Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places

New system for tables

User:Multichill has proposed above a new system for setting up our (county) tables. It sounds good (so far), but I'm concerned that not everybody understands the change and what it might mean. Also, I'm not sure that Multichill has a complete understanding of what we want from our tables, and some of the quirks that we might have.

I ask everybody concerned with our tables (that's everybody here isn't it?) to join in and help describe what we want and need from our tables. But first I'll just copy some of the advantages he has stated above. Smallbones (talk) 04:00, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

The advantages of the system:

• Make detailed progress statistics (example)
• Automatically suggest images to be added to the lists. See for example nl:Wikipedia:Wikiproject/Erfgoed/Belgische Erfgoed Inventarisatie/Vlaanderen/Ongebruikte foto's
• Plot items on the map: All monuments, just monuments in a certain region, monuments lacking an image (great for photo expeditions). (example 1 and example 2)
• Automatically categorize images at Commons (example).
• Automatically add coordinates to images at Commons (example).
• It's easier for the user to update an entry or find incorrect entries. (from above)

What we need, quirks, and questions

• We have a system of tables that breaks down the 85,000 or so US NRHP sites into:
  • State lists
  • County lists
  • And sometimes sub-county lists if the county lists are too large.
• The lists are updated every month with additions and a few deletions.
• There are overlapping lists, e.g.
  • The NHL lists (by state) have sites that are all (except for 4 in DC) on NRHP county lists (but sometimes with different names) and the NHL format is different from the NRHP table format.
  • Each (?) state has an overlapping list of NRHP bridges and canals.
  • Some historic districts (HDs) and Multiple Property Submissions (MPSs) have separate lists. The HD lists are not on the County lists, but the MPSs are.
  • Some particular topics (e.g. Masonic buildings, Odd-Fellows, Elks, etc.) have lists that include some NRHP sites, HD sites, and other sites identified as historic.
• There are questions about the maximum table size caused by long loading times. It used to be that over 100 sites in a county caused concerns, but now it might be 200 sites (as technology improves)
• Question on whether we need the first column with the site number (but useful when dividing lists)
• A big need (or an intense curiosity) on our progress. How many photos to go in the US, in Montana, in XXX county? How many red-links? How long would it take to get such info. If I want to go tomorrow (nice weather) to YYY county, can I get these lists myself, or do I have to wait a week?
• Some photos on address-restricted sites, we don't want and put a special graphic on, but other address-restricted site pix we do want, and others we just leave blank. How would that affect the above question?

I'm sure there are other questions and quirks. It wouldn't be fair to Multichill to expect him to know all of these unless we tell him, so please add on! Smallbones (talk) 04:00, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Great job of summarizing where we are Smallbones and thanks for taking on that task. Just a couple of things to add/clarify:

• In general, the state/county/city lists are updated weekly, not monthly
• The row numbers are also useful for quickly knowing how many listings there are in a table, which helps with the tables that tally the number of listings in a state by county and in the US by state. --sanfranman59 (talk) 00:17, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm having trouble following the examples; but the things that concern me are the automatic processes: automatically categorizing Commons images, and automatically adding coordinates to them.

Most of us are well aware that there are bad coordinates in the database. Even if the errors were corrected, there'd be situations where we'd want to put in our own coordinates rather than the database's. To come up with just two examples, we might be uploading photos of individual structures within a geographically large site (an HD, a major battlefield, or the like); or we might be uploading a photo of a historical marker describing the site but not at it.

I've had plenty of situations, as well, where I did not want to use the official NRHP name as the name of a category. The official name might have been ambiguous, for example; or the site might have been better known under a different name.

I'm afraid that these automatic processes could become a rich source of irritation and error. I'd prefer that they not be introduced; or, if they must be, that they be designed so that an editor can quickly and easily shut them down. Ammodramus (talk) 03:16, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Automatic processes are meant to assist us, not annoy us. It can be enabled but it doesn't have to.

Automatic addition of coordinates will only happen if an image is not already geotagged. It always contains the source of the coordinates so you are able to hunt down errors.

Automatic categorization at the moment is only used to do the first pass. Take for example the Netherlands. Images start in Commons:Category:Rijksmonumenten. The bot only works on this category and will move images to subcategories example. If you don't put images in the root category, this bot won't work on them. multichill (talk) 13:12, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Maps! Ooh, bots and other automatic processes making more maps! Maps of kinds of places. Maps of photographed places. Local maps of photos wanted! Ooh, I want maps, especially on my smartphone when wandering in unfamiliar neighborhoods seeking unphotographed treasures. Yes, the coordinates in Wikpedia are objective, while most coordinates in Commons are POV, all for good reasons, but most photos have no coordinates. Presumably the automated coords would be placed low in the Commons, photo page so other bots would give priority to other coords in case of conflict. And of course they must say they are of objects and not where the camera sat.

Yes, automatons often apply categories stupidly in Commons but usually those are more easily found and corrected than pictures escaping notice due to undercategorization. So yes, I hope a way can be found to go forward with this project, not so hastily as to spread great confusion (for example by unwise categorization within templates) but without unreasonable delay. Jim.henderson (talk) 22:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks User:Smallbones for compiling this list. For bullet 3 under overlapping lists, my experience has been that The MPSs lists are not on the County lists, but the HDs are. I'd love to see an intermediate MPSs listing.--Pubdog (talk) 00:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

The individual sites of the MPSs are listed in the county lists, as are single listings for each HD. Nytend and Ebyabe and probably some others have put in articles/lists of MPSs that are linked from the individual MPS sites in the county lists. I think the purpose of this is to avoid having individual articles on sites where the NRHP nomination only has one or two paragraphs on each of the MPS sites. In a few cases there might be an individual article linked to the MPS article, so I guess you could say it's an intermediate list. HDs are another matter. Other than the regular sites that are also in the HD, there is only one entry on the county lists for an HD. HD articles, which sometimes develop into lists are pretty common. BTW, a few weeks ago, I ran into a HD that is part of another HD (not a simple boundary extension) in National Register of Historic Places listings in Montour County, Pennsylvania. I sometimes think the NRHP makes these things up just to confuse us. Smallbones (talk) 19:58, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

The older "Danville West Market Street Historic District" covers the western half of downtown, and the newer "Danville Historic District" covers all of downtown, so I guess a simple boundary extension to "West" would have really confused everybody! If you can deal with the PHMC website (I have multiple delays because I use a Mac and it requires the use of an unsupported Mac version of internet explorer) you should be able to verify this from the nominations, but the way I read it, the courthouse- the major building in the center of downtown - is not included in either district. Hope this clears up everything. Smallbones (talk) 20:10, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I too have seen instances where some HDs are "swallowed up" by later, bigger HDs. Very curious.--Pubdog (talk) 01:45, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Weird; I don't remember encountering that before. Perhaps it's something in the Eastern Seaboard states? The closest comparison that I can remember visiting is in East Liverpool, Ohio, where exactly one bank building is in both the East Fifth Street Historic District and the East Liverpool Downtown Historic District. Smallbones, I'm confused what you think I've done; as far as I can remember, I've never added MPS-related bits to the "comments" column — am I remembering wrongly, or are you talking about something else? Nyttend (talk) 04:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure I got the details wrong, but I was thinking about Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches and the recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 50#MPS and TR categories. I do like the idea of separate lists/articles for some MPSs, and at some time in the future will probably try it out for School buildings in Philadelphia and Fire stations in Washington, DC. Intermediate may not be the best term. Smallbones (talk) 04:46, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Progress

I went ahead and converted part of the lists. On the first pass the bot converted the list in a template based format and tried to extract the reference number from the linked article. For the second pass I downloaded the full NRHP database and converted it to Mysql (the source is MS access). I imported this database at the toolserver (p_erfgoed_nrhp_p for anyone who has an account). In the second pass the bot tried to find reference numbers. For each item I use the state, county and date to find one or more items. If either the address or the name match exactly the number is added. This worked quite well. Some numbers:

• Number of items in the NRHP database: 85847
• Number of NRHP items in the big monuments database: 40874 (that's {{NRHP row}} with the refnum set)
• Number of items in both the NRHP and the big monuments database: 40789 (a join)
• Number of items in the NRHP database, but not in the big monuments database: 45058 (a intersection)

The gap between 40874 and 40789 can be explained by the fact that the NRHP database seems to be a bit outdated (all items which are in the big monuments database, but not in the NRHP one are recent). Some nice things:

• Detailed per county statistics at the Toolserver
• Images that can fill empty spots in lists at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images
• A proof of concept map with all the monuments in the database (scroll to the US and zoom) at http://toolserver.org/~multichill/temp/map/
• A better map in an augmented reality browser (here). If your phone supports it you can also use this on your phone.

All updated on a daily basis (each night UTC). multichill (talk) 22:37, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm finding that an awful lot of the table entries generated by the bot are missing refnums. Isn't a lot of the functionality described above dependent on refnums? If so, there's an awful lot work to do to get all of the refnums in the tables. --sanfranman59 (talk) 09:57, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Currently I have two ways of adding refnums:

1. Linked article contains the reference number
2. Match it with the nrhp database, this only works with exact matches and the county needs to be set

At the moment I managed to match about 44.000 items, that's already more than 50% and I have plenty of pages left to work on. I guess this number will rise more and more once I convert more list and add counties to already converted lists. After that I can problably produce lists per county of items in the nrhp database but not in our lists making it easy to find the missing refnums. multichill (talk) 10:31, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to make it clear: Don't spend too much time on hunting down refnums yet: The bots will probably take care of a lot of them. multichill (talk) 11:56, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thanks for the prompt reply. --sanfranman59 (talk) 21:35, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Now I can use some help, see #Update 11th of December. multichill (talk) 15:21, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

formerly listed subtables

I noticed errors implemented by the Botmultichill bot in changing the presentation of "Formerly listed" sites. In this edit for Downtown Davenport and this edit for North Dakota, there were incorrect changes of the displayed text from "Delisted Date" to "Listed Date", for the section of Formerly listed properties. That's an error, to completely change the meaning to the opposite of what is factual. Multichill, notified, has commented that there is code in the bot to seek to avoid such errors. Multichill, could you please comment on how your bot seeks to address these cases (searching on what string, etc.)? Perhaps the "Formerly listed" sections are coded with different titles or otherwise are not uniform enough, across pages, for your coding stratgegy to work. Can you provide one or more examples where your bot did transform them into something correct? In particular, do you have a different row-template that you seek to put in for these rows?

Perhaps a manual editing campaign is needed to search the set of NRHP list-articles for instances of "Formerly listed" or similar phrases, or use of "NRHP-delisted color" template. "What links here" applied to the use of "NRHP-delisted_color" template yields 50 or more NRHP list articles that probably all have Formerly Listed sections, by the way. Would we need to visit all those manually?

I do in general admire Multichill's effort to transform NRHP list-tables into versions that are more easily translated into other language wikipedias. Has anyone else noticed this problem for formerly listed subtables, though? --doncram 19:20, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I noticed my bot incorrectly editing formerly listed sites headers too. This shouldn't be too hard to clean up: I'll just look for == Former .... == {{NRHP header)things too change, but how do you guys would like to have this header? I see different approaches. I would propose to just have {{NRHP header}} with "delisted date" and the {{NRHP-delisted color}}. What do you think? multichill (talk) 23:17, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Not sure if they will all have "former" in the section title. Summit County, Ohio is another one messed up by the bot (and not fixed by me) which i find by checking a few in the "What links here" link above.

