Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places

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Governing body in infobox

Ever since I could remember, the infobox has supported a parameter for "governing body", with information taken from NRIS. I'm now proposing that we remove this parameter: not by editing all pages to cut this part of their infoboxes, but by recoding the infobox template so that |governing_body= become a meaningless chunk of text, just as |ingroingpirbody= would be. See three related discussions:

• Archive 33, in 2009, where it was noted that this parameter is routinely out of date
• Archive 60, last year, where it was proposed that this be one of several parameters removed from the infobox
• Archive 61, this year, where I referred to previous discussions of this subject

I'm in particular relying on the argument by Ammodramus in Archive 60, although going slightly differently: how many of us project members, and how many members of the general public, will find the governing body's identity one bit important? Or note the 2009 issue about situations when the governing body changes: we don't change anything when the actual governing body changes (and normally we won't have a chance of knowing, as it's a matter of ownership), so this parameter can only really represent the state of things when the property was listed, decades ago in some cases. With all this in mind, I'm formally asking: should we remove this parameter from the infobox? Nyttend (talk) 13:28, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

You're right that it can easily be out of date (sometimes rapidly so, as the property is nominated while a public organization is trying to acquire it), and I don't recall ever using or referencing that field. That said, I can see the information itself being important, since the owner of the property is important from a preservation and access perspective; readers may want to know if a listed house, for example, is a public museum they can visit or a privately-owned home. It seems like this information should be somewhere when we know it, but it probably fits better in the article text than the infobox, and since the field is usually auto-populated by NRIS data I'm not sure it's useful in practice. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:53, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

You allude (perhaps accidentally) to an additional problem: ownership and access are routinely unrelated. For example, the Elijah P. Curtis House is |governing body = Private while the Shawneetown Bank State Historic Site is |governing body = State. Remember which one is open to the public? Right now, the governing body is accurate for both of those places, but it's not accurate for the Crenshaw House (Gallatin County, Illinois) — when still privately owned, it was open to the public, but now that the state owns it, the house is closed, so we have the problem of the parameter being out of date and the parameter not reflecting public access to the site. This is obviously one of the "technical details" as summarised by Magicpiano in Archive 60, but it's a rather useless technical detail, and its inclusion is potentially confusing. Nyttend (talk) 16:51, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

That's a good point, and it raises yet another problem with the "governing body" field; there's really no explanation of what "Private" means. There's a huge difference between a single resident and a privately-operated local historical society, but since neither is a government agency they both get lumped under "Private". That may be useful information for the NPS as a government agency themselves, but it's not something that really matters here. We should either change the parameter to "Ownership" or get rid of it entirely, and given the other problems with an Ownership field I'm in favor of the latter. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 17:05, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Exactly my sentiment; "Private" governing body is about the only similarity between Harvard Yard and your average owner-occupied house, and the field appears in NRIS probably because NPS, unlike the average Wikipedia reader, has Section 106 responsibilities. I sure hope our planning professionals, who do need to worry about this kind of thing, won't be relying on our articles for Section 106 compliance :-) Nyttend (talk) 17:22, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I'd strongly support Nyttend's proposal to eliminate the "Governing body" parameter, for reasons already discussed: it's unclear to the casual reader what it actually indicates, doesn't tell that reader anything about public access to the site, and is likely to become outdated.

