly important to include a link to the Commons category. I don't care for the "Commons" template, with its rather generic phrase "media related to X". It'd be better to create an EL with more specific phrasing, like "Additional photos of X at Wikimedia Commons". Ammodramus (talk) 19:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, Ammodramus seems to be far ahead of every other NRHP photographer in terms of providing multiple photos, set up properly in an individual Commons category, for individual NRHPs and especially for HDs. It is a pleasure, truly, to work at developing articles in Nebraska and neighboring states where Ammodramus has been most actively photographing. Ammodramus seems to prefer the EL as I just tried to provide, for one example, at Grant Commercial Historic District (Grant, Nebraska), where the addition was:

== External links == *] of the Grant Commercial Historic District at ]

which is a format that I personally am fine about using for any Ammodramus collections.

Another idea, is to actually take a video as you drive around a historic district, with or without verbal narration about what you are seeing, and upload that to Commons. Then, the commons category-inline link speaking of "media" would make more sense. I don't think anyone has done that yet for any NRHP HD. I have personally done a video, with my own voiceover, of a designated walking tour in one city, though I am not willing to upload it to Commons; it was a test for me of smartphone technology. I drove, rather than walked. I like Smallbones' photo presentations; a proper movie would be in the same vein, but even more personal if you are sharing your own voice, live, as you drive and comment on what you're seeing. Anyone willing to do that? --doncram 01:55, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

"FWIW, Ammodramus seems to be far ahead of every other NRHP photographer in terms of providing multiple photos, set up properly in an individual Commons category, for individual NRHPs and especially for HDs." Ahem.  :) --‖ Ebyabe - State of the Union ‖ 02:28, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

An ahem for me, too. I may not have signed on the dotted line to be a member of this project, but in watching this page, I've noticed some pretty inflammatory comments from you lately, doncram. You don't need to denigrate or ignore people's contributions just to highlight good ones. All of us put in a lot of effort writing and/or taking photos, and to come here seeing you talk about "fringe views of some weirdly-anti-NRHP people", discouraging people from getting getting visibility to the project and topic through things like WP:FA, and wanting to create a "sucky photos" log? Come on... Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 03:05, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I partly don't see what you are speaking about, and would prefer to discuss what you mean off-line. But I am sorry, I was not aware of there being extensive commons categories as extensive as what Ammodramus has done, elsewhere.

At risk of making more of a mess, let me say: I am coming from Misplaced Pages and aim to serve Misplaced Pages readers, and I am not much swayed by the two "Ahem" links to extensive category systems existing over in Commons. There may be tons over there, sure. But for Misplaced Pages readers, if there is not prominent link from a Misplaced Pages article to a specific commons category, the commons photos may as well not exist at all.

About Florida's HDs, I am not aware that there are NRHP nomination documents available, usually, so how could one document the contents of a district, anyhow? I browsed and find one random example, Downtown St. Petersburg Historic District, where there is just one source given in the article, an external link to a www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com page for the county; there are two pics included directly in the article. At very bottom right is a Wikimedia commons link, in format less salient than an external link as suggested above. Frankly I seldom click through one of those. But I see the link does go to a collection of photos for the district. However, I am left wondering whether the buildings depicted are actually in the district; there is no documentation supporting that in commons or in the wikipedia article. I have the impression that the Florida NRHP articles were mostly developed back in 2007-2009 or so, and mainly I think it is great we have the coverage that was provided. But I don't think this HD, or the collection of FL NRHP articles, on average, compare very well to the best of what we can do now in areas where the NRHP nom docs are available. Hope that doesn't offend anyone too much; it just amounts to saying there's more that can be done in the future.

And about Alabama HDs and other NRHPs, sorry, i simply haven't worked much in the area and am not aware of how much linkage there may be from Misplaced Pages AL articles to corresponding Commons categories. In contrast, I happen to be developing a lot in Nebraska where there are both NRHP docs available and good corresponding Commons categories, where I myself can put the links into the Misplaced Pages articles. I hope this sort of explains where I was coming from in my comment. --doncram 20:17, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I am frequently confused as to how your brain works, Doncram. I cannot believe that I just witnessed you of all people telling someone that their work is not "the best that we can do" when the average article you create is at best marginally better than Downtown St. Petersburg. So tell me, what is the best that we can do, and when are you going to start doing it?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:56, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

"there is no documentation supporting that in commons or in the wikipedia aricle" - except for the boundaries of the district which are clearly stated in the article, and the picture of a plaque which says the building pictured is in the district. If you're going to criticize other people's work, at least make sure you have the facts right first. TheCatalyst31 22:42, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll give a shameless plug for some of the things I'm doing - the main points will be that there are many different styles of covering a historic district, and that taking a lot of photos in an HD is not a bad idea. I've done a couple of NHL districts Colonial Germantown Historic District and Cape May Historic District in the form of tables, adapted from our county list style. Both of these districts have about 600 contributing buildings, but I've limited myself to about 100 buildings on each (maybe 200 photos total for each district). There's no particular reason to limit the number of buildings photographed, although exhaustion and a small marginal benefit of 1 extra building plays a role. I do have a bad feeling about many of the examples I've seen where people take multiple-dozens of photos of a single building - my usual (though not uniform) reaction, which I try to keep to myself, is "Why don't you edit and select the best photos, rather than just dumping all of this on Commons?"

It's important, though not always possible, to try to find an inventory of the HD. Usually the buildings are specified as being "significant", "contributing", and "non-contributing", though there are different classification systems. Germantown uses that system, but Cape May never included an inventory! Fortunately I was able to find 2 "official inventory substitutes".

It's important to note that User:Nyttend tends to do complete photo inventories, which I find to be marvelous. I also find User:Andrew Jameson's Detroit Financial District to be simply outstanding. A different approach is my Rose Valley, Pennsylvania.

