Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 63

Multiple Property forms

I believe the following statements are true about TR, MPS, MRA, and the like.

• Simply appearing in one of the multiple property forms does not confer "listed" status on a property. It must be in an HD as a contributing property, or be listed individually. An "Entered in the National Register" notation means the property will have its own reference number (sometimes given in the MPS) and its own nomination (sometimes a simple list with a copy of the MPS), but it will appear in the focus database.

• Articles about such lists do not get an NRHP infobox. They might get a project banner on the talk page, with a related importance, or if it contains a list of properties, some of which are otherwise listed, a list class.

• Articles about a property were the only NRHP justification is a mention in an MPS, MRA, TR, etc., and where the property does not have a Entered in the National Register stamp should be corrected. If the property is otherwise listed on the NRHP, provide the correct reference. If the property is not lsited, correct the article and remove the NRHP decoration.

• A multiple property form does not create a historic district.

• A pending property never gets an infobox.

I plan to correct the obvious cases in Category:NRHP infobox needing cleanup based on the above. Generic1139 (talk) 14:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I think most of the above is correct, although I would disagree with your second point. I'm not sure why articles about listed NRHP properties would not get a NRHP infobox. See, for example Iron County MRA, where I believe most of the properties included are not notable enough to deserve their own article (individual NRHP listing notwithstanding). The infobox seems to me to add some context. Andrew Jameson (talk) 16:35, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Some context, but not much - the reference numbers aren't complete and therefore not machine readable, the dates aren't specific as to what which listing they apply to. There are other ways to host the map and collage. If a reader wanted to click to get the NRIS data, they would need to go to the county list to find the reference number for a property. As a separate issue, it seems that almost all of the references are now dead links. Generic1139 (talk) 18:19, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I've fixed all but Charles Johnson Farm and Swedish Farmsteads of Porter County, Indiana to give Chris Light a chance to respond to Ammodramus. I also plan to remove the infobox from Iron County MRA unless there is a consensus that it should be kept. Generic1139 (talk) 22:01, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the other points, but I also disagree with the second point. I don't see a good reason why articles about multiple property submissions shouldn't have their own infoboxes, since an infobox can be a useful visual aid and a quick reference for information on a MPS. I'm especially concerned that we're doing this so soon after the infobox code change that put a bunch of MPS articles in Category:NRHP infobox needing cleanup; it seems like we're changing our article content to fit our new infobox code rather than the other way around. We should either change the code to find some way to work around MPS infoboxes or agree to some way to add reference numbers to MPS infoboxes (either in the style of the Iron County article, or by using the MPS reference numbers). TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:48, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't see the use for a set of partial reference numbers as in the Iron County article. They aren't correlated to a property, you can't search for them, what's the point? Also, this isn't an issue with the new infobox code - infoboxes without reference numbers have shown up in the cleanup category for quite a while. The new code simply catches those that were missed before because they had a reference in the otherwise empty refnum parameter. I'm fine with having an multiple listing flag or special nrhp_type, and using the MPS number (which always starts with 64, not the year), as long as we don't try to cram 70 reference numbers into it. If we list properties in an MPS article, I'd also argue that they should use the NRHP Row format as well - easier to maintain, and would look more like other list articles - just with a longer intro and the descriptions in the table with the image, location, and usable refnum. Generic1139 (talk) 06:45, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I have no particular objection to changing or reformatting the refnums, if that's what's causing heartburn. However, I think that a table format wouldn't work well for this particular article (although it probably would work well for most MPS articles). Most of the properties which are part of the Iron County MRA are likely not notable enough to deserve their own article, so the group article is the de facto repository of information for those particular properties. That makes the descriptions longer than will easily fit in "description" block of the table. Andrew Jameson (talk) 12:05, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

As currently structured, the NRHP infobox is a container for a historic place, using one of the defined types.

Accepted values

"nhl" — National Historic Landmark
"hd" — Historic District (more information here)
"nhld" — National Historic Landmark District (NHL that is also a historic district)
"cp" — Contributing Property to a Historic District (more info here)
"nhldcp" — Contributing Property to a National Historic Landmark District
"indcp" — Contributing Property that is also individually listed (more info here)
"nmon" — National Monument
"nhs" — National Historic Site
"nmem" — National Memorial
"nhp" — National Historic Park
"nb" — National Battlefield
"nmp" — National Military Park
"nbp" — National Battlefield Park
"nhs" — National Historic Site
"nhr" — National Historic Reserve
"ihs" — International Historic Site

If a property has been delisted from one of these designations, append "former" to the beginning of the value (i.e. "formernhl", "formerhd", etc.) "formernrhp" is also available, though not required. For more information about delistings, click here.

We can:

• Make a new nrhp_type for MPS (optionally, each type of MPS) for the existing infobox. This one might be the best choice, but it would be the only type that isn't a specific listed property.

-or-

• Make a new info box altogether

We need a convention for listing multiple reference numbers for MPS. I suggest we avoid that problem and simply use the MPS reference number, and if the article has table of listed properties, or a series of summary paragraphs, then the table or paragraphs should give the refnum, and use something similar to [{{NRHP Focus|refnum|url=y}} refnum] to make them clickable.

We also need to agree that properties that are listed on the MPS, but were not added individually or are part of an HD, don't get an infobox with a CP and a partof_refnum = the MPS.

I suggest we keep (and continue to refine) the validity checks on refnum, as that process finds far more problems than it does false positives. Generic1139 (talk) 16:12, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

And, FWIW, with a quick look at the 68 articles in Category:National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Submissions and its sub categories that are actually MPS articles, 43 use a single refnum (usually the MPS), 8 used multiple refnums, 7 have no infobox. I'm modifying my changes to use the MPS refnum for in the cases where the refnum field was empty or non-numeric (for now).

FWIW, I'd support standardizing on using the MPS refnum for all MPS articles. Andrew Jameson (talk) 17:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

New listing today that may be is a first of its kind

In today's newly-announced listings there's one from Washington County, Arkansas, that I can't wait to see a picture of:

Prairie Grove Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth, SW. corner of E. Douglas and Parker Sts., Prairie Grove 15000291

Would this be the first time a telephone booth has been listed on the NRHP? I know Britain lists just about every one of those old red phone booths they can find, but I don't think we've ever granted one this honor (Not that we shouldn't ... they sort of are disappearing, and should one day arouse the same curious interest that mounting blocks do today). Daniel Case (talk) 18:24, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Addendum: Yes, apparently it is the first. OK, someone needs to get a picture so we can start an article about it and get it nominated to DYK. Daniel Case (talk) 18:31, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Photograph here, for people who aren't old enough to remember them. Nomination here (with lots more pictures). This one should be fun to write up. Magic♪piano 18:35, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I have pinged Valis55, who has done yeoman's work photographing many of northwestern Arkansas's listings. Definitely a DYK. Magic♪piano 18:39, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I called the phone number given for it in the nom, sorry it was busy. Don't ask me why I called the phone number - it was there and why not? Which raises the question of whether we should put the number in the article. We might ask the folks at the motel for a quikpic. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:14, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

This also raises the question of whether there are other famous phone booths (not numbers or simple phones, but booths). Maybe in Metropolis, may something to do with the Phonebooth stuffing craze? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:20, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

The only other phone booth that I know has a Wikipedia article is the Mojave phone booth, which is one of the classic unusual articles. Sadly, it's been removed, so it won't be showing up on the NRHP anytime soon. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:34, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

It's amazing that something that was once as ubiquitous as a phone booth is now in need of conservation and qualifies for the NRHP. Maybe 50 years from now cell towers will be on the NRHP. Einbierbitte (talk) 20:58, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I will likely photograph it this weekend, weather permitting. Valis55 (talk) 17:56, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Kjellberg or Chellburg Farm - Question

• I've taken the liberty to split this topic off from the question on Refnum as it has it's own stream of information. My comments are at the end. Chris Light (talk) 19:26, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Here's another weird one: what should we do about Swedish Farmsteads of Porter County, Indiana? The main article has an infobox for the "Swedish Farmsteads Historic District (Pending)" and it links to several other articles that have either no refnum or a very unusual-looking one, none of which appear to be actually listed on the Register. Charles Johnson Farm is supposedly a contributing property (it doesn't say to what historic district) with no refnum, and Anders Kjellberg Farm, Gust Lindstrom Farm, and Pete Larsen Farm have refnums that are longer than 8 digits (and in one case is hyphenated). They all cite some sort of National Register nomination without linking to it; the nominations are usually dated 1994 or 2008, but there's no evidence that any of these places were ever listed. (The properties themselves seem to be real, just not any of the NRHP info about them.) Aside from probably gutting any NRHP-related info from these articles, I'm at a loss as to what we should do with them. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:29, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

It gets worse. I tried Googling for one of the distinctive names in the purported Swedish Farmsteads HD, "Anders Kjellberg", and discovered that we've got two articles on the property: Anders Kjellberg Farm, which makes an apparently spurious NRHP claim, and Chellberg Farm, which doesn't, though it cites a nom form for a "Swedish Farmsteads" MPS (with no link in the citation). Worse still, both articles were created by the same editor, "Chellberg" in 2008 and "Kjellberg" in 2015. (This editor, Chris Light, also created the other articles in TheCatalyst's comment.)

Digging deeper, I find an online copy of the NPS's 2000 Cultural Landscape Report: Chellberg Farm. On p. 3 (which is p. 10 of the PDF), it states that the farm "is included in a Swedish Farming District that is potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places". A footnote on p. 6 (p. 13 of the PDF) states that "[a] multiple property nomination is being prepared for the district by the Lakeshore historians".

Like TheCatalyst, I'm at something of a loss. My inclination is to leave the creator of the articles a note, asking that the Kjellberg/Chellberg articles be merged, that any claims of NRHP listing be sourced or deleted, and that a serious effort be made to find online sources so that other editors can check any dubious assertions. Thoughts? — Ammodramus (talk) 14:13, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

The note you left on the authors page sums it up nicely. Certainly, removing the claims that the properties are listed and removing the infobox seems non controversial. Claims of pending need to be backed up, but even pending doesn't mean it's on the list as had been discussed here many times. Generic1139 (talk) 18:07, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for helping out. Sorry I haven't been able to participate as much as I usually do lately. Now that it appears we have taken care of all of the infoboxes that have no digits whatsoever, I have edited the infobox to include pages that have a refnum that has fewer than 8 digits, another error. I expect the cleanup category to populate shortly. If anyone would like to work on these, feel free to do so! Thanks again!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:46, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

On the Swedish Farms topic, I've added added some notes on the subject to Talk:Swedish Farmsteads of Porter County, Indiana with some additional references, but not the MPS submission. Generic1139 (talk) 17:08, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

And, @Dudemanfellabra:, you might consider adding an error trap for reference number greater than 8 digits, for example, Gust Lindstrom Farm. Generic1139 (talk) 17:09, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

• Okay, This is one of many edit errors that have cropped up trying to make sense out of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore historic properties. This was submitted to the Indiana SHPO sometime before 2010 and normally, they run pretty quick through the system. This didn't, so I removed the infobox for the multiple site historic district and left each farm as it's own. No - NHRP reference numbers of info boxes. In the process, the spelling change from the original Kjellburg to the current family use of Chellburg caused two articles to be created. While the Swedish farm district appropriately uses the older historic spelling, it needs to direct itself to the Chellburg Farm article, which is the name in common use at this time (since before 1990).
  • Thus, The Anders Kjellberg Farm article needs to be merged into the Chellberg Farm article. My quess is that deletion of the Kjellberg article will handle it as the information should already be in the Chellberg article.
  • As far as the other farms, i.e., Pete Larsen Farm, Gust Lindstrom Farm, and Charles Johnson Farm, articles, they are small and can be handled in the Swedish Farmsteads of Porter County, Indiana main article. I split them out because of another article I was working on, ? ice age moraine, I think?, where I did not create small articles and an editor, pulled it apart and created 5 or 6 articles out of it, rather than one.
  • Summary:

1. delete Anders Kjellberg Farm.
2. combine the smaller articles into the primary summary article.

Does that meet the needs for clarification and adequacy of information to warrant an independent article. Note: I tend to work across topics, thus with different sets of editor, creating some confusion on my part. I'm more that happy to meet each topical areas standards. Chris Light (talk) 19:26, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

commons NRHP template

A user on commons, in a good faith following of the OVERCAT guildlines applied to the NRHP template, has been removing the NRHP template from individual files if thet are in a category that has the NRHP template. Good, bad, or doesn't matter? Will files without the tag still show up in all right places, like the unused images category if they are in a tagged category? How about the database that feeds the monument finder mapping tool? Should a file continue to be tagged with the NRHP template even if it is in a category that is tagged? Generic1139 (talk) 06:15, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I think that the NRHP tag should stay in the file - a person could easily get the file some way other than going through the commons category. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 06:32, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

The template should definitely remain on the file itself. Without that template adding the file to the category, none of our bot stuff works correctly. All of the removed templates should be added back immediately.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:22, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, there is more than just a single user transferring the template to the categories. One question I have is, should the template be used in categories at all, if it only works correctly on files? (The template documentation is very minimal) I wasn't the first to use it on categories; I just followed what I thought was already common practice. I'll undo all the templates I removed, but I'm not going to go and add the template to all the files inside c:Category:Cranbrook Educational Community or c:Category:Michigan Theater (Ann Arbor, Michigan), most of which never had any connection to the template at all. kennethaw88 • talk 15:29, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Having the template in the category is what makes Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Missing commons category links and the corresponding script work, so removing it would also break things. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:45, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

To summarize, then, the commons NRHP template should be on each individual file and each category to which it applies.

And in practice, that normally means the NRHP template for an individual listing is applied to lowest level category to which it applies, we don't want to add several templates to a county level category covering all of the reference numbers in the county. For HDs, if a property is individually listed, it gets its iindividual refnum, contributing-only files get the HD ref num. The HD category gets the HD refnum. And one more guideline that I think has been inferred is that the HD ref number only goes on the highest level category where all the contained files or sub categories are within the HD. Generic1139 (talk) 17:34, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying this. kennethaw88 • talk 22:30, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I, too, have been removing the tag from individual files - literally for years now. Could someone explain what "bot stuff" needs all those multi-categorized files? And if we have all these bots that are invisible even to experienced users, are we over-automated? Or maybe we should have a section on the project page outlining the various scripts, bots, infobox tools, etc. that are in use? — Ipoellet (talk) 04:44, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I'll second Ipoellet's request for more information. I almost always take multiple photos of an NRHP site, so create a Commons category for each one; and when I do, I put the NRHP template on the category but not on the individual photos within it. If this is causing problems, I'll fix it; but it'll be a power of work, and I'm somewhat loath to undertake it unless I know that the benefits will justify the effort.