Regarding TheCatalyst's comments on ownership, I think we're better off leaving such a field out of the infobox, and presenting the information in the body text with as-of phrasing. This approach can't be falsified by a change in ownership or access, and the recency of the as-of date would give the casual reader a clue as to how current the information is, and therefore how reliable it's likely to be. — Ammodramus (talk) 21:49, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree we can and should get rid of the parameter. This information is much easier to include in prose.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:44, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Echoing my concerns above and those brought up in this discussion, reflecting only limited information/sources may contribute to the problem. When the Old City Hall (Fairbanks, Alaska) article was created, the building had been sold the year before by the City of Fairbanks to a husband/wife partnership who were seeking to create a distillery there. The museum moved to the old Empress Theatre, a building of far greater historic importance than the city hall building yet not NRHP-listed, but that's another argument for another day. It's quite possible that many of these properties change hands often enough to affect the shelf life of that particular information; Wikipedia in general already has a huge problem with "curious snapshots in time" which quickly become outdated. Additionally, reflecting particular information may detract from properly reflecting the subject itself. Not only was Wickersham House (Juneau, Alaska) far, far better known as a private tourist attraction (Mmmm...flaming sourdough waffles) than today's version as operated by the state government, but the governing body in that article says "Private", which I can only assume refers to its status when it was listed in 1976 and not its current status. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 12:13, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree that we should deemphasize the governing body parameter, as it is difficult to interpret and hard to keep current. We should also consider an info icon in the infobox, linking to a general article that helps readers interpret the meaning of all of the items in our inbox, and the relative likelihood of their being wrong or misleading. For example, the name is the NRHP name (not the current name or the local common name), the built date might be the start, the end, or the opening date, the location might be the old street name, the architect might be the builder or the name of the original owner, etc. We also have a general problem with our NRHP article set, some of them rely on outdated information from as much as 40 or more years ago. The worst cases are where the nomination is from the 70s for a house that didn't become a museum, funeral home, or wedding location, and there is no new reliable/relevant, information. Or the many properties that are now unused. We need some standard way of denoting that the information was relevant at the time of nomination and we don't know what the current status is. Sometimes, the history just ends, leaving the reader to wonder if the last mentioned use is the current, or even a recent, use. While a reader of Wikipedia in general should assume that any article may be out of date, our project does generate "new" articles where the information therein is already half a century out of date. Generic1139 (talk) 17:06, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

That last issue is a problem for more than just NRIS-based information; it depends on whatever sourcing we have. See Masonic Temple (Mechanicsburg, Ohio), which I just expanded from an autogenerated stub: aside from a short appearance in a 1990s book, I used the MPS form, but my other text sources all predated 1918, so some of the statistics are just slightly old. Nyttend (talk) 15:14, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

The problems that Generic brings up are yet another reason why we should deplore the proliferation of NRIS-only substubs. A decent article will give the construction history ("begun in 1903, completed in 1905, belltower removed by tornado in 1934, west annex added in 1972") so that the reader will know what the single date in the infobox means. It'll say "designed by architect Mary Smith" or "built by contractor Mary Smith", rather than leaving the reader with nothing more than an ambiguous architect/builder line in the infobox. If we can't find out whether Smith was architect, builder, both, or neither, then the responsible thing is to leave that infobox field blank. Better no data than bad data...

The problem of dated sources should be addressed by including lots of as-of phrasing in the article text. The statement "The Smith-Jones house is currently operated as a museum" could be falsified at any time by a change of use. If we preface it with "As of 1993," it'll remain true whatever may happen in the 21st century; and such a phrase also tells the reader how current the information is. — Ammodramus (talk) 13:56, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Didn't someone once ask on here "what exactly is your problem?" or similar and I never really responded? I'm pretty sure the key issue was one of achieving "completeness of coverage" through slapping together content in a by-the-numbers fashion. With little regard given to context, factual accuracy, shelf life or anything of that sort in these creations, it's more like slapping it together in random fashion just to tweak the stats and leaving it in a state which sends a message of WP:SOFIXIT to other editors who may have other things to do, one after the other after the other. Feelings of editors aside, what you're really slapping is the faces of readers familiar with the associated subjects and therefore capable of seeing through what they're reading. I'm pretty sure it's not just me complaining, but WMF likely won't reveal information related to the widespread lack of credibility in Wikipedia content affecting their fundraising efforts, so it's impossible to ascertain how many people are voting with their feet versus saying anything on a talk page. All I know is that when I see that many articles in such shape, I'm reminded of the workplace interaction scenes in Night Shift and that I sure as shit didn't come here to play Henry Winkler to someone else's Michael Keaton. Some of the stuff I've seen is literally at the level of "Name of the deceased...SOMETHING POLISH!?!?!" / "Yeah, yeah, my uncle said that you'd fix that for me, okay?" Nonetheless, I am making some progress on cleanup, simply because it has to be done eventually.