I personally think the date column should just say "Dates" as it does within National Register of Historic Places listings in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, and allow editors to put in parenthetical "(listed)" and "(delisted)" after the one or two dates that can be given in a cell. That's the way i have set up many. Some have explained out the listed date over in the comments column; i happen to think it's compact and best to put all the relevant dates in a "Dates" column. There is no official WikiProject style guideline for this, I believe. Can anyone else comment on this style point? --doncram 23:58, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I like having both the listing date and the removal date in the table. Like doncram, I've been putting both in the same column. I think I usually make the column heading "Date Listed/Removed", but "Dates" is fine with me as well. It actually might be best to have two date columns so one could sort on either, but that means more work when transferring entries from a "Current listings" table to a "Former listings" table. I'm not a fan of using the term "delisted". The NPS uses "removed" as the verb for these actions. --sanfranman59 (talk) 01:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Created {{NRHP former header}} and my bot is now replacing obvious mistakes. You might want to tweak the template to meet your wishes. multichill (talk) 21:00, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

As best as I can tell, the new templates don't accommodate having both the listing date and the removal date in the same column. The 'NRHP former header' template has 'Date listed/removed' in the column header, so I thought it should be possible to enter both dates, but I can't figure out how to do it. Help anyone? Can the header template be further modified to allow two date columns? I guess that would also mean that we'd need a new row template also, huh? --sanfranman59 (talk) 04:25, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I took current practice for the design. Of course it can be change to two columns, but yes, we would need to make a row template too.

I'll try to do some sandboxing later this way to see what's possible. Multichill (talk) 21:07, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I completely missed this section. Getting lost in this whole thread... I've been slowly adding delisteings comparing the yearly forms and the database downloaded from the nrhp site. I've been sticking with putting the delisting in the added/removed column, but ran across a way to put both dates in the column in National Register of Historic Places listings in Williamson County, Tennessee. Maybe this would work instead? 25or6to4 (talk) 04:54, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

article tables lacking a city column

The bot made an edit to National Register of Historic Places listings in Lowell, Massachusetts, attempting to change a single row in the table to use {{NRHP row}}. A number of things were broken in the edit (multichill, please look at how it botched the citation). Note that this article's table does not have a "city" or "neighborhood" column (a feature other sublist articles I know of share), so the whole table would have to be converted to avoid breaking formatting. Magic♪piano 14:40, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The missing column makes the bot act up. Should be hunted down by now at User:Multichill/NRHP to skip#Cities. multichill (talk) 23:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Bot not converting NHS and other less common NRHP types?

I've come across a couple tables now where the bot didn't convert NHS listings to the new NRHP row template format. Is that intentional Multichill? The process that I use for renumbering rows in long tables requires each listing to have the same number of row elements. If a row or two in the table are formatted the old way while all of the other rows are formatted the new way, my system doesn't work very well. Is there some reason that we shouldn't be using the new row template for type=NRHP and type=HD? --sanfranman59 (talk) 00:26, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

This is intentional for the first pass. Want to be a bit conservative. I now match on NRHP, HD, NHL & NHLD. I'll convert the NHS' in the second pass (this week?). multichill (talk) 23:21, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I did another pass. Seems to have caught most of them. multichill (talk) 15:19, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

when neighborhood column not wanted

(moved from separate discussion item "Table help")

Can someone remove the number column I don't see a point and the "neighborhood" column, they are all Davenport now on here CTJF83 22:00, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The number column is standard; it's a foolproof way of sorting (better than the alphabetical sort of the name column, since with numbers we can sort by last name) and a good measure of how many sites we have. Nyttend (talk) 06:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Re the number column, I completely concur with Nyttend on this. We've discussed the value of having that column on several occasions in the past and have always decided to keep it as standard. No one knows better than I do what a pain it can be to update the row numbering when inserting a single row in the middle of a long table, but the benefits outweigh the inconvenience. I've got a method for relatively quickly renumbering long NRHP lists that involves copying the table into Excel, manipulating the data there and then pasting it back into the Wikipedia editor. I can renumber just about any length list in about 30 seconds or so. If you'd like me to renumber a list for you, feel free to post a request on my talk page.

The Neighborhood column can be useful in some cities. I see that there's an article about neighborhoods in Davenport. Is this not a useful way to identify the locations of NRHP sites in the city? If not, feel free to remove that column. --sanfranman59 (talk) 01:29, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

The Neighborhood/City column cannot be removed in lists that use {{NRHP row}} unless that template is modified. (Is this the right place to request that be made possible, similar to the showcounty option?) Magic♪piano 13:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

We should. The column is useful in most city lists, but since the list in question is just downtown Davenport, they're all a single neighborhood. I removed every line from every NRHP_row template, but in preview the line still appeared; we need to request modification. Nyttend (talk) 06:19, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

What's wrong with the information that the NRHPs in the Davenport list are located in Davenport? And why introcuding two different standards. (What would make later list rearrangements more complicated.) --Matthiasb (talk) 09:06, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

In this case, they're all in the same neighborhood of Davenport. This isn't introducing a different standard; for years we've removed this column from the old table in cases where it's not needed. See National Register of Historic Places listings in Sandusky, Ohio for an example: Sandusky is a small enough city that a neighborhood column isn't amazingly useful for it, so we simply got rid of the column. Nyttend (talk) 12:41, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

This is/was also true in some of the sublists for Middesex County, Massachusetts, where the towns are small enough that the column isn't really useful; see e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in Concord, Massachusetts. Magic♪piano 13:24, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

(comment composed for Talk:Multichill, applied here instead:)

Hey, this is a serious problem which applies for a number of NRHP list-articles besides this Downtown Davenport example, namely any NRHP list-article that is focused on just one neighborhood, where it doesn't make sense to repeat the neighborhood in every row. The Downtown Davenport list-article, like others, was probably split out of a bigger table for all of the city, where it did make sense to have neighborhood appearing. The {{NRHP header}} and {{NRHP row}} might both need to be adjusted, to allow a user to suppress display of the neighborhood entry (which actually appears to be the field labelled "city=" in the NRHP row).

I think it would be preferable to allow an editor like Ctjf83 to choose to suppress neighborhood column display, rather than requiring one to blank out the city= field in every row entry. For one reason, suppose if two separate one-neighborhood lists are combined back into one two-neighborhood article, where you do want to show neighborhood again. But, currently, even blanking out that field won't help: that would just make a blank column display, i think.

Multichill, can a parameter be added to the NRHP header template, which would allow suppression? I am not sure if this would be easy, because the following NRHP rows have to understand the header is set differently. --doncram 17:23, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

That's impossible AFAIK. multichill (talk) 17:27, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Can we set a hidden css class for the column? It would still be there for the bot, but not displayed. --Aude (talk) 17:40, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

It would be an option, somehow, in the template to set it as hidden column --Aude (talk) 17:42, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

How would we do that Aude? multichill (talk) 17:42, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

We could add display:none css styles to both the header and row templates, which is a hackish way. A more proper solution might be a site-wide hidden column functionality, and have come up with two solutions (css only, jQuery): Wikipedia:Village_pump (technical)#Hidden table columns. Cheers. --Aude (talk) 03:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Implemented the hiding, see #Improved templates. multichill (talk) 21:46, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Bot stripping out cites for dates listed, and sometimes dates themselves

On National Register of Historic Places listings in Orleans County, New York, there were two issues related to the listing date field (I had, last fall, been working on developing this for a possible FLC, so I'm, uh, a little interested in seeing this resolved).

• It stripped out the citations I had for those dates, and couldn't handle the remaining dates, leaving just "None".[1]
• I hand-restored the dates using the ISO 8601 format. However, when I restored the cites, the cells ballooned to easily the largest in the table, way larger than necessary. Is this a bot problem or a template problem? I can't tell.

Since I feel that any of these lists we put up for FLC, should someone decide to do so, will need to have the dates of listing cited (and it's easy to do so), this should be resolved.

Also in that vein, I had added alt text to the images that has also been stripped out. I think I can add a field to {{NRHP row}} that would allow them to be restored, but if someone else who's better at template fixes than I am can do so, all the better. Daniel Case (talk) 01:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

That stripping wasn't supposed to happen. I improved the template to handle these cases, see #Improved templates. multichill (talk) 21:48, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Counties

Hi everyone, I could use some (bot assisted) help with Category:NRHP list missing county. Every listing contains the county. This is used to find the right refnum and for the statistics. I already added a lot of counties myself. This is the strategy:

1. Pick a page - National Register of Historic Places listings in Middletown, Connecticut
2. Find the county - Middlesex County, Connecticut (please keep it in the [[<county>, <state>]] format)
3. Do a bot replace - replace.py -lang:en -regex "\|county=\s*\r\n" "|county=[[Middlesex County, Connecticut]]\n" -namespace:0 -page:National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Middletown,_Connecticut
4. Review the edit and press ok - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Middletown,_Connecticut&diff=prev&oldid=465290971

multichill (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

What you did in that Middletown, CT list looks fine. Are you suggesting I or someone else could run that script somehow? Is it even possible for me? Please explain more. I and others have used AWB; is AWB an option for this? --doncram 20:34, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I finished most easy ones in Category:NRHP list missing county. Now we're left with:

• Alaska: Census area/boroughs/changes ahum, needs to be done manually. This list can be used for reference.
• Parks: Most parks are in multiple counties so that needs to be figured out manually too.

If it's manual it's probably best to add the reference number right away (to prevent double work). multichill (talk) 15:19, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Boundary increase/decrease

Boundaries of historic districts change every once in a while. How to handle these?

1. Include all listings (original and updates)
2. Make the first listing leading and include updates in the description
3. Make the last listing leading and include previous listings in the description

Opinions please. multichill (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Glad you're noticing that there is an issue. I have wondered what on earth the bot is doing, when adding NRHP registration numbers, because the correspondence between NRHP-listed places and numbers is not 1:1.

I don't know what you mean by "include all the listings". If you mean insert new rows for each boundary increase or decrease, then, no, that is not what we have done, and I am pretty sure in general our consensus is that we don't want that. We have one row for each NRHP-listed place. It can have multiple dates associated with it, and the location info and the descriptions may have been edited to describe the complexities. Also, I and some others have, in many list-articles, gone to some trouble to present clearly the multiple listing dates, and descriptions, for the boundary increases and decreases. You need to be aware that there are some boundary decreases, in fact, maybe that has not come up.

Has the bot been replacing dates and location information by what is in the NRIS database? I sincerely hope not. Multichill, could you please clarify what, besides registration numbers, the bot has been adding from the NRIS database? --doncram 22:07, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Nothing. multichill (talk) 22:38, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, good, thanks. There really are a lot of cumulative fixes, relative to NRIS info, that we have accomplished. --doncram 20:43, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

About the boundary increases, decreases, is it best to list the multiple reference numbers in the reference number field? Also, note some boundary increases giving a new reference number in NRIS are also giving a new, expanded name for a given district. Hopefully our development of articles reflects, or will reflect, the multiple names and multiple reference numbers in their infoboxes. I was making it a point to start stub articles for places having such complexities, but not all cases have been sorted out (by constructing a stub article that clarifies, giving multiple reference numbers).