Speaking of Rose Valley, please see the external media at the bottom for links to three videos. These aren't my videos, but are made by somebody I've never met or talked to, Wanda Kaluza. She is my inspiration, and all these videos are made from her photos, rather than being true video. Pretty amazing, aren't they? Getting true video to this quality would be much harder.

I'm still working on my video technique - see at the right "A walk up Main Street, Adamstown, Pennsylvania" (not on the NRHP) which may be a different way to present an HD (or any Main Street, Anywhere).

So please take lots of HD photos and present them in HD articles as you think best describes the district. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:34, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Smallbones thinks too highly of what I've done :-) Aside from tiny districts with three or four CPs, all of my complete photo inventories have been in Bloomington, Indiana, where I've lived for the past few years — when I'm anywhere else and taking pictures, I'm too busy getting something of all sites and don't have time to get everything for one or two HDs. I tried in Campbellsville, Kentucky when I had a week in town two years ago, but they had no inventory that I could find. If you want to see what I've done, check either Steele Dunning Historic District or Commons:Category:Bloomington West Side Historic District (and its parent, Commons:Category:Historic districts in Bloomington, Indiana) for examples, although note that Steele Dunning's table relies on the local district boundaries; it doesn't include two sidewalks that contribute to the NR district but that aren't mentioned in the local inventory book. Of course, if I were writing articles about lots of HDs (I rarely do any), I'd only include all-site tables for smaller districts; there's no way I'd give such a table for the Bloomington West Side HD, with over 400 contributing properties. Finally, you might want to consult Hartford City Courthouse Square Historic District and List of properties in Hartford City Courthouse Square Historic District; most of the images and all of the writing and design are the work of someone else. Ntsimp, part of my reason for uploading photos of tons of images is the hope of assisting Indiana's historic preservation efforts; they've been trying to get images for most inventoried properties statewide and put them on SHAARD, and I see it partially as a method of helping with that. Moreover, I recently saw something on an academic library listserv encouraging us librarians to participate in this kind of intensive community photography, if for no other reason than creating a more comprehensive "picture" of what the community looked like at a certain time. Nyttend (talk) 17:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for their feed back on HDs in NRHP. So far as I am able to tell, I could create a cat on commons for the pics and populate the cat at commons. THEN, I would then use them HERE in a NRHP HD article which sounds OK by me. I would only offer a caution about "quality". My last trip to WV for McDowell, Fayette and Raleigh counties was about 1,200 miles in a weekend. I was able to get some pics for various NRHP in the counties mentioned and provide clear pics that were there which is fine. Luckily, I research WV on my own time, but as to the quality, I welcome ANYONE here to drive what I drove, and get the pics themselves if the quality needs to go higher. For those of you familiar with where I drove, ANY pic is NOT so easy to getCoal town guy (talk) 21:06, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Just remember that it's entirely appropriate to upload images of more sites than should belong together in an article, as long as you put them on Commons; do as many or as few as you want. Definitely agree with your relationship between images and driving time; back in April I did a thousand miles in three days, including substantial amounts of driving on dirt roads without signs at intersections, so it took forever to get the Illinois Iron Furnace, and I had to photograph Battery Rock from across the Ohio River and the Duffy Site from a mile away, because many former roads (both in the hills and in the floodplains) have become footpaths or no longer exist in any condition whatsoever. We need images that represent sites fairly; beautiful artistic images are wonderful when we can get them, but sometimes we have to settle for the dreary-sky image with a speed limit sign in front of the building. Such an image is still a good representation for the future of the appearance of the building, and that's the most important thing. Nyttend (talk) 22:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Burned out industrial hulk after killing a rat snake because I stood in the middle of a grove of trees is just as cool as Dreary sky with speed limit sign. Many thanks NyttendCoal town guy (talk) 22:46, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

NRHP information not digitized

Does anyone know how I would get the NRHP information for Simmons Hardware Company Warehouse when the NRHP hasn't digitized the main document? SL93 (talk) 01:48, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

It looks like you were pretty successful getting information for the article, notwithstanding the lack of a National Register nomination document. Nice work! --Orlady (talk) 02:46, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I just wish that I could add more to the template. SL93 (talk) 02:48, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Follow instructions in wp:NRHPhelp to request, by email, a free copy of the NRHP nomination document, from the National Register. Although their system may say "not digitized", they may well be able to email you a PDF copy almost immediately. At worst it'll take a week or two to receive a postal-mailed hard-copy. You/anyone is entitled to this. Hope this helps. --doncram 02:54, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I will do that even if it takes awhile. SL93 (talk) 02:55, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

See Hard Rock Casino - Sioux City and the rest of the extensive website. Just a guess, but the history section looks like it did double duty for the developers as part of the nomination as well. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:46, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I have received the nomination document, with three files, today. SL93 (talk) 19:18, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

NRHP and supporting properties

Hello All- I did indeed manage to get the historic properties listing for the Welch West Virginia Historic Commercial district. I will be updating the article soon. Sheer curiosity here, can I assume that all HD will have a handy map and listing as was the case for thr Welch district? If not, thats fine.Coal town guy (talk) 14:13, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

The nomination forms will include: written description of the boundaries, map(s), list(s) of contributing and non-contributing properties (if any), and photos. Einbierbitte (talk) 19:50, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