The following section mentions photo drives. There's the side issue of browsing photo sites and miscellaneous discussions and discovering that photographers avoid uploading or even photographing subjects of historical interest or other encyclopedic value in the general area of NRHP listings, only obediently photographing the listings themselves. While this may help beef up coverage of the NRHP and its listings, how does that help to build an encyclopedia in general? I would imagine that many corners of the United States lack warm bodies living there, judging from the bias given to NRHP listings and other touristy views versus more localized views reflected in much of this coverage, combined with other available images. Back to the main point, my current poster child for slapping something together is Teeland's Country Store. I discovered that Wasilla existed much, much sooner than September 2008 and even patronized the store once upon a time. Regardless of me and any associated possible WP:OR, "even Ray Charles can see" that the infobox photo offers information which contradicts the information of the article's text. One such clue points to the Teelands selling out to Julian Mead in 1972, not mentioned in the article. Also not mentioned is 7-Eleven expanding into Alaska in 1984 and subsequently occupying the Parks Highway site (those stores later became Tesoro stores, which is the current occupant), with the building moved up the hill to the corner of Boundary and Herning (it was stored at another location in the interim), becoming a museum piece of sorts (I say "of sorts" because the photo reveals a present/recent business use, also not mentioned). The background of the photo doesn't match up with this photo taken along the same block of the Parks Highway as Teeland's former location (represented as its present location in the article), even though both face the same direction. Resources to verify all this are abundant. So really, what's the point of creating articles in large numbers under such circumstances, especially when the pattern of construction makes the aforementioned and other clusterfucks all the more obvious, with cherry-picking decades-old source material constituting one of the prime reasons why? "1970 something" is a lyric from a country song, not what we should be pawning off as current information for expediency's sake. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 13:43, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Seeing the consensus here, I removed the parameter. There's no need to start a mass campaign to clean it out of existing infoboxes since it isn't hurting anything by not being there, but if you come across it while editing, it would be helpful to remove it then.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:55, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Impact of not participating in a photo drive this past September

Progress percentages over time

Rate of image uploads

Now that I have a little more free time over the holiday break (which unfortunately ends next week, so don't get used to it), I have updated the graphs at WP:NRHPPROGRESSHISTORY. The last time they had been updated before today was in March of this year, so there wasn't any available information about our Progress through the summer and particularly the month of September which is when the project traditionally participates in some photo drive like Wiki Loves Monuments, Summer of Monuments, etc.

As we all know, the project did not participate in any kind of drive this past September, and that fact is immediately visible on these graphs. The first graph on the right is a collection of statistics about WP:NRHP over time since the Progress page began tracking these things back in 2013. The relevant line is the red one for percent illustrated. As you can see, there is a relatively constant increase throughout the year until September in which there was a much more pronounced increase during 2013 and 2014 when we participated in WLM and SoM respectively. September 2015, however, shows little to no such increase when compared with the months around it.

This is more clearly shown by the second graph, which shows the rate of image uploads per day for articles within the project. The green jagged line shows the raw, noisy data, and the red line is a smooth approximation to this noisy data which is much easier to interpret. The average upload rate is about 10-15 per day normally, but there are obvious spikes in September 2013 and 2014 to nearly 50 per day. There wasn't much data taken during September 2013 (long story, that one...), so the smooth approximation kind of glosses over that spike, but you can see from the green raw data that the image upload rate then was on par with the large hump seen during September 2014. September 2015, however, shows only a modest increase in upload rate compared to the previous two years; even the raw data never climbs much above 30 uploads per day.

I'm not really a photographer myself, so it's not my place to make any judgements on the benefits/drawbacks of participating in these photo drives, but I did want to point out using cold hard data that it appears these drives do have a rather significant impact on the progress the project is making toward its eventual goal of 100% coverage. Do with that information what you may.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 09:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for sharing. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:51, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing the info.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:13, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

That is interesting and impressive data. As far as myself, sometimes I make trips for an afternoon go get photos and sometimes I get them along the way when I'm going somewhere. I usually upload them shortly afterwards. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:20, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Ditto, but I am also tempted by collaborative campaigns. If I know others are contributing to a photo campaign during a certain period of time, I will attempt to get out and help in whatever ways I can. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 20:18, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, for the record, the previous drives were overwhelming, to the point where a lot of pictures really didn't deserve to be part of the project. I always try to encourage other users to get more pictures, especially those that I can't get myself immediately. During one drive I even tried to start a campaign for get Long Island pictures that failed miserably. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 20:17, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Reverts by non-registered user

