Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 57

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Dentils, and all things buildings

Hey folks, an honest question. It JUST SO HAPPENS, that I have taken extensive pics of a few of the NRHP buildings in West Virginia. In your opinions, would it be helpful, IF, I were to include pic examples of the architecture features mentioned. Example, dentils, of brick cornices etc etc? IF thats cool, HOW would you all integrate these pics in an article, a gallery???Coal town guy (talk) 13:49, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

You could start your project by looking at Commons:Category:Architectural elements and (1) seeing what's already there to illustrate these elements and (2) uploading your images there. The small dentils category is mostly U.S. examples, but for the larger categories, I don't see a lot of subcategories for the U.S. (e.g., there's no Commons:Category:Oriel windows in the United States), so it might be worthwhile to create some new subcategories. --Orlady (talk) 14:26, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
CTG brings up some interesting issues. I think the best way to illustrate an article is first to write a good article, hopefully with text related to the pix. (Easily said, not easily done). Some folks link to an article we have (somewhere) on architectural terms, but I've always found that a bit clumsy. You have to be careful with using technical architectural terms; most of our readers probably don't know the difference between dentils and defenestration (or fenestration, for that matter), so explanations should be written in everyday terms.
The info box can cause problems, but photos can be put on the left-hand side, probably smaller than you would on the RHS. Galleries *may* be used, but some editors absolutely hate them, and often misquote the guideline to just defenestrate them. I see two major problems with galleries. First, they are often just grab-bags of unrelated or repeated pix. Second, in the small format of most galleries, the pix often seem very dark or difficult to see well. There is a new format for galleries, just introduced last week, that I've played around with, that might help the second problem (or emphasize other problems). Examples will follow, but be careful with these as well. 1st, some people just hate galleries, period. 2nd, new formats are not readily adopted on WP. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:49, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
I was thinking left side pics, here are the dentils of location x, here is a brick cornice of location xCoal town guy (talk) 14:56, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
I think the kind of arrangement you are describing would be best implemented with a table format, using larger images than are in the NRHP tables. A table format allows text to be aligned with images. I tried something like that to organize List of Tennessee state symbols, but that is not a good example for format (for one thing, it doesn't use the wikitable format). Look at The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates, List of reptiles of Michigan, and List of people on United States banknotes for some good examples of tables with large illustrative images. --Orlady (talk) 15:37, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
The bank note list is a great FL....and , a good example, that would be a great thing for a historic district, IMO.Coal town guy (talk) 15:51, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

New gallery format examples

  • Using <gallery mode=packed-hover> </gallery>
  • Using "mode=packed" without the "hover"

Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:02, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

There's an example of how this works with an infobox on the right at Henry Albertson Subdivision Historic District. Feedback welcomed. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:24, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
THAT is a cool format, and one I will use.Coal town guy (talk) 12:24, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Most excellent examples, Over the last few years, I have managed to get some close up pics of the "features" of some of the buildings and Historic Districts in WV. Many of them, are Alex Mahood buildings, and to be totally honest, it would IMO, be of great value to have examples of the specific features mentioned for that particular structure. Odds are, out there, some place is a person, who will see the pics, or a normal user, or building geek will doubtless have info on these features as opposed to the architectural items which, sorry to say, will not be known by most of the general public, UNLESS someone wants to tell me that everyone knows about neo classical revival etc etc etcCoal town guy (talk) 15:35, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
If there's any reasonable chance that an article on the relevant listings can use such images, please upload them. (I recently uploaded a raft of pictures of Naumkeag, where the extant pictures did not do enough justice to its gardens and architecture. These will help make the article about it much better eventually, even if not all of them are used right now.) The point Orlady makes about architectural detail categories also applies to articles: if the article on, say, oriel windows were short of US examples (or specific regional variations), then such images also have use there. Magic♪piano 16:27, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Reality check...

was rated a start can anyone tell me why? OR Am I missing somethingCoal town guy (talk) 16:29, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

My only immediate thought is that AFC guys see so much junk that a stub that isn't fundamentally horrible (non-notable, copyvio, not even wrong) that something well-formatted like this looks like a start. But anyway, given that the nomination form is online, the article can easily be far more extensive, and it is a definite stub. Chris857 (talk) 16:43, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
My goodness, this is not a good thing. I guess a pic, and another source pushes it to above FA, written by the hand of Jaweh, forever now called the HAND OF GOD classCoal town guy (talk) 17:02, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