No, they don't necessarily. In general, newer forms are better, but many of the earliest-designated and most important districts (as well as individually listed properties) have forms that are really minimal. I quote Acroterion, who addressed the same issue in a slightly different context: " lot of the early (and often very important) NRHP properties that were nominated and documented before there were preservation professionals, often written by Mrs. Timothy van Snootington of the local garden club or the DAR, unreferenced, and riddled with problems." Check the nominations for the Vincennes (no map, no inventory, only a few major CPs get mentioned) and Madison (one really zoomed-out map, no inventory, only a few major CPs get mentioned); these are two of Indiana's most important districts, and they were listed in 1974 and 1973 respectively. Compare that to the nomination for the Gosport HD, listed just last month; it's a small group of normal late-19th century commercial buildings with your regular vernacular houses, but it gets almost fifty pages because the standards have really gone up in the last forty years. It's that way in West Virginia too, as you can see for a couple of sites in Hancock County on the Ohio River — the William E. Wells House, a nice house listed in 2009, gets eighty-two pages, while the Peter Tarr Furnace Site, the first iron furnace in the whole country west of the Alleghenies and listed in 1976, gets seven pages. Nyttend (talk) 00:05, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

My first NRHP article

In order to precluse a potential fecal tsunami, I have in all good faith and honesty decided to let you all know, about my first NRHP article. I know you will find some suggestions fro improvement. BRING IT. As a note, this was a former redirect to the town it resided in. Thats right, IF you clicked the NRHP listing, in the county list, it took you to the town the place resided in as a redirect. SO, there is some good out of this. I am open to criticism, I am open to learn, I am eager to contribute.Coal town guy (talk) 00:58, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Please don't simply remove the redirect, because that will be even more confusing than having it redirect to the wrong place. Thanks for replacing it with an article! Two suggestions for you: (1) Add the country name in the text , since not everyone knows where Kentucky is, and they shouldn't have to look to the infobox to notice that it's a US designation. (2) Format the citation to the nomination , since a full citation is much better for preventing problems such as linkrot. Some people use the styles that appear at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Style guide, while others (including me) use other styles. Nyttend (talk) 01:47, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

GROOVY, Much appreciate the input, I also had Catlyst see it, Madison County KY has some oddities which I will address as I can. As long as I can contribute and learn, this is goodCoal town guy (talk) 01:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Article is good as far as it goes, but it should be longer! The nom form tells about how the Cornelison family was still operating the pottery as of the 1970s (is it still family-owned?) and about the changes over the years in the types of kilns used and the type of pottery produced -- that is appropriate and interesting content for the article. Also be sure to mention that the oldest part of the building is a log structure. Please expand the article and nominate it at ]! --Orlady (talk) 02:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, I think a merge with Bybee Pottery may be in order (just found the article). Chris857 (talk) 02:47, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Argh! I did a little more research, and I discovered some unexpected issues. It seems that the pottery was doing business under the name "Bybee Pottery", and there's an article for it: Bybee Pottery. (This sort of thing happens rather often -- in this case, the NRHP nom form is almost 40 years old, so it's not all that surprising that things have changed...) I'm afraid that the two articles should be merged: I think that "Bybee Pottery" should be the article name, but "Cornelison Pottery" should be an alternative name, and of course the NRHP infobox needs to be in the article. --Orlady (talk) 02:52, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Have to agree with Orlady here...The town proper acquired the name from the Pottery company named BybeeCoal town guy (talk) 03:02, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Shortest time on Register?

I have just finished Dr. Hun Houses, a property in Albany that was demolished and delisted within three months of their being listed back in 1972. I am going to make my usual DYK nomination with a hook on that one.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any properties that spent even less time on the Register? Or do these have the record so far? It might make a better hook if we can say with confidence that this was the record. Daniel Case (talk) 05:01, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

You could probably query the NRIS for all properties with listing code "RN", which corresponds to delisted properties, extract the listing dates for each of them, and compare them to the delisting dates, assuming both are given in the NRIS. I know the Elkman generator erroneously gives (or at least used to give) the delisting date as the listing date in its generated infobox (so for example if a site was listed on January 1, 2000 and delisted on January 20, 2000, the infobox would show | added = January 20, 2000), so the NRIS may not actually have both dates in there. The delisting date may (although this would be the stupidest programming decision ever) simply overwrite the original listing date, losing that bit of information forever (although obviously there are other sources where we could recover it).

If it is the case that the original listing dates of delisted properties are not included in the database, you could maybe use the refnums as a rough guess of the listing date. The first two digits of the refnum generally correspond to the year the property was listed, so you could pretty safely throw out any delisted properties that begin with two digits that are more than one year prior to the delisting date. That would probably trim the list of ~1500 down to something that would be a little more manageable by hand.

That's really the only methods I can think of off the top of my head to get a quick answer to your question. And on top of all this, remember that the database available for download only includes properties up until a certain date (2010? 2012? Not sure what the latest version is), so this method wouldn't account for any properties listed after that cutoff date.

But then again, maybe there's a news article about it out there somewhere.. or heck maybe you could just email the NR and get them to do the work for you haha. I don't actually have a copy of the database on my hard drive (and its pretty full already so I don't want to download it) or I would write a database query that could do all this pretty quickly. I would like to have the full database available, though, rather than just the scrape that Elkman provides and the even smaller scrape that Focus has. Maybe I'll try to get an external drive and put it on there eventually, but definitely not fast enough to have it done before your DYK goes through.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:10, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I believe I'm going to have to disappoint Dudeman. Elkman's generator simply provides the date in the CERTDATE column of the PROPMAIN table of the NRIS database, and that column is apparently meant to reflect the date on which a property got its current listing status — as far as I can see, the delisting date really does simply overwrite the original listing date, losing that bit of information forever. I think you're going to have to go through old pages of recent listings to find what you need, although at least the refnum will generally tell you the year in which a property was listed. Nyttend (talk) 23:18, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Do you have a copy of the database on your machine? After I left this comment, I was inspired to download the database (which is actually not that big at all.. I assumed it would be several GB, but it's actually only a few MB! Crazy that they can get info about 80K+ sites into just a few MB of data!). Problem is, I'm on a Mac, and apparently the NRIS hates Mac. I have a bunch of dbf files sitting on my computer, and Mac can't open them natively. I downloaded a program called LibreOffice which allowed me to open the files, but they're in spreadsheet format now, kind of like Excel, and basically completely unusable from the standpoint of a database. LibreOffice does have a database program inside of it, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to convert these spreadsheets into something compatible with the database program. The internet is not much help either. Do you have any ideas? Possibly some other program that can open/manipulate dbf files on a Mac? I know some people on here have to work with Macs and definitely have a lot more computer knowledge than I do. Maybe User:Multichill can help me?