I'm experiencing reverts on a legitimately revised article Sanderson House at 301 Scottholm Boulevard (Syracuse, New York) by User:107.216.53.108. My standard revisions to the article consisted of updating the NRHP template and moving text from the house article to the newly created Scottholm Tract Historic District. Any guidance?--Pubdog (talk) 21:48, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Given the person's ISP's habit of constantly changing the address, you can't leave a note at the person's talk page. I see that Ser Amantio di Nicolao has restored your edits; if they get reverted again, I'd say that you should re-remove the text, give nothing for an edit summary except See the "Historic district text" at the talk page, and create such a section with references to WP:Content forking and perhaps WP:SUMMARY, explaining basically that it's unhelpful to repeat the HD stuff at each house article when we have a separate HD article. Hopefully the edit summary will be noticed, making your explanation easily found by anyone who wants to work collaboratively. Nyttend (talk) 04:48, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

If it persists I can also protect the page, should it come to that. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 06:27, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

You guys are the best . Gracias--Pubdog (talk) 00:39, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

De nada. I've got it watchlisted, so I can keep an eye on things. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 00:43, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

The editor came back and reverted my edits of earlier this month; I have rolled them back. I'm inclined to leave things be for now - the level of vandalism (not per se, but I can't find a better word for it) isn't enough to warrant protecting the article, in my opinion. But I will do so if this persists; for the moment I've still got it watchlisted. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:15, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

The strange tale of Nicholas Zabriskie House and Seven Chimneys

Please see talk:Nicholas Zabriskie House. Its nomination form largely matches Seven Chimneys. The addresses and coordinates are the same. Details are on the talk page - is this just a bookkeeping problem and there is only one house with two different refnums, or are there really two houses, one not documented correctly. Generic1139 (talk) 03:56, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

It seems to be the same to me. The Seven Chimneys article says "Seven Chimneys, also known as the Nicholas Zabriskie House". Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:19, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

It looks like they're the same house - the Nicholas Zabriskie nomination even says it's called Seven Chimneys. As for the built date discrepancy, the Zabriskie nomination has a second built date of 1_45-50 (with one number illegible), which matches the 1745-50 in the Seven Chimneys article. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 13:40, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

What's the best way to correct this? Just point the Zabriskie county list entry to the Seven Chimneys article, add a note about the other refnum in the Seven Chimneys article, and delete (or merge, I guess, which can be done without an admin) the Zabriskie article? Or keep the Zabriskie article as a stub with a "main article" link to Seven Chimneys? Generic1139 (talk) 14:54, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Merge and redirect. It's the same address. Jonathunder (talk) 16:08, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places listings in Bergen County, New Jersey has lots of difficulties with repeated names and the like. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:19, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm aware of several instances of duplicated listings, generally involving a TR/MPS/MRA grouping, so this occurrence does not come as a surprise. Magic♪piano 20:21, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Merged. Generic1139 (talk) 22:17, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

This is what was done with Twin Oaks (Wyoming, Ohio) and Robert Reily House; the articles were merged, and on the local county list, the older name was retained and the later name treated as a boundary increase. Nyttend (talk) 14:07, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

NHL vs NRHP names

The project's style guide says that if a listing is on the NRHP and is a NHL, then the name in the infobox should be the NHL name. I wonder if it is time to change that. NPS has made some changes such that there is only a list by state of NHL with just the city, county, state, and date. If you need to find anything about the listing, you need to search focus for the name - which only works with the NR name, not the NHL name. Using the NHL name in the infobox will only slow down someone wanting to search for information. Yes, we usually have a link to the NR nomination form, and yes, clicking on the ref num now yields meaningful results in many states/years, but using the NHL name only is a source of confusion. Ship names are often different between NHL and NRHP, but even a straight forward listing can lead to trouble, like Hale Solar Observatory(NHL) vs Hale Solar Laboratory(NRHP). I've been trying to clean up ship names on the NHL lists, but since the names in the current NHL source http://www.nps.gov/nhl/find/searchnoms.htm sometimes differ from whatever was used in the past for now defunct links and the new NRHP focus, these seems to be little point for now. Thoughts? Should we add a field in the NRHP infobox for NHL name when it differs from the NRHP name? Generic1139 (talk) 15:57, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Perhaps we could set up the infobox so that whenever it's marked as an NHL, it displays two lines: NR and NHL. At the same time, we shouldn't require a parameter for the NHL name — if only one name is supplied, it assumes that the name is both NR and NHL, but the use of an optional |nhl_name= parameter would enable them to be different. Nyttend (talk) 16:10, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Michigan NRHP nomination documents available