The game is on

an oldy but a goody. The weditor, basically has provided an extra link, the "extra link" is a sumary of the NRHP nom form, on the NRHP site, and explicitly states, its a summary of the nom form and provides the link for the full nom form. Ergo, its a start class......no. Is this a gaming technique that a bot can find??Coal town guy (talk) 17:53, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

The revised article is no longer based solely on the output of the NRIS database, so it no longer exhibits the problems we've identified with NRIS-only articles. Also, due to the efforts of User:Teemu08, there's enough content now for start class. --Orlady (talk) 18:03, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
I want to make 100% certain I get this correct, and to be clear. If a NRHP page exists out there has a link to a NRHP summary page. And that summary page, states, explicity, its a summary of the nom form, and there is a link to the nom form, on that same page, I have 2 questions, 1)Is that technically a different ref? AND 2)Depending of course on the answer to question 1, we can then call that a start? Again, the only data is, nom form, and summary of nom form, on the NRHP site.....I will follow and respect any decision madeCoal town guy (talk) 18:07, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Let's back up a few steps. Our concern about stubs with a single source has been focused on stubs that are sourced only to the NRIS database output. The database does not contain the nom forms. It's a computer database that contains a very basic set of facts about each property. NRIS output and nom forms are very different. An article sourced only to the nom form isn't ideal, but a nom form is a decent source. --Orlady (talk) 18:28, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Understood, appreciate the clarity.Coal town guy (talk) 18:45, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Ocqueoc Falls Highway-Ocqueoc River Bridge

The unused images page finally updated, and one image struck my eye. File:Ocqueoc River Bridge.jpg purports to be the Ocqueoc Falls Highway-Ocqueoc River Bridge refnum#99001536. However, It looks quite different than this image from MDOT. Anyone know anything about this, or how to resolve it? Chris857 (talk) 18:32, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Based on Google Street View, the MDOT bridge (45.395421,-84.057795) seems to be the correct bridge, as it is on Ocqueoc Falls Highway. The photographed bridge (45.389078,-84.059189) appears to be the one where the GPS coordinates point on the NRHP page, but the coords may not be accurate. Since the photographed bridge is not on Ocqueoc Falls Highway, I would say that it is not the correct bridge. Teemu08 (talk) 18:40, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Happy Labor Day, get ready for WLM

I hope everybody has a happy Labor Day, and a nice 3 day weekend while you rest from your labors.

Wiki Love Monuments - US will start Sunday, Sept. 1, likely at 12:01 a.m. (if anybody is still awake then). I hope everybody will enjoy it, add lots of photos, and participate in the more informal WP:NRHP contest at WP:NRHP Fall 2013 Photo Contest

I still haven't heard anything about how WLM - US will change our tables for uploading (if there will be any change). There is a second upload method via state-wide maps (see http://wikilovesmonuments.us/upload/ ). Send any questions about this to User:Mono.

Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:43, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The text upload link is now in the tables. Looks ok to me. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:46, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
About 600 photos uploaded the first day. About 40 left for placement at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images. Any help appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk) 11:46, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
I've moved an image or two to some articles and lists. Also for the past day or so I've been narrowing down new images in the generic commons category "National Register of Historic Places," although I've had this feeling I might be the only person doing it. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:07, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
UPDATE: I think all the images there are used now. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 00:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
But more are put onto the list almost everyday by the ErfgoedBot. See Commons:Commons:Monuments database/Statistics for some of the other things it does. It also seems to categorize pix into county categories, and if there are multiple photos for a particular site, into that site's own category. I have no idea how it does this, but clearly fine categorization, such as DanTD is doing is needed. The data at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images are updated *almost* everyday - I think last year it missed about 3 days, and then 5 days at the start of October when it was busy with other things. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:15, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
The categorization is explained at this page. It runs at least once a day. The page also describes how you can help improve categorization. Multichill (talk) 16:51, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
I created Commons categories for nominated and reviewed images. Royalbroil 00:43, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
It's best to let User:Mono and the other organizers decide how to do this (but leave the categories as they are for now). It's a pretty complex task reviewing 20,000-30,000 pix.so it as to be organized well, and I know they are considering a special jury tool among other things. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:31, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
You're right, thanks. Royalbroil 03:53, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

WLM and coordinates

I've just done some work on a file at Commons that appears to be from WLM-2012. The file includes coordinates, and these do not match the actual location of the building. However, they do match the NRHP coords. Since they were apparently added when the file was created, I assume that this was part of the automatic processing done by WLM.