Several questions about where to apply it at various category levels. First, what should be done if a separately listed site is also part of an HD? For instance, the Auburn, Nebraska post office was individually listed in the NRHP; later, the Auburn Historic District was listed, including the post office. Should the PO category include two NRHP templates, one with the PO refnum and one with the HD refnum? If we need to put the NRHP template on individual photo files within a category, should individual PO photos also have two NRHP templates?

Second, what should be done when a category for an NRHP site includes subcategories? For instance, the St. Leonard's complex in Madison, Nebraska includes the church, the rectory, and the rectory garage. I've got an overcall category, c:Category:St. Leonard's complex (Madison, Nebraska), within which I've got separate subcategories for the church, the rectory, and the Holy Garage. Within the church subcategory, I've got subsubcategories for the windows and the frescoes. Should these subcategories and subsubcategories also carry the NRHP template, with the complex's refnum? — Ammodramus (talk) 14:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Now that I think about it, if the category is properly tagged, do all the images within it need to be tagged too for bot stuff to work? The image adding script will catch images in a tagged category, and while they won't show up on ErfgoedBot's unused images page, the categories will still show up on the missing Commons category page and can be added from there. I also suspect that users who go through the trouble to make categories for their new photos are far more likely to add their images to the list themselves (or at least tell someone else who will). (I'm probably forgetting about some aspect of bot functionality, so please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 14:44, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I think that there are reasons for tagging photos other than for the bots. For instance, cities have photos of NRHPs and a person may click on the photo, which takes them to commons. It would be good if that tells them that it is a NRHP. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:07, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

But in that event wouldn't it make more sense to state the NR status in the description in prose, rather than use the template that applies an excess category? — Ipoellet (talk) 20:07, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I put the NRHP tag in the photo's description. It is a lot shorter than writing it out, plus it shows up nicely in galleries and perhaps other places. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:25, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Photo copyright before 1978

The 1974 NRHP Eudora Plantation was destroyed by fire but since the NRHP photo was before 1978, we can use it, right? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:15, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Before I respond, I'd like to acknowledge that some folks may disagree with me on some points. However, as I see it the answer is: Likely, but not necessarily. There are two things you want to check for:

• Whether or not the nomination file has a copyright notice in it — you need to check both the text and the photos if you're using the Focus files. If there's a notice, then the photos are not public domain and we can't use them.
• You need to have a reasonable (not absolute) belief that the photos were not published prior to the nomination being filed. If they were, then you need to go back to the first time they were published to see if there was a copyright notice there — at which point you are better off using the first publication as the source rather than the NRHP nomination. (In the unlikely event that the photos were first published prior to 1923, then they're in the public domain whether or not there's a copyright notice.)

If the nomination is the first publication and doesn't bear a copyright notice, then the Commons copyright tag you will want to use is PD-US-no notice.

Okay, after writing all of the above, I've now taken a look at the files on Focus, and it appears to me that the photos are in fact public domain. — Ipoellet (talk) 20:03, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Those particular ones are PD, or in general? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:20, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Those particular ones. — Ipoellet (talk) 23:03, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Is there a way to get digital copies of photos in a NRHP form other than a screen capture from the PDF? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:39, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I usually use the PDF-to-JPG utility at http://www.zamzar.com/ — Ipoellet (talk) 04:44, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I didn't know about that - I just did a screen capture of the PDF, saved to JPG, and uploaded it. I'll check out that conversion. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:48, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Printing progress maps

Pretty often I print a "percent illustrated" map from the /Progress. I'm generally printing about half of a state. A few months ago I was able to print some of these that were reasonably good - the county borders were a little pixelated but sharp enough and the various colors were smooth. Now I can't figure out how to do it that well. The best thing I know now is to go to Original File and blow it up as large as it will go in the browser, do a screen shot, paste that into Photoshop, crop it and print it. But this way the county borders are very pixelated and burry and the colors are splotchy, especially near the county borders. What is a good way to print a "percent illustrated" map for about half of a state? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:07, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, I found a fairly good way. I found a website that can convert SVG to PNG. It has a limit of 5000x5000 - I wish that was higher, but I converted the SVG to 5000x2800 PNG, and that was good enough. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 06:14, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I was about to suggest converting to PNG. If the website you found doesn't give you good enough results, you could download ImageMagick and convert the file to PNG from the command line. That's how I generate the gifs on WP:NRHPPROGRESSHISTORY (which I'll update as soon as I find the time). Alternatively you could download Inkscape to work with the SVG directly; there's probably an export/print function provided.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:39, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

List of NRHP schools in Georgia

Is there an easy way to get a list of schools on the NRHP in Georgia? Several months ago I was in some county, looking for a school by its address and coordinates, but I couldn't find it. In the last couple of months I've corrected a lot of coordinates and I remember correcting that one. But now I can't remember what county it was in; and I've checked the counties I could think of. I want to go back there and get it, so I could use a list of Georgia NRHP schools. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 06:14, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe try querying "school" with state set to GA in Elkman's infobox generator? You'll get a lot of unnecessary stuff as well, but at least you'll have all the names there.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:42, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Portland Historic Landmarks?

I stumbled upon List of San Francisco Designated Landmarks and wondered if I should create a similar page/list about the local landmarks program for Portland, Oregon (or any other cities). This page describes Portland's historic landmarks program. There is, of course, a lot of overlap with NRHP, but is it helpful to Wikipedia to have a Portland Historic Landmarks page and category to add to pages? I see local landmark status added to NRHP infoboxes (see Skidmore Fountain, for example), but would a category help, too? Surely there are some PHL's that are not also NRHPs and vice versa. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:14, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I'll suggest that you carefully consider it (there are lots of potential problems) and then go for it if it looks like you can overcome the problems. The potential problems include different levels of government, and non-governmental agencies, making lists in the same area resulting in duplication and a real mishmash. E.g., there are 1 or 2 non-governmental groups that do this in Pittsburgh and it always seemed like a real pain to deal with. But there are several good lists in other areas. I think California has local govt. lists, county govt. lists, maybe even state govt. lists, on top of the NRHP lists - but it all seems to work ok. I think Chicago and Omaha have some good "duplicate" lists. Check around and check out the good and the bad. Others might add their favorites and least favorites here. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:04, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

BTW, I think New York City and Philadelphia both have huge lists but couldn't have Wikipedia articles because they are so huge - maybe 5,000+ sites. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:14, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

New York has an article, but the list is split across several sub-articles because of its size (which is also the case for Los Angeles); there are many other examples in Category:Locally designated landmarks in the United States, as well as some examples that should be in that category but aren't. A list for Portland seems reasonable, since it's a large city with many landmarks and an official preservation program, though I do wonder what the threshold for having a list for a city would be; I can't imagine we'd want a list for a small town with five non-notable local landmarks. The smallest cities with lists right now are in the range of 100,000 people, but there are many cities with significantly more people than that and no list. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 21:46, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I would probably not start with a list of landmarks (or lists separated by city quadrant), but instead just create an article called "Portland Historic Landmarks" with info about the program, then also add a similarly-titled category to articles. But, now that I think about, I don't really know how often this list changes or how much updating to Wikipedia articles would be required... I will definitely look into this further, and please feel free to continue discussing and providing examples, feedback, etc. here. I really appreciate the feedback from WP NRHP members. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 22:09, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Look2See1

Please explain why this editor is removing Category:National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco, California from Old Federal Reserve Bank Building (San Francisco), which is a building on the NRHP? BMK (talk) 05:39, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I am removing Category:National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco, California because that is OVERCAT. It already has Category:Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco, California which is quite sufficient. Look more carefully Beyond My Ken, before posting non-problems here. Look2See1 t a l k → 05:56, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

ANd you should EXPLAIN YOUR EDITS instead of simply reverting. BMK (talk) 18:45, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Beyond My Ken/BMK, head your 18:45 comment above and finally "Explain Your Edits"/edit warring please. I have explained my edits. Your reverts (3 times) on Old Federal Reserve Bank Building (San Francisco) - edits history were obviously done by you without actually looking at my edits always using the more specific Category:Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco, California. You finally obliquely explained your reverts by revealing your ignorance/lack of noticing (3 times) that the correct "primary category" was being used by me - not you + Category:National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco, California - when you posted on my talk page and the (needless ?) entry here.

Beyond My Ken/BMK, your lack of apology to myself/the editing community for your rude mistake x 3 is a notable void, as is your still missing answer to "Please explain why this editor is removing Category:Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco, California x 3, a lingering mystery. — Look2See1 t a l k → 00:21, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Town of Southold, NY NRHP list

Another local list; National Register of Historic Places listings in Southold (town), New York, is now fully illustrated! I had my doubts about one site, but some vague research has convinced me that "Peaken's Tavern" is in fact the Terry-Mulford House in Orient, New York. It would seem that this article could be expanded as well. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 22:18, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Ship names

The NPS databases typically present ship names in all caps. This is because (way back when I was a wee, young whippersnapper) all caps was the typwriter convention to approximate the italic convention for ship names in typeset text. Italics was preferred, all caps was a necessary second choice. When computerized databases came along and NPS started using them for the National Register, they couldn't handle italics any more than mechanical typewriters could. And NPS hasn't updated their data or database procedures significantly since then. Sorry for the history lesson, but my point is that the all caps in the NRIS is nothing more than a stylistic choice based on technical limitations – limitations that no longer have any relevance in Wikipedia.

So my question: I would propose that WP:NRHP have a style rule that where NRIS (and other sources like nominations or the Weekly List) puts ship names in all caps, we should change the style to title-case italics. This would affect primarily the name column in county lists and the name banner in the NRHP infobox. We do have precedent for making stylistic changes from the NRIS, most significantly that we routinely reverse (or de-reverse) personal names from <last, first> to <first last>. Because I've seen different editors switch ship names back and forth both ways between the two conventions, I'd like this to be a discussion that results in some sort of consensus. Thoughts/comments/opinions? — Ipoellet (talk) 03:52, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the ship names. (I'm from the typewriter era but I didn't know that history.) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:20, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I think italicizing ships' names makes much more sense. (And I am not from the typewriter era, for the record...since we're sharing.) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 06:53, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with italics instead of all-caps; the shift-locked names in the county lists look as though they were inserted by an IP editor who spends most of his time SHOUTING at others in comments sections. Ipoellet's got a very valid point about our making other format changes in NRIS names, so a change like the one proposed isn't violating any hallowed tradition of deference to NRIS name formats. — Ammodramus (talk) 14:33, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Agree with italics for ship names. As long as the name on the county list and the name in the infobox matches the NRHP name for text search purposes, I think the formatting of the name can be what we like, and should be in line with general guidance where reasonable, which in this case is WP:NCSHIP and WP:ITALIC. Generic1139 (talk) 15:15, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

And, of course, {{Italics title}} at the top of the article if the article title should be all italics, use {{DISPLAYTITLE}} if only part of the title is in italics. Infobox ship takes care of this for articles where the NRHP infobox is embedded, as in USS Massachusetts (BB-2). An example of an article title that would need to be corrected if we reach consensus here would be SS Appomattox. Generic1139 (talk) 15:34, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Agree. I use all caps because I'm lazy and just copy and paste off Focus or the Weekly List. If there's consensus (and it looks like there is) I'll just have to remember to change the name to italics Einbierbitte (talk) 17:10, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Agree with italics instead of all caps. I never understood why the NPS capitalized ship names, not being from the typewriter era myself, and now that I know it's an outdated convention I see no reason to propagate it here. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 17:35, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

I just found Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Style guide. It doesn't address the county listings, but it does have something about the title used in the lead section. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:11, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like there's a consensus: Ship names should be presented in title-case italics in county lists and infoboxes. I don't think this consensus addresses or was intended to address article titles or lead sections, which are still governed by WP:COMMONNAME, WP:SHIPNAME, and similar guidelines. I.e.:

NRIS / Weekly List	County list / Infobox
RMS TITANIC	RMS Titanic
EDMUND FITZGERALD (Bulk Freighter)	Edmund Fitzgerald (Bulk Freighter)

Is this something that should be added to Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Style guide?

BTW, while we're talking typewriter conventions, another such convention that I've seen come through in the NRIS is the double-hyphen. Since most (all?) typewriters did not have a dash key, a -- was used as a stand-in. I don't think there was ever a convention for typewriters to distinguish between en-dashes and em-dashes, however. So the NRIS gives us "Annand--Loomis House", which we should probably style as "Annand–Loomis House" (which is also consistent with MOS:DASH) with redirects from both the single- and double-hyphen versions. — Ipoellet (talk) 06:42, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Our SS Edmund Fitzgerald article (which is featured) does use italics. If we used "bulk freighter" as disambiguation, that would be in lower case. Jonathunder (talk) 00:35, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we actually use the double hyphen in our lists; I see it in the occasional infobox that was copied from Elkman's tool, but that's about it. We typically use hyphens instead, but we probably should be using en dashes in most cases per MOS:DASH. We'll have to evaluate article titles on a case-by-case basis with that one though; while I suspect the majority of these names should use an en dash, there are probably a handful that are named after a single person with a hyphenated name, which should still use the single hyphen. We can probably weed those out just by checking if the NRIS uses a double hyphen or a single one, but the current names we're using here won't show a difference. (And given all of the past controversies about dashes, I'm not sure that a mass effort to fix those titles is necessary; it seems more like a "fix it when you see it" situation.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 06:58, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

I think it should be added to the style guide. And the double hyphen was used as you say (some editors on WP still do that). I remember typewriters that didn't have a "1" and I think some didn't have a "0". I remember struggling with people at work in the 1980s (when we switched to computers) telling that they had to type the digits, which was hard to get them to do. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 07:05, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Back in the typewriter days, I remember backspacing and typing underscores over something to indicate italics. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:50, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The Bridges of Clark County

Old Stone Arch Bridge, Marshall

Old Bridge, Clark Center

The last two listings on National Register of Historic Places listings in Clark County, Illinois are bridges on the old National Road and are listed as stone arch bridges. The one in Marshall (top photo) is definitely the one. But the second photo (that I took with a bit of difficulty) is the one at Clark Center, which I think is definitely of a later era. The article about it (Old Stone Arch Bridge (Clark Center, Illinois)) links to the 1978 NRHP form, which states that it is in essentially its original condition. But later in the form is some text saying that it might not be the original, but some local resident says that it is (IIRC). This road was abandoned decades before 1978 (replaced by US 40). I'm hesitant to label this bridge as the NRHP one. Ideas, anyone? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:04, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

The second bridge doesn't appear to match the description in the nom form: it's not an arch, and it appears to be made of concrete rather than cut stone. The photos in the nom form are pretty bad, but I can make out the joints between stones on one of them, so they should show up in a better photo.