NRHP nomination documents for 1,831 Multiple Property Submissions, National Historic Landmarks, and Single Properties (along with finding aids for each of the three) are available through the National Archives Catalog. The forms are available under entry National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: Michigan (NAID 20812803). The easiest way to find an individual entry is to search the Catalog for the National Register of Historic Places Reference Number. The forms and other associated documentation are in OCRed PDFs and are available for viewing and downloading.--Pubdog (talk) 16:06, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Interesting that NARA would be doing this independently of NPS. Thank you. Nyttend (talk) 16:11, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Sweet! Thanks for the heads-up on this. It appears that the NPS may be partnering in this (?), because they wrote the "finding aids" which list the properties by county. (Arkansas is also up on the NARA site, if that hasn't been noted previously). Andrew Jameson (talk) 17:21, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Andrew, "finding aid" is a normal term in archives; see the Finding aid article. Nyttend (talk) 03:03, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

An email received by me last year from the NPS in response to a request for a recent (2014) Address Restricted listing included a comment that the National Archives would in future be doing document redactions. That and this suggest to me that a chunk of process managing the archival of approved nominations and related documents may be getting/has been handed off. Magic♪piano 19:08, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

It seems that if you search, as Pubdog said, you'll get a page with a nomination link. Click on it, and you get a page with a small window where the document will appear. In the lower left of the frame that has the document frame is a download icon. Right click (in chrome, your browser may vary) on that icon and select copy link address. Now you have what might be a persistent url for the pdf that you can paste, for example: https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/media/25339980/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MI/71000413.pdf?download=true. Remove the "?download=true" from the end to get https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/media/25339980/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MI/71000413.pdf, and you'll get a link that can be used in a ref. Unfortunately, the eight-digit number after media changes from one form to the next, so we don't get a fixed base that we can add the refnum to, but this is way better than the nothing we've had in MI for a while. Generic1139 (talk) 23:33, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Generic1139. The eight digit number is the National Archives Identifier (NAID) assigned in the Catalog. It is a persistent number and unique to each of the items. From the https://catalog.archives.gov/id/20812803 File Unit] level, click on the link for Includes: 1834 item(s) described in the catalog. Click on Export in the upper right hand corner, select "Top 10000 Results", and Export Brief to get the item entry data. This will give you a list of the NAIDs associated with the item descriptions and other info, but will unfortunately not provide the PDF filename.--Pubdog (talk) 19:48, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

@Pubdog: Thanks. I was hoping there would be a base string we could insert the refnum into, and could therefore have a template similar to NRHP Focus, but this does sound like it is a persistent link, and is a good thing. Generic1139 (talk) 20:20, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Great to hear! That's one more state with online nomination forms, bringing us ever closer to having resources for every state (fingers crossed for Ohio). TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:02, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Judging by File:NRHP nominations upload status.svg, only Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas are left; every other state has essentially everything on Focus, everything hosted by the SHPO or some other source, or both. Nyttend (talk) 03:07, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

The image needs to be updated. Most of the NC listings are available through the NC SHPO (link)). (Massachusetts, while improving, continues to be a work in progress at the state level.) Magic♪piano 03:14, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Louisiana, meanwhile, is incorrectly marked as in Focus (both by the NPS and by us), but both the LA and TX SHPOs host pseudo-nominations that have the content from the description/significance sections but not the whole forms. The LA pseudo-forms are pretty complete in my experience, but I've heard that the TX content is sometimes missing sections. (And it would be nice if Focus hosted forms for certain SHPOs with regular downtime issues *cough* Illinois *cough*) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:23, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Fantastic news. It's disappointing that the state site is still down, but now we again have info on these sites. Chris857 (talk) 06:32, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Nomination copies for delisted properties

There are a couple of former listings that have piqued my interest, and I'm thinking to request nomination copies from NPS/SHPO. Has anyone tried this much before? Any greater difficulty than for current listings? — Ipoellet (talk) 04:54, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Never tried. Nyttend (talk) 02:51, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Arkansas nomination forms

It looks like Arkansas has recently changed the location of their nomination forms. Former link example is http://www.arkansaspreservation.com/!userfiles/CW0109.nr.pdf, the new link is http://www.arkansaspreservation.org/National-Register-Listings/PDF/CW0139.nr.pdf. It looks like the file name has stayed the same. A candidate for AWB and a template similar to NRHP-PA? Generic1139 (talk) 21:22, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Categories