As to the database itself, if you have a query-able version on your machine, there is an "OTHCERTD" table which includes other certification dates (i.e. if the CERTDATE entry in PROPMAIN is not a listing date, the listing date is included as OCERTDTE in OTHCERTD). If I could get this database crap sorted out, it would most likely be possible to match up the refnums in OTHCERTD to those in PROPMAIN and then subtract OTHCERTD.OCERTDTE from PROPMAIN.CERTDATE for each of the matching refnums to get the total times on the Register. The smallest of these times would then correspond to the property which stayed listed for the shortest period.

In other words, it is most likely possible to extract the information we want from the database.... I just can't get the stupid thing to work on my machine.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:54, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I do have a copy; I downloaded it months and months ago. Smallbones just the other day was telling me how I should consider getting a Mac, but I remember his machine's difficulties with the Pennsylvania CRGIS, and now you're having problems with this, and...This is why I have a computer, not a Mac :-) You need to get it in Excel or Access format; the dbfs are old, if I remember rightly. I was aware of the existence of OTHCERTD, but I'd not thought to look at it. Be back later; I'm off to photograph one upcoming listing and a few dozen ones that are already listed in eastern Illinois. Nyttend (talk) 12:33, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Not exactly what DC is asking about, but the File:Jewel Tea Building.JPG in Lake County, Illinois was listed while it was being demolished. Still listed, however, 9 years later! Now if we could find a site that was delisted before it was listed ... Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:21, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Check Holy Rosary Catholic Church (St. Marys, Ohio) — it was demolished in 1978 during the listing process for its MPS, and with the other MPS properties it was listed in 1979. And it's still listed, nearly 35 years later! Ohio tends to be bad on delistings; I've visited tons of empty lots that were still listed, while here in Indiana they're a bit better at delisting the empty lots. Nyttend (talk) 12:33, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

This listing notwithstanding, New York is very similar to Ohio—see here for all the zombie listings we've discovered so far. AFAIK NY has not had one removed since the late 1980s. My favorite is Poughkeepsie City Hall—listed in 1982, demolished a year or so later, but never delisted in the intervening four decades. Daniel Case (talk) 16:48, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

The Frances Packing House in CA was listed in 1977, after it was demolished according to the OC Register . It's still listed. Einbierbitte (talk) 18:32, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Here in Illinois , there's at least one building wall listed by itself, the Alton Military Prison Site (just one wall of the prison) in Madison County. Was the Packing House listed as if the whole thing were standing, or did they list just that one wall for someone reason? Holy Rosary was already in the listing process when it was knocked down; it's hard to believe that six years could pass after the Packing House's destruction without the historic preservation folks realising that it had been mostly destroyed. Nyttend (talk) 01:45, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The plot thickens; these photos of the still-standing Packing House from its nomination are dated 1976. Having the nomination form here would be enlightening, but unfortunately the link that's supposed to have the form has the maps from the nomination instead. TheCatalyst31 02:06, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, I may have found the problem. The OC Register appears to have copied bits from this blog (based on the similar "wrecking ball" line), and it probably misquoted "After the packing house was closed in 1971, it was demolished", which doesn't actually mean it was demolished in 1971.

This LA Times article claims it was demolished in 1977. Chris857 (talk) 02:39, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Try this one on for size. I finally got my database software to work (switched to NeoOffice), and found that some properties were delisted before ever having been listed in the first place. Anyone care to explain that to me? Here are the results:

--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:40, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Since every delisting date is January 1, I'd guess that nobody recorded the actual delisting date and it defaulted to January 1. Though one of those was listed in November, so it couldn't have spent much time on the Register anyway. TheCatalyst31 08:26, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

LDS First Ward Meetinghouse is found on National Register of Historic Places listings in Salt Lake City, Utah, where User:25or6to4 added it with this edit, with a delisting date of February 15, 1996. I haven't been able to find it on the 1996 List of Weekly Actions, so it would be good to find out where that user got that date. Ntsimp (talk) 14:57, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Here's the link to the pdf with that date. The original on the Utah heritage site is gone, but found a backup at (page 28, 4th from bottom). Looks like the dates are "iffy" at best, as I took the "listed date" as the "removed date". Hmmm... 25or6to4 (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

And I was just kidding when I wrote "Now if we could find a site that was delisted before it was listed ... " Ask here and it shall be given. It also looks safe to conclude that the NRHP has a few data issues. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I've known for a while about the problems with Maennerchor and CB Smith; see the comments and partial lack of dates in their entries at National Register of Historic Places listings in Center Township, Marion County, Indiana. Indiana's SHAARD system provides the following information for them:

• State Register Listed Date: 06/20/1974 (Maennerchor) 05/25/1970 (Smith)
• National Register Listed Date: 01/16/1974 (Maennerchor) 01/31/1972 (Smith)
• Listed in Both Nat. Reg. and St. Reg. 06/20/1974 (Maennerchor) 01/31/1972 (Smith)
• Demolished 10/27/1974 (Maennerchor) (Smith)

Unfortunately, neither listing has a "Delisted" line. This is in contrast to the situation in the nearby National Register of Historic Places listings in Morgan County, Indiana; all three of its delisted sites have "Delisted" lines (but no "Demolished"), and the delisting dates it gives for them are the same as the delisting dates on our list. Nyttend (talk) 18:37, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I was able to get a little bit more out of the database, and I found out that the Dr. Hun Houses were on the Register for a total of 83 days. The following table includes all properties which, according to the NRIS (and so they may be inaccurate?), were listed for a shorter period. Obviously the 17 properties above are weird, but there are also apparently 2 properties which were listed and delisted on the same exact day (one of them being a boundary decrease). Will the madness never end?

