Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places listings in Manassas Park, Virginia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conner House, verified to be in Manassas Park, VA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arbitrary edit point

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

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

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

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

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

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

continuing

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

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

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

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

Henricus

The site is in the list for Henrico County, National Register of Historic Places listings in Henrico County, Virginia. Yesterday I added the category, Category:National Register of Historic Places in Henrico County, Virginia. Til Eulenspiegel twice changed it to Category:National Register of Historic Places in Chesterfield County, Virginia. When I asked at their homepage, they replied that there are no doubts that Henricus is in Chesterfield County.[1] I asked them to remove the site from the Henrico county list and add it to Chesterfield county list, but they have chosen not to reply. Now we have a site which is in a list of one county but in a category in another county, which is not really acceptable. I am not sure what I should do. Should I move it myself from one list to another one?--Ymblanter (talk) 06:51, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, because it should not take that much to convince you that the site is south of the James River and has been part of Chesterfield County for over 250 years now. (For example, merely looking on a map should suffice.) I have never edited the NRHP list articles myself before and don't think I want to start editing them at this present time. But if they say the Henricus site is in Henrico County, they are imparting false information. The nearest part of Henrico County to Henricus would be Varina, on the north bank of the James River. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 13:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

What do sources say? This seems to be about Henrico/Henricus/Henricopolis, which seems to be listed in the National Register's NRIS database with county identified as Henrico, so we here in WikiProject NRHP put it into the List of RHPs in Henrico list-article. NRIS does not provide coordinates or a specific street address for this one; it seems to be an archeological site. NRIS is usually quite good about identification of counties, but there are errors at that level, which we detail at wp:NRIS info issues VA and other pages for other states. In fact we seem to have already identified 3 errors in NRIS for Virginia county locations, which are easier to discern for those places because NRHP nomination documents and other location info is available about them.

Anyhow, the Virginia state Dept of Historic Resources does not list Henrico among its Chesterfield county sites, nor does it list Henrico among its Henrico county sites. Virginia simply doesn't seem to list archeological sites like this. --doncram 14:18, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

It's not that Virginia doesn't list archeological sites, it's that they don't publicize the nom forms. Per their city/county listings page: "Due to the need to protect the location of listed archaeological sites and districts, not all nominations are posted for public access on this page." All sites are, however, listed in their Register Master List, which does indeed show "Henrico (Henricus Site)" as being in Chesterfield County. Andrew Jameson (talk) 15:19, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I don't think I ever saw that nice Register Master List document before, and I will add a link to it, at wp:NRHPhelp#Virginia. So, Ymblanter, the answer to your question is yes you should move the row from one county to the other county. And, it would be nice if you'd add explanation documenting this decision to go differently from NRIS, at wp:NRIS info issues VA; i'll start something there. Thanks Ymblanter, thanks Til Eulenspiegel, thanks Andrew Jameson. :) --doncram 22:18, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, moved, I also added the link to this discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:15, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

New project proposal

Please review the new project proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Wikipedia editor business card project. The hope is that this project will help Wikipedians gain press credentials and make it easier to get higher quality image files for free use.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:41, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Infobox concerns

(I'm raising this here, rather than at the talkpage for the infobox, because I suspect I'll get more responses here instead of there.)

User:Pubdog has been creating a bunch of articles about NRHP properties in Arlington County, Virginia today. In the process he has chosen to use Location map District of Columbia street.png instead of the general Virginia state map. I support this choice; I generally support more specific maps whenever possible. However, it's leading to an issue in that now articles are being created with the ghost category Category:Historic districts in United States District of Columbia street. I'd love to remove it, but I don't understand infobox formatting well enough to do so. This part of the question may require a simple fix, and I raise it mainly to ask for help from those who understand coding better than I.

Along these lines: I believe it's time to start breaking down the category Category:Historic district contributing properties by state. It's large, and will only get larger. However: again, the category is tied to the infobox, and I don't know how to untie it. More to the point, though - and this is the reason I bring it up here - is untying it desirable? I think it is; there are thousands of contributing properties in the United States, and I think it will go a long way towards making the category navigable if we begin forking it. But I'd like some other input on the proposal. Alternatively, we could go the route of the opera Wikiproject, in which all operas are categorized in a parent category as well as in subcategories. I'm not wild about that suggestion, myself, but it's there.