As I don't have the time I had in prior months, I've tried to focus on a few maintenance tasks. One of these has been cleaning up the Category:Alaska tree. As such, I've been following the warring between Hmains and Nyttend over NRHP categories, spilling over into NRHP lists. Nyttend started a thread at ANI recently regarding this. From what I saw, there was an attempt to remand it back to here rather than deal with it there. I did an archive search of this talk page and couldn't find any indication of substantial prior discussion. So here are some of my thoughts about NRHP categorization in general and some of those categories in particular:

• Spelling out things in full which could be represented in shorter form in every single subcategory, such as "National Park and Preserve", "National Register of Historic Places" and "United States House of Representatives", makes for some ridiculously long category names the further down the tree you go. This also applies to article titles to a lesser extent. It really causes me to wonder whether some of my fellow editors have ever familiarized themselves with the KISS principle, but I understand that some are awed by officialdom and wish to beat that over everyone else's head at every turn, as evidenced everywhere throughout the encyclopedia. I suppose this relates to an impression I get that we're here to bludgeon people with the NRHP whenever possible, which may include the name of the NRHP itself. Still, I feel that we should discuss whether a shorter form is warranted in some cases.
• I see that Nyttend resurrected his creation Category:National Register of Historic Places in Alaska by borough and census area without restoring the talk page in which I contested its deletion in the first place. If admins are ignoring contested deletions and just deleting away regardless, what useful purpose is being served by giving these people those tools? I've seen this behavior before from the deleting admin and object to the idea that I should have to grovel on his talk page each time it happens. Now Nyttend's category and the categories Hmains created sit as islands unto themselves in the category tree, even though they cover the exact same ground. While I follow Nyttend's rationale in all this, that doesn't mean it makes any sense. Subcategories entitled Category:National Register of Historic Places in Alaska by borough and census area and Category:Lists of National Register of Historic Places in Alaska should mean what they say and not deliberately confuse things just to satisfy particular beliefs of active editors.
• Unrelated to the NRHP, but I'm mentioning it because it was part of the deleted rationale and related to recently-created categories within scope, is that "by borough" and "by census area" should be merged throughout. With any other state, a reader can browse the state geographically through browsing by county, which can't be done that easily with Alaska as presently structured. From what I see, this is because we're catering to the belief of a few editors that we should confer certain status upon the Unorganized Borough because it's a legal entity and census areas are not. This is enforced by works like this, which is OR as far as Wikipedia is concerned — the Unorganized Borough didn't exist as a legal entity until 1961, only as a concept included in the language of the state constitution — the 1960 Census used the twenty-four election districts established under the constitution as first-level divisions. In reality, the Unorganized Borough exists mostly on paper and is defined more than anything else by how ill-defined it is. Its primary purpose is to provide a legal framework by which the state government oversees a small smattering of local service areas, primarily school districts. Lesser classes of service areas besides school districts exist in much, much greater numbers in organized boroughs. To reiterate, that's all irrelevant and counterproductive to readers attempting to browse the state geographically, an aspect we don't appear to be giving appropriate weight to. There's no good reason why articles and subcategories should exist one or two levels on the category tree below equivalent articles and subcategories simply because one article or subcategory describes something pertaining to an organized borough while the other describes something pertaining to the Unorganized Borough. As this greatly simplifies the category tree yet is contrary to prevailing opinion, I can see why there would be no rush to acknowledge that I've already addressed it and am being forced to repeat myself by virtue of the talk page being deleted out of hand and not being restored.
• Every single state has a robust category tree for lists related to that state, as witnessed here. Considering that, there should be a category for each state collecting NRHP-related lists, placed within not only the state-related lists trees but the state-level NRHP trees. Last I checked, very few states have these categories. As I'm assuming good faith that Hmains has some sort of plan, I haven't rushed to create these categories myself, even though it's a no-brainer AFAIC. However, attempting to tweak some of existing categories has already resulted in subsequent editing which only confuses things further, which in part explains why I'm proposing some of this. See above where I mention that categories should mean what they say, as this is far from the only case of contradiction/overlap I'm sorting through within the Alaska tree.
• See above about "by borough and census area" being a lot simpler than artificially bifurcating organized boroughs and the Unorganized Borough. As it's presently structured, Category:Lists of National Register of Historic Places in Alaska categorizes a hodge-podge of lists of the state defying relation to subcategory topics at the top level, while the level below categorizes lists pertaining to minor geographic divisions of the state covering approximately half the state's area subdivided by one type of division and the level below that categorizes lists pertaining to minor geographic divisions of the remainder of the state subdivided by another type of division. How does that make any sense whatsoever, except perhaps to someone with their head too far deep into the categorization scheme? At last check, there are a grand total of 36 NRHP-related lists covering areas and topics of Alaska, which I don't believe overwhelms a single category. See below where I discuss Hmains creating a category out of slaving devotion to specificity, which has since been deleted for that reason.
• I don't believe the issue of creating categories collecting lists by state to be that contentious. However, since a lot of the mess I'm discussing is rooted in two warring editors and specifically the turf war-like nature of some of their edit summaries, an issue such as real estate within the category tree may be contentious. When I looked over various state category trees, I determined that the NRHP list categories would ideally belong as subcategories of the buildings and structures and geography categories which exist for all 50 states (there's also history-related lists, but it covers very few states at present). Same with the by-borough subcategories in the Alaska NRHP tree: these would be ideal as subcategories of the buildings and structures, geography and visitor attractions subcategories for each borough, plus the few local history subcategories which exist. In this edit, Nyttend removed the buildings and structures subcategory with the rationale of "not all NR sites are buildings or structures". That list brings to light the issue of wasting readers' time by making them wade through numerous separate lists containing only two or three entries apiece, when they could easily be merged into a reasonable read based on reliably sourced geographic distinctions. That's already occurred and been reverted and swept under the rug, so I wouldn't want to delve into another side issue considering how much I'm bringing to the table related to NRHP categorization alone. Back to the main point, with each of those proposed subcategories, the NRHP articles are collected in a dead-end subcategory whose content as a whole substantially relates to buildings and structures, to geography and to visitor attractions (and to history where applicable). One of the categories Hmains created as part of this recent run was recently CFD'ed with a rationale of unnecessary specificity (see here). In that case, he created a subcategory of a category which had only eight articles solely because one of those eight articles was out of scope of some of the parent categories. The resulting consensus reflected my opinion that this was overkill. Case-by-case exceptions will exist and should be considered, but applying this to the tree in general would result in overcategorizing a lot of articles for little gain, by adding multiple by-borough subcategories to many articles instead of fewer subcategories. If an NRHP borough subcategory has 23 members and 21 of them are articles expressly about buildings and structures, that's exactly what you do when you remove that subcategory to better suit the two articles. The few articles which don't apply should have their categories tweaked appropriately, not the overwhelming majority which do. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 17:01, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