REFNUM	RESNAME	Delisting date	Listing date	Days on Register
72001034	Toledo News Bee Building	19830505	19830505	0
88003125	Between the Rivers Historic District (Boundary Decrease)	19890110	19890110	0
71001092	Miller House	19711106	19711105	1
75002163	Newell, George R., House	19750101	19741230	2
78003197	Herold, Sidney, Mansion	19780802	19780725	8
75002167	Brunswick Town Hall and School	19760101	19751218	14
03001091	Nanzattico Archeological Site	20031110	20031023	18
71001049	Traymore Hotel	19720101	19711213	19
77001582	Oneonta State Normal School	19770101	19761212	20
74002343	Gilbert, Calvin, House	19750101	19741204	28
74002229	Mayfair Theatre	19750101	19741202	30
71001078	Summit Stake Tabernacle	19710409	19710222	46
78002941	Covington, Dr. B. J., House	19790101	19781115	47
77001191	Sims, Joseph, House	19780104	19771114	51
74002274	Sellers House and Laboratory Building	19741213	19741016	58
04000586	Valle Crucis Historic District	20040816	20040609	68
76000624	Carnegie Library of Atlanta	19770101	19761022	71
74002273	Vendome Opera House	19750101	19741016	77
73002283	Brownsville Covered Bridge	19740101	19731015	78

Again, as TheCatalyst31 mentions above, many of these delisting dates are on January 1 of their respective year, suggesting a default date, but a few aren't, most notably the Miller House, which seems to have been listed for only a single day.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:37, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Time to bolster TheCatalyst's argument: SHAARD says that Brownsville was delisted on 16 October 1974 (this information's already in our list), so I expect it's a data entry error by NRIS. Nyttend (talk) 19:53, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

After having gone through the delistings during the last year, I have run into many sites where the dates were missing or the delisting was missing from the weekly announcement, the dates were wrong, or the date was a placeholder. I've found that any dates listed as 1/1 have the right year, but no date. All of the listings for 1/1/1999 are placeholders for an unknown date AND year. State resources have been a better source at times. If I added a delisting, I was able to source it from the weekly announcements or from a state database (mainly Mississippi and Utah). In my edited Access database, I still have 361 listings that I can't reference from something other than the NRIS Access database, including such entries as the 1/1/99 listings, 5 listings lost during the Grand Forks flood and fire, which I found a delist request, but no acknowledgement, and a couple dozen "Boundary decrease" listings which are now labeled as "RN". Another issue is that the scanned listing documents are being added to NPS Focus, but all states labeled "complete" do not include delisted sites, as far as I have found. Can the 371 sites listed as "RN" be added to the local lists, or should they be kept off until another source can be found? If anyone else has delisting sources, please let me know so I can wittle this down. Whew... 25or6to4 (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Historic District versus a town

All- I have taken a look at Thurmond, West Virginia. The town article and the NRHP article are one and the same. This KIND OF makes sense. HOWEVER, as it is a HD, there are a few pics I have which I can add. Problem is now the article is long, because the town and NRHP are the same, what do you think? Should they be seperated?Coal town guy (talk) 12:33, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Ramsey County, Minnesota

I've been sprucing up the National Register of Historic Places listings in Ramsey County, Minnesota page and have come up with seven entries that I can't verify are really on the Register. They're not in the NRIS or the Minnesota Historical Society's database. They have ref numbers and were clearly nominated, but seem never to have been officially listed. If it were just one or two I would make the necessary edits, but for seven I'd really like to get more experienced editors' opinions, especially since they're all articled. The listings in question are:

• Joseph Brings House "83004868"
• Edward and Elizabeth Heimbach House and Carriage House "83004628"
• James J. Hill's North Oaks Farm, Blacksmith Shop and Machine Shop "98000312"
• Otto W. Rohland Building "83004865"
• St. Paul Seminary Historic District "86003818"
• Anthony Waldman House "83004866"
• Martin Weber House "83004867"

-McGhiever (talk) 04:36, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

If you have claimed listing dates, look in the weekly lists around the listing date. (For example, the Joseph Brings House is claimed to be listed in January 1983, but does not show up in the list of actions taken for that period.) Magic♪piano 12:14, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRIS information issues/Minnesota is at least somewhat enlightening. Chris857 (talk) 15:30, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey, Mcghiever, i noticed one of your edits on my watchlist and commented on your Talk page about keeping the WikiProject NRHP template on Talk pages of NRHP-delisted items, and similar items, albeit with "importance=related", the decision from some discussion here quite a while back. I appreciate your adding to the Ramsey NRHP articles. However, I am not sure that this edit removing 6 items from the Ramsey County NRHP list is good. Your edit summary indicated that the 6 items were not confirmed to be NRHP-listed, so you removed them. But I think it is quite likely that they are NRHP-listed, just that NRIS records don't show it properly (e.g. showing that a listing was pending). In other cases I've looked into, in other states, it turned out that a pending listing did become listed, as was documented by non-NRIS sources such as news articles and maybe Congressional Record mentioning. So, I think it would be better to have the 6 items restored, pending confirmation that they are NOT listed.