Is the bridge in the photo in current use? If so, and if you can locate it on a Google-type map, you might see if you can find it at uglybridges.com. If they've got it listed, then you can zoom in on it on the map and click on the marker for a report, which includes things like the construction date. A sister site, bridgehunter.com, specializes in historic bridges; you might look for it there as well. Ammodramus (talk) 02:54, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

(EC)@Nyttend: has a pic File:Old U.S. 40 near Clark Center.jpg, but neither look much like an old stone arch bridge from before 1838. Bridges do get washed out, replaced, widened etc. so it isn't so much a wonder that they're not still there, so much as that any survive from 1838 at all. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:03, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

(ec) The bridge in Marshall is still in use but the one in question at Clark Center is on part of the Old National Road which has been abandoned. I think the coordinates on the bridge's article are correct. The UTM coordinates in the form are quite a bit off of that location, but that seems to be the closest bridge that crosses a creek near Clark Center. I'll look at the suggested website. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:07, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I think this is the bridge, but I don't see a photo. Nyttend's photo doesn't show the original bridge. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:19, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

[double edit conflict] I did a bunch of research before getting the picture (not pulling rank; of course I can be wrong), so I'm confident that it's the right spot; I hope this isn't too long. Like farther east in Ohio, much of US 40 in Illinois was brick-paved along its original route, and when they re-routed the highway onto a new alignment, the old road was neither totally abandoned nor maintained at a comparable quality; you can still drive on the road with a normal-type vehicle (I didn't have trouble using my car there), although a heavy vehicle would break the road. Meanwhile, like most Illinois nomination files hosted by the Illinois SHPO, http://gis.hpa.state.il.us/pdfs/200176.pdf consists of three separate documents: the nomination form itself (pages 1-4), a notification document for relevant members of Congress (page 5), and the Illinois Historic Sites Survey Inventory form (pages 6-11). Here, they made a mistake and uploaded the wrong IHSSI form — it says that the bridge in question is ¼ miles west of Marshall, which is drastically wrong for a bridge near Clark Center, but perfect for the other one. Moreover, check the final page of the inventory form: they say that there's another bridge in the southern half of Section 29, Wabash Township (not surveyed because it wasn't accessible at the time of the Depression-era survey), which is the subject of the sketch; it carried the old road just south of US40, separated from it by a ravine. This is the location of the spot in my photograph, and the invisibility of the wing walls and other structural features I'm attributing to significant plant growth. This and other factors I've observed to hide most or all of a bridge, even if it's in great shape; going much farther east, the Bridge in Portage Township near Johnstown PA has lots of plant growth around it and was totally invisible from the road, and due to the trees and smaller plants growing on the bridge itself, there's no indication that you're not driving along a hillside. So basically this is my reasoning for arguing that my photo shows the top of this NR-listed bridge. Nyttend (talk) 03:33, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Bubba, did you supply the wrong link? http://uglybridges.com/1137694 carries a minor road, fifteen miles south of Clark Center and nowhere near the National Road. Nyttend (talk) 03:37, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

(1) I might have gotten the wrong one. The maps show it crossing Mill Creek and I checked for ones in Clark County that crossed Mill Creek, and that was the only one I saw. (2) I agree that your photo is of that location - I was there 5 days ago and it looked like that. It does not cross a stone arch bridge though. (3) there might have been some confusion between this one and the one in Marshall or another one. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:45, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not clear about this statement: "This is the location of the spot in my photograph," do you mean the one close to Clark Central or another one? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:51, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

What maps are you seeing? I can't find this specific bridge through bridgehunter or uglybridges, and the sketch map on page 9 of the ISHHI survey form doesn't label the map. The site I photographed is at a crossing of a small Mill Creek tributary. Meanwhile, I'm confused by your saying that there's no stone arch bridge here; how can you be certain? It's a steep climb down to the stream if I remember rightly, and the road had to cross the stream via some sort of bridge, so it's not just a hillside. I don't see why it's necessarily different from the Portage Township example; I can upload one of my pictures of the site if you'd like to see what I'm talking about, as it's now drastically different from the PennDOT image in the article. [above written before EC; remainder after] I'm meaning that my photo depicts the lowest spot on Old US 40 over the stream just east of Clark Center in the southern half of Section 29. See [1]; you'll note that the spot where 40 (old and new) crosses the main body of Mill Creek is actually in Section 30. They made a mistake in saying Wabash Township, as that's too far east (sorry for my reproducing their error); it's on the western edge of Marshall Township. PS, I suppose I'm sounding rather hostile, but that's not at all my intent. Nyttend (talk) 04:01, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I used the coordinates at the bridge's article and looked at Google maps and Acme maps and satellite view. I used those coordinates to get there. I thought that there needs to be a picture of the stone arch, and it is a steep climb down there to get a photo (I noted above that getting the photo was difficult). Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:08, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

"I'm confused by your saying that there's no stone arch bridge here; how can you be certain?" - I climbed down there 4 days ago, based on the location in the article, and took the photo above. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:11, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

The IHPA claims to have a picture of the bridge, but that one looks a heck of a lot like the other bridge near Marshall (which the IHPA doesn't show a photo for), so I think they got the wrong bridge again. Nyttend seems to have done his research here, so I'm willing to trust him, though it does mystify me as to how a bridge can be that thoroughly hidden when there's not all that much brush on the right side. I'm well aware of how easy it is to misidentify sites when they're overgrown and unmarked, so any additional confirmation here would be nice. (Nyttend, any chance you have and could upload those pictures of the Bridge in Portage Township? I'd like to see how that one's hidden too, and the article could use a modern-day picture anyway.) 04:12, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

That is definitely not the bridge at Old Stone Arch Bridge (Clark Center, Illinois), but it very well could be Old Stone Arch, National Road, based on the buildings visible through the arch in it and in my photo above. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:19, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

So you did climb down at the spot where I took my picture. I'm sorry for misunderstanding you: I thought you had taken a picture of the bridge at http://uglybridges.com/1137694 (a cursory glance at satellite view made me think it was the concrete bridge in your picture) or of the old road's site of crossing the main Mill Creek (39°21′59″N 87°46′20″W). Part of the issue is that this road's general abandonment makes me question why they would have spent any money on bridge construction at this spot post-1933 (why build a new concrete bridge, and how, when you're leaving the old brick pavement?); perhaps Dick Durbin got some federal grant? I don't see how the original bridge could have been at any other site, so I'm left expecting that they replaced the original bridge for some reason after it got NR status, or that it was heavily "improved" with concrete after it got NR status. Nyttend (talk) 04:45, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

See File:Bridge in Portage Township with snow.jpg. I generally don't upload images of sites that already have images (I've been working for a while on writing something for publication with a lot of my photos, and I don't want to put up stuff that I could publish otherwise), but when the newer photo is needed for something here, that's different. Having checked the PennDOT image previously, I drove past the site two or three times, looking for anything resembling it (my map and my GPS both confirmed that I was at the spot in question), but it wasn't until I went down on the little side street at 40°24′8.5″N 78°38′25.8″W that I saw anything. Snow kept me from seeing any stonework from above, the trees and brush would have obstructed my view in warmer months, and the fact that the bridge now carries two roads (Pennsylvania Route 53 and Portage Street into Cassandra) made me doubt that they'd left the original bridge in place. Go to [2] and look at the site in Street View (the bridge is right under the sign in the median, right of the blue adopt-a-road sign), and I'm supposed to believe that there's an 1830s bridge under that? But there definitely is, and it goes all the way through (another picture, otherwise not as good for uploading, shows some light coming through from the other side), despite its invisibility from above. Nyttend (talk) 05:03, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

(1) I downloaded the IHPA picture someone linked to above so I could enlarge it. Except for some damage between 2 and 3 o'clock on the arch, it matches my photos of the one in Marshall. It incorrectly describes it as "E of Clark Center off U.S. 40". (2) To me, the concrete bridge at Clark Center looks older than 1978 (the year of the NRHP for it). Also, the poor photos in the form do not show an arch, so it doesn't match the description. I think some error has been made in this nomination. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:55, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

It wouldn't be the first time; see Florence Mills House. And it isn't the first time that ILHPA has made a mistake with its uploaded documentation; [3] is the profile for the Duffy Site in Gallatin County, and the PDF link at the bottom of the page goes to the right URL (they're really systematic in their URLs), but somehow that URL is instead home to documentation for the Elijah P. Curtis House, three counties away. Nyttend (talk) 00:12, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

The trouble with the IHPA is that, unlike most of the other state SHPOs that post nomination forms online, they don't include the nomination photos along with the nomination text. The set of photos in that PDF are associated with the IHPA site inventory, which we already know is wrong, and the photo from the property information page was most likely filed incorrectly for the same reason. If someone could get a hold of the actual photos from the NRHP nomination, that would probably be very helpful; unfortunately, the NPS hasn't been able to provide Illinois nominations for a while now, as they were sent off-site to be scanned. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:26, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

They are in the process of digitizing all of them, aren't they? Also, I was wondering how they are stored. Are they on paper or something like microfilm? I've seen a couple of PDF scans that looked so bad that I wonder if they were taken from microfilm. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:08, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

They're digitizing a few states at a time, and apparently it's time now for Illinois. It's been a good while since I requested any Illinois nominations (and that only for a few sites whose nominations weren't on ILHPA HARGIS), although TheCatalyst31 might know better, as she's gotten copies for sites like the Benson Water Tower and the Mound City Civil War Naval Hospital a good deal more recently. I don't know much about how they're stored, except to say that all Illinois nominations I've requested have appeared to be scans of paper documents, and the same is true for nominations from other states. Nyttend (talk) 16:22, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I requested the nomination form for the bridge yesterday, and I got it today; it has a lot of helpful information that just might clear up some of the issues here. (If any of you want a copy of it, just email me and I'll send it along.) First off, the pictures in the nomination still look very similar to the ones we have of the Marshall bridge, except this time I don't see any of the buildings in the background. The top of it is in a similar setting to the picture Nyttend took, though, and the road looks abandoned. I'm starting to think the two bridges were just built from the same plans, since they were part of the same construction project. I requested a copy of the Marshall bridge's nomination to try and confirm they're different, but I haven't gotten that one yet.

More importantly, though, there's a map in the nomination that might explain all the issues we've been having with the location. It turns out the National Road was realigned twice in this area - once in 1933 to straighten a curve, and once in 1953 onto the modern US 40. The road that we've been calling the Old National Road appears to be the one left behind by the 1953 realignment, as it's straight through this area, but the bridge was part of the curved section abandoned in 1933. The coordinates of Nyttend's original photo are on the 1933 realignment, so I'm guessing the pictures we have are of a replacement bridge added in 1933. If you look closely at the trees south of the coordinates in the article, you can see a distinct line where the old alignment was, though it's not marked in Google Maps; the bridge we're looking for should be somewhere along there. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:55, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

TheCatalyst sent me a copy of the form, and it clears things up. The 1933 form of US 40 generally followed the old National Road, but there was a loop in the National Road to the south of the 1933 US 40. The bridge is/was on that loop. I was on the 1933 US 40 (which was replaced by the current US 40 in 1953). I believe Nyttend was at that same place. From what I can see, most of that National Road loop no longer exists. The stone arch bridge may or may not be there - I can't find it from the satellite view. I took the UTM coordinates in the form and used the 1927 North American easting & northing, and converted them to 1984 lat & long. I put these coordinates in the article about the bridge. That point is among a bunch of trees.

The nom form has photos taken in December 1977, but it was added to the register in 1978. Would these photos qualify as public domain under the "before 1978" rule? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 07:14, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Copyright on nomination forms

See Jeremiah Service House. This seems to be minimally paraphrased, and in some places simply a copy, of the nomination form - which was written in 2000 (after 1989), and not by government employee. My first inclination was to treat it all as a copyvio. The main author of the article, however, seems to imply (here) that, being a government form submitted for government action, the rules are different. Is that correct? Is the text in nomination forms public domain? Generic1139 (talk) 17:43, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

A very long time ago, I argued the same thing, but it was rejected by this project. The basic idea is that, like a court decision, a NRHP nom is a government document (actually a petition for a benefit) and can't be copyrighted. The no-copyright for court decisions was decided way back, perhaps in the 1820s. Other public documents that might be affected include thing like birth and death certificates, housing construction permits and real estate records, petitions to congress, legislative records. The whole point of these documents is that they be available to the public, so they've never been copyrighted. Of course all of copyright law changed in the last 30 years, but I don't think anybody mentioned anything about "oh yes, you can copyright government records." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:12, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

After a very quick check the United States Copyright Office states that the following is *not* copyrightable:

•works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources).

Not exactly what I was saying, but in the neighborhood. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:27, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

• A bit closer from NARA FAQs
  • "May I reproduce other NARA records?
    • "In general, all government records are in the public domain and may be freely used. We do have some donated or other materials that might be copyrighted. If you have questions about the records you are interested in, speak to the archivist or reference staff that handles those records.
  • "Can I get a signed permission form from NARA to use materials?
    • "NARA as a policy does not sign documents stating that particular records are not copyrighted because government records are in the public domain. For other materials, it is the user's responsibility to determine copyright."