This strikes me as a bad thing. We've generally found that NRHP coords are not accurate. For example, I've recently uploaded photos for 14 sites in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, and for every one of the sites the coords were off by quite a bit-- at best, on the wrong side of the street; at worst, up to a block away from the actual site.

Could I suggest, if it's not too late, that NRIS coordinates not be automatically added to WLM-2013 photos? If this isn't the right venue to post this suggestion, could it be passed along to the people in charge? Thanks. Ammodramus (talk) 14:29, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I think the WLM coordinates are drawn from the NRHP county list-article tables, which for older entries had coordinates from NRIS originally. But many of those entries have had their coordinates corrected/refined. And newer entries have coordinates figured out from street addresses or other clues and added by SanFranman59 and other list-table updaters. It's not like WLM is going back to NRIS coords ignoring corrections/refinements.
You just made corrections to coords in Santa Cruz County NRHP list-article, which is great, and is what often goes on. I guess you have to manually correct the coordinates in the commons photos. But now, if you added another photo using the WLM upload, wouldn't the best/current coords be attached? That seems as it should be, to me. Although maybe the photo uploader should be asked if they want to refine the suggested coordinates. What if the photo comes with GPS coordinates included, from the camera? I wonder if the WLM upload process is smart enough to take those, instead. --doncram 17:02, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
Old Baldy: camera location ≠ object location
Sorry, but this reads like "We'll introduce some data that we know very well will be erroneous, and let other editors find it and correct it later." Photographs without coordinates are still useful; why not leave the coords off rather than profligately reproducing errors?
Another problem is that this apparently uses the "location" template, which translates to "Camera location". This is not necessarily the same thing as "object location", which is used to give the coords of the object photographed. For example, Old Baldy (Lynch, Nebraska) is a large topographic feature on private land; I shot it from a public road over half a mile away.
Yet another source of error: HDs and other sites with large footprints. If I photograph a house at the northeast corner of a mile-square HD, and the set of coordinates in the list article for the HD as a whole gives a location at the southwest corner, then the data attached to the photograph are going to be off by a mile or more.
I'd favor using GPS coordinates from cameras that have them, or letting the photographer manually enter camera- or object location. Otherwise, I'd say: don't add coordinates at all, unless they've been checked by humans. Ammodramus (talk) 20:18, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
You make good points. This is about Wikimedia Commons files, not specifically about anything in Wikipedia, so maybe it is a commons issue. I personally don't edit much at Commons, and don't believe this issue is directly important for wikipedia exactly, because any incorrect coordinates are not added from Commons to wikipedia. I agree it is of some concern, however, to try to get the commons pics identified correctly, over there. Not sure if it is better to have no coordinates added or to have the Wikipedia NRHP list-table coordinates added, however. The wikipedia list-table coordinates have been posted for years now, in most cases, and have largely been checked by humans. Any really big discrepancies have been noticed and fixed. Many small refinements have been made. And in many cases where the geo-coordinates system has changed by only a small distance, maybe close is better than no location at all. So I think it is a matter of judgment, it is subjective, whether the WLM process should take and use these coordinates that we provide, to add to photos in commons. Perhaps a solution could be a change that still gives coordinates to the photos in commons, but also gives a note as to where the coordinates come from?
Unfortunately the problem is partly/largely of our doing, as we have ourselves not tracked the accuracy of coordinates and we have not even developed any way to note the sources of coordinates. This is unlike other corrections that we track in wp:NRIS info issues. Even to call the original list-table coordinates as being "NRIS" is maybe incorrect, or fails to note that the National Register has made available better coordinates. Specifically the National Register has provided different databases of coordinates which can be merged with other NRIS data, including improved coordinates databases that I believe have not ever been incorporated into the popular NRHP infobox generator. We still often put in less-good coordinates into articles when better coordinates have been made available. So, by the way, i have pretty much changed to using the NRHP list-table coordinates, if those differ, because indeed the list-table coordinates have often been improved. I don't think there's any easy fix here, and it's not clear to me that the WLM system should be changed, though I can see why you disagree. --doncram 01:43, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Keeping track of used and moved images

I just added a picture to Peekskill, New York, and another to North Carolina, and earlier today I added some to Virginia, and Sea Cliff, New York. Sometimes I wish there was a bot to keep track of the progress of our uploads of these pictures, because I just found Smallbones adding a huge chunk of them manually to the progress page. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:19, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Images uploaded at Commons