Also, either way, your adding information to wp:NRIS info issues MN would be appreciated, so that the research question is clarified and, if and when some MN state official takes interest or some other resolution can be reached, that it will be clear what corrections to make in wikipedia. Consider the NRIS info issues page to be a list of outstanding research issues to be addressed. When you have doubt about a treatment, you can go either way in a mainspace article using your best judgment, IMO, as long as you document it in the NRIS info issues list, so that your judgement can be reviewed later. --doncram 20:11, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

RFC notice

Members of this project may wish to comment on an RFC at the Talk:Pythagoras Lodge No. 41, Free and Accepted Masons article. The RFC relates to the scope of the article and its categorization. Blueboar (talk) 21:13, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Elizabeth, New Jersey's old CNJ Depot

I recently tried to used Elkman's infobox generator to create a new NRHP infobox for Elizabeth (NJT station) that would eventually be combined into the existing New Jersey Transit one, and for some reason it claimed that it was made in 1983! Are you kidding me? The Central Railroad of New Jersey hasn't existed as a company since 1976, and they were on the verge of bankruptcy a decade before that, and we're supposed to believe they built an elaborate station like that next to the line of a major competing railroad seven years after being absorbed by Conrail? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 20:52, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Looks like another typo in the NRIS. According to the nomination form, the station was built in 1893, and somebody probably flipped the middle digits along the way. I've added it to the information issues page. TheCatalyst31 21:59, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

No flipping of middle digits on this page please. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:45, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

A better solution. Is it possible to get that specific counties court hpuse and get the property deed? I have had to do such in other places. IMO, and I stress, IMO, if you are local, or know a local, the local courthouse can be a font of incredible data.Coal town guy (talk) 13:12, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Irving Gill

Need help at the article Irving Gill. Somebody pointed out that the count in the article of his properties on the National Register of Historic Places was woefully incomplete. We're trying at Talk:Irving Gill#National Register to make a list and get an accurate count. --MelanieN (talk) 22:08, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Masonic buildings...

I fully understand that NRHP-listed buildings are notable, but I don't particularly like that as an overriding criterion for inclusion on Misplaced Pages. I'm also not going to comment on users, because by the letter of the law, the user adding this type of material is freely able to do so based on the fact that the guideline exists. However, in doing a search on a recent RFC on Pythagoras Lodge No. 41, Free and Accepted Masons, I discovered there are no usable sources for information on either the organization that meets in it, or the building itself. So it would seem to me that simply being a historic building doesn't mean a quality article can be turned out on said building.

Therefore, I'd like to know if there would be any interest in reassessing the "NRHP = notability" policy such that it doesn't override GNG (as it seems to at present as a specialty notability guideline). I would rather see quality articles on buildings that really say something instead of a heap of stubs that do nothing but give coordinates and evidence of existence and will never do anything else because sourcing doesn't exist to do so. MSJapan (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Not that I'm a fan of those kind of stubs either, but the "NRHP=notability" policy exists at least in part because sources exist for (almost) every NRHP-listed property in the form of a nomination document, and the list of sources that generally accompanies it. The nomination documents are only online in certain states, and the other sources are often print-only, but they exist nonetheless. (Print copies of the forms are usually available upon request from the National Park Service, so the forms aren't locked away beyond our access either.) TheCatalyst31 22:22, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that a couple of users have created piles of useless substubs and exploited the fact that AFD doesn't tend to delete junk pages on notable topics, even when the creation of proper pages would be better encouraged by the presence of redlinks than by the presence of substubs that statistics (provided upon request) prove to have a nearly 0% change of being expanded by anyone who wouldn't start an article. I'd suggest that you try to start a bigger RFC to force the removal of substubs on these pages or to prohibit their creation. Nyttend (talk) 02:10, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Further to Nyttend's comment, that Pythagoras Lodge article is an ineffective venue for the RFC because it has inevitably devolved into speculation about questions that cannot be resolved without more information than is available in the NRIS database entry upon which the article is based. This seems like an instance where an RFC about the generic question that you frame would be more effective than an RFC about a single page. --Orlady (talk) 03:19, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

IMO the problem with getting these deleted at AfD is that there's a general consensus that AfD is about the topic rather than the article, due to things like speedy deletion criterion G4. Since a single junk article is likely to get fixed over the course of an AfD anyway, this only becomes a problem in a situation like this when someone creates hundreds of low-content articles from an error-prone database. It's not isolated to NRHP articles either - I've made some reluctant Keep !votes on other topics because I didn't want to throw out good articles with a batch of bad ones or stop people from writing legitimate articles on the topic.

The best approach here may be an independent RfC about articles based only on the NRIS, since that database has so many errors that it's not useful for much more than whether properties are on the NRHP and their listing dates; everything else, occasionally including property names themselves, can't entirely be trusted without confirmation from another source. While people won't vote to delete these kind of articles for being marginal, they might if they're fundamentally inaccurate - see this AfD for a precedent. TheCatalyst31 05:04, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

IMO, although being listed on the NRHP indicates that the property is likely notable, it doesn't indicate that the property is certainly notable. Again, IMO, NRHP articles should follow standard Misplaced Pages:Notability guidelines, where "multiple sources are generally expected" and "lack of multiple sources suggests that the topic may be more suitable for inclusion in an article on a broader topic." (See, for example Iron County MRA - many of the structures on this MRA are non-notable as far as I can tell, and the broader article works better.) Andrew Jameson (talk) 12:49, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

• Here's how I think about it. It's not that that an NRHP site is automatically notable as the result of that designation. It's that the criteria that are used to designate NRHP properties (NRHP#Criteria) mean that any property that satisfies those criteria also would satisfy WP:N. In other words, NRHP sets an even higher standard that WP:N, so any property that satisfies NRHP also satisfies WP:N --GrapedApe (talk) 16:14, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Politely disagree. For the majority - the vast majority - of properties what you say is true. But there are some properties (in MRAs) that I don't think pass Misplaced Pages's notability standards. See, for example, many of the houses on the above-mentioned Iron County MRA. Andrew Jameson (talk) 00:08, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

That's true that the component sites of a multi-site NRHP--they are parts of a whole that is notable. But, for standalone sites, I think it's true.--GrapedApe (talk) 22:09, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