Thoughts? --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 21:09, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

A similar issue arose about five five threads above this one. Dudemanfellabra pointed out there that you can set |nocat=yes within the infobox to suppress all autocategorization. As for breaking down the parent category, I agree that something probably needs to be done. Altairisfar (talk) 13:18, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see - thanks for pointing it out. I missed it before. I've been working on the breakdown of the parent category; it's not that difficult using AWB. For that matter, fixing the infobox problem shouldn't be so, either. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:12, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

OT, I've got an infobox concern of my own. I'm working on one for Princeton (NJT station) which is a contributing property of the Princeton Historic District (Princeton, New Jersey). Here's the sandbox, and once again, the POS reference links from the government aren't working for me. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:51, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I've stopped embedding Infobox NRHP in favor of {{Designation list}} like what I've done with Lancaster (Amtrak station), also a contributing property. Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 18:31, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect commons cat

Recently, while trying to sort out some NRHP in Missouri commons categories I stumbled upon one for "National Register of Historic Places in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States." This looks like a potential merger into the category without the "United States" in it, but I'd like to create my own category for at least five of those images. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 18:05, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Description column

I've reverted a major contribution by a newbie in a SC NRHP table of the description column [2] I'm guessing that everybody here will agree that a couple of paragraphs of material for each entry in this column overwhelm the table, and the paragraphs should go in the article instead. Perhaps the description column should be limited to a couple of short sentences per site.

Still, I hate to discourage a newbie, especially when we've got these big, mostly empty columns that we seldom, if ever, discuss here (and frankly, use poorly). Is there any consensus guideline that we can give on the use of this column?

All newbie-friendly responses welcome.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:31, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I went ahead and edited the new contributions to a length I thought was reasonable. (National Register of Historic Places listings in Greenville, South Carolina) (Edited as a suggestion only - if someone else wants to revert/tinker, be my guest.) As a general rule, I usually shoot for about three sentences worth of information in the infobox, which seems like a reasonable short summary. In this particular case, though, a lot of the original contribution was redundant or uninformative, so there wound up being about three sentences of informative content within each description anyway. (The contribution reads like an eighth grade history report to me.) Andrew Jameson (talk) 18:55, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Smallbones that there's no real pattern. Frankly, I'd say that's good: while the diff you linked is definitely too much, we really should have lots of latitude regarding the amount of text for each site. In my opinion, you've gotten to the "too much description" point when the text is taller than the photo, i.e. the line on the table takes up more space because of the amount of text. I don't use the column for this purpose very often, but when I do, I tend to write substantially less than Andrew does — not that I think he's wrong, but that I simply don't care to write as much as he does. I'll normally do a sentence or sentence fragment summarising what's in the article, and if there's no article, I'll not add a summary. See National Register of Historic Places listings in Champaign County, Ohio, for example; I've put in summaries for all the properties with articles (except one useless substub) in what for me is a typical style. Nyttend (talk) 01:12, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

My only stipulation would be that any blurb use complete sentences. At least if you're seeking some sort of recognition for the list. Daniel Case (talk) 23:39, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

New page from Arkansas Post National Memorial?

What would you guys think about moving Arkansas Post National Memorial to a new page dedicated solely to the historical settlement (Arkansas Post (Historical Settlement)?), while keeping a separate page for the memorial itself? I'm planning to do an overhaul of the page soon anyway, along with other related articles (just organizing some sources). The page mostly discusses the history of the settlement anyway instead of the actual memorial. I posted on the article's talk page about it. Feel free to reply there or here with input/opinions. Samuel Peoples (talk) 19:18, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for asking! I see that Arkansas Post is currently a redirect to Arkansas Post National Memorial article, and that the article does not currently describe much about the current site or any memorials present. The "Arkansas Post" is a U.S. National Historic Landmark; "Arkansas Post National Memorial" is how the place is listed on the National Register of Historic Places's NRIS info system; the NRHP registration document gives both names, with the shorter name first. In this WikiProject, we have usually used the NHL name rather than the NRHP name, for a place that is listed on both, if the names differ. If I was naming a new article about the NRHP and NHL, I would use "Arkansas Post". From what I see, the article could be moved to "Arkansas Post", with no need for any parenthetical addition to the name. And, it would be improved by adding some section about recent/modern commemorations and memorials, and include narration of it being NRHP-listed in 1966 (right at the beginning of the NRHP program), how an when it became an NHL, how and when it became a National Memorial. The linked NHL page suggests there is an "Arkansas Post National Monument": is that possibly an error? National Monuments are different than National Memorials. After developing some such section, then I'd consider splitting it out. But my guess is one article at the simpler, historic short name, would suffice. My 2 cents. :) --doncram 19:33, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict, although it looks like I agree with Doncram) My personal opinion would be to move the page to Arkansas Post (currently a redirect) since it's mostly about history and looks like it will be even more about the history soon. The amount of material there about the monument itself is not enough for a standalone article. If at some point in the future, the memorial part is expanded enough, it could be split out via WP:SUMMARYSTYLE.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:34, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, guys. The one-article (renamed to Arkansas Post) idea sounds good to me as well. I'll go ahead and make the move. Samuel Peoples (talk) 07:32, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually... I get this error trying to move it to Arkansas Post: "The page could not be moved: a page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid." But there is no page named simply Arkansas Post. There's Arkansas Post, Arkansas (an article about the unincorporated community), but Arkansas Post is simply a redirect to the memorial article. I guess that means the name is somehow not valid? Samuel Peoples (talk) 07:37, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