Well, at least you can see that the idea of public records being non-copyrightable is not some freakish concept. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:44, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Once again, the situation is that nomination form author Dana Kopkowski, both in her capacity as a private person and in her capacity as the field coordinator of Indiana Landmarks, was able to create copyrightable works; she wasn't a federal government employee or an employee of a state government that releases its works into the public domain. Granted, the form itself is a federal work, but the text added to it, and the images submitted with it, are creations of a private person, not of the federal government, and the fact that it's submitted to the federal government doesn't affect anything. These are not federal records, because they were not created by the federal government. Parallels exist in other fields; there are even a few works with copyright owned by the federal government, because the private creator sold the copyright to the government. See {{PD-USGov-money}}; for example, it's well established that the federal government owns the copyright to the design of the Sacagawea dollar, and that was a private work created for submission to the federal government, so we have no reason to believe that other private works created for submission to the federal government are necessarily in the public domain. And in this situation, the nomination is very much an original work: it's not mere figures or date charts, nor something merely copied from government records, but prose written in an original manner by someone who wasn't working for the federal government. It's basically the same as private documents appearing in congressional papers collections, such as constituent correspondence, which are protected by copyright; if you're uncomfortable with this conclusion, an email to the listserv of the Congressional Papers Roundtable (an SAA chapter) would reach a lot of people, and as someone who's subscribed to the listserv, I can guess that you'd get good responses. Nyttend (talk) 19:49, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

As someone who has dealt professionally with issues similar to these (I am a contract manager in local government dealing with both intellectual property in contractor-produced work and with public disclosure laws), I have to agree with all of Nyttend's main points. Unlike the text of a statute or a court decision, the content of the nomination form was produced by a private individual (not a government employee) with no waiver of their rights under copyright law. The comparison above to court decisions is not instructive - briefs submitted to the court by a private attorney would in fact be subject to the attorney's copyright even if the judge's original content in the decision is public domain. (To the extent that the judge quotes any briefs, those quotes might be copyrighted.) Similarly, and perhaps counterintuitively, the text of a government contract is subject to copyright even if the contract is subject to public disclosure laws. (Exception: if the text was written by a federal employee then it's public domain.) And here's a key point: public information ≠ public domain. Just because a document is subject to public disclosure under FOIA or similar laws does not mean that its content can be reused free of copyright. The copyright is relieved only to the extent necessary to distribute the document's contents to the public for the public to be aware of the information therein - nothing more. (In fact, if government contract negotiators are careless, they can put their employer in a bind between respecting a contractor's copyright and complying with public disclosure laws. A good contract will always have a disclaimer/waiver regarding public disclosure.) Because NRHP nomination forms are public information we can read 'em to inform our writing; because NRHP nominations are not (necessarily) public domain we cannot (necessarily) copy 'em into an article. Thus, assuming Generic1139's assessment of Jeremiah Service House as a substantial copy of the nomination form is correct (I haven't verified), then it is indeed copyvio and needs to be rewritten or deleted. — Ipoellet (talk) 00:55, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I see now that at the same time as I was writing my input above, the article in question was deleted. Although my conclusion was that the article should be deleted, I would admonish the deleting admin that using admin tools to delete the article while this discussion was still in progress was somewhere between questionable form and inappropriate. The discussion should have been allowed to play out before acting to close it. — Ipoellet (talk) 01:00, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

This is a legal matter, not a matter that can be changed by an on-wiki discussion; any reasonable administrator would come to the same conclusion that a copyright infringement, being illegal, must be deleted. I would have tagged it with {{db-copyvio}} had it been merely a matter of close paraphrasing, because that's a discussable matter, but throughout the article's history we have entire sections copied directly from the nomination form (the second half of Architectural Significance being copy/pasted from the third paragraph of nomination page 10, for a random example), making this a blatant situation of copyright infringement. Nyttend (talk) 01:16, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

While I agree with you that this is a copyvio, as it was written by a private individual and is too recent to be public domain, I would have at least left it up until this discussion had concluded. Outside of extreme circumstances (which this isn't) I think it's best to wait for the discussion to play out and then decide what to do with it, rather than just decide these things unilaterally. I'm not going to restore the article, partly because I don't like to undo administrator's actions without their agreement and partly because I suspect this discussion will play out the same way as the last several discussions we've had on the matter, but I don't think this is such a pressing legal issue that it couldn't have waited a day for a consensus. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:37, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue this again. I haven't for about 7 years now. But I will correct Nyttend - NRHP nominations fit the definition of Government records provided at http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html citing (See 44 USC � 330113)

"Government Records are all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine-readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the United States Government under federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the Government or because of the informational value of the data in them." That's extremely clear except that it put everything in one sentence. Parsing it out

"Government Records (include) ... documentary materials ... received by an agency of the United States Government under federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved ... by that agency ... as evidence of the ... decisions ... of the Government or because of the informational value of the data in them."

Which makes the National Archives and Records Administration statement "In general, all government records are in the public domain and may be freely used." very relevant. That's all I'll say. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:03, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Note the bit about "in general"; they wouldn't say that without exceptions, and 44 USC §3301 (which is the quoted passage, despite apparently the different number) merely defines terms such as "government records" for the purpose of setting archival and records-disposal standards; the context is not that of copyright. Having worked in a congressional papers archive through most of graduate school, I've seen plenty of forms that must be signed by researchers, agreeing to respect various standards when using congressional staff archives (largely non-governmental documents collected by the staff for background research), and acknowledgement of copyright restrictions is part of this: we wouldn't impose such restrictions if the works in question were all in the public domain. Smallbones, if you'd like to see an additional suggestion that I won't make onwiki for fear of self-outing, check your email. Nyttend (talk) 02:59, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi User:Nyttend. Please note that the administration of access to records of the Legislative Branch is wholly different from those of the Executive Branch. Access to Executive Branch (i.e. Federal) records is guided by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, 5 USC 552). As described by NARA's Center for Legislative Archives, the records of the legislative branch are not subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (see Rules of Access. Therefore, your experience with a congressional papers archive is in line with what one would expect for that body of records, but not reflective of access to Federal records. Given the range of access and use restrictions that may apply to the nomination forms and associated materials, NARA's description identifies the possible FOIA exemptions and copyright; see National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records, 2013 - 2015. Hope this helps.--Pubdog (talk) 22:12, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for linking to that page, with its copyright warning. Since it was an academic archive with congressional papers, restrictions on access depended only on the congressman's stipulations, and I haven't previously worked with access restrictions set by law; I was only addressing copyright on documents submitted to the federal government by non-federal employees, because access and related issues such as FOIA are completely separate from copyright. After all, as works of the federal government, most Top Secret documents are in the public domain from a copyright standpoint, but a FOIA request for one of them won't work. Nyttend (talk) 22:34, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Coordinates (again)

I know you probably don't want to hear this again, about how bad many of the coordinates are, but before I gave four examples of bad coordinates that I had fixed in a haphazard way. Ovrt the last two days I've gone through the specific building and houses in List of National Historic Landmarks in Georgia (U.S. state), using Google Maps, Acme Satellite View, photos in the nom form, and info in the nom form (a sketch in there is particularly helpful, when they exist). (I didn't do HDs and other areas.) Some of the coordinates were OK, some were off a little, and some were off a lot. I put a comment in the edit summary of the ones I fixed. Some that I changed were good enough that if you went to that spot you would see the right building. But quite a few were so far off that if all you had to go on was the GPS coordinates, you would not get to the correct location. (I think there was one that the coordinates didn't seem right, but I couldn't find it.) Anyhow, one or so was off 200' in the N/S direction, which is likely the conversion from the 1927 UTM to modern lat & long, but the others don't seem to show a pattern of why they are so far off. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:54, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Going through a list systematically is probably the best way to do it, if you have time. I did the same thing early last year with the Louisville-Jefferson County entries (currently 476 sites, or 1/7 of all sites in Kentucky), as you can see at [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], and [9] — by checking Google's satellite view and the nominations, I am highly confident that all coords were correct to a degree unparalleled in any major city that hadn't had such a check of its sites' locations. Nyttend (talk) 05:57, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

I corrected a bunch of these for Alaska listings some years back. In limited cases, a few were reverted because they "weren't reflected in the (cherry-picked) source", the same rationale used to justify the vast number of incorrect coords for translator locations found in broadcasting articles, and possibly inherent in other classes of articles based upon government database entries. Elsewhere, editors have created new content and defaulted to said cherry-picked sources in lieu of actually paying attention, causing other editors to come along and correct these messes. The worst case I've seen were a handful of articles on Ketchikan-area listings, whose articles' location maps initially pointed to a spot in the middle of the Bering Sea some 400 miles from dry land and 1,000 miles from Ketchikan. It's hard to assume good faith when you realize this was the doing of an experienced editor who should know better. It's becoming harder to justify how it's my duty or obligation to repeatedly correct these coords year in and year out, so thanks to other editors who picked up the slack there. Of lesser importance to me, though possibly of greater importance to readers, are incorrect coords for listings which use more specific location maps. Anyone attempting to use those maps to locate the listings on the ground are likely to be disappointed. Once again, with the listings I've worked on, it's the same editor relying upon the same factually incorrect sources, despite the fact that the coords were corrected in the parent lists years before. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 11:40, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

AfC

A note left at WikiProject Nebraska led me to work over a rejected draft article on a Nebraska NRHP site, Draft:Morton-James Public Library Nebraska City, Nebraska. The article should be ready to go (though the title should probably be changed to remove the "Nebraska City, Nebraska" from the end), but I don't know the AfC process at all. If someone here's familiar with AfC and can move the article into mainspace without too much trouble, could they please take care of that? Thanks. — Ammodramus (talk) 23:37, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:00, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

I approved the article and moved it to Morton-James Public Library. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:38, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I left the article's creator a note mentioning that there were 25 more NRHP sites in Otoe County, and that it'd be nice... Ammodramus (talk) 14:16, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Merry Christmas! Here's a present...

Merry Christmas! Since I've been out of class for winter break for the past week or so, I've been working on updating the code that updates the Progress page. Before, the code only really worked with Firefox since it was set up to be synchronous, i.e. it queried one page after the other in strict succession and took forever (usually about an hour) to do so. Now I have completely rewritten the code from the ground up to make it asynchronous, i.e. it can query multiple county lists at once, speeding up execution immensely. In all of my tests, it has taken a maximum of 10 minutes to run, and the average run time is usually 4-5 minutes! A side effect of this rewrite is that the script now also works with other browsers, so you aren't forced to use Firefox to update everything. I've tested with Safari and with Google Chrome, and although I don't have Internet Explorer to test with, there's nothing in the code that should break it there either. Hopefully for those of you that pick up my slack and run the code yourselves this will be a great time saver. If anyone has any problems with the new code, please let me know, and I will try to fix them as soon as possible!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:14, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! I just tried it in IE, but the button to update doesn't show up. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:39, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

If the button isn't even showing up, I have no clue what's wrong. That much should work anywhere. Which version of IE are you using? Do you know how to open the JavaScript console in IE? Can you tell me if any errors are triggered when visiting the Progress page? If this button is not working then none of the other scripts I have written (renumber lists, check for commonscats, etc.) will work either since they all use the same method to make the button appear at the top of the page.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:43, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

I tried it in IE 11 (I normally use Firefox). There are no errors - only the update button doesn't show up. i don't know how to open JavaScript in console. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:06, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

According to this page, you should push F12 to get to the Developer tools, and you will be able to access the console from there. Clear out the console, visit the Progress page, and then tell me if any errors appear in the console, please.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:42, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

I get a lot of triangles with "!" them, but I can't seem to copy and paste but one of them. The first one is "DOM7011: The code on this page disabled back and forward caching. For more information, see: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=291337

User:Bubba73" Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:07, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Awesome! Now I might actually be motivated to update the stats myself every once in a while, since I use Chrome and usually didn't feel like waiting an hour for the script to finish. (That and I know how to update the maps now too, which also helps...) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:43, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

...and I take that back, because when I went to update the maps the SVG output had some clearly bad data in it; the counties looked fine, but the overall state percentages were all wrong. Any idea what's going on there? TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 05:02, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

I have no idea what happened. I see the bad edit, but I can't explain or replicate it. I just ran the code once from Firefox and a second time from Chrome and got the same results. Could you maybe try to revert my edit and then try again with Chrome to see if it happens again?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:42, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

I have noticed (as one of the more frequent runners of the SVG update, using Firefox) that it sometimes produces data that is incorrect (some geographies recorded as under-covered, some as over-covered, where I have a pretty good idea what the numbers should be). It's not replicatable, as far as I can tell. You do need to make sure the progress page you're running on (i.e., in the browser) is up-to-date, yes? I always check the SVGs before I upload them. Magic♪piano 13:55, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, up until just now you had to make sure the page visible in the browser was the most up to date version of the page (i.e. you couldn't just run the SVG code immediately after running the update code without refreshing the page first), so maybe that was what was messing with things a bit? I'm not sure how that would matter, but either way, I have just rewritten the code to use the wikitext of the Progress page rather than the parsed HTML. The wikitext is a constant regardless of the browser or local settings used, so hopefully this will cut down on some errors you guys seem to have been encountering. A by-product of this rewrite is that you can now run the SVG code after updating the statistics on the page without refreshing the page first! If anyone has any other trouble with the SVG code, let me know.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:08, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your work. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 07:18, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Seconded. Just that it be clear, I believe the incorrect data I've seen was *not* related to a lack of refresh of the browser page. Magic♪piano 19:22, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Historic House images of New Jersey

Lately, I've been creating commons categories for Houses on the NRHP in New Jersey for separate counties, but Bergen County, New Jersey has a lot of categories for existing houses that look like they converted to NRHP cats, and combined with existing images. The trouble is there are a nearly a half a dozen Blauvelt, Vanderbeck, Ackerman, Zabriskie, and other names to these houses. It gets kind of tough to sort out and avoid getting wrong. Does anyone else care to work on some of these? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:11, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Progress maps and another question

The progress maps are generated by taking the county data, going down the columns and seeing if the entry has a link to a live article and a link to a photo, right? What about National Register of Historic Places listings in Laurens County, Georgia, the Stubbs Park-Stonewall Street Historic District? It says to see Dublin Historic Neighborhood Association. Within the last two weeks I added photos to the Neighborhood Association article and gave it an HRHP info box.