• Question - I keep reading comments about how error prone the NRIS database is. So I have to ask the big question... If the NRIS database is known to contain so many errors, should we really consider it a reliable source? Does it really have the "reputation for fact checking and accuracy" that we want? Blueboar (talk) 17:10, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

• IMO, articles really should be based off the nomination documents and not the NRIS. The NRIS is best for the reference number and maybe the listing date (though the weekly actions lists are better for that). Chris857 (talk) 17:16, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

OK... but if we say that the NRIS database is not enough, the next question is: what do we do with all the substandard substubs that currently exist (substubs which only cite the NRIS database, and are not based on the nomination docs)? That's the real issue here. Blueboar (talk) 18:27, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Why not put all of them into a list? The stubs could simply be turned into redirects. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 23:01, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Those lists already exist; there's a National Register of Historic Places listings in <state> list for each state, which is broken into smaller lists for most counties. Redirecting the substubs to those lists would cause even more problems, though. For one thing, the only link to some of these articles is from those lists, so linking to the same list the reader was already at would be pointless. For another, there's usually no more content in the lists than there is in the substubs (excepting a handful of states like Nebraska), so making a reader look through a long-ish list to find the same limited content would hardly be more helpful than leaving the substubs or saying "We don't have an article yet" with a redlink. This would also be a huge pain for anyone who wants to write actual articles about these places, since it would get much harder to track which places had articles and which only had redirects; both the obvious visual test and the article progress page depend on redlinks at the moment.

At any rate, the first step toward fixing this is to identify which articles need fixing. We should probably make a tracking category for articles only sourced to the NRIS before we do anything, so we know which articles would be getting deleted or the like. Even if nothing else comes of this discussion, having the category lets editors like me know which articles need better sources. TheCatalyst31 23:38, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Although I am normally one of the most outspoken editors here against substub creation, I have to take the moderate position in this case and say that I would not support the mass deletion of pre-existing articles. Although these articles exhibit the laziest and worst of this project, they are still marginally better than a redlink in my opinion. Deleting these articles would be a step back for the project, but I like the idea of a cleanup category (Category: Articles sourced entirely to NRIS? Whatever the title, I think it should be a subcategory of Category:Articles needing additional references) to keep track of all substubs existing before some date X corresponding to the date of the final decision here for use in cleanup drives. I would definitely support some kind of requirement on articles created after date X that they would have to include at least one other source besides the NRIS to stay in mainspace, but deleting thousands of articles is not the way to go about this.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:51, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Again, one single list, say Historically significant Masonic buildings in the United States, broken down by state. Stubs converted to redirects, real articles linked. I don't see a problem, and I'm more than willing to do the job myself if it clears up an infestation of annoying little articles. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 10:31, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

There already is List of Masonic buildings in the United States, which is organized by state, which can include entries for Masonic buildings that are notable for other reasons, too, other than being historically significant. Much discussion about the list is archived at Talk:List of Masonic buildings, before the U.S. sublist was split out. If i recall correctly, several editors including Avicennasis, Orlady, and myself created short articles on all of the Masonic buildings listed there in 2010, in order to end dispute at the article about whether redlink items could be included in the list. The list itself was created as part of trying to end dispute about whether Masonic Temple (disambiguation) and other disambiguation pages could exist. Notability of many of the individual new articles was tested by AFDs, which all ended Keep, if i recall correctly.

About going back and redirecting some of the short articles created in 2010, I think that would be going backwards, while the point of WikiProject NRHP is to build coverage of NRHP-listed places. And, each of the articles is linked now from at least two list-articles and often from town or city articles too. Is it proposed that the information in the short articles be copied back to each of the linking articles? How will updates of the information at just one linked article be transfered to the other linked articles? And many include pictures now, while the list-articles include just thumbnail pics, and many include an external link or two, and all include appropriate categories that have been sorted out by many category-focused editors. And many are correctly categorized already as dual topics, i.e. covering a Masonic lodge group and the historic building(s) it met in, or covering a current museum building and a past usage as a Masonic meeting hall, so redirecting those to a non-Lodge, non-museum list seems incorrect. It seems best just to keep the short articles.

To address what appears to be the fundamental complaint starting this discussion thread, how about an editing campaign to develop the short articles? Specifically by using the NRHP nomination documents that have become available online in many states since 2010, or by requesting copies of NRHP nom docs for the other NRHP-listed ones? About the Pythagoras Lodge one, it may well be that convenient ONLINE sources don't exist, but it has hardly been proven that "no usable sources" exist: you are free to request a free hard copy of the offline NRHP nomination document, from the National Register (i myself requested that one several days ago but have not yet received it).

How about anyone else improving the following short articles where NRHP docs are probably now available online right now:

• Masonic Temple (Cheyenne, Wyoming), created in 2010
• Masonic Temple (Pendleton, Oregon), created in 2010
• Masonic Temple (Port Angeles, Washington), created in 2008
• Madison Masonic Lodge, Madison, NJ, created in 2010
• Bellevue Avenue Colored School, NJ, created in 2010
• Old Masonic Temple (Trenton, New Jersey), NJ, created in 2010
• Eureka Masonic College, MS, created in 2010
• Grenada Masonic Temple, MS, created in 2010
• Masonic Temple (Kingman, Arizona), created in 2008
• Masonic Temple (Youngstown, Ohio), created in 2010 (NRHP doc probably not available, but OH historic dictionary source probably available)

None of the above were created by me, by the way. I just added to the now-available-online document to one article I started back in 2010, Crane Hill Masonic Lodge, in Alabama, and developed it a bit. I and Pubdog and other editors have revisited many others and added NRHP nom docs already, but there do exist many more that could easily be improved now.