 Done--Ymblanter (talk) 07:51, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Samuel Peoples (talk) 08:26, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Better split for Westchester County, NY, list

If anyone's interested, I have a proposal to better split the Westchester County, NY, list. Daniel Case (talk) 18:39, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

WP:NRHPPROGRESS question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Numbering of counties in statewide lists

User:Jimboradley just made this edit to delete the numbers column in National Register of Historic Places listings in Utah, since "it wasn't really showing any actual data". Looks like all the other state lists have the numbers; what is their function? Ntsimp (talk) 21:44, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The column isn't meant to convey much information; it provides a way to force the table to sort all the entries the way we want them. Re-sort a numbered list any way possible, and you'll still be able to put it back to the original form by sorting the numbered column. Re-sort an unnumbered list, and you'll have a much harder time getting it back to the original form. In the unnumbered table, I can't figure out how to get it to put Salt Lake City before Salt Lake: Other. We could use the {{sort}} template on the county names, but that would prevent us from using the county name column for any other purpose, and if we split out any additional sublists, we might have to rearrange lots of numbers instead of simply adding a .1, .2, etc. in the numbers column. Finally, this column does provide a little information, as having a number next to the county name is mildly helpful for showing at a glance the county's alphabetical place, but the sorting is the primary purpose. Nyttend (talk) 22:50, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I am sure that i created many of the state list article tables with those numbers. But, a table can be resorted back to its original order by simply hitting "reload" of the page, using your browser. Not sure there is any real value to having the numbers. It is not of great interest how many counties there are in a state, or that is otherwise known. So the purpose is not to accomplish the counting function that the number column in the individual county list-articles accomplishes. Maybe the numbers should be dropped now. --doncram 03:07, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

It's a *lot* easier to edit specific rows if you use the number. Please dont remove them unless you otherwise make it possible to edit one row at a time. dm (talk) 17:41, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Forcing someone to refresh a page just to get the order back would be unhelpful with no benefit. Nyttend (talk) 18:33, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Check my work please (duplicate across county lines)

In writing an article on the Main Street Historic District (Milan, Michigan), I discovered that the district actually spans a county border. Most of it is in Washtenaw County (its "official" home), but the southernmost few buildings are definitely in Monroe County. I added a line to the Monroe County list, then updated the total and noted the duplicate in both National Register of Historic Places listings in Michigan and Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress. Is everything correct here, and any place else this new duplicate should be noted? Andrew Jameson (talk) 11:45, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

All looks correct to me, and I don't see anything that's missing. Nyttend (talk) 18:37, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that this is not an original question

but I have looked around and not found an answer so I'll toss it out. But first a preface. I have noticed and been annoyed by this before but while at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens I clicked on the reference number 1 in the infobox, which was for the NRHP listing, but the link just takes me to page 1 of the NRHP website rather than to the registration information for that particular site. I attempted (think I succeeded) to change it but am wondering if the original way is how the project wants it to be? So my question is, should a reference to the NRHP in an infobox take you right to the particular building or whatever that the article is about or is close (NRHP website) close enough? Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 18:39, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

There has been much discussion about the use of {{NRISref}} as the preferred citation in NRHP articles, mostly because of the fact that you mention that the reference doesn't point directly to the listing in question but rather the front page of a search engine. Your changed link is one that I have never seen, but I don't think we should use that, especially because it can simply be replaced by a link to the PDF for that file (See WP:NRHPMOS#References for info about how to construct a citation template from that pdf). The reason NRISref is generally used is that the nomination document does not include information such as the reference number and the listing date, while the NPS skeleton record does. In the case of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, the ref tag is attached to the reference number, so the nomination document should not be used in that case. If there were some way to link directly to the skeleton record, that would be great, but the NPS website does not currently allow that, so NRISref is the most accurate thing we can get.

That said, I have brought up many times the fact that there is a {{NRHP Focus}} template which takes the reference number as an input and links a tad bit closer to the actual skeletal record for a site (one click away rather than a whole search engine away). The output for that template for Stan Hywet Hall is

Staff. "NPS Focus: 75002058". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.

I've suggested on numerous occasions that we somehow combine this into the NRISref template, but it has never caught on for whatever reason.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:03, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

The Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens is actually National Historic Landmark. For NHLs, there is almost always an NRHP Inventory/Nomination or Registration document available. I just added that to this article:

I would very much support a campaign to revisit all 2,500 or so NHL articles, to ensure that each has such a good reference.