Should Stubbs Park-Stonewall Street Historic District redirect to Dublin Historic Neighborhood Association? Should Dublin Historic Neighborhood Association be split into two parts (which will make two stubs)? (The Dublin Historic Neighborhood Association is probably not notable in itself.) Should Dublin Historic Neighborhood Association be renamed to Stubbs Park-Stonewall Street Historic District (and edited)? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:29, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

The progress data only checks if the article itself is a blue link; links in the summary section don't count. As for that specific HD, it seems like we should either move the neighborhood association article to the HD title or merge it into a brand new article on the HD; in either case, most of the stuff about the neighborhood association isn't appropriate for Wikipedia and should be gutted. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 19:56, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

I think move it to the HD name and rewrite it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:26, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

 Done Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:39, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

What about sites that have been delisted but are still listed in the county data (in a different section)? Are they counted in the totals? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:19, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

No, only current listings are counted.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:27, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

OK, that's the way I think it should be. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:35, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I think Boston has its own page - does it get counted properly? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:22, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

All counties in the country, even those that have multiple lists split up among several pages or that have multiple lists on the same page (e.g. state lists), are properly accounted for. The Progress page is set up in such a way that every single one of our lists is linked from that page, and the script which populates the data on the page knows where to look for each of them. The script visits each list linked from the Progress page, extracts the information about each site in the relevant list, and adds that information to the wikitext of the page. In the case where counties have sublists, there script tallies up all the sublists (and any duplicates there might be) and outputs the total in its own separate row. Each county has an ID attached to it, which you see in the first column of each state's table. The IDs for all the counties are used as labels in the SVG files, and each county is colored on each map according to the percentages displayed on the Progress page. If you want more information about how the data is gathered, see User:Dudemanfellabra/UpdateNRHPProgress.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Atlantic High School (Iowa)#Title confusion

Hi, there is a discussion on a page of interest to your project regarding a page split and titling issue. Please add your knowledge to the discussion. Thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 08:47, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

How to get NRHP form that isn't online

How can you get a copy of an NRHP form that isn't online (12000382)? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 07:15, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

WP:NRHPHELP#NRHP nomination forms tells you to send an email to nr_referencenps.gov or write snail mail to the address given there. There's also WP:NRHPHELP#Georgia, which leads to the state historic preservation office and eventually to this pdf (linked from this page) that outlines what went into the official nomination form. So while you're waiting for the actual nomination via email/snail mail, you can at least use this to write a draft in userspace or something.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:31, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you - I'll contact them. But the topo map in one of your links got me close to locating it and I think that the description in another link let me pinpoint it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:08, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Many listings after about the middle of 2010 are not availabe from the NPS, even for states with otherwise good coverage from them. Those you have to ask the state office for (until the NPS gets around to digitizing them). The one you are looking for falls within that time frame. Magic♪piano 21:44, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I may be going to the one above this month, but I was trying to get get the correct location (I think I have it now). Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:14, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I never have any trouble getting recent nominations from them with an e-mail request. They're slow (about a week) but they respond. — Ipoellet (talk) 01:16, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I think I got the location from what Dude... provided, but I emailed a request to confirm it. Also thanks for telling me about [[WP:NRHPHELP - I didn't know about it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:24, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Using PD photos from the nomination

Sometimes the photos accompanying a nomination are in the public domain. Does this project have any rules/standards/advice for using these? Any suggestions of which software to use to extract the photos from the PDF file? And how to determine which public domain tag to use on Commons? Just as an example, I'm looking at uploading a photo from the nom for Ute Mountain Fire Tower. The nomination and photos were created by Forest Service archaeologists; do I assume the PD-USGov-USDA-FS tag applies, or go with PD-US-1978-89? Obviously these decisions have to be made on a case-by-case basis, but do you have any good rules of thumb? Ntsimp (talk) 20:15, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

If the photos are attributed to USDA archaeologists, {{PD-USGov-USDA-FS}} is indeed the right template. As far as the software, see the final section of Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 June 16, where I asked the same question. Nyttend (talk) 03:58, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

The photos in that nomination are attributed to "Evan Debloois". The form was prepared by other (named) USFS staff, and does not identify who Debloois is. A brief search of fs.fed.gov does not turn up evidence that he was a Forest Service employee in 1979. Do you have other evidence that he is a USFS (or other federal government) employee? Magic♪piano 15:39, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is his LinkedIn profile. Ntsimp (talk) 16:20, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

As I understand, works are PD if produced by a US government employee "as part of that person's official duties". Do we need to rule out the possibility that the photographer was a government employee who took the photos on his own time and with his own camera, but allowed them to be used in the nom form without necessarily relinquishing all rights to them? Ammodramus (talk) 16:43, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

That's exactly the kind of thing I was wondering about. I'm thinking of just tagging it with {{PD-US-1978-89}} since that doesn't require me to research those details. Ntsimp (talk) 16:53, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that if a US government takes photos on his own time, he has the rights. It is only when he is doing work for the government that it is PD. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:22, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Given what you've said here, the image does not belong on Commons: there's significant room to doubt that the photo was taken by the federal employee while performing his own works, and as has been explained repeatedly in the past, the lack of a copyright notice in the nomination form is no guarantee of the total absence of a copyright notice. You are required to research the details before tagging something with PD-US-1979-89; just assuming that it's safe isn't enough. Nyttend (talk) 03:09, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Here you have a U.S. Forest Service regional archaeologist documenting the condition of government property on public land as part of his duties. It's public domain. Jonathunder (talk) 03:19, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Where would the copyright notice be, if not in the actual publication? Is the idea that there's some remote possibility that the photo was published previously? Ntsimp (talk) 04:25, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

See Magicpiano's comment: where's the proof that Debloois took the photos as part of his federal employment, given the absence of proof that he was a federal employee in the first place? Prepublication is an issue: unlike normally published books, whose publishers can reasonably be expected to ensure that you don't use someone else's pre-published image without permission, images from these forms wouldn't necessarily be checked for that kind of thing, both because unpermitted uses are often fair use, and because there's not much benefit to suing someone because he copied your image into a document that's just getting submitted as part of federal government paperwork. They often use others' images without permission; I could find you lots of examples with little difficulty, e.g. the final page of [10], from Google, and the architectural plans at the end of [11], which is a good example of fair use of previously unpublished documents, and those are just recently submitted ones in this Internet age: if there's not much chance of being sued nowadays for this kind of thing, how much less risk was there in the pre-Internet days, when essentially nobody would be able to see the nominations without making a request to NPS. As you probably remember, the nomination isn't the only document submitted for a property: you've got SHPO paperwork, correspondence with the nominator, presumably something certifying approval by, or lack of objection from, the owner(s), maps, HD site inventories, etc. It would be entirely reasonable for the photographer to insert an additional document (especially if there were a lot of photos and other works created by the same person) saying "All images are ©[year], Evan Debloois". That would suffice for notice (if it didn't, ring-bound publications would never have been copyrightable), but given NPS' habit of not scanning stuff that's neither nomination nor photos, you wouldn't have a clue that it existed. Nyttend (talk) 04:42, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

PS, demonstrate that Debloois was employed as a federal archaeologist (or whatever other federal position would have been responsible for this kind of situation) when the photo was taken, and that's sufficient; salaried employees documenting places that they're visiting as part of their employment are creating PD-USGov stuff, whether or not they're momentarily "on the clock"; if you can find this proof, it's not substantially different from all the Calvin Beale courthouse pictures, which are PD-USGov-USDA because he took them while making trips as part of his employment, even though photography wasn't in his basic job description. Nyttend (talk) 04:53, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I think it would be coincidental in the extreme if the Evan DeBloois who took the photos were a different man from the Utahn whose LinkedIn profile says he was Regional Archaeologist at the US Forest Service from July 1970 to August 1980. Ntsimp (talk) 15:19, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Maybe you can contact him through LinkedIn. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:10, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I feel Nyttend is being far too conservative here. The precautionary principle does not require absolute proof beyond any shadow of any doubt that an image is freely licensed (or PD). It requires us to eliminate any "significant doubt" about whether we can use the picture, not all doubt. Indeed, if you look at the examples given in the PRP policy, they are about a "We know we're in the wrong but we won't get caught" mentality rather than setting a really high standard of proof.

As long as we exercise due diligence, make good faith efforts to follow up on leads, and make reasonable judgments that an image is free, then we should be okay. Yes, sometimes photos and documents are included in a nomination that were previously published. The two examples provided by Nyttend were both clearly on their face produced for a purpose other than an NRHP nomination, and should not be used on that basis. Other times a nomination file will include old historic photos, sometimes of unclear provenance, which may have been previously published or otherwise placed under copyright during the long time they hung around before being used in the nomination - again, those probably should not be uploaded. But when some photos are taken close in time to the nomination (the Ute Mountain nom form is dated April 1979 and the photos are dated 1979) and there is no apparent other purpose or value to the photos other than the nomination, then there is no significant doubt that they were taken for and first published with the nomination. Some nominations may include a mix of original photos, historic photos, and reproductions of images from other places (such as blueprints) - in those cases, some of the images attached to the nomination can't be used by us, but others probably can.

Similarly, while it is theoretically conceivable that there is a copyright notice somewhere in the nomination file that wasn't scanned by NPS or SHPO, it is unlikely in the extreme. I have never seen such a notice anywhere, and I'd be very surprised if anyone else had. The most obvious spot to place such a notice would be in the nomination form itself or on the photo caption sheets. If a notice isn't there, while that doesn't absolutely prove there's no notice somewhere else, then it does remove all significant doubt.

By my lights, the PD-US-1978-89 is the safer bet than PD-USGov-USDA-FS because using a LinkedIn profile to identify the photographer as a USFS employee feels a bit tenuous to me, but I wouldn't contest another editor's judgment to the contrary. (I have used LinkedIn in the reverse way, however - to conclude that a photographer was not a federal employee. The difference between the two situations is dictated by the precautionary principle.) — Ipoellet (talk) 20:22, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Reverting photo from banned editor

I'm being harassed by a notorious banned editor. In particular, I was asked by a good-faith editor to take a photo of a particular (non-NRHP) building and the banned editor put his photo in the article instead. I've put in a much better photo now and have been reverted by the banned editor and now by one of his fans. What do I want from WP:NRHP? Just an honest reading of which is the better photo. Please pick photo 1 or photo 2 as the better photo.

• 
  (1)
• 
  (2)

Thanks for your honest and straightforward opinions.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:28, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Honestly, the original photo (1) is the better. --Hillbillyholiday ^talk 16:45, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

(1) has better lighting and contrast. (2) shows more of the building, but is a bit overexposed, and its contrast suffers from that and the cloudy conditions. From a strictly aesthetic perspective, I find (1) more attractive, and it does an adequate job of showing the building's architecture. Magic♪piano 17:17, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Number 1 is crisp, well-exposed, good contrast, provides fine detail on magnification. Number 2 is washed out, blurry, begrimed by the baseball diamond and the backstop fence. It's not even close (full disclosure: I worked with professional photographers/photo editors on magazine layouts for many years; they would have thought me nuts if I suggested the second photo over the first here).Dan Murphy (talk) 17:46, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

(2) shows the overall structure of the building better, but the bow windows, which can be seen clearly on (1), don't stand out at all on (2). Aesthetics-wise, (1) is head and shoulders above (2), for reasons stated by Magicpiano and Dan Murphy, and because of the poor framing: if I'd taken the picture, I'd have corrected the tilt and cropped to center the building and to exclude all that surplus sky and foreground. Ammodramus (talk) 17:56, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm being harassed No, you're not. Using the word harassment inappropriately diminishes the experience of those who are genuinely subject to it. Also, the original photograph is better for all the reasons already given.  — Scott • talk 20:48, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I can't give a single answer to your original question. I agree that for most purposes (1) is better, but (2) does a much better job of depicting the building as a whole, merely because it doesn't show just a portion of the building. Because (1) cuts off large portions of the building, there's no way to know how big the whole thing is, no way to understand that the same style appears all over this side of the building (as opposed to some garish mix of styles), etc. You can't say that either one is fundamentally better for all purposes, so a proper answer will depend on the intended use. If I were writing an article about it, I'd use both images: (2) to give the reader a sense of the building as a whole, and (1) to provide an attractive and detailed view of its central section. Nyttend (talk) 21:00, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

cuts off large portions of the building By my estimation, approximately 10% of the available totality of the viewable building is cut off in Photo #2, therefore representing about 90% of the available view. I wouldn't say that 10% is a "large portion", but then again, if someone cut off 10% of my hand, I might argue that it was a "large portion", so... each to his own. - 2001:558:1400:10:CCD9:FD80:B90A:DADA (talk) 22:12, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

#1 doesn't cut off very much and a viewer should be able to infer that only a little is cut off the edges. B a mark against #1 is that it is looking up at an angle. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:23, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree that it depends on the use. For the article where the first image is being used, Elizabeth Hirsh Fleisher, I think it does a better job than the other image would of showing the architect's style. For an article on the building itself, the second image might be better, but that's an editorial decision best discussed on the article's talk page. Jonathunder (talk) 21:15, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I like #1 better. The color, brightness, and sharpness are better. However, #2 has the advantage of showing the whole building but it does include a lot of wasted space. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:18, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that there are better places to photograph this building from, for instance like this, except get in tighter. The angle, lighting, distance, focal length, and quality of the camera and lens all make a significant difference. This one is far enough back so that it isn't looking up at an angle. It should use a little longer focal length lens to cut out the empty space on the sides and it needs to be made with a higher-quality camera, but it appears to have been shot from a distance through the two baseball fields. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:38, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I think (1) is the better photo, since it shows off the building's features a lot better and doesn't have as much noise as (2) does. (2) does show the building as a whole, which is nice (and would be worth including if there was a separate article), but (1) is better in enough other ways that it's my pick here. (And while I'm well aware of the controversy surrounding that particular editor, he's not banned from Commons, and I don't think his history should factor into this.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:50, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Is there smth known about the building? We could create an article and add the other photo there.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

• I prefer photo (1). It gives me a better feel for the building and makes me look at its details (and makes me want to go in and look around). Photo (2) is just meh, taken from too far away and partly obscured by fences and trees. It generates no interest in the building. Photo (1) is superior technically too, with better resolution and clearly taken with a better camera, while the pixels in photo (2) look cheap and nasty. At full size, the details in (1) are crisp and clear, but in (2) they're blurry and smudgy. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:04, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

@Boing! said Zebedee: If one were to want to go in and look around, one could follow this photo and this photo into the building's lobby, which Smallbones apparently did not bother to do; however, if you look closely at the second photo, the banned Wikipedia editor is visible right there in the lobby mirror. Horrors! (For more background on this dispute, you can go to www(dot)examiner(dot)com/article/deciding-the-fate-of-images-at-wikimedia-commons . I would provide the actual hyperlink, but we Wikipedians are prohibited from linking to it, because contrary to popular belief, Wikipedia is censored. Make sure to check out the photo slideshow in the story, as it constitutes a challenging quiz about what gets deleted for promotion at Commons.) This has been an enlightening process here. It's not often that a banned user can be shown to be improving the encyclopedia project, while a respected user in good standing can be shown to be playing political revenge games with the encyclopedia project. Enjoy your day. - 2601:42:C100:9D83:D2E:AAEB:FA46:AAD4 (talk) 13:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Ah, so that's what a banned editor looks like ;-) I'm not too interested in the back story myself, I just want to see Wikipedia made as good as possible - and replacing a good photograph with a significantly inferior one is not a step in the right direction. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:25, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Indeed it is not. Edit warring about it, as happened here, with "needlessly inflammatory rhetoric" such as "troll/trolling" in the edit summaries, seems unwise though, given prior arbcom advice. Still, hopefully nobody noticed that - I'm sure Smallbones has the best of intentions, and is not just pursuing a petty feud. Begoon ^talk 16:35, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

1). Far more interesting. Shows the structure of the building. Not sure how replacing it with 2) could be classed as an improvement to the encylopaedia, because it isn't. pablo 12:35, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

• 1 is far more interesting and technically better, 2 merely shows the whole building from a banal point of view. Acroterion (talk) 16:33, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

1). Technically far superior, visually pleasing and much more indicative of the architectural style, thus clearly more appropriate for the article in question. I'm surprised the question needed to be asked at all. Begoon ^talk 16:43, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Photo #1 is 15.8 has megapixels, 7 MB in size, which is 2.2 pixels per byte. Photo #2 is 11.2 has megapixels and is 2.12MB in size, 5.3 pixels per byte. The more pixels per byte (or the fewer bytes per pixel) means that there is a lot less detail per pixel. My camera has three settings for JPEGs, the higher quality naturally makes bigger files. Your camera may be set for small files and low-quality JPEGs. If you can set that, set it for the highest quality. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:28, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I Photoshopped the camera distortion out of photo 1, if this seems preferable. Andrew Jameson (talk) 22:36, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Actually, that one looks more distorted to me. I prefer 1 to 2, for various reasons stated above. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:49, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I think vertical lines appearing as vertical in the image are usually preferable, though if carried to excess other distortions can become objectionable. The geometric distortion removal on this image is an improvement, and this version of the image should be used instead of the previous version of this image. Generic1139 (talk) 22:59, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I disagree. I think the perspective in the 'shopped version looks unnatural and gives too much weight to the darker part of the building in the right-hand third. pablo 11:43, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Tips for future articles

Is there a place we can add tips and references and such in case somebody want to write an article on a historic site, like they have on WP:TWP? Because while I was working on my proposed article for US 301 in Georgia I found out that the John A. McDougald House is a bed and breakfast called the Beaver House Restaurant, and the William G. Raines House is another one called "The Historic Statesboro Inn." I'm still working on other stuff for that article too. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 13:11, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

If you're confident the sources are reliable, just start the articles with what you have. A short stub with a good source or two gives other people a place to add what they find. Jonathunder (talk) 15:48, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I tend to dump this kind of thing on the talk page for the site's county list, or in a relevant userspace page. See the McPherson line at User:Nyttend/Ohio NRHP/Sandusky, or the Whiteman line at User:Nyttend/Ohio NRHP/Greene, for a couple examples of what I typically do. Nyttend (talk) 05:18, 15 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

New article: Flounder house

Hello all!