Could a bot go through the existing NRHP articles to identify where there are multiple reference numbers in the infobox, and use that to guide semi-automated updating of the reference number field in the list-articles? --doncram 20:43, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The few instances I've seen of this in the list articles has been option 2, where the date of the original listing is cited in the date column of the table, and any increases are cited in the description. That also to me seems to be the preferred option. Andrew Jameson (talk) 13:43, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't recall a discussion of standardizing how we enter this information. Perhaps now's the time? I've changed my practices in this regard over time. My current practice is to note boundary increases/decreases in the Location column as such:

123 Main St.
Boundary increase (listed December 12, 2011): 125 Main St.

I used to enter this information in the Description column, but it seems to me that the Location column is the most appropriate place. --sanfranman59 (talk) 21:19, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I expanded the templates a bit to be a bit more flexible (see #Improved templates). What I would propose:

• We use the original listing for the "refnum" field
• We use the original date for the "date" field.

Additional dates and increases can be put in the "date_extra" field and/or the "address" field (whatever you feel like). multichill (talk) 21:55, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Oregon

Oregon is definitely the state causing me the most problems. Everything is different in Oregon (compared to the other states). I keep a list at User:Multichill/NRHP to skip#Oregon. If somebody could help with these that would be nice. Some of the problems:

• Name column contains extra information
• Date is in non standard formating

multichill (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Oregon is in fact different than any other state, because there is a strong WikiProject Oregon that has done things its own way, in many respects. That is basically fine for them to have done. Some evidence of different-ness is reflected in long Talk page and/or archives of Talk page at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Oregon. The editors' concerns there included that the NRIS database had inaccuracies which they could identify by comparison to the Oregon state system (which also turned out to have errors). All known discrepancies were resolved in a longish process.

But, it needs to be pointed out that there are known errors in the NRIS database, including about NRHP registration numbers. The known errors are mostly detailed out in a series of state-specific pages linked from wp:NRIS info issues. Many Oregon specific issues are detailed in particular at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRIS information issues/Oregon. Note there are many NRIS errors where NRIS erroneouosly includes or excludes an item from a given Oregon county. We do not want a bot re-implementing NRIS errors that we have known about and fixed in wikipedia already. --doncram 22:18, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Why do you think the bot would add errors, it wouldn't dare to do that! ;-)

Anyway, I expanded the templates a bit (see #Improved templates) and now I have suitable places to store the references. multichill (talk) 21:59, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Update 11th of December

I converted some more lists. We now have almost 70.000 items with a reference number. Some statistics:

• Total NRHP listings in the main NRHP database: 85847
• Total NRHP listings in our database: 67191
• Total NRHP listings in both main and our database: 66890
• Total NRHP listings in the main NRHP database, but not in our database: 18957 .

I made a list of items not yet in our lists. This can be used to shorten Category:NRHP list missing refnum. We could probably use some tooling for that. Doing this manually is an awful lot of work. multichill (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what these databases are supposed to indicate (because I haven't been following your process as closely as I should; sorry), but I'm familiar with a lot of the Michigan entries on your list of items. Many (most, or possible all) of these are entries having articles whose names do not precisely match the NRHP name, for various reasons. Some of these reasons are fairly standard: appending a disambiguating city name in parentheses, for example, or substituting an em-dash for the NRHP's double-en-dash. Would listing these "standard" name changes be helpful? Andrew Jameson (talk) 14:23, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

In general i want to support this initiative, and am willing to do some tedious manual editing to help out, as probably are others here. We've done many big technical cleanup campaigns before, could pitch in to get all the reference numbers added, splitting remainder to do by state, say. --doncram 20:34, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I think I'm reaching the limits of automation here so some help would be very nice.

Category:NRHP list missing refnum now contains 1592 items. Combined with this list you can work per state. At Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Reference numbers I added a short explanation on how to find the reference numbers. multichill (talk) 15:01, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I did Florida last night, then read this. :) This has a side benefit, as I've found some Florida articles that don't have NRHP infoboxes. Also, while updating I noticed refnums from certain weeks were missing. Not new ones, but from 1996. Perhaps they're not getting picked up? Anyway, keep up the good work, y'all! :) --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Repel All Boarders ‖ 19:25, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I also noticed it's not converting National Monuments to the new format. Is the bot only converting basic NRHP sites and HDs? --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - State of the Union ‖ 19:43, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Oops, found the problem, I updated the wrong regular expression. Now changed the right one and now fired up the bot to work on the already converted pages. multichill (talk) 21:22, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

There are currently 0 pages needing one or more refnums, in Category:NRHP list missing refnum (that number will update occasionally, is to be compared vs. 1,532 total as of 12/18. I knocked off a couple, will keep at it. It seems new listings are the issue, mostly. I find that google searching per one of Multichill's suggestions, e.g. "site:nps.gov Cassidy House" works best to find the relevant NRHP new listings page. --doncram 22:34, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I found that the refnum was missing for sites duplicated across different counties, at least in Texas. Helped me find a duplicate I missed! Texas has been updated. 25or6to4 (talk) 23:49, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Improved templates

Based on the input I got I improved the header and the row templates. For the header I added the "nocity" field to hide the city column. For the row template I did several changes:

• I added the "name_extra" field to add text after the name column. This can be anything, for example a reference
• I added the "alt" field to add an alt text to the image
• I added the "date_extra" field to add text after the date column. This can be anything, for example a reference
• I added the "address_extra" field to add text after the date column. This can be anything, for example a reference
• I added the "nocity" field to hide the city column

For an example without the city and some extra fields set, see User:Multichill/sandbox. What do you think? Do you like it? Did I miss something? multichill (talk) 20:25, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Seems ok to me, but I don't understand why the "name_extra" and "address_extra" fields are necessary. Can't I just enter a reference or additional text to the end of the name or address field? I've been doing that with the address field for boundary increases that have been listed the last few weeks and it seems to work fine (e.g. University of Montana HD boundary increase listed 12/1/2011. --sanfranman59 (talk) 21:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

That won't work for the name field. It's a nice field to put references in too. It just adds some flexibility without loosing functionality. multichill (talk) 21:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I removed the extra adddress field. This way it was redundant. multichill (talk) 22:03, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

template to do the numbering

Thanks for improving the templates, but further improvement is needed. In particular, it doesn't make sense to go on with tables that require tedious manual re-numbering of the listed items. It doesn't make sense to propagate that system on to Wikipedias of other languages; it doesn't make sense to keep doing it here. When, I am pretty sure (because there are smart programmers around), it would be feasible for the header and row templates to take care of it. In particular, I saw a "nocity" solution by User:Aude before which nested his/her version of the row templates within the header template. That worked to allow for the suppression of the city/neighborhood column without requiring "nocity=1" to be added to every single row of a table. I think it would also work to allow for a program to count the rows. This would be a big gain for us in the English wikipedia NRHP project, an unexpected payoff from the templatizing initiative. --doncram 16:35, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Thought of another feature that would be really great. Could the county and state totals be set to automatically update with new listings? That is, have a function count the number of listings in each county, and propagate the info upward. A hinky bit, though, would be listings in more than one county or state. Still, if such programming could be added eventually, it would be one less manual task to worry about. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - State of the Union ‖ 18:38, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I guess both could be solved with bots.

So say you add something to a list you add it add it as pos=new. Bot comes along a renumbers the list. Not sure how difficult it is to update the totals. I try to work project based so for regular maintenance you might want to look around. multichill (talk) 20:02, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico has complexities, more so than Oregon, because Puerto Rico does not have counties. Editor Mercy11 was raising some issues. I'm trying some edits at National Register of Historic Places listings in western Puerto Rico. Please discuss Puerto Rico complications here. --doncram 21:46, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

At Multichill's talk, Mercy11 posed that "I also notice that the new format is not Puerto Rico-friendly: in Puerto Rico there are no "counties" instead there are municipalities, and towns/cities always go by the name of their corresponding municipalities (that is, although they are geographically different, they are both always named the same, with the city/town always being a subset (geographically speaking) of its corresponding municipality). It appears the new table is unflexible and does not acccomodate this requirement. Another Puerto Rico-unfriendly feature I bumped into has to do with the Town/City column header, which appears unflexible as well: in Puerto Rico Municipalities break down into "Barrios", just as in the States counties break down into city/towns, but the table cannot be made to read "Barrio" as a column header." To reply to part of that, "Barrio" can be made to appear, as demonstrated by my changing "City or Town" to something else in an edit at the western Puerto Rico list-article already.

However, although I contributed to much of the original table-izing of Puerto Rico, I am not clear on distinction between municipalities and the city/towns. I think the "county=" field should just be filled with the relevant Municipality name. But should that link to an article about the municipality or an article about the similar city, if different? --doncram 21:51, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

That's correct: in Puerto Rico every municipality uniquely maps into a city/town and every city town uniquely maps into a municipality of the same name. Also, a municipality is headed by a mayor and a legislative assembly and so is its corresponding city/town. You might then ask, what then is the difference between a municipality and a city/town? The difference is that a municipality is made up of several barrios, some of those barrios are rural and some are urban. Since there is only 1 urban area within a municipality (with 1 or 2 rare exceptions which can be ignored for NRHP purposes) that urban area is what is named the city/town of the municipality, and goes by the same name as the municipality where it is located. Think of it this way: In Puerto Rico counties may have 1 and only 1 incorporated town. And while there may be other (smaller) urban areas in the rural areas of a Puerto Rican "county", if any one of those smaller urban areas wished to become incorporated with its own mayor and legislative assembly, it would have to become another county first. Hope this clears things up a bit.

From this, it follows that for every "county" (municipality) the NRHP features will all have the same city/town under the city/town column header. As a result it is silly to have a "city/town" header when it will be the same throughout the "county" table (see HERE for an example, and note that for the Ponce "county" the city/town is always the same, namely, Ponce) Due to this idiosyncracy it appears that for the case of Puerto Rico, the logical thing to do is to change the city/town column header to read "Barrio".

"I think the "county=" field should just be filled with the relevant Municipality name." >>>Correct.

"But should that link to an article about the municipality or an article about the similar city, if different?" >>>> It should link to the article about the municipality, which is the article about the city, which is the article about the town (that is, the same name is used for both the municipality and the city/town). (See THIS article's first line which states "Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico", and this is teh case for every other municipality and city/town in Puerto Rico.

The question you missed asking was, what should go into the "city/town=" field? I propose that for Puerto Rico this field read "city/town (or barrio)=" and that it be populated iwth the barrio (ward) name where the feature is located. The reason is that if we don't add the barrio name then we would end up with redundant information for all the Puerto Rico NRHP features. (See: Barrios of Puerto Rico)

With that said, I would also prefer that the ref number were displayable on the table. I can see at least 2 advantages to doing this: (1) The refnumber is the key to the whole table, that is, it is the one single field which, acting only by itslef, uniquely identifies any NRHP feature, if a field is that powerful, it sould have a spot on the table, and (2) it could be used to cross-check if an error in the ref number has been made by sorting the refnumber column.

Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 01:44, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Mercy11, thanks for responding here.

The NRHP works with "STATE", "COUNTY", "CITY" & "ADDRESS" (example) to identify locations. For all "non-standard" parts of the USA (Virgin Islands, Guam, Alaska, etc) the county is a actually a mapping to something else. The mapping for Puerto Rico seems to be that the county is filled with the municipality and the city with the bario. Probably best to stick to this list for the "county" and "city" fields. multichill (talk) 20:18, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Why? why is it best to stick to that listing, when in practice it will only lead to a mess and confusion?

As I believe said earlier, for Puerto Rico town and municipalities are nominally one and the same, which means that Camuy, Hatillo, Isabela, Maricao, and Quebradillas (to name the errors in only the first of 12 pages in your listing) are NOT cities nor towns in the county of Aguadilla.

In any event, I am not sure you know precisely what you state: You say: "for Puerto Rico the county is filled with the municipality AND THE CITY WITH THE BARRIO". But this is precisely the problem, namely, that the CITY field is not being populated with the barrio (and even if it was, someone with need to program the new table format just developed by yoiu guys so that the *HEADER* will in fact read "Barrio" and not "City/Town".) Thanks,

My name is Mercy11 (talk) 01:23, 21 December 2011 (UTC), and I approve this message.

Map of the 78 municipios of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

So we use the municipality to fill the county field? These seem to be clearly defined. Multichill (talk) 20:29, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but that issue is already discussed and settled. What remains is the header, which currently reads "City/Town". In the case of PR, I am proposing it should read "Barrio". See HERE for an implementation of how the fields under such "Barrio" header would read. Mercy11 (talk) 02:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

So the header would look like this? That's all fine with me. So to sum this up:

• County field of each entry will contain the municipality
• City field of each entry will contain the barrio
• Each header template will be like {{NRHP header|city=[[Barrios of Puerto Rico|Barrio]]}}

Did I miss anything? Multichill (talk) 11:18, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ No, I don't think you missed anything. Just one question though: Is your intention to go ahead and modify the headers for all the other remaining municipalities??? If it is, I would advise against that for now. I think the change to include "Barrio" in place of "city/town" at the column header would need to be done piece-meal. (I supplied all the barrios for the Ponce municipality because I am familiar with the exact location of all the features in that municipality, but I don't know the barrio locations of all the other municipalities.) I suggest we leave them showing "city/town" in the column header and, since we now have the proper header template format (via the new Ponce listing), it can be used as an example to change each municipality as each one's full set of barrio locations are obtained. This is my suggestion on this. Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 14:10, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't plan to change anything besides adding refnums. I'll leave the restructuring up to the locals :-) Multichill (talk) 14:49, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Refnum meaning

I just realized how the refnums are constructed. Yeah, I know, I'm a genius. :) The first two digits are the year of listing. Example: 88001822 was listed 1988-09-08. I guess the last digits are the order of listing in that year. Though if it's listed in January, sometimes the first two digits are the year previous. Thought this info would be good to have on record for the refnum project, doncha know. :) --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Opposites Attract ‖ 17:02, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I think the first two digits and the sequence number is for the year it was accepted as a nomination by the NPS rather than the year of the listing. That's why the first two digits is often the previous year for listings announce early in the year. Sometimes there can be a long lag between the acceptance of the nomination and the listing. I've encountered new listings that have refnums that are several years old. --sanfranman59 (talk) 17:13, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks like they open a new can of numbers each year. Some things don't get listed, that would explain the gaps. multichill (talk) 20:04, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you're right. I've now run into a few that were NRHP-listed in May, and the refnums start with the last two digits of the year previous. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Inspector General ‖ 22:12, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

The reference number is used by the NPS to track nominations. (Of course the refnum is useful to our project.) The number is assigned once the nomination is received by the NPS. The first 2 numbers are the year it was received, followed by a one up numbering system. Because of the time delay between when a nomination is received and when it is listed, many of the listings in January and February of a given year were in fact received late the previous year. There are gaps in the refnums because not all nominations are subsequently listed. Many nominations are sent back to the originator for further information and never returned to the NPS. Some nominations only ask for a 'determination of eligibility' (usually as part of the Section 106 process) and are not intended to be listed. Other nominations are turned down because of an owner objection. The original ref number is retained, so that when a nomination is fixed to the NPS's satisfaction, or when owner rescinds his or her objection, it can proceed to listing even after a number of years. Some examples that come to mind are the Campo de Cahuenga and Snoqualmie Falls where the ref numbers are several years prior to the date of listing. Einbierbitte (talk) 23:56, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Just ran into a nice example: Joseph Crockett House has refnum 83004587, but was listed at February 11, 2011 (list & source). multichill (talk) 22:07, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Also see the University Courts HD in Bloomington, Indiana — it has a number of 93000179 because of a failed nomination (owner objection), but it was renominated in 2007 and didn't have to face objection that time. Nyttend (talk) 04:59, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Missing refnums progress

In a week we had quite some progress:

Total listings from 75.000 to 83.000 listings

From 8000 to 2500 listings without refnum

From 1500 to 800 pages with missing refnums

That's partly because I improved a bot, but mostly due to the combined hard work of several users. Thank you for that! If we keep this up we should be done in January. multichill (talk) 10:20, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Down to under 300 pages. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Attract and Repel ‖ 00:05, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Done! Great work everyone! --sanfranman59 (talk) 07:32, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Huzzah! --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Union of Opposites ‖ 21:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Awesome job everyone, but I'm afraid we stil have some left, see Category:NRHP list missing county. Anyone wants to help to finish this up? Multichill (talk) 12:41, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Did we come to a consensus on Puerto Rico, since it doesn't have counties? --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Border Town ‖ 18:43, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't keep us from adding refnums. ;-)

I just proposed to use the municipality, see above. Multichill (talk) 20:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Who wants to help with the last ones in Category:NRHP list missing refnum? http://toolserver.org/~multichill/temp/queries/erfgoed/NRHP_Puerto_Rico.txt helps a lot. Multichill (talk) 13:51, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Y Done category is empty. Thanks everyone for helping out here! Multichill (talk) 13:01, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Correcting some refnums

So we're (almost) done adding a reference number to every listing. I know that some lists contain mistakes because this list is still rather large. I did some queries to hunt down this errors:

• Incorrect refnums - A refnum should be a number of 8 digits. If that's not the case it will show up in this list. For historic districts we expansions we have multiple listings. I think it's best to add the original refnum and listing date and add the additional refnums to the description.
  • Make sure to check the articles too. Some have the same information as the list, so should be corrected as well. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Union of Opposites ‖ 19:13, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
  • It looks like we'll have to look at WikiCommons at some point, if the attribution on this photo is any indication. Eek. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Welfare State ‖ 19:44, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
    • I probably already have a tool somewhere to hunt down templates with incorrect refnums on Commons (if refnum is not in the database it's incorrect). Multichill (talk) 20:33, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Updated the list. It's already much shorter. Multichill (talk) 21:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
• Duplicate refnums on the same page - No two listings should have the same refnum. Some listings have the same refnum or link to the same article. That causes my bot to add the same refnum multiple times. I'm first focusing on dupes on the same page. Later on we can have a shot at dupes across multiple pages. That's more complicated because this is often intentional (listing spans across multiple counties).

I hope you guys want to help solve these puzzles. And by the way: For the people who wonder how I make these lists, just replace the .txt with .sql to see the query. Multichill (talk) 12:41, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Found a couple duplicates which were valid. A couple locations that span counties might actually show up on the same list if that list shows multiple counties. 25or6to4 (talk) 13:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

What pages? I'll filter these out in the query when they're fully checked. Multichill (talk) 12:00, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places listings in Texas, Counties H-J, National Register of Historic Places listings in Texas, Counties K-S, and National Register of Historic Places listings in Texas, Counties T-Z. #s 04001290, 06000823, 66000820, 76002052, and 79003020. 25or6to4 (talk) 13:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok. Filtered out these Texas lists and updated the list. Already a big improvement has been made. Multichill (talk) 21:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Could use some help here. My strategy:

1. Open http://toolserver.org/~multichill/temp/queries/erfgoed/NRHP_dupes_same_page.txt and http://toolserver.org/~multichill/temp/queries/erfgoed/NRHP_missing.txt in two tabs
2. Pick a page with dupes. One of the entries is probably correct, the other one(s) you can find at the missing page

Multichill (talk) 13:27, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I've been combing through the images on Commons that are categorized as NRHP listings in Oregon and have come across a bunch of refnums that are missing leading 0s (e.g., refnum 00001234 is entered in the NRHP template as just 1234). This clearly doesn't suit our needs, so I've been correcting them as I've encountered them. Multichill ... is it possible to generate a list of images on Commons that have an invalid refnum in the NRHP template? I think the invalid refnum reports you've created for us so far are based on the NRHP lists on Wikipedia and not the files on Commons, right? --sanfranman59 (talk) 20:28, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Color accessibility

Hi everyone - I recently put up a featured list nomination for List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan (the review can be found at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan/archive1). As part of the review, a user who works with accessibility issues has pointed out that standard colors used as differentiators in NRHP/NHL listings (detailed at Wikipedia:NRHP colors legend) do not meet accessibility guidelines. Here's the exact quote from this reviewer:

"We also need to be aware of the effect of colour contrast on viewers who may not have the same colour responses as the general population. The standard called 'Web Content Accessibilty Guidelines' (WCAG) gives us guidance on what colours we can use as background against a given text colour. There's a useful tool at http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html which shows that 'NHL color' (i.e. #87CEEB) and 'NHLD color' (i.e. #00CED1) are marginal for black text with the small small point size used, but the latter fails even the lower AA standard if the text is wikilinked (colour is #0645AD). I understand the desire to retain a project-wide colour scheme, but the scheme really needs lighter or less blue colours if they are going to be fully accessible. I'm not suggesting this is anything you can rectify individually (other than abandoning the NRHP scheme in favour of the default wikitable colours), but it doesn't reflect well on Wikipedia if examples of our very best work don't match up to world-wide standards for accessibility."

I am not going to change this list to be out of sync with the rest of the lists, but I am hoping that as a project something can be done to bring the colors into standard with accessibility guidelines, so that all of the lists curated by the project meet the guidelines. Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 20:33, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

This same idea came up with Template:Designation a while back. The solution that came out of consensus was to use outlined rows instead of fully-colored bars in infoboxes. This implementation can be seen in {{Infobox historic site}}. Should the NRHP infobox use this style as well?

This solution may work for infoboxes; however, it does not work in a table setting because the outlines overlap, making it look horrible. I can't find the diff that showed this, though. I feel like the resolution to this problem is somewhere in this direction.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:56, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

This came up with navboxes a while back, and the solution was to add a preference setting that overrides all CSS-based color settings in favor of whatever scheme makes it more accessible for the reader. While I think it only works with navboxes at the moment, I see no reason it can't be extended to infoboxes. Daniel Case (talk) 17:20, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• This Wikiproject's insistence on using color in lists is one of several reasons why very few NRHP lists have become featured lists. A notation scheme was implemented in List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama to allow it to become a featured list. The same thing could be done for Michigan. --Orlady (talk) 19:18, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Is this the same ship?