First issue: Hmains emptied existing categories out of process, opening the way for them to be listed for speedy deletion as empty. This is firmly prohibited; see the final section of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion, the description of Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion, and the text of the speedy deletion template. As far as I could tell, I was merely restoring the pre-existing setup before Hmains imposed a new setup. If this project decides to support the setup he used, that's fine (I won't offer a "support" or "oppose" rationale, because don't care either way), but someone who repeatedly violates policies while imposing a new setup needs to be reverted and firmly told to stop. Second issue: Categorization of articles must be verifiable. It's trivially easy to verify that not all NR sites in many places are buildings or structures, and it should be obvious that it's possible anywhere to have NR listings that are neither buildings or structures. We categorise articles based on the concepts represented therein, not the current contents: putting a "buildings and structures" category on an NR list is absurd as putting Category:Men in the United States on List of presidents of the United States — in both cases, the current membership of the list reflects the parent category accurately, but the concept does not. Read Commons:COM:OCAT (look for the word "glass") for a simple treatment of this subject; it's the best layman-friendly treatment of the concept that I can find. If you want a technical treatment of this section, browse the Library of Congress Subject Headings: a thesaurus must reflect the nature of the subjects being catalogued, not the items currently contained therein. If you're interested in professional discussions of this subject, see an intro to taxonomy from SLA or guidelines from the American Library Association. If you believe that traditional thesaurus-based taxonomy is flawed and needs to be replaced with something reflecting the current contents of each level on the tree, you need to convince the Library of Congress that it needs to overhaul many or all of the currently accepted principles of cataloging. Nyttend (talk) 17:32, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Before I could even read your entire reply, the part you put into bold fulfilled the purpose of putting things into bold. Unfortunately, all I could think about now is how it's obviously policy-shopping and ignoring common sense. You're asking to overcategorize something like 300+ or 400+ articles simply to suit comparatively few instances of out-of-scope categorization within (once again, I'm repeating myself and don't know why). I would view this as more a matter of project participants angling for NRHP categories to receive better real estate within the category tree than what I propose because the NRHP is a topic that editors actively push, which is the point where WP:BIAS and WP:NPOV collide far too often as far as WikiProjects are concerned. What's that expression: "How's that goin' for ya, anyway"? I'm not afraid to point out that mainstream attention given to Wikipedia's 15th anniversary was practically non-existent compared to the 10th anniversary. I'm also not afraid to point out that "Wikipedia is ruled by people who have time for this shit" and that reliable sources have said exactly the same thing, albeit in different words, effectively making Wikipedia more a popularity contest than anything remotely resembling an information resource. I previously commented in response to a pair of adjoining threads about how "completeness of coverage" appears to mean creating content for content's sake with little or no regard to whether it's credible to the people reading it. As I don't see NRHP-related articles showing up on lists of popular pages all that often, I would imagine that a relatively higher percentage of these articles are being read by people familiar with the subject, scratching their heads saying "What is this shit, anyway?" and directing their time and financial assistance towards any number of the other billion-plus websites in the world. When I volunteered in public radio, we received "actions have consequences" lectures such as this all the time over precise details of what was going out over the air during our shifts. Same deal here: just like Chicago in '68, the whole world is watching, even when they eventually determine consensus by not actively participating in determining consensus.