I've drafted an article about flounder houses. A flounder house has a shed roof and lacks windows and doors on its tallest wall.

Would anyone here be interested in collaborating in making it ready to move to the mainspace? Feel free to dive in, say hey on my talk page, or send me a note.

Thanks for the help!

Verbistheword (talk) 18:45, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

AfD: Houston Heights Woman's Club

Resolved

Feel free to participate: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Houston Heights Woman's Club. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 04:53, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

rating predictions software

Has anybody else looked at the rating prediction site http://ores.wmflabs.org/scores/enwiki/wp10/xxxxxxxxx that predicts what the article rating should be? To use this take the permanent ID, e.g. 680557092 for the Francis McIlvain House, and replace that for the xxxxx's so http://ores.wmflabs.org/scores/enwiki/wp10/680557092/ . To get the permanent ID click on the "permanent link" link in the left hand column which will give you a url of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Francis_McIlvain_House&oldid=680557092 where the ID follows oldid= .

It predicts what the article rating should be, in this case "stub". For Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts it gives "C", both ratings being what the current rating is in theses cases.

There a couple of problems with the manual ratings we use:

• they are inconsistently applied by different people
• they are almost never updated

Thus the WMF came up with this system, to help decide when an update needs to be done, and likely for many other uses.

I'd like to suggest that we gradually update some of the ratings, using this tool along with manual ratings.

Any ideas or feedback?

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:33, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Does WMF have a discussion anywhere of the algorithm this tool uses? I tried out the tool on Dr. Agustín Stahl Stamm House, and it gave a prediction of C followed closely by Start. That quite surprised me because I had rated the article as a stub. — Ipoellet (talk) 00:44, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

While I wouldn't call it C-class, that article's about 1500 characters long (the cutoff for DYKs) and it's got enough historical information that I'd call it Start-class if I were assessing it. That being said, I think this could be useful for general re-evaluation purposes if we understand how the algorithm works. I've seen plenty of articles that had a lot of words but very little content (e.g. an entire paragraph of a two-paragraph article describing the nature of its NRHP designation), so I think we'd still want to manually evaluate everything; our standards seem to be close enough on most things that I'd rather take the risk of differences than use an algorithm. (We do have an official set of assessment criteria to smooth out those differences, though since I wrote most of those I may be a little biased towards them.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:11, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I would call that article a Start as well, but in my mind, "C" is just "long start", and I hardly ever apply it when actually rating. I looked up some of what this service is doing, and it seems to be machine learning, i.e. it looks at a database of articles that have been manually rated and then "learns" what to rate a new article it encounters. This page gives an idea of the accuracy of the algorithm (about 61%) in matching what the average human would rate articles. Here is the raw code, which I haven't had time to look over. Machine learning is way above my head in terms of coding, but if this code does what it says it does, I would say it could serve as a pretty good guideline on how to rate an article, but shouldn't override human judgement. It could definitely be used in extreme cases like someone rating something B or C when it is clearly a stub, but the difference between, say, Start and C, are too nuanced for this system to pick up on (yet?).--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:42, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Seems to me that what would be most relevant for this project is how the tool affects ratings between "stub" and "start", which we feed into our net quality rating for articles. — Ipoellet (talk) 01:48, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. One place to check for more info is Meta ORES. I've been checking some old articles to see if the rating has been updated. As expected many of them are 5 or 6 years old. I've removed the rating on a few - AFAIK that's the method of requesting a new rating.

I definitely do not think we should leave something as important as rating to a mere computer program, human input is crucial. The thing I like about ORES is that it enables more frequent rating revisions and might even point us in the right direction on where we should revise. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:24, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Please also see User:Fuzheado/ORES experiment

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:28, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Where the algorithmic rating scheme particularly fails is project-based ratings. Take, for example, Rose Valley, Pennsylvania. While it might be a C in general, it is lacking in coverage of the embedded NRHP historic district, its significance, unifying theme, architecture, dates, etc., and is at best a "start" for the NRHP project. Generic1139 (talk) 16:13, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Generic's right. An article on a high school could have a well-referenced match-by-match description of the wrestling team's journey to the 2012 state championship; three or four paragraphs on faculty and enrollment and SAT scores; and an NRHP infobox plus the single sentence "It was built in 1931 and added to the NRHP in 2003", sourced to NRIS. Such an article might be a C for WikiProject Wrestling, a start-class for WikiProject Schools, and a substub for us.

By our standards, a start-class article includes "[a]t least one important aspect of the topic covered in reasonable detail". I don't think that an algorithm, presumably working from things like word count and number of citations, can make that kind of content-based assessment. — Ammodramus (talk) 13:50, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Mixed up photos

I suppose this should be added to the errors page, but I'm curious if this has been encountered before. The NRIS page for the U.S. Post Office (Auburn, Alabama) currently has the photos for the U.S. Post Office (Opelika, Alabama), while the latter page has no photos (links for Auburn and Opelika). The photos are correct in the articles, since the actual buildings can be easily checked from their addresses. I guess there was confusion when the photos were uploaded, since they're both listed as U.S. Post Office in the same county. This seems like a bigger error than I'm used to seeing at these pages. kennethaw88 • talk 03:33, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I've seen cases like that before, where the photos (and in some cases, the entire nominations) are swapped; the example that came to mind has since been fixed, so I don't have one to link to, but it happens. It might be worth getting in touch with the folks at the National Register (the same people who handle nomination requests, it looks like) and seeing if they can fix that. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 05:17, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Has anyone Googled themselves?

Or rather, their username related to photos? I do it every so often, and find my pictures being used in all sorts of different sites. And has anyone been contacted about having their photos used? I've had a travel agency and a city chamber of commerce do that so far. With the amount of pictures we've all taken, I think it's interesting seeing how they're used outside of the project and Wikipedia itself. Cheers, y'all.  ;) --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - General Health ‖ 04:40, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I looked out of curiosity, and got some... interesting results: a Dutch blog about America, a real estate article that picked a pretty low-quality photo of mine for some reason, and a HuffPo article that credits me for a picture I didn't take. (And that's once I get past all the results for the person who has the same username for their League of Legends account.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 05:11, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Two researchers used my photos for Brinkhaus Saloon Livery Barn and Wendelin Grimm Farmstead in a multiple property submission (http://www.mnhs.org/shpo/nrhp/docs_pdfs/0058_chaskabrick-MPDF.pdf) for Chaska Brick Resources in the Vicinity of Carver County. They asked for my permission, of course, and I was happy to help them out. I've also had people asking to use my pictures of the Neptune Memorial Reef for their own travel articles. Minnesota Public Radio also used my original pictures of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in a news story about its collapse, but they didn't ask first. Someone contacted them on my behalf and reminded them of the Creative Commons license. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 15:44, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, that was interesting. Took a little work to separate photos by Ammodramus the Wikipedian from photos of Ammodramus the sparrow genus, but a "-sparrow" in the Google search window eliminated most of the bird pages. I release my photos into public domain, since I don't care at all about having them attributed to me. Still, lots of results.

Found one of my photos used at an NPS site. One of my photos of the Nebraska Sandhills got repeated use. A photo of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln was used to illustrate a story about hazing at the Pike house at Cal State Northridge.

Surprisingly, the class of photos that saw the most use were the ones that I took of courtrooms, generally inside NRHP-listed courthouses. These got used as generic courtroom shots on hatfuls of pages devoted to legal issues. Ammodramus (talk) 04:22, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I've found some of my photos use elsewhere. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:32, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I've gotten lots of appearances, but that's to be expected when I've uploaded 17363 own-work images. I found this one several years ago, West Virginia Public Radio, and even Britannica (credit). Also run a Google search for <"the chadwick" indianapolis>; you'll find stuff like [12], and the source image is one of several that's been used for years now at the Indiana SHPO's website. Nyttend (talk) 03:27, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Arkansas NRHP nomination documents available

NRHP nomination documents for 2,631 Multiple Property Submissions, National Historic Landmarks, and Single Properties (along with three processing checklists / finding aids for each category) are available through the National Archives Catalog. The forms are available under entry National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: Arkansas (NAID 24519285). 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) 12:27, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

They're also available (with color photos and summaries of restricted/redacted listings) at Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. Magic♪piano 14:51, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Palace Theatre (Marion, Ohio)/GA1

Unresolved

Hi. I am reviewing Palace Theatre (Marion, Ohio) for GA status. But just now I found that the nominator Atmospheric theatre is away since November 2015. I tried to ping him/her in vain. I would request the members of this WikiProject to take a look at the review and help promote this well-written article. The issues are minor and can be fixed easily, I believe. Thanks, Sainsf <^>_{Talk all words} 04:59, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Focus down?

I link on the nomination forms from the county listings and I get "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable". It has been like that for hours. Is this temporary? I'm going on a trip Monday and I need to see some of these (the coordinates of most houses are not accurate enough to know which one it is.) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:01, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

It's down for me too, and has been since this morning at least. I assume it's temporary, since outages like this have happened before, but I couldn't tell you how long it will last. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:23, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Seems to be back up and running now.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:21, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

All the URLs got changed

NPS has just taken down their existing URLs, replacing them with a similar but different set of URLs. For example,

http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/00001069.pdf

has become

http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/00001069.pdf

Of course, this breaks tons of URLs; Special:Linksearch finds more than ten thousand appearances of http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/ links. Someone's raised this at WP:HD#Tool to flip NRHP URLs?, and I've suggested a template similar to {{OHC NRHP}} — a bot would replace current URLs with a template that transcludes the URL, with the exception of the refnum, which would be supplied in a parameter. Two issues: (1) Would project members please comment on the WP:HD thread? (2) Do we already have a template that does this? If so, what is it, and if not, is it a good idea? Please offer those opinions, as well, at WP:HD. Nyttend (talk) 03:50, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I commented there, but on a project-specific note User:Elkman will have to fix the links in the infobox generator, which are now pointing to the wrong place. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:11, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I notified him just before leaving the note at WP:HD. Nyttend (talk) 04:17, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

PS, note that the whole conversation is just below my signature; please don't go to WP:HD. Nyttend (talk) 12:23, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Moved from WP:HD

Thanks to Trappist the monk for moving this here; he's right that this is a better place to have the discussion. Nyttend (talk) 12:19, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Because topics at the help desk are quickly archived:

Moved from WP:HD

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:35, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

For a couple months, I've been adding URLs like http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/00001069.pdf in references for NRHP sites in Wisconsin. Last week those URLs stopped working. A guy from the NRHP suggests that I use the form http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/00001069.pdf instead, moving "pdfhost".

I just did that by hand on National Register of Historic Places listings in Calumet County, Wisconsin and it seems to work fine. But I'm guessing I have 200 such links scattered over 40 pages. This sounds like a job for automation. Is there some bot (or something) that could hunt down URLs of this form and transform them? Mine would all be in pages linked from National Register of Historic Places listings in Wisconsin and its children. If someone wants a guinea pig to test on, National Register of Historic Places listings in Wood County, Wisconsin still has a bunch of the dead URLs. Jeff the quiet (talk) 02:46, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Why do they do things like that? (that's a rhetorical question). This insource: search shows that there are some 19,000 pages that use pdfhost:

insource:pdfhost

The question then is: is it just Wisconsin? or are all NRHP pdfhost links broken?

The problem should be easily solvable with a simple AWB search and replace:

Find this:

http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/

replace with this:

http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/

Repeat ad nausium til done. Caveat lector: this is not tested; it may be necessary to have the entire url including the file name and extension be part of the search and replace.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:27, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

[edit conflict with Trappist] Two suggestions: bot and template. For one thing, you're grossly underestimating the work: Special:Linksearch finds at least ten thousand links to URLs beginning with http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs. I strongly doubt that you're interested in manually doing all those! Somewhere, we need a bot, but I question whether it's the best choice merely to update the links: instead, the bot should replace the URLs themselves with a template. Some time ago, the Ohio Historical Society made a similarly annoying URL change, so I requested a bot to update the links, but someone suggested that I create a template that the bot would then add to pages: the template provides the whole URL, except for the number at the end, and a single parameter takes the number at the end. This way, if they change their URLs again, we only need to make a single edit to the template. This has worked well with Ohio, and I doubt that it would be a significant problem for the federal website. I'm going to leave a note at WT:NRHP regarding this very-big problem and requesting input; one of our project members, Dudemanfellabra, runs a NRHP maintenance bot, so if he's willing to do this kind of stuff, it should be rather easy to finish. Nyttend (talk) 03:45, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree that a bot and a template would be the best solution. I don't think there's a template right now (though Template:NRHP Focus is close to what we want). As for the bot, the only tricky thing there is that we'd probably need to run it over all articles, rather than just NRHP-related articles like that bot usually does; I've cited nomination forms on plenty of biographies and city articles, for instance, and we'd want to update those too. (I assume this wouldn't be a technical problem, but the bot run would presumably take a bit longer than usual.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:07, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I guess I should have made clear before that the guy from NRHP didn't say that they intended to make the pdfhost.focus.nps.gov URLs stop working. He said, "We did switch our database a little while ago and that may be throwing some links off... Please let me know if this doesn't answer your question and I'll forward it to the database people to see if they've changed something." So if transforming the URLs on our pages is difficult, I can ask him to have someone look into making the old URLs work again. The ten thousand broken links might help our cause. Then we could see where that goes before making changes on our side? Jeff the quiet (talk) 05:00, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

At the original conversation, Editor Jeff the quiet wrote: I can ask him to have someone look into making the old URLs work again. I think that should be done because it can take the pressure off to have a 'fix' now.