In going through the removals from the NRHP, I have come across a listing that I'm not sure about. The S.S. John W. Brown is currently listed in the Baltimore listings with Ref#97001295. On the Same day listing, There is also a removal listing for the John W. Brown at Newport News for ref#85000399. I'm assuming these are the same object, but want to double-check with everyone else. 25or6to4 (talk) 13:30, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

It's the same ship. She was in the Reserve Fleet in VA and then transferred or sold to the Baltimore group. I seem to recall that the US Govt listed her in VA and then when she went to Baltimore delisted her so that the Baltimore group can relist her. Einbierbitte (talk) 22:12, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Why couldn't they just do a "change of address" bit? 25or6to4, please continue to be careful about properties that have been delisted and were later relisted; this happened with the Kent Jail and the Gramelspacher-Gutzweiler House (Dubois County, Indiana). The latter case is particularly difficult — the nomination form and the earliest list both speak of it as being listed in 1978, and the nomination form refers to a delisting (you'll note that NRIS gives a listing date of 1983), but I never did find a notice of delisting anywhere. Nyttend (talk) 00:18, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

The same thing happened to the Southern Pacific Railroad Depot, Whittier. Luckily all the delistings and relistings were covered in the weekly updates. Einbierbitte (talk) 01:01, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Preservation efforts for Tranquility Base

Interesting article from the New York Times yesterday on the efforts to preserve, and possibly grant formal status of some kind to, the Apollo landing sites on the moon.

I've often wondered about this myself. I don't think anyone would disagree that the Apollo 11 site meets all the criteria for NHL status, but apparently the NPS rebuffed efforts by students at New Mexico State to do so (apparently the concern is that it might violate the Outer Space Treaty's provision that no nation claims sovereignty over any portion of the moon or any other celestial body. It seems like it would be eligible for World Heritage Site status as well, but apparently UNESCO only lets nations list sites within their own borders (even in sort of fudgy cases like Jerusalem Old City and its walls, which was proposed by Jordan, and was within borders Jordan was still claiming at the time although it had been under Israeli administration for a dozen years or so (and still is)).

But, that hasn't stopped California and New Mexico from listing Tranquility Base in their state-level registers. Apparently all they need is some connection to the state (Texas can't, as theirs is limited to the state itself). And NASA itself, which normally doesn't do much to preserve its history (as any look through our articles on certain space-related NHLs such as Neutral Buoyancy Space Simulator will attest) is actually getting interested. They have to balance the preservation interest with their own impulse should we/when we return to the moon to collect some of the objects and see how well the material has held up (Apollo 12 was purposely landed near one of the Surveyors for exactly this reason). So for the time being NASA has asked that any visitors to the moon, human or robotic, keep at least 75 meters (246 ft) from all the Apollo sites save Apollo 17, where a 225-meter (738 ft) limit is requested due to the tracks Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt left in their lunar rover. This was apparently prompted by the Google Lunar X Prize, which offers a $1 million bonus to a team that gets its spacecraft to a historic site on the moon (See here for the controversy).

This is an interesting issue in preservation given that we, as a species, have now put landing craft on practically every inner planet (we did land one on Mercury, didn't we?) and now some of the moons of the outer planets. And I would imagine free spacecraft would qualify as well, if not Pioneer 10 (first outer-planet probe; first manmade object to leave the solar system) and Voyager 1 (farthest man-made object from Earth). Since we're not the only country to have done this, I think this should be addressed at the UN level. Daniel Case (talk) 20:35, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

However, to me it seems rather pointless to list the free spacecraft — it's going to be rather hard for anyone acting with federal funds to reduce their historic integrity, and I don't expect to see NASA attempting to get tax credits for historically sensitive restorations of said spacecraft. Nyttend (talk) 21:04, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Useless stubs?

Category:Stubs at this moment (may not be the same when you look) contains 49 items all or most of which are minimal stubs for NRHP places. In each case the stub provides less information than the county listing (compare: Joseph Mandl House "is a house located in Jerome, Idaho listed on the National Register of Historic Places." to the list at National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Jerome_County,_Idaho which includes date of listing, street address and geog coordinates.

Such stubs seem to be positively unhelpful, and I suggest that they should be made into redirects to the listings unless there is any prospect of them being expanded in the immediate future. PamD 10:13, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I would rather see people expand them than redirect them. Based on the NRHP database we now have it shouldn't be too hard for someone to create a web tool to pre populate {{Infobox NRHP}} or even generate the whole stub with more information. That would be a better start. Multichill (talk) 11:51, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

These pages at least serve as starting points for expansion. Making them redirect pages would, in my opinion, just make the already-complicated page structure more confusing. I personally have expanded some stub articles within the last few months, and I don't doubt that others have too. A stub page is better than no article at all, although I don't advocate creating them. Chevsapher (talk) 14:23, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure it is "better than no page at all"? If it wasn't there, the reader would find the county list with more information! PamD 14:37, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

PamD, you just stepped into a long, book-length debate over the NRHP sub-stubs that heats up about once every year. I agree with you, these articles should never have been created with such minimal information, and I consider them an embarrassment to this project. I am no fan of the "somebody might expand it later" argument for creating sub-stubs, and I feel the effort spent generating these things would be much better spent creating a smaller set of longer articles with more meaningful information. However, that's just my opinion, and if we push this issue, it will lead to a debate that stretches across 80 paragraphs and will involve at least one frustrated mediator. Bms4880 (talk) 19:54, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning. Another stub-sorter, more patient than me, has cleared the 49 stubs (though I venture to say less thorough than me, as they haven't added the {{Idaho-NRHP-stub}}, just {{Idaho-struct-stub}}!). I'm glad to see someone has added an infobox to at least one of the batch, and will now let the whole thing lie ... until perhaps another swathe of timewasting turns up to be stub-sorted! Good luck with it all. PamD 20:20, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Put in over thirty NRHP infoboxes into articles using the Elkman tool. This gives them refnum, coordinates, etc., but it does not solve the problems of one-sentence stubs. KudzuVine (talk) 13:31, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

In turn, it shouldn't be too hard for us to take the information from the infobox and turn it into a paragraph in the main body of the article. (Builder, date constructed, style, location, etc.) This also goes along with Wikipedia's policy. Although these articles still won't state much and will still be stubs, they will be much more informative than their one-sentence ancestors. Chevsapher (talk) 17:14, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

It'd be a good thing to turn infobox information into real prose. However, a caution is indicated. We've found and documented lots and lots of errors in the NRHP database that the Elkman tool queries. An editor writing a "real" article (Start-class or better) and consulting multiple sources is likely to spot those errors and correct them. Unfortunately, an editor prosifying infobox information without checking up on it probably won't; and the better-looking an article is, the more likely it is that errors in it will be picked up by other sources, making it harder to detect and correct in the future. (Obligatory link to relevant XKCD cartoon.) If error-checking isn't happening, then I think it's better to leave one-source stubs looking like poor neglected WP orphans, as a warning to readers not to rely on them too much. Ammodramus (talk) 18:44, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

+1.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:02, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I've just found a lot more: Swampyank has decided to create a pile of substubs for almost all of Ohio's churches, leaving us with pages such as St. Paul's Sunday School and Parish House. Some of them I've had to delete because they're outright wrong (created even without paying attention to NRIS data such as the listing name or number of contributing properties) and thus unintentional hoaxes. Having expanded dozens or hundreds of NrhpBot stubs in Ohio, I can testify that they're never expanded, except in a few limited cases: (1) People add unsourced information that I have to remove when I write a decent article; (2) People add copyvios that I have to delete; (3) We have a duplicate article that is expanded by merging into a larger article under the common name; (4) I have the time to expand it. Nyttend (talk) 18:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Swampyank doesn't confine his antics to Ohio. He's also responsible for a plague of substubs for churches in South Carolina, e.g. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (McClellanville, South Carolina). Looking at his contribution history for the date of that article's creation, I see five minutes or less elapsing between each new article. The man must be a powerful fast reader, to be able to research an article that quickly...

One thing I note about his substubs is that he doesn't address the reason for a church's notability. He mentions the fact of the notability, which is proved by their inclusion in the NRHP, but not the reason for it—excellent example of Carpenter Gothic architecture, second-oldest surviving AME church in South Carolina, Francis Marion's daughter was married there, or whatever. If this isn't a violation of Wikipolicy, then it seems like it should be: it'd be like an article reading entirely 'Abraham Lincoln was an American politician from Springfield, Illinois. He was listed in Time magazine's "100 Greatest Americans".' With a citation, of course.

I've been mentally drafting a talk-page note appealing to his better nature and asking him to quit with the substubs, but his userpage suggests that I wouldn't be the first to try. Suggestions? Ammodramus (talk) 19:11, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

It appears swampyank has been in my neck of the woods as well: Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church (Knoxville, Tennessee). I have proposed numerous times that sub-stub creators at least mention the reason for the building's listing on the Register, but to no avail. Bms4880 (talk) 19:54, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Ammodramus, perhaps you could appeal to obvious errors, such as St. Paul's Sunday School and Parish House (it's not a church building at all, but a building that was both a rectory and a religious school) and suggest that he stop mass creations because they result in errors. Nyttend (talk) 02:31, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Similar cleanup eyes needed...

Could someone please look at and vet List of Masonic buildings in the United States, both entries and linked articles? There are a lot of stubs, small articles, etc., that to me only seem to speak to existence rather than notability, but I don't know enough about buildings and architecture to know what features would make a building's style notable. If they could stand to be prodded or AfDed, I can do that, but I need to know which articles I can do that with, and which are OK as they are. MSJapan (talk) 21:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania - call for submissions

Forwarding this - discussion in next section

Early registration is only $35 for 3 days for Wikimedia contributors

which includes lunch and lots of extras, but not hotels of course. Smallbones (talk) 22:08, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Call for Participation - Wikimania 2012

To submit a proposal, visit: http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions

Important Dates Deadline for submitting proposals: 18 March 2012 Notification of acceptance: 8 April 2012

Overview Wikimania conferences provide unique opportunities for the wiki community and its sister projects (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikimedia) to come together, share their common goals, and develop better ways to work together on an international level. The Wikimania 2012 program structure is designed to create multiple opportunities for conference participants to actively engage with the subject matter, the environment, and, most importantly, each other. Washington, D.C, can play an important role in Wikimania 2012 as a locale that gathers interest in government, culture, media, and academia around the general goals of the Wikimania conference series.

In accordance with these goals and themes, the program will include traditional conference offerings such as paper presentations, tutorials, panels, and poster sessions; provide lounge space and breaks throughout for participants to gather; and innovate with an unconference day for attendees to design their own schedule and participation around common interests. Submissions will be reviewed and selected in advance by the program committee. Attendees are welcome to present in the open space track of the conference, regardless of whether their submitted presentations were accepted.