How about anyone agreeing to review all of the Masonic building articles in any one state, out of AK Done, WA, OR, CA, NV, AZ, MS, AL, CO, WY, ND, UT, NE, KS, OK, KY, WV, NH, DE, CT, NJ (the states where NRHP nom docs are almost all available online now)? --doncram 19:27, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I would be happy to review the Masonic building articles in one of those states and work on improving them... (picking at random... I'll take CT). However... such a review will only solve a small part of the problem. While this discussion was inspired by the sub-stubs in the Masonic building category, the underlying problem goes far beyond that. There are hundreds (thousands?) of uninformative perma-stub articles on NRHP listed buildings (most have nothing to do with Masonry). These are all just as problematic. We need a plan to deal with those as well. Blueboar (talk) 23:26, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

New articles should be sourced

I second User:Dudemanfellabra's suggestion that all new articles created in mainspace after (choose a date - Sept 1?) be sourced with something other than the NRIS. With so many nomination documents digitized and online, and PDFs of the others are only an email request away, there is no more rationale for using just the NRIS to source new articles. Comments? Einbierbitte (talk) 20:41, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

To do what with them? Delete them? How exactly does that advance the project?-GrapedApe (talk) 22:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

The proposal in full detail:

1. All articles created before date X (to be decided.. I'll second September 1, 2013, as just some arbitrary date) will remain in mainspace and will not be deleted.

2. All articles created after date X will be required to have at least one source besides the NRIS to solidify notability and availability of sources. (One of) the other source(s) would ideally be the NRHP nomination document found at Focus or some other state location, but other online (or offline) sources may be used as well.

3. If an article is created after date X with only a citation to NRIS, any user is free to AfD it. To defend the article (i.e. to close the AfD as "Keep"), someone must add another source. If no source can be found, the article will be deleted (alternatively, userfied?) until said source can be found.

It is also possible, as User:Doncram suggests in the section above, that we start an editing campaign to bring any and all articles (not just Masonic lodges) created before date X up to current standards by including at least one other source. The articles can be collected into some cleanup category whose name will be decided at a later date. Thoughts?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:23, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

All this depends on the regular AfD rules - but subject to that is sounds reasonable. I'd guess most folks at AfD would respect the sense-of-this-project. I'd also want to avoid any mass deletions of old articles. In general, I think this is a major distraction and we ought to work on more important stuff (both sides). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:38, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

What about remote locations that have very few resources to list? There a few location in WV which are VERY difficult to find data for other than the source of NRIS OR if you are very lucky, publications from a specific industryCoal town guy (talk) 01:43, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Presumably you can email the NRHP and get a copy of the nomination docs before you write an article... those nomination docs can then be used to support the article. Blueboar (talk) 02:36, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

You want me to spend money to edit a 💕????Coal town guy (talk) 13:34, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

NRHP nom docs from the National Register itself should be sent free (limit 2 per request, number of requests allowable not clear). But nom docs for some states do cost money. And some nom docs probably aren't readily provided: for address-restricted archeological sites in some states there may be redacted versions (with location info blocked out) readily available, while for others it would take pleading and delay probably to get a redacted version created. So we KNOW that there is documentation, but we can't always get it so easily as some are supposing. --doncram 17:01, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

For articles that don't meet the new standards, I would suggest userfication rather than outright deletion. It seems more friendly... saying: "yes, we want an article on this building... it's just that you have to do a bit more source based research before we can go live with it." Blueboar (talk) 02:36, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose While stubs with minimal sourcing are not great, this proposal would do more harm to the project than these stubs.--GrapedApe (talk) 13:46, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

• Outside comment. As someone who tried his hand at starting articles recently for NRHP places, I really don't see what the issue is with finding an extra source to have an extra sentence or two of information on the article. That's what I did with the couple I wrote, and it took maybe an extra ten minutes. Stubs are better than redlinks, yes, but substubs that only say "x is a building that is on the nrhp" really is not better than a redlink. Then again, maybe I just got lucky and the ones I picked to write had readily available sourcing, which others might not. Wizardman 16:15, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, you maybe were lucky. I am thinking that several comments here and in previous discussions that "it only takes 10 minutes" are ill-informed. It is NOT so easy, and one or 10 examples where it was easy proves nothing about ALL examples. --doncram 17:01, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose On the first day of the 2013 month-long WLM drive, hopefully attracting many new photographers and new editors, the proposal is to empower any editor (no matter how inexperienced) to overrule any new editor trying to make a contribution. And to empower any editor to second-guess any experienced editor who has judged it useful for some likely-good reason to start a stub article minimally. I oppose creating a new layer of bureaucracy and platform for expression of hatred/bullying/nastiness/bickering. :) Besides the fact that one local Wikiproject cannot change Misplaced Pages's site-wide notability standards. cheers, --doncram 17:01, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Stubs are better than redlinks

I wanted to lay out my case against the Duder's suggestion that stub NRHPs cited to NRIS be deleted. Stubs are better than redlinks because they:

1. Build the network. (See WP:BUILD). A stub can serve to as a crosslink between related articles--similar builders, architectural styles, locations. This helps to organize human knowledge, the purpose of this project.
2. Attract editors. A stub is more likely to receive edits than a redlink. Think about a new editor who has some knowledge about a NRHP location: he is more likely to make edits and expand an existing article than to create a new one. The same goes for someone who may have photos of a location that he wishes to donate: he is more likely to upload them to add to a stub than a redlink. (The User:KLOTZ factor). Misplaced Pages can be intimidating, and we should ease the entry of new editors, rather than make it more difficult. Also, stubs appear in searches, but redlinks do not, another critical point to draw more editors/viewers into the project.
3. There is no deadline.' Making a stub is the first step to getting to an FA. We shouldn't undo that first step.

Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. --GrapedApe (talk) 16:08, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

• Project-Class National Register of Historic Places pages
• NA-importance National Register of Historic Places pages
• Project-Class National Register of Historic Places articles of NA-importance
• Misplaced Pages pages with to-do lists