I've e-mailed that request to the guy at NRHP. I'll post here when he answers. -Jeff the quiet (talk) 13:33, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

The pdfhost.focus.nps.gov URLs should be working again. The guy from NRHP just e-mailed to say that some security change on their side broke the URLs, but it should be fixed now. I tested a few links and they work for me. (Just as Monkbot closes in on getting them all changed on our side. Sigh.)

- Jeff the quiet (talk) 14:10, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Also at the original conversation, Editor TheCatalyst31 wrote ...Template:NRHP Focus is close to what we want. A quick look at these search results suggests that most uses of these urls are in cs1|2 templates where all you want is the url:

insource:"pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text"

insource:"pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Photos"

There are external wikilinks that use these urls. It would be simple enough to create a template that takes two parameters: |id= and |title= perhaps. If |title= is not set, the template produces a plain url for the identified document; this form would be used in cs1|2 templates. If |title= is set, the template produces an external wikilink.

As an aside, it seems to me that {{NRHP Focus}} is misnamed and should perhaps be renamed to {{NRIS Focus}} because it produces links to NRIS.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:15, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

• Changing the template name National Register of Historic Places would be a pointless make-work exercise. I'd have to look again to remind myself what "NRIS" stands for.
• We've seen this happen before (see NPS Focus has been updated, Template talk:NRHP Focus and Fixing Pennsylvania), and yes the solution is something like Template:NRHP Focus and Template:NRHP-PA.
• Of course if the .gov guys can redirect the old URLs to the new URLs that would save us a lot of work, but confining the URLs to one template is good programming practice and will help keep this problem from repeating in the future. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:41, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

From a lurker to a bot operator, who could eventually handle the change: please note someone could have already replaced some obsolete links manually and have not made any public announce about that; so the bot should seek for both obsolete and current URL's structure to replace them with a template. --CiaPan (talk) 11:43, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Some have been converted:

insource:"focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text"

insource:"focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Photos"

Are these links only for NRHP nomination forms? If so, that might suggest an appropriate template name.

Are there other pdfhost links that are broken and that do not match these patterns?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:18, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Please also include links to NHL documents in any bot work:

insource:"pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text"

insource:"pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Photos"

Given that NHL and NRHP documents are sometimes different (i.e. in the new Focus scheme they have different assetids for the same refnum), it is unclear to me if/how {{NRHP Focus}} can be adapted to that case. Magic♪piano 13:12, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

As a start, I've created {{NRHP url}}. It takes two parameters: |id= and |title=

{{NRHP url|00001069}}

{{NRHP url|id=00001069}}

https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/00001069_text

{{NRHP url|00001069|Central Park Historic District}}

{{NRHP url|id=00001069|title=Central Park Historic District}}

Central Park Historic District

The first for is suitable for use in cs1|2 templates:

{{cite web |title=Central Park Historic District |url={{NRHP url|id=00001069}} |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=2016-03-03}}

"Central Park Historic District". National Park Service. Retrieved 2016-03-03.

A similar template can be created for NHLS urls. Are there others that use this same basic url?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:52, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Modified {{NRHP url}} to take a third optional parameter |photos=y so that it will create the proper link to the identifier's associated photos pdf document.

I have created {{NHLS url}}. Because it is so similar to {{NRHP url}}, I also created a shared template {{NRHP url/core}}. If ever the base url changes, {{NRHP url/core}} is the place to fix it.

I have the beginnings of an AWB script to replace the dead urls with appropriately configured {{NRHP url}} or {{NHLS url}}. This AWB script will probably get robotized.

In the process of doing all of this, I discovered {{NRHP listing}} which has similar functionality. It has two transclusions so I propose to convert them to {{NRHP url}} and then delete {{NRHP listing}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:29, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Another caveat lector: This url is in National Register of Historic Places listings in Monterey County, California:

http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/00000856.pdf

My AWB script converts it to:

{{NHLS url|id=00000856}}

which produces this which doesn't work:

https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/00000856_text

Because the extant url is broken, I don't know if it ever worked. I do know that if I change the url to point to NRHP instead of NHLS:

https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/00000856_text

I get to a document that apparently applies to this asset. I don't know of a way to avoid this kind of GIGO failure.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:28, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

See National Historic Landmark if you're not already familiar with it. Basically, the NPS has for years been maintaining a separate collection of URLs for National Historic Landmark nominations, and this was the ordinary format for NHL nominations, but not ordinary NRHP nominations. Nyttend (talk) 19:41, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Sorry, what? I get that NPS has been maintaining a separate collection of URLs for National Historic Landmark nominations but after that I'm having trouble making sense of what you wrote. Can you clarify?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:53, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

This is one of those annoying things. Some NHLs have only a single document set, or only one that has been made available online, and it may be found at either ...NRHP... or ...NHLS..., or both. I doubt there is a reliable way to tell at which link available documents are (or were) to be found, without actually testing them. I would just convert like-for-like, and leave finding broken ones for a separate operation, or for generic dead-link finders to flag. Magic♪piano 19:46, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Ok. Should I let the script edit a handful of pages to see that I haven't badly broken anything and then go on to WP:BRFA?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:53, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Two quick comments. 1) A url template is the clear right answer here, so we don't have to go through this next time. Even if someone at NRHP gets the old links to work again, changing now is the right thing to do. I say test the script on a small number of pages. 2) I have used the new format, on Fox River Paper Company Historic District for one. I was going to wait a day to two to see if the old link outage was temporary or permanent, but got busy in real life. Generic1139 (talk) 20:59, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I also have manually updated the URLs on a substantial number of articles, but I've stopped now because the template is clearly the right direction to go. We'll need a clear announcement when the new template (as opposed to a script/bot) is ready for prime time. — Ipoellet (talk) 21:44, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I think that the templates are ready for prime time. Use them. Report any results that aren't correct (iaw the documentation).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:12, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

First 125 articles modified by script to use {{NRHP url}} and {{NHLS url}} are listed in my sandbox.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:08, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Task to replace urls with templates is now at BRFA.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:35, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

URLs to hurricanes, too

NOTE: request moved to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tropical_cyclones&oldid=708245650#Massive_URL_change_of_Tropical_Cyclones_Reports_at_NHC

---

Hi, could anybody resolve the similar problem with hurricanes? The National Hurricane Center website has changed paths to Tropical Cyclones Reports PDF files, e.g.:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL012004_Alex.pdf

has changed to

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL012004_Alex.pdf

– the file name lost its TCR- prefix and the last segment of the path /pdf got replaced with /data/tcr. Links list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?target=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nhc.noaa.gov%2Fpdf%2FTCR&title=Special%3ALinkSearch

CiaPan (talk) 12:26, 4 March 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)

After reviewing this list, what I should say really makes Suffolk stand out for a county outside New EnglandOf course, it was settled around the same time by the English, so it's sort of New England as a practical matter is that it achieved 300 without having a large city within its boundaries. Daniel Case (talk) 18:02, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I wish I had read this when you posted it, since Suffolk County, New York is where I spent most of my life. Two things that the New York County and Suffolk County lists have in common are "Listings by town" sections, that I think should also be added to the Nassau County and Westchester County master lists. A couple of things that I'm sorry about is that when I was in the Tri-State Area last September was that I mistakenly took another picture of Tuthill-Lapham House when what I really needed was Benjamin King Woodhull House. Also I passed up an opportunity to get a pic of the Jamesport Meeting House, assuming it was already posted. So, if I don't capture these places the next time I'm up there, perhaps they should be added to the next WLM contest, or some other contest. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 15:25, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Personally, I don't care for having lots of summary tables of counts by X geographic area. They become very awkward/fussy/tedious to update when there are new listings (or delistings), and are subject to error and growing out of date as errors accumulate over time. On a similar note, I don't think 302 (in Suffolk) is too many rows to include in a single list article for the county. The way Suffolk (as one example) is broken out into multiple lists increases search and navigation difficulty for readers to find the information they want. For myself, I would hope we would keep lists as large as possible, subject to intuitive divisions when there must be sub-county lists, but (generally) not larger than single counties. How large "as large as possible" is I don't know, but more than 300. I have started thinking about merging the 6 Multnomah County lists, but am concerned that nearly 600 rows may still be too many. — Ipoellet (talk) 22:21, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Meaning merge all Portland listings, too? I hope you'll reconsider. That list would be way, way too long. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 22:24, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Not to worry. My thinking was at the level of the vaguest of musings - nowhere close to actual execution. — Ipoellet (talk) 04:28, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

We broke up Chester County, PA 6 years ago and it was definitely needed due to loading time (~317, divided into 3). I don't think there would be much trouble with loading time now, except perhaps for mobile. Now I doubt 600 would cause any loading time problems, but maybe human comprehension (getting around on the page) would likely be very difficult for newbies. I'd leave everything as is, until a clear problem arises Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:35, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Also keep in mind that for users who look at coordinates using Bing Maps, they can only see 200 sets of coordinates at once, so lists should probably stay below 200 listings. (While this didn't use to be a big deal, ever since Google Maps dropped proper support for KML files I imagine people are using the alternatives a bit more.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:39, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

@Smallbones:, was loading time the only driver for breaking up Chester County, or were there other considerations as well? — Ipoellet (talk) 04:32, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

As far as I remember it was just loading time, the Bing map limit now would also convince me to split. I do agree however that breaking a county up into 10 here, 30 there, 50 elsewhere - is not the way to go. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:48, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, there are definitely a few broken-up counties here and there that I wouldn't mind merging back together (like Greenville County, SC for instance). Splits should only be necessary for counties that are near or over 200 listings (and, of course, between different counties and independent cities). TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 05:20, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Historic district not listed

A sign in Salisbury, North Carolina says "West Square Historic District National Register of Historic Places 1975". And yet when I asked about this no one at the local library could provide evidence. I had already tried to include it in the Rowan County list but was reverted. I asked again for more information but they're having trouble finding it.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:01, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Presumably contacts at The West Square may have some information. According to the city, it is (at least) a local historic district. It is possible that the district is part of the National Register Salisbury Historic District (listed 1975, enlarged several times), but neither of the above resources gives detailed geographic information. All of the nomination forms for Salisbury Historic District are linked at that article; if you are familiar with the geography, you may be able to tell from them if West Square is included within it or its various enlargements. Magic♪piano 22:28, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

I have slow Internet at home so going to a web site I haven't gone to yet won't work. Anyway, Salisbury Historic District does say 1975. I'm just surprised the people at the library had such a hard time coming up with anything to show just what happened. A source says Fulton-Mock-Blackmer House is a contributing structure to the West Square District.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

So I went to the library yesterday and talked to the woman. She wasn't there the first time but the woman who was showed me a book listing the historic districts that were on the NRHP and West Square was in there. The second woman couldn't give me anything more specific. She did show me (on what I believe is called a nomination form) that Fulton-Mock-Blackmer House is in the Salisbury Historic District.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:32, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

From this Salisbury design guide:

On October 15, 1975, the City of Salisbury adopted an ordinance delineating the West Square Historic District and setting forth special zoning and architectural guidelines to help preserve it. A Historic District Commission was created to ensure that all future changes in the West Square Historic District were consistent with the guidelines. One month later the Salisbury Historic District was nationally recognized through placement on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Register district encompassed the historic downtown commercial area as well as the adjoining West Square residential neighborhood.

So, essentially, the (national) Salisbury Historic District = (local) West Square Historic District + (local) Downtown Historic District. Apparently, boundary increases in the national district coincided with boundary increases in the local West Square HD. Andrew Jameson (talk) 19:16, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I added one additional detail above based on reading someone's response more carefully. If someone could just provide the proof of what the West Square District actually is, I could redirect or do something.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:48, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Georgia NRHP navbox

I recently found out a lot of articles and lists in Georgia don't have navboxes. Since other states have them, is there anyone who wants to create a Georgia-specific NRHP navbox? I tried to put it in the requested articles section, but I couldn't format it properly. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 15:02, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

I would appreciate it but I don't know how to do it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:28, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Could you provide a link to such a navbox from one of those "other states"? I'm just not clear what kind of navbox you're talking about. Nyttend (talk) 13:14, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I assume he means something like Template:National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina, but for Georgia. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:40, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

That, and South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Florida, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera... ---------User:DanTD (talk) 12:28, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

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There are up to 30 one-year ASP accounts available to experienced Wikipedians through this partnership. To apply for free access, please go to WP:ASP. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 21:34, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

List of courthouse buildings in the United States: A nominated for deletion

List of courthouse buildings in the United States: A, an article which may be of interest to this project, has been nominated for deletion: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of courthouse buildings in the United States: A. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 18:35, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Delisting demolished buildings

How do we handle demolished listed buildings? Do we simply delete all mention, or note somehow that the building once existed and was listed? Vzeebjtf (talk) 02:51, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

If a building is demolished but still listed (which quite a few demolished buildings are, since the NPS is slow to update things), then just leave it in the list (and maybe note in the description that it's demolished). When demolished buildings are removed from the Register, they can be moved to a "Former listings" section below the list (e.g. this listing in Cook County, IL). Is there a specific example that you're wondering about? TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:05, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, Sheffield Farms Stable, which is number 78 on National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan above 110th Street, was demolished between May 2009 and June 2011, as documented by Google Street View; a building owned by Columbia University is nearing completion on the site. Vzeebjtf (talk) 03:48, 28 March 2016 (UTC) The demolition is discussed prospectively at: Gray, Christopher (January 13, 2008). "Vanished City Industry Uncovered in Land Fight". The New York Times.. Vzeebjtf (talk) 05:46, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Help—bad URL at Focus?