It's a different issue, what the regular "NRISref" template oughta display. The last time this was brought up, some progress was made by creating a mainspace article on the National Register Information System. I and some others believe that should be linked from the NRISref template. It was a battle to get that article started, to defend it from a contentious pair of AFDs that were connected to an arbitration case that eventually ended with an interaction ban between a couple editors (not naming any names). The article was, however, kept, and now could be used in an improved NRISref. Hijacking the NRISref template employed by zillions of articles formed partly from the NRIS database, to link to a "first-page" that is not the actual source of data used in most of these articles, seems not helpful. If and only if the "first-page" is where you actually got the data, should a reference to it be used in an article. Someone could create a "NPSFOCUSref" template that would link to an NPS Focus page, however, which could be used occasionally (I think it would be attractive to some new NRHP editors from time to time, until they got more accustomed to better references). In general, such a NPSFOCUSref based on a reference number should not be put into every article by a bot or whatever, because often it would lead to an apparent links to PDF files that would be ultimately frustrating to readers, as oftentimes it would turn out to link merely to "file not available" messages. Yawn.... --doncram 19:22, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

The main point behind linking to the Focus database is that, like I said in my first post, the nomination documents don't include the reference numbers or the listing dates for properties, and that is usually what the NRISref is used for in articles. If there does exist a nomination document online, that's great, and no one is saying that shouldn't be included as a reference in the article (although it appears in the Stan Hywet Hall case, you've just thrown the ref onto the end of the article in your trademark quick-fix, let-someone-else-clean-up-my-mess style, which is definitely NOT the way we should be including the reference), but you can't use a source that doesn't include certain information as a reference for said information.

The link I included above is one step away from the reference number/listing date, which is closer than the front page of a search engine. Yes, the skeletal record may also include a link to a non-existent pdf file, but the reference isn't claiming the pdf exists. Maybe would could put a qualifier in the ref where if you set |pdf=no, it will include something like "The pdf linked from this skeletal record has not yet been digitized; this citation is only meant to apply to the reference number and/or date of listing for this property." Regardless, I think changing the NRISref link to point to the search results rather than the search interface would definitely be an improvement, although not perfect by any means.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:27, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

The problem with that idea is that our information comes from the database, which is a single downloadable document. If we could link directly to the database, we'd be at what I'd call the best possible solution, but I dimly remember trying and failing to get a good link to the database; if I remember rightly, that's why we link to the search screen, since it's the best way to go to the database. Prove me wrong and I'll be happy :-) Nyttend (talk) 21:03, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

If "although it appears in the Stan Hywet Hall case, you've just thrown the ref onto the end of the article in your trademark quick-fix, let-someone-else-clean-up-my-mess style, which is definitely NOT the way we should be including the reference" is referring to me and my edit I'll just say that I feel that I left the reference in a better state than when I found it and move on. Carptrash (talk) 21:53, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

That was directed at Doncram. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I don't think you, Carptrash, did anything wrong.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:36, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

NRHP project and Wikidata

I've been playing around Wikidata for some time now. One of the things I've been looking at is how to replace the monuments database (which also contains all the NRHP listings) with Wikidata, we even created a task force for that. I think it's time to also start looking how the NRHP can fit into this. I proposed a property so we can add the reference number. In this list you can see how I did the breakdown of data to include for Rijksmonumenten in the Netherlands. We should also do that for the NRHP. A lot is the same, but I'm not sure yet how to handle the classification yet. National Historic Landmarks is understand, for example the Empire State Building is an instance of that, but how to handle normal listings? Making it an instance of National Register of Historic Places feels a bit weird. Maybe make a new NRHP listing with NHL, etc. subclasses of that? Wikidata supports sourcing of information. Once we have the url type, we can include a link to every listing records as a source (a solution to the problem in the previous section). We would also get rid of the data redundancy we have now with the same data in the list and the infobox. Who wants to help? Multichill (talk) 21:20, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Keep in mind that article<->refnum mappings are not one-to-one, so Wikidata should accomodate that (I don't know enough about Wikidata to know if your proposal addresses this). Some articles include things listed under more than one refnum (the easiest example is separately-listed properties that are also in one or more districts; some articles also cover multiple objects). Likewise, some refnums appear in more than one article (e.g. contributing property articles). Magic♪piano 22:23, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Your penultimate sentence concerns me: why is it a problem to have the same piece of information in both the list and the infobox? They're different articles, so all information that's relevant to both should be in the list and in the infobox, and if it's not relevant to both, we should remove it regardless of a Wikidata project. Nyttend (talk) 21:01, 16 June 2013 (UTC)