Trying to bury me in a mountain of instruction creep isn't helping your cause, but I'll browse through what you're offering when I can. Said instruction creep began with discussing the deletion of the category. All that offers a whole new perspective on linkspam, that's all I have to say. My point was that I contested the deletion and that was evidently ignored out of hand by an admin who's done that before. I choose not to be an admin so I'm not stuck in the position of having to defend one who isn't doing their job. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 18:40, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Another county reaches 300 listings ...

For those of you who care about such things, the two new listings announced last week for Suffolk County, New York, put it over 300 total, making it only the second county in New York (after New York County, aka Manhattan) to reach that milestone (and I don't know how many in the whole country that makes).

Not surprising, really, as it's the second largest county in the state, fairly developed (at least in its western end, closer to New York City) and with a history of European settlement going back to the early 17th century. Daniel Case (talk) 02:42, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Awesome, congrats to them and their local preservationists. There definitely aren't a lot of counties with over 300 listings (at least in states not named Massachusetts); I didn't count all of them, but there are only seven in the entire Midwest. It takes a lot of local history and pretty active preservation efforts to make that happen. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:47, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Only 5 counties >300 west of the Rockies (Salt Lake, Carbon, Maricopa, Los Angeles, Multnomah). Good on Suffolk. — Ipoellet (talk) 04:00, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Here were the numbers from my spreadsheet as of the first of the year:

1. Middlesex County 1319
2. Worcester County 644
3. Multnomah County 584
4. DC 578
5. Philadelphia County 552
6. Cook County 534
7. New York County 534
8. Los Angeles County 522
9. Jefferson County 476
10. Essex County 469
11. Hartford County 424
12. Providence County 411
13. St. Louis County
14. Cuyahoga County 385
15. New Castle County 381
16. Maricopa County 380
17. Bristol County 368
18. Norfolk County 352
19. Hamilton County 350
20. Salt Lake County 342
21. Wayne County 335
22. Jackson County 331
23. Franklin County 324
24. Chester County 317
25. Suffolk County 317
26. Carbon County 315
27. Pulaski County 303
28. Suffolk County 299

25or6to4 (talk) 04:50, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

My adopted home county, Scott County, Iowa is closing in on 300 with 282 current listings. 21 of those are districts, each with several properties that are probably individually eligible. I just completed a fairly large nomination myself last year for one of those districts (Oakdale Cemetery Historic District). Maybe I'll tackle another nomination or two one of these days. Dustin C. Oliver (talk) 05:01, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

OTRS help, please

I would like to move File:Antiguo Cuartel Militar Espanol de Ponce.jpg to the Commons. However the PD tag on the image is incorrect: it credits the image to the NPS when the correct author is Hector Santiago / PR SHPO. A number of similar nomination photos from Puerto Rico have been uploaded to either enwiki or the Commons using the tag {{PD-PRGov-PRSHP}}. That tag relies on an OTRS ticket that I have not looked at, since I don't have OTRS access. Is there anyone who has an OTRS account who is willing to go look at the ticket and check whether it applies to this file? — Ipoellet (talk) 03:37, 16 February 2016 (UTC)