The eigth annual Wikimania will be held between 12th and 14th July, 2012 in Washington D.C. For more information, please visit the main site.

Presentation length Due to the extensive amount of program submissions received in the previous years, we request your presentation be a maximum of 25 minutes, including time for questions. You may request more time, though shorter individual presentations are more likely to be accepted.

This does not apply for keynote speakers, panels, or workshops. 70 minute presentations must be submitted either as panel presentations to include at least three presenters or as workshops with a clear lesson plan.

Tracks Tracks are used by Wikimania to organize submissions and diversify audiences so that presentations of competing interest do not have time conflicts. Five tracks are proposed:

Wikis and the Public Sector The Washington, DC, location for Wikimania 2012 provides a special opportunity for those working in the social good, policy, government, nonprofit, and disaster response arenas to share their experience with collaboration on a local, national, or international level. Wikis and complementary technologies are proving to be critical in times of crisis and in ongoing work with citizen participation in government, as well as in long-term goals for education, public policy, social entrepreneurship, and development in the global south and throughout the world. This track will explore the ways that Wikimedia projects and related activities can be used to support citizens worldwide.

GLAM: Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums This track aims to support current outreach to Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums and build enthusiasm for continued work in this area. Presentations and panels will demonstrate effective outreach techniques and results from ongoing activities as well as envision the future path for these efforts. Topics of particular interest to this track may include: wiki technology as a tool for cultural preservation; use of wikis by museums and libraries for information management for the public good; legal and copyright issues; use of content in GLAM projects, education, journalism and research; conflicts between different laws that apply to the same wiki system simultaneously. This track may also incorporate ?field trips? before, after, or during the evenings of the conference to visit Washington, D.C., organizations.

WikiCulture and Community Why do people contribute to Wikimedia projects? How might the community grow and expand while retaining its inherent cultural ethos? This track will explore the sociology of wiki culture and community and provide a forum for practitioners and researchers to share insights and best practices for community management, engagement, participation, and conflict resolution. The assessment of different wiki cultures and demonstration of clashes and effects of those interactions between wiki communities and chapters is relevant to this track. A special focus will be a discussion of gaps between different community groups, most notably related to gender and age; within this context, submissions related to female and teenage participation, representative roles within the community, and the use of wikis as a tool for different gender and age group dialogues, are strongly encouraged.

Research, Analysis, and Education The scope of research and analysis on wikis has grown significantly in recent years, and wikis are rapidly being introduced to educational institutions in the course of teaching and more formally through the Campus Ambassador Program. The scholarly atmosphere of the selected venue creates a special opportunity for researchers working in this area to present papers and panels to a well-informed audience. Subjects associated with the research component of this track can include a diverse range of topics including: technical development, philosophy and the humanities, communications, community management and collaboration, information science, and a broad range of other areas. The practitioner side of this track can include: expert participation and inviting expert contributions; Wikiversity and other higher education wikis; wiki sources deployed and implemented in academia and research practice; approaches to the improvement of collaboration in research institutions and universities; and contribution to content quality, among other areas.

Technology and Infrastructure Technology and infrastructure play essential roles in the success of Wikimedia projects and other uses of wiki technology. This track will incorporate research and practice to showcase technology applications and theories, demonstrate new uses of existing and evolving technologies, and focus on applying technologies to meet user needs and improve the overall user experience. Issues and areas particularly of note in this track include: OTRS, MediaWiki development, semantic wikis, wiki-based Augmented Reality (AR), the use of QR codes, Wikipedia on mobile devices, Wikipedia offline, User Interface Design, WikiLove, Liquid Thread and related technical focus points.

Lounge Space Presentations All proposals and presentations will be welcome in the Lounge space of the conference, whether or not they are accepted in this initial process.

If you have any questions, please contact:

Tiffany Smith Program Committee Chair, Wikimania 2012 tiffany.lmb.smith@gmail.com

Thank you very much for your consideration, and we look forward to seeing you at Wikimania 2012 in Washington, DC.

http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions

Wikimania Panel or other participation July12-14

I'll suggest that WP:NRHP get a panel discussion together for Wikimania of about 70 minutes, and make a submission by March 18.

It should probably be very basic is some aspects for newbies, and could probably relate to Washington DC as well. Perhaps 4 speakers - addressing issues that are dear to their own hearts, but probably along the lines of photos, article write-ups, data availability, project organization. We could also try to recruit somebody from the NPS, HABS, or NRHP to come to talk with us. There might even be a possibility that we could do something at one of their sites, e.g. they could invite us to their offices, present several people, and then we do something that the GLAM folks call on editathon.

I'd guess most people on the East Coast and the Midwest could get to DC pretty easily and it would be good to actually meet the people I only know by their usernames.

Could we get some sort of indication of how interested you are and how you might want to participate? e.g.

• Smallbones (talk) - I could help organize, but wouldn't want to do even half of it myself; could present on photos and how to get lost finding NRHP sites; could try to contact NRHP folks if nobody else can do it.
• Sorry, no way that I could do it — my grad student's budget wouldn't support it, and I'll have five-day-a-week language classes this summer. I attended the editathon at Wikipedia:GLAM/TCMI/BackstagePass2, so I'd be happy to contribute whatever little input I have from that, if you'd like. If you want help, you might also ask LoriLee — one of the USA's most experienced GLAM people, she put together the event I attended, and she's largely responsible for the high-quality Oldfields article, an NHL in Indiana. Nyttend (talk) 01:12, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Anybody who's interested should contact me directly on my user talk page or via e-mail. I'm sure we'll get something going. I do hope nobody is against this type of presentation. Smallbones (talk) 04:12, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

• --Pubdog (talk) 01:33, 10 February 2012 (UTC) I'm in the DC area and do stubs and take pics. I guess I could talk about it as a hobby, but not sure how much I could offer.

County & City-specific NRHP pics

Am I the only person who has been sorting out NRHP pics in specific counties and cities that are in the commons? I found close to 200 that have been incorrectly placed in the National Register of Historic Places by county meta-category, that I can't keep up with all the counties and states they belong in. I've created scores of NRHP by county categories for nearly a third of the states, and there are still tons that need to be done. And furthermore, why can't the National Register of Historic Places in Louisiana by parish category be linked with all the other NRHP in Foo state by county categories? ----DanTD (talk) 03:04, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't do much with other people's uploads, other than specifying the dates (e.g. taking building images out of "Built in the United States in [year]" and adding them to "Built in [state] in [year]), but I'm always careful to add my own uploads to county categories if they exist. I'll frequently create new county categories if I have a bunch of images that belong in a county that doesn't have its own NR category, or even a city category if necessary; see Commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places in Sandusky, Ohio, which has over 100 members: I created the category last month because I was about to upload over 100 different images of NR-listed places in Sandusky. As for the meta category, that's a bot error. As for Louisiana — the template is based on a metatemplate; the code is {{metacat|county|topic=National Register of Historic Places|topic2=Louisiana}} It's set up to create a navbox with links to [topic] in [topic2] by [parameter 1]. The template doesn't list Louisiana because it's set up to display links only to extant categories, and there is no Commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places in Louisiana by county. You could ask for help at the Commons VP, but I don't know if this is a fixable problem. Nyttend (talk) 03:27, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Got it fixed. I created a soft category redirect from National Register of Historic Places in Louisiana by county to ... by parish and now it works. I have always been subdividing by county or large community within a county. I see that Wisconsin never had Category:...Wisconsin by county parent category. Royalbroil 05:26, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. And you ought to know that I just created a Commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places in Ohio by city category this afternoon. So far Cleveland and Sandusky are part of it. ----DanTD (talk) 19:04, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Re. DanTD's original request: It looks like quite a few of the problem files are in Iowa. I'm working on those right now. Need to fix the Iowa category structure first: it didn't yet have Commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places in Iowa by county, which I've created and am presently moving county categories into. Once that's done, I'll deal with the misplaced files in the metacategory. Ammodramus (talk) 20:52, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, that was a nice idea, but too many of the filenames don't mention the state. Just going through and doing the files in the metacategory from the bottom up. Ammodramus (talk) 21:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I see that you also created Commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places in Alabama by county too, but only moved one county-category there. I did the rest. I've added a few new categories tonight myself. I need to find more NRHP in Michigan by city categories to make, so I can mode Detroit there, and some for NRHP in Colorado by city so I can move Denver there. Since there's also an NRHP in South Dakota by county, there ought to be one for NRHP in North Dakota by county too. ----DanTD (talk) 04:04, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks—I was going to move the Alabama county categories once I'd finished moving all of the files misplaced in "NRHPs by county". However, the library closed before I could get it done. I notice that for several other states, the "NRHPs in X County" category is directly under "NRHPs in (state)", with no intermediate "NRHPs in (state) by county". I assume that eventually, that intermediate category is going to be created for all states. Ammodramus (talk) 16:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

(unindent) I do this type of work periodically over at Commons. The last couple of weeks, I've been focusing my efforts on images of NRHP in Oregon. Right now, I'm working my way through about 150 images that were put in Category:National Register of Historic Places in Oregon rather than in the proper county category. While I'm at it, I'm adding other relevant categories related to the type of structure (house, church, hotel, etc.) and year of construction. If you're not aware of it, the Oregon Parks and Rec Dept has an incredibly useful search-able online database that has virtually all of their NRHP nomination forms (complete with photos). I just wish that my state of residence had such an amazing resource. Given the dismal fiscal condition of this state, I'm not holding my breath that anything such thing is in the offing. --sanfranman59 (talk) 20:29, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Move request dealing with disambiguation

Hopefully this won't degenerate it another project-wide conflict, but this could affect the disambiguation policy here. I've requested a move of Horseshoe Curve (Altoona, Pennsylvania) to Horseshoe Curve (Pennsylvania). The discussion can be found here. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 20:23, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

NRISref formatting

Nytend and I were discussing this on my talkpage. This template creates a link to a NPS site. However the site does not itself contain any info on a NRHP. Because of this I was removing them (being unknowing that is) and I'm sure I'm not the only one that has been confused by this. It is searchable and has a downloadable database. NRISref uses a date format I detest (though I know it's one of the acceptable standards). Is there a way to change it? Template documentation is mute on this...to be more explicit, the Template:NRISref displays dates as YYYY-MM-DD. Is there are way to make it display in this format January 22, 2012? Also the date it displays is the database version date and it doesn't display a retrieved date at all. These sorts of issues are a big deal at GA and FA and somewhat at DYK, ie, date format consistency and referenced sites that do not themselves have any info on the topic. If these can't be changed I might just put the info in cite web format. Tks. PumpkinSky talk 11:01, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

1) I have no opinion on the date formatting, although I'm not quite sure how the current format can be both "one of the acceptable standards" and "a big deal at GA and FA" at the same time. 2) I disagree that the database needs a "retrieved date." The database is not like a web page, where the information may be altered at any time with no notice. It is more akin to a textbook, where new editions are published at various intervals. When citing a textbook, you references the edition number, but you don't note the date you read the book. Similarly, with a database, the version date should be sufficient, and the access date is not needed. Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:53, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

To change the date formatting, use the |dateform= parameter. Setting it to "dmy" gives 23 January 2012, "mdy" gives January 23, 2012, and both "ymd" and "iso" give the default 2012-01-23.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:57, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

@andrew-what's a big deal is if the refs use different date formats, not the date format in and of itself. If no retrieve date is needed, that's okay. Dudemanfel-can that be added to the documentation? PumpkinSky talk 17:09, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Added to the template doc file. Feel free to tweak.PumpkinSky talk 00:32, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

dateform= does not work. See my attempts to fix Kluge House. PumpkinSky talk 02:13, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

It was simply a typo: PumpkinSky meant to type "mdy" but accidentally used the invalid option of "myd". Nyttend (talk) 02:49, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

DOH on me! Thanks. PumpkinSky talk 02:58, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

HABS files on Commons

A botmaster named "Multichill" is going through and deleting multiple HABS sub-categories on Wikimedia Commons, and replacing them with a generic "Historic buildings" category. Does anyone know if there was a discussion on this? Bms4880 (talk) 19:30, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi Bms4880, talk is at several places: Commons:Template talk:PD-USGov-Interior-HABS#Template needs to be split, Commons:Category talk:Historic buildings in the United States, Commons:Commons:Batch uploading/HABS & Commons:User talk:Multichill.