I've been trying to find the nom form for the Crawford Hill Historic Residential District (refnum 85001874) in Nogales, Santa Cruz County, Arizona. Clicking the refnum link from National Register of Historic Places listings in Santa Cruz County, Arizona gets me to the expected Focus page, from which I can get the photos just fine. However, the link for the text part of the nom form doesn't go anywhere. Same thing happens when I try to go straight to the nom form: http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Photos/85001874.pdf takes me to the photos OK, but substituting "Text" for "Photos" in the URL leads nowhere. I tried Googling the phrase ("extensive residential district is situated on Crawford Hill"), from the first page of the nom form, but got no hits. Could anyone suggest an alternative way of finding the nom form? Thanks. — Ammodramus (talk) 14:39, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Depending on what you need the nomination for, I found an alternate link for the Multiple Resource Area nomination that contains the district; if you're looking to write the article it may not be ideal, but if you're looking to visit the district and take pictures it should be useful, as it includes the district's boundaries and mentions some of its more significant homes. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:00, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Some nominations only have one of Text or Photos digitized. This would appear to be one of those. Magic♪piano 15:34, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Normally when I see a nomination like that, though, it shows the usual "This nomination has not been digitized" placeholder where the other half of the nomination would be. This one shows the actual text of the nomination in the preview and then just doesn't load it, which makes me think the file is corrupted or something like that. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:55, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Belatedly, thanks for the suggestions. I'll see what I can do with TheCatalyst's MRA form. I was hoping for a detailed map—Nogales has changed its house-numbering system since the HD was listed, so figuring out which present-day address goes with which address in the nom form is going to be a bit of a headache. Might have to limit myself to descriptions like "is part of the Crawford Hill HD", with no mention of contributing vs. non-contributing, or categorization by date or architectural style. Son cosas, as they say a half-mile or so south of the district, de la vida. Ammodramus (talk) 15:30, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

If you have time, you can also try requesting the nomination from the NPS by email (which, in hindsight, I should have suggested a week ago.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 17:26, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

75% illustrated before July 4

We'll reach the 75% illustrated mark within 4 months, probably in 2 months (May 1?). Should we make plans for some type of celebration? I base this on the Progress page, where we currently stand at 74.4%. Four months ago we were at 73.7%, so if we keep the same pace we'll get to 75.1% at the start of July. But the last 4 months were pretty slow since it's winter, as the temperature rises and the day gets longer, I predict we'll go a lot faster.

Maybe we could have a prize for the 66,887th photo entered on the progress page. Only 530 left to go! (Yes, adjustments will have to be made for the number of new listings). Any other ideas welcomed. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:54, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

We're now at 74.7% with 314 photos to go. New ETA - April 15. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:47, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

According to the latest Progress Page update, we reached 75.0% some time between March 26 and today, April 2!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:54, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Actually not quite so fast; this was a false alarm from rounding. See below.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:31, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Link to wrong article

At National Register of Historic Places listings in Greene County, Georgia, #23, Union Manufacturing Company, linked to a city that has nothing to do with this building. I commented out the link, but it still links to it. Do you have to completely remove it? (I thought I'd leave in the comment so someone would know that it is the wrong link.) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:08, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

The template links to the "name" if the "article" is blank. What you need to do is use a disambiguating article name, like Union Manufacturing Company (Union Point, Georgia) in the article field. Magic♪piano 01:14, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

That is a good idea, but at present the dab would have only one link, Union Manufacturing Company, and that might be against policy. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:17, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

I've done what you suggested, but left it as an empty article. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:19, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Search for the image that put us above 75% Illustrated

As pointed out a few sections above, we have been closing in rapidly on the 75% Illustrated milestone, according to the Progess page statistics. As of the latest update to the page, it appeared we had crossed that mark some time in the past week, between the last update on March 26 and the update today, April 2. Upon further inspection, it seems we are almost there, but not quite yet. According to the latest data, there are 90,589 listings, so exactly 75% of that is 67,941.75, and thus the 67,942nd image would put us over the mark. There are currently 67,910 images, which is 74.96% of the total, so the Progress page rounds that up to 75.0%. That means only 32 more images are left!

It was suggested above that some kind of reward or recognition should be given to the editor who uploaded/added the picture that put us over the mark, so maybe we should pay close attention, updating the Progress page every few hours (we added 243 images in the past week, an average of ~33/day, so updating daily may not even be enough to catch it!). Any new listing or new image added can be recorded below, using the Progress page updates as a guide (you can see which county lists had images added by inspecting the diffs). Then we can get even more specific and check exact contribution times to figure out who adds the exact image.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:30, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

I just added the latest round of unused images and re-ran the script, and we're up to 67,939 now. Who wants to find three more images? TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 23:06, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

I added a few more to the list for Cass County, North Dakota. Jonathunder (talk) 23:40, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Looks like that did it! Although there were also some images added in Arkansas and Kentucky in the past hour as well (holy smokes!), so I had to dig in to an exact timeline to find out which picture was actually the 67,942nd.

Since TheCatalyst31 updated the data at 16:04 PST to find 67,939 total, there were 12 images added to tables, bringing us up to 69,951 as of the update I just ran at 17:04 PST. In order, the images added were:

• At 16:11 PST, User:Ammodramus added an image to Potter County, Texas, making 67,940 total.
• At 16:17 PST, User:Jonathunder added an image to Pendleton County, Kentucky, making 67,941 total.
• At 16:20 PST, User:Jonathunder added an image to Cass County, North Dakota, making 67,942 total.
• At 16:22 PST, Jonathunder added a second image to Cass County, ND, and User:Colinhester added an image to Greene County, Arkansas, becoming the 67,943rd and 67,944th images added.
• At 16:23 PST, Jonathunder added a third image to the Cass County article.
• At 16:25 PST, Jonathunder added a fourth image to Cass County, ND, and Ammodramus added a second image to Potter County, Texas.
• At 16:37 PST, Ammodramus added a third image to Potter County, Texas.
• At 16:43 PST, Colinhester added a second image to Greene County, AR.
• At 16:56 PST, Ammodramus added fourth image to Potter County, Texas.
• At 16:57 PST, Colinhester added an image to Lawrence County, Arkansas.

And so, from the above, it appears that our 67,942nd image was indeed added by Jonathunder to the Cass County, North Dakota list, three minutes after (s)he added one to Pendleton County, Kentucky, and two minutes before (s)he added another to Cass County, ND, at the same time Colinhester added one to Greene County, Arkansas. Talk about cutting it close! Congratulations! Now, what type of award/recognition should be in order? :P--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:35, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Upon further inspection, it appears that the image added by Jonathunder has actually been on Commons since December 2014 and has been present in the listing's article but not on our county list for that long as well. This is also true of the other images added to Cass County, ND, and the image added to Pendleton County, KY, has been on Commons since February of this year. Now Jonathunder was still technically the editor who added the correct image to the tables, but it should be pointed out that the image Colinhester added was actually taken by him/her and uploaded today. Indeed Colinhester is a new editor on Wikipedia, with the edit adding the picture to the NRHP list at 16:22 PST his/her first edit ever on Wikipedia. As such, while Jonathunder is no less deserving of some type of recognition, I can't help but to be partial to our new contributor here, and would support including him/her in our congratulatory measures, whatever they may be.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:47, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Congratulations and barnstars all around, with special barnstars for Ammodramus and Jonathunder and an extra special barnstar for the newby Colinhester! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:03, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Is this photo OK to use?

This is a photo from the Library of Congress of Jefferson Hall (Union Point, Georgia). It says that it was transferred to the US government in 1944. Is it OK to use, regarding the copyright? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:19, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

The photo was taken by Jack Delano, then a US government employee (employed at the Farm Security Administration). As a work of a US government employee, the photo is in the public domain, and can be used. (the Jack Delano article contains a few images with the correct PD tag, as an example.) Andrew Jameson (talk) 06:19, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

 Done Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:24, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Silverbrook Methodist Church

This article was located at Silverbook Methodist Church (note the missing "R") for a good long while. I've been through it several times without noticing; I finally did so last week, and moved the article without a redirect, as it seems an obvious typo. I don't believe the church is listed incorrectly on the Register - it's correct on the Virginia DHR form - but I'd appreciate another pair of eyes or two to make sure my wits aren't woolgathering. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:46, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

The Weekly List has it as Silverbook Church on Silverbrood Road (lol). Went into Google Street View and the sign in front of the church says Silverbrook. Seems to be an honest error in the Weekly List/Focus/NRIS. I see no reason why we should intentionally propagate a typo on Wikipedia. — Ipoellet (talk) 18:23, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

The sign still says "Silvebrook" - I was out there a few weeks ago. (Interesting little remnant of the past in suburbia, incidentally.) Given that the form appears correct (because if it wasn't I'd at least like the redirect) I think everything's OK as it is. Thanks. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:26, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

"Silvebrook"? — Ipoellet (talk) 20:51, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

"Goldenriver", actually. Don't know how it came to be so far off. (Yeah, I was ham-fisted there; it's "Silverbrook".) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 00:37, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Arleta Branch Library

This library building was supposedly just listed on the NRHP. I added a source to this newly-created article, but if someone is aware of an official source, please feel free to add or help expand the article appropriately. Thanks! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:45, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Probably tomorrow's Weekly List. — Ipoellet (talk) 18:11, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Great! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 18:12, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

It's on the January 30th pending list [13]. 25or6to4 (talk) 22:58, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I added the link as a ref for the time being, knowing it can be replaced very soon. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 23:50, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

It's on the April 1st Weekly List Einbierbitte (talk) 14:37, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! I believe the article has been updated accordingly. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 15:53, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Attention requested at arbitration amendment request

Hello. The attention of members of this WikiProject is requested at the recently-filed Doncram arbitration amendment request seeking to lift arbitration sanctions on Doncram (talk · contribs). Please review the amendment request at your convenience, and if so inclined, give a statement addressing why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request. For the Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 04:41, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Titles

Over the past several months, I've made several page moves of NRHP buildings where the previous title is some combination of current and historic names. Examples include Evergreen (Rocky Mount, Virginia), General Squier Memorial Park, and E. S. Swayze Drugstore. I haven't seen anything in the style guide specifically about combining names in the article title, but it seems like common sense should be applied to cases like these. I really doubt anyone has ever spoken the term "Dryden Community Country Club–General Squier Historic Park Complex", and certainly not "Swayze, E. S., Drugstore/Otisville Mason Lodge No. 401". Yes, these are the titles for the NRIS pages, but a quick look at the nomination forms shows they are just alternate names. Besides, these already violate conciseness and recognizability. It seems like there is too much reliance on just creating titles based on the NRIS titles and not enough on common sense. kennethaw88 • talk 04:16, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Our style guide agrees with you. From the Naming conventions section:

"This does not mean, however, that the title of an article about a property listed on the NRHP should always be the name listed on the National Register. Article naming is guided by Wikipedia:Naming conventions. That Wikipedia policy indicates that the article title should be the most recognizable name to the greatest number of English speakers. Accordingly, sometimes the NRHP name for a site will not be the name of the article. For example, a building may now be known by a different name than it had when it was listed on the NRHP. If the article about a site listed on the NRHP has a different name than appears on the National Register, a page with the NRHP name should be created to redirect to the article."

--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:07, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree with both of you, but while we're on the topic, what should we do about cases where the National Register uses an inconsistent naming convention for similar buildings? This is most common with railroad stations (e.g. Chicago and North Western Railway Depot and Chicago and North Western Railroad Depot, where there are two disambiguation pages and seven or eight naming variations for the same railway), but I've seen this happen with post offices and courthouses too. I'm in favor of moving relevant pages to standardized titles; we already usually do this with post offices, but it would make a lot more sense (and be easier for disambiguation) for all railroad stations of a particular company to spell the company's name in the same way, and we could weed out those last few articles that spell their title "Court House" instead of "Courthouse". TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 12:38, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Some sort of standardization for archaeological sites would be good too, especially handling of Smithsonian trinomials. I've been wanting to draft and propose some style guidelines about that. Hopefully I'll find time soon. — Ipoellet (talk) 00:05, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm so glad this issue is being raised because it's been bothering me too. I think we owe it to readers to use a WP:COMMONNAME wherever sensible rather than the jargonistic mouthfuls the NRHP often cranks out. To me that's more than just standardizing, though. Standardizing the carrier names for railway stations would be a nice improvement, but they still wouldn't represent the commonly used name. Most stations in the U.S. are usually referred to as the [town name] Depot. I know that would be a big change that poses new disambiguation challenges, but surely having articles for the "Wheaton Depot" or "Springfield Depot" would be closer to what someone might actually search by. -McGhiever (talk) 02:59, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

In regards to your last point, would it make more sense to apply WP:USSTATION to historic railroad stations too? It would result in much simpler titles (though it would also create a few disambiguation messes when a city has a historic and current station that served the same line, like Wilmette station and Chicago and Northwestern Depot (Wilmette, Illinois)). TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 08:24, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

This really ought to be addressed by whoever maintains WP:USSTATION. Since we're not in the business of naming conventions (aside from our lists), we ought to let those folks know that we have a big pile of articles that don't match the convention. I'm unaware of naming conventions for archaeological sites; it's time to formulate one. Nyttend (talk) 02:49, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (US stations)#Historical stations; feel free to join in there. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 12:48, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

The problem with depots arises with the consultants/archaeologists/architectural historians/historians who nominate the properties to the NRHP and who have no background in railroads. There is scant guidance to naming in the NR Bulletin 16a [14]. As for archaeological sites, some states (California, Arizona, Southern Nevada) do not use the Smithsonian trinomial, we'll have to take that into account, too. I would support some standardization. Einbierbitte (talk) 15:04, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

I have no experience working with archaeological sites in the non-trinomial states, so I don't know what to do with those. In all states, we should use the site's recognised name when it exists. For example, Bedford Village Archeological Site instead of Site 36BD90, and Canfield Island Site instead of Archeological Site 36 LY 37. What should be the article names for sites known only by trinomials? I'd say "Archaeological Site [number]"; it's simpler than "Archaeological Site No. [number]" and clearer than "Site [number]". Nyttend (talk) 02:49, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

And then there's "Archeological" (seemingly the NPS's preferred spelling) vs. "Archaeological", which seems to be more commonly used in wider contexts here. Magic♪piano 12:18, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree that we should use WP:USSTATION guidelines. For archaeo sites, I think the common name should be used. If there is a numerical designation, maybe that should be included as a parenthetical? If the site is only known by number, then I like the suggestion of "Archaeological Site [number]". Maybe we should include WP:ARCHAEO in the discussion. As for the spelling, I don't have a preference. I use the 'a' and the 'a' is also used here. As for California, the designation is not standard. The names vary by the age of the designation and the CHRIS information center assigning the name. In some names they use the state designation (CA) or (4), or leave it off entirely. In some cases the county abbreviation is all caps (SBR) or mixed upper and lower case (SBr). Then there are sites that don't use the California designation at all. Einbierbitte (talk) 15:04, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

In most cases, throwing the trinomial into the article name would be unhelpful. Angel Mounds works well; why would we want to retitle it Angel Site (12 VG 1)? And how would Ramey Mound (15 BH 1) be better than Ramey Mound? Of course, the trinomial might be a good method of disambiguation (this was done with Park Site (36LA96), because "Park Site" is such a generic title), but including it in the title wouldn't normally be a good idea. Nyttend (talk) 22:31, 26 April 2016 (UTC)