This is all preparation for the upload of a rather large amount of images (300.000?).

Your friendly botmaster Multichill (talk) 21:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Schools and NRHP infoboxes

In working through the backlog of NRHP pages needing NRHP infoboxes, I have a question about schools in general. My current school is Archmere Academy. Without reading the NRHP documents, I have no idea if the building in question is related to the current page that discusses the school. Archmere Academy is probably not the best example because it could easily refer to a specific building. Elkman infobox generator lists a site called "Archmere" and gives the name "The Patio," as an "other name." "The Patio" is mentioned in the actual Archmere Academy webpage. But in general, school buildings on the NRHP have become a lower-level school, e.g. high schools become middle school, or apartment buildings, condominiums, opera houses, etc. The page that refers to the existing school only shares the name. It may be in a different locaton. What should we do about the infobox? It does not seem right to put the NRHP infobox on a page that may or may not be the NRHP site? Schools are not the only type. Courthouses, and other buildings get repurposed and the original tenant moves elsewhere. KudzuVine (talk) 01:15, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

To answer your implied question, NRHP designation is for the building or structure, not the institution that occupies the site. If the institution moves or becomes defunct, the NRHP designation does not follow the institution or disappear; it stays with the site. There are all sorts of NRHP properties where the NRHP "name" does not match the current name of the property - churches, for example, change ownership with surprising frequency (as an example I'm familiar with, only three of the 19 churches in this MPS are still known by the same name under which they were submitted to the Register).

To answer your actual question, I think it would be sufficient, when applying an infobox, to check that the location of the NRHP property and of the institution still match. In your example, Archmere Academy is listed as being located at 3600 Philadelphia Pike, which matches the address given in the NRIS database. The NRIS database isn't always accurate for various reasons, so an address match isn't necessary to confirm the correct property location, but when both the property name and address match an existing place, I think that's sufficient to establish identity. Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:49, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with nearly all that you said. The implication is that if an institution is linked to a a NRHP school or other building in the county table but does not use that building, it needs to be delinked. Thus Central High School (Some City, Some State) should be linked to something like Old Central High School (Some City, Some State) through piping. Then the current Central High School page and its talk page have any NRHP category removed. KudzuVine (talk) 16:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I remember encountering this situation with "Piqua High School" at National Register of Historic Places listings in Miami County, Ohio; there's a current Piqua High School, while the NR-listed building is now apartments, so we changed the link to Old Piqua High School. By the way, Smallbones might be familiar with Archmere, since it's vaguely near him and he's contributed a lot of photos for New Castle County; I'll ask him for input. Nyttend (talk) 17:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm somewhat familiar with Archmere Academy and agree that the article is a mess. The photo there is not really the building of interest, but the nomination http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/92001143.pdf (for "Archmere") includes the 36 acres around the "Patio" an Italian Renaissance Florentine courtyard with white limestone Corinthian columns (pretty different than the photo!). I'm pretty sure that the newer Academy buildings are separate from the Patio, but built around it or nearby. BTW schools, especially on large campuses can be especially difficult to photograph - they don't like strangers with strange stories about Wikipedia who might perhaps photograph the kids. I might suggest a separate article with a creative name - perhaps "Patio at Archmere" - but it is a judgement call and one that will be repeated for many schools in similar situations. For conservation of effort - I'll suggest that we NOT separate the articles - unless somebody sees a very good reason and is willing to do the work themselves. The flip side is that once somebody separates the articles, we not spend the effort to argue about whether he/she violated consensus.

I'll try to get there on a weekend (no kids-I hope) and take a photo. I'll also lookup an even more confusing related situation I ran into for comment. Smallbones (talk) 18:17, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The building of the Julia R. Masterman School is one of the former buildings of Philadelphia High School for Girls and NRHPed as "Philadelphia High School for Girls", which is somewhat associated with Central High School which has had at least 4 locations (pretty sure I got the right one for NRHP). The Pennsylvania School for the Deaf has a similar history with the next-to-last campus NRHPed, and the previous campus HDed, but they moved into another NRHP building, the old Germantown Academy, right next to the NHL Germantown Historic District, with the G Academy being pretty notable and having its own article about its own history and new suburban campus. All I can suggest is try to be as clear as possible, and slog through it the best you can. Rules or guidelines might make it even more confusing. Smallbones (talk) 18:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The Patio at the Archmere Academy

FYI, nomination form and photos. I'd like to suggest that you get an image looking along the driveway from the west, through the main gates (see page 43 of the photos page); that will give you a rather monumental view of the front of the house as it was likely meant to be seen — the gates themselves were originally ranked as contributing and somehow got left off the list of CPs, but they still are a substantial part of the view and would help with a picture. Having read the nomination form, I believe that "Patio" is the name of the central house, rather than what we think of as a patio. Nyttend (talk) 05:00, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Will do, but you're not actually suggesting that I should read the nomination forms, are you? Smallbones (talk) 05:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes :-) Nyttend (talk) 05:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Architects, MPS, Thematic Resources and NRHP infoboxes

There are a number of architects and architectual firms on the list of needing NRHP infoboxes. I have started deleting the Wikiproject NRHP templates with the need for the infobox, e.g. Henry L. Blatner, Edwin Fitch, Peter J. Barber‎, Babb, Cook and Willard, .... Before I go further, I thought I would check if people object. I can restore these if the consensus is the need for an NRHP infobox, but then someone needs to show how the infobox is to be used for an architect as the principal subject.

Similarly, there are a few MPS and thematic resources on the list, e.g. American Indian Rock Art in Minnesota MPS, Apartments and Flats of Downtown Indianapolis Thematic Resources, tthat indicate the need for an NRHP infobox. Although these are often directly related to one or more NRHPs, I cannot see how we fill out an NRHP infobox.

Your thoughts please. KudzuVine (talk) 01:09, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Link for this list, please? I wasn't aware that one existed. The infobox is useful on some MPS articles (for example, it might not be a bad idea to add to Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches, if only we had more text above the table), but I don't see it being useful on the two that you list, since they're essentially just groups of substantially different properties in a certain area that don't have any strong themes tying them together. No infoboxes for architects, of course. However, they should be included in the scope of this project; the assessment scale includes suggestions on how to rate architects for importance, and we wouldn't have that if they weren't included. FYI, please watch out when you remove these templates, or you'll have unexpected results on other templates. Nyttend (talk) 01:38, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

If we want to include them in the NRHP Wikiproject, an option is to just mark "needs-infobox=no", which should remove them from the - I think. That would keep on the wikiproject.

I don't know of list of MPS and Thematic Resources. I found these two near the top of the list in Category:National Register of Historic Places articles needing infoboxes KudzuVine (talk) 01:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

What I meant was "the list of needing NRHP infoboxes"; I didn't know we had a category for that. Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 12:46, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Category:National Register of Historic Places articles needing infoboxes - there is a link at the top of this page in the "To do" box on the right. 782 more to go!

I change "needs-infobox=yes" to "needs-infobox=no" on the Wikiproject NRHP template on the talk page for American Indian Rock Art in Minnesota MPS last night and the Apartments and Flats of Downtown Indianapolis Thematic Resources earlier this morning. They have not been changed back so far. I was concerned that there was a BOT that check the articles and changed the Talk page indicating that they will need a NRHP infobox. Has not happened yet. I will get to revert the architect's pages so that the respective talk pages have the "need-infobox=no." Then they won't go on the above list. KudzuVine (talk) 18:50, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

The category filling up is mostly my fault. When I was doing importance assessing, I added the "need-infobox=yes" on articles that looked to need them. If the parameter is removed completely, it will remove the article from the category. Though if you want to change it to "need-infobox=no" to indicate it's been looked at, that's not a bad idea. I have added infoboxes to MPS's in the past. see any of the National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Submissions in Florida for examples. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Attract and Repel ‖ 21:27, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Pictures of private houses

I have been looking at NRHP articles that do not have pictures to see which ones I could do. Some of them are however private homes. Are there any guidelines or even laws on publishing to Wikipedia and uploading to Commons pictures of private residence in the USA? --Traveler100 (talk) 19:44, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

You may photograph and upload anything that is visible from a public street. Andrew Jameson (talk) 20:47, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Of course, just because you can does not necessarily mean you should. Jason Quinn (talk) 18:36, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

The relevant policy is probably best described at Commons:Freedom_of_panorama#United_States. Not all places are visible from a public way, of course. Magic♪piano 21:04, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

That has to do with the copyright issues. The poster is seeking guidance as to whether it's legal in the first place to take a picture of a private residence. Which, as we know, it is. But see what I'm going to write below. Daniel Case (talk) 02:44, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Public streets or sidewalks are OK but do not hold the camera up to shoot over a fence, and never shoot through a window, even if it is open. If the homeowner has made even the vaguest attempt at maintaining privacy, then the photographer needs to respect that. I've been confronted even when standing on the sidewalk, so it helps to know your rights. I've also been warmly welcomed when I write ahead to ask for permission and a tour. Rklawton (talk) 21:06, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

You could also try what Ruhrfisch did. He contacted the owners of the Clemuel Ricketts Mansion and was able to visit and get a bunch of photos of the house, inside and outside. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 22:34, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

That's a good point — if you politely ask permission, you'll often find willing property owners; for example, the owner of the Carl Potter Mound happily drove me back a half-mile-long lane through his woods to get to the site. Nyttend (talk) 01:38, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I have had very good experiences contacting people associated with the subjects of articles - Pennsylvania park employees have read near-final versions of articles to make sure we haven't written anything in error. Or PennDOT provided a bunch of free pictures of NRHP bridges in Pennsylvania after I was in contact with them about Plunketts Creek Bridge No. 3 (I believe that Finetooth initiated that contact). (Technically the Clemuel Ricketts Mansion is owned by the lake association - I contacted people who had access to the house. They also told me about a biography of Col. Ricketts I did not know of, which provided some useful information, and took me to the Ricketts family cemetery, which I doubt I could have found on my own, or accessed as it is also on private land). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:15, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

As Rklawton points out on his talkpage, Bert F. Krages, a photographer and lawyer, has a lot of good advice at his website [2]], and specifically has a freely printable discussion of photographers' rights [3]. I carry a copy in my camera bag, mostly for reference in case of a confrontation with security officers rather than homeowners. Acroterion (talk) 02:20, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

My rule is that yes, it's legal, but be discreet because people in the neighborhood can get so touchy sometimes, and if they call the police you probably won't get arrested but you probably won't want to come back to that town again for a long time.

I've been confronted about three times while taking pictures for this project. The first was a neighborhood in Yonkers that's a historic district I'm going to be writing about soon. Some woman confronted me from her open window and made it pretty clear she didn't want me around. I took a picture of the houses across the street (not hers) and left. Second time was the Melius-Bentley House, where, in order to get a view of the house over the fence, I didn't hold the camera up but instead climbed the rock ledge across the road. She was OK with me doing it because it was a historic house, but clearly resented the intrusion (it's in an isolated rural area) and I don't feel like going back there anytime soon, although I did get the picture (it's going to be a while before I upload it, at any rate).

Lastly was different ... I went into the lobby of the Suffern, NY, post office, which I'd already photographed from the outside and written the article. But I wanted a picture of the bas-relief described in it. The woman in the teller window told me, after I'd gotten a couple of pictures of it, that I couldn't take pictures there because it was a federal building. Not even if it was paid for with my tax dollars and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, I asked? No, she said, which of course was absurd. She even told me I couldn't take a picture of the outside (which, again, I already had).

She was polite and courteous about it, so I left amiably, but I was planning for several days to write a letter to whoever was in charge of that region of post offices complaining about it (cc'ed to the appropriate people in Congress, of course). I didn't, after I stopped being mad about it.

One place I really would be careful, though, is historic school buildings that are still in use as a school. Do not photograph them while they're in session, if you can absolutely avoid it, even though it's legal to do so. For understandable reasons, people get really emotional where the safety of their children might be threatened, and you don't want to be in that situation. Twice I have been asked why I'm taking pictures of school buildings, and one wasn't even in use anymore. Daniel Case (talk) 03:07, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I second that: I design schools for a living, and often have occasion to be around a school with a camera, but I always check in at the office, tell them I'll be taking pictures and never include children in a picture if I can help it - and that's for images that I strictly use for work. For anything uploaded to the Internet, no kids, ever. Acroterion (talk) 03:29, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Since I have yet to take pictutes of schools, I'll keep this in mind. I've never had anyone chase me away for taking pictures of post office buildings though, but private homes? Well, in April 2011 I decided to take a picture of one in Sayville, New York, that I previously felt self-conscious about taking in 2010(File:Joseph Wood House; Sayville, New York.JPG). It's kind of blurry, but I was in a rush. Granted I didn't let that stop me from taking pictues of historic houses in Long Beach, New York, and the only people who inquired about my activities were the ones at File:226 West Penn Street, Long Beach, NY.JPG, which is the headquarters of the Long Beach Historical Society. I did a few others in both Suffolk and Nassau in both years, but the Joseph Wood House in Sayville, and the former Bellport Academy were two places I thought I'd get in trouble for trying to take pictures of in 2010. ----DanTD (talk) 04:44, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I am new to all this and quite confused, but could someone help me with this problem, I looked up my own home which is on the NRHP and found that someone had photographed the wrong address, and mistakenly listed my house as having been torn down.they posted pictures of my neighbors barns. so the entry is completely wrong. how can I correct this? anyone know? Cookie pierce (talk) 18:06, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

You came to the right place. The NRHP nomination form is linked on the article page or I suspect you have of copy of this as well - so you can summarize, paraphrase, or even quote this to insert any information you'd like. And since Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anybody can edit, you can take out any info you know to be false. I didn't recognize the photographer, but you can certainly remove the photo from the article (go to the "image =" line). Request: can you include your own photos - exterior, interior, details, barns, maybe even pastures with sheep if the house is in the background? We'll take them all. Last thing is renaming the neighbors barn pic at Commons - I'll see if I can do that. Any questions - just ask here. Smallbones (talk) 18:41, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I've asked for the picture file to be renamed at Commons and removed it from the article. Smallbones (talk) 18:51, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I've had one instance where the owner objected to a pic and identification. It was the Joseph D. Lyons House. The pic was removed and article modified accordingly, despite the pic taken from the public roadway. No need to tork anyone over this, which is supposed to be fun and educational!--Pubdog (talk) 01:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Military facilities

I'm negotiating access to Fort Lesley J. McNair in DC. In common with Fort Myer and Henderson Hall (Arlington, Virginia), the stipulations on photography encourage photography as long as prohibitions on images of gates/entrances, quarters or barracks, motor pools, ammo storage, food prep areas and utility systems are observed. They also want a week's notice, as far as I can tell (I'm still working on clarification). Since some of the quarters and gates are historic in character, that's disappointing, but it's best to have explicit and written permission and a clear statement of limitations on a military installation. Even with permission, it can be difficult: I've been stopped (as in blocked in by police cars on the road) on an installation where I was working and had official, documented permission to do what I was doing: the word had not made it around to security. Acroterion (talk) 02:40, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

If you're able to succeed, I'd appreciate any tips that you could give. I attempted to negotiate access to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base some time ago to photograph an Adena mound on the base, but after a single cordial exchange of emails ("I'll check to see if that area's restricted"), I never heard back from the base's PR guy. Nyttend (talk) 02:49, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Most military PIOs are extremely reluctant to give permission, and it all varies from base to base. Fort McNair's a very prominent place with obvious historic and architectural merits, and the photo policy (which they forwarded to me), explicitly says so. Wright-Pat could be a tougher nut to crack, and it's often hard to find someone who has actual authority. I'll keep you posted. Acroterion (talk) 03:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month

Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:NRHP history will have interest in putting on events related to women's history related to NHRP places. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. These events can take place off wiki, like edit-a-thons, or on wiki, such as themes and translations. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Please note that there is a wonderful list of about 40 NRHP sites - with attached articles - provided by the NRHP at Women's History Month March 2011. They might even update this for 2012 :-) . The Patsy Cline House definitely needs an article! There's also an overall NPS website and an overall US government site.

Since the resources are easily available, I've listed this on Wikipedia:WikiWomen's History Month and in our To-Do List (ending date March 31). Smallbones (talk) 16:26, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Require coordinates in lists

This is a technical proposal, not a policy proposal — it's comparable to how we "require" refnums in our lists to ensure that lists don't end up in Category:NRHP list missing refnum. What do all of you think of requiring every entry to have coordinates or end up in Category:NRHP list missing coordinates? I'd suggest a single exception: we could use a parameter such as "unavailable" for cases in which NRIS doesn't provide coords and we can't figure them out from the address; this could encompass both address-restricted sites and sites where the location simply isn't clear enough. For an example of the latter situation, see the Dr. John Parson Cabin Complex in Daggett County, Utah, which has the wonderfully precise location of "Southwest of Bridgeport". Nyttend (talk) 02:55, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I have no objection. Daniel Case (talk) 05:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Places that have vague geographic locations in NRIS often have better descriptions in the nomination papers, unless they've been redacted for one of the usual reasons for doing so. Places with vague locations can always be coord-inated to a large area, as large as the county or community if need be (although it should be pointed out in the notes that the coordinates are approximate when they're added). Categorizing lists (and articles) lacking coordinates sounds like a good idea. Magic♪piano 13:59, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I have to disagree with your second sentence: listings shouldn't have coordinates unless we're quite confident that those coordinates point to the listed property or to one of the listing's contributing properties. In this situation, a marker at a random spot in Daggett County (since Bridgeport is/was in the county's northeast) would not help and could be rather deceptive to the person who thinks that it's the actual location of the cabin complex. Nyttend (talk) 01:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Works for me. I put quite a bit of effort into determining coordinates when adding new listings to the tables and I also always try to add coordinates for listings that are missing them whenever I come across them. --sanfranman59 (talk) 19:03, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I have to go with Nyttend on this. First because I suck at coordinates. Second, becasue when I know that coordinates are wrong I have to get other people to correct them, and hope they get it right. From what I remember, the Union Savings Bank (Patchogue, New York)'s coordinates were way off, and when I tried to get it corrected, they were brought closer, but still not right(they're right now). If we're going to get coordinates on anything(articles, pictures, lists, whatever), we've got to get them right. ----DanTD (talk) 23:49, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Since I have just been adding many, many missing nrhp infoboxes, we must be sure to not flag ones that are in articles with coordinates. I have embedded many nrhp infoboxes in lighthouse, school, bridge, park, etc. infoboxes. Many of these have coordinates already. So I took them out of the nrhp infobox if they were in the Elkman Infobox Generator because we show all the coordinates given at the top of the article. This can be a jumble of conflicting overprinted numbers. Secondly, an nrhp may be at a large institution such as a College or Universitywith coordinates. If the article has a subheading about a particular nrhp building, it seems appropriate to remove the coordinates from the nrhp infobox to again prevent a jumble of overprinted at the top. If there was a way to prevent the coordinates printing at the top of the article that would overcome this objection. But it will still leave hundreds (thousands) of nrhp articles on this proposed list. KudzuVine (talk) 00:35, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

KudzuVine, the coordinates in the NRHP infobox are good for showing the map if one is not already in the other infobox. If you'd like to show coordinates/map in the nrhp infobox, but you don't want the coords to jumble in the top corner, use |coord_display=inline.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:56, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Tried it and it displays map and does not affect the top line. KudzuVine (talk) 21:28, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

KudzuVine, I'm simply talking about requiring them for {{NRHP row}}, not articles — either you misunderstand me or vice versa. Nyttend (talk) 19:26, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, that is fine. I think we should cleanup the need for nrhp infoboxes (484 to go!), before we do anything with requiring coordinates. KudzuVine (talk) 21:28, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Problems with embedding NRHP Infoboxes

Here are some other problems that I have had. Maybe someone knows a work-around.

• Convert template for area does not work in an embedded NRHP infobox in the following parent infobox: Park, Bridge, Station, University, Stadium, Theater, Observatory, Zoo, Protected area, Museum, Prison, and Cemetery. It does work fine in the unembedded NRHP infobox in the same article. It also works as an embedded NRHP infobox in the following parent tables: Historical area, School, and others. When it did not work, I commented out the area entry in case anyone solves the problem.
• I have been unable to embed the NRHP infobox in the parent Airport infobox. The NRHP infobox only occupies the left hand side and does not stretch across the Airport table. I have put the NRHP infobox as a separate, unembedded infobox. KudzuVine (talk) 21:28, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Trujillo Homestead gets NHL designation

On today's new listings, Trujillo Homestead in Alamosa County, Colorado has been designated an NHL due to its ties to New Spain (something no doubt dear to our current Secretary of the Interior, who also does). This is the first of the most recent batch of listings I mentioned last month to get the nod.

I have updated the entry in both the county NRHP list and Colorado's NHL list, but we still don't have an actual article. Daniel Case (talk) 23:43, 10 February 2012 (UTC)