This message is being posted on talk pages for both WP NRHP and WP United States

I just relabeled images at Commons, because they were labeled to identify with an NRHP historic district, and the images had nothing to do with the NRHP. I have addressed the issue on the editor's Wikipedia page, as this seems to be their ongoing method on Commons. It occurs to me that this might be more wide-spread than one or two editors. "Historic district" doesn't mean anything to someone who isn't familiar with NRHP. And I have previously noticed other uploaders at Commons who don't always tie the image into anything identifiable. For instance, "Casas en San Antonio Texas. Is that a private residence and/or something historic? Do we have policies about posting images of a private residence without the owner's permission? Chances are, the photographer doesn't know. You can correct each one yourself at Commons, or post a message there, but there's no way to educate anyone who uploads. Wiki Loves Monuments seems to set enthusiastic photographers out to capture images, but there is no WLM University to tell them how to know what they're looking at. It bears mentioning because placing the right image with the article is of some importance. — Maile (talk) 15:54, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

It was a long time before I understood about historic districts and the concept of a contributing property. My early photos reflect my ignorance. It would be nice to have some way to educate the less-experienced. Also, we don't have policies about posting images of (the outside of) a private residence without the owner's permission, nor should we. Whatever is in public view is, by definition, public rather than private. Ntsimp (talk) 16:05, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
I assume what you're referring to regarding yourself is not the Sisterdale images. Because I sure wasn't knowingly referring to your work.. After I posted this, it made me wonder if there are any local privacy laws that cover things like that. We'd pretty much have to know what exists on the municipal level for such policies. I seem to remember something about people getting upset about the privacy invasion by Google maps and notice how the satellite images have eliminated views of private homes - you just see a dirt lot where there is actually a private residence. — Maile (talk) 16:24, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
No, I didn't take those pictures. It was just a general statement, agreeing that the uninitiated don't know what to take pictures of. And I don't know what you're talking about with the Google Maps thing. I've seen thousands of houses everywhere on it. Ntsimp (talk) 10:39, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Regarding Maile's question about photos of private residences taken from public property, I don't believe that there are any serious legal restrictions on that, so long as the photographer remains on public property. What restrictions there are apply to photos of the residents under circumstances in which they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy": for instance, I can't use a telephoto to shoot an occupant through a small gap in the bathroom-window curtains. However, an occupant sitting on the front porch and plainly visible from the street is fair game. This seems to be borne out by Commons:Photographs of identifiable people. Given that a photo of a residence is less privacy-violating than a photo of the resident, I don't believe that there'd be any legal problem with such shots.
Not sure about the business with Google satellite photos, but could it be that Google eliminated photos that violated the reasonable expectation of privacy? For example, someone sunbathing in a back yard surrounded by a high wall would presumably have a r.e.p., which might be violated by an aerial photo. Ammodramus (talk) 12:59, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
My recollection is that the issue with Google images has been related to Street View images, not satellite images, and that most of the concern about legality has been in countries with laws different from laws in the United States. --Orlady (talk) 13:39, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
I just don't understand what's the issue here. The Sisterdale pix *are* part of a NRHP historic district. The Casas pic never had anything to do with an HD (no category, no claim, no nothing). There is freedom of panorama in the US for buildings, and I think most people understand privacy issues pretty well, and in fact are pretty conservative about them. (Americans tend to respect private property) Perhaps we could define the use of "historic district" a bit better, but as used on Wikipedia, it includes not just NRHP HDs, but also state and local HDs. In Google satellite I can barely identify my car in front of my house (mostly by size and color), so I don't think sunbathers are much of a problem (unless, perhaps, they are really big sunbathers!). Google Street View does have a program whereby images can be removed in special circumstances, e.g. a gentleman coming out of a "gentleman's club". I think we have OTRS for that, but can't remember any problem being reported. Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:01, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Several comments:
  • I've given notice to editor User:Renelibrary about this discussion, which Maile neglected to provide.
  • I agree with Smallbones that there seems to be no issue here about privacy of photos. In the U.S., there is "freedom of panorama" that allows anyone to take and publish photos depicting private buildings from public places. When I have myself been taking pics in a historic district, and anyone objected, I would stop taking pics and not use the ones I had taken, just because I don't want to torture/hurt someone who feels damaged somehow by the photography. However legally I could use them. And in a rare case or two that I recall, we have removed photos from Wikipedia/commons where someone took issue. No one, or few, among us actively want to hurt people, so this is not a big problem.
  • I just started Sisterdale Valley District as a section within Sisterdale, Texas, to provide a focal point to collect what is known/knowable about the historic district (HD). There's very little clear info about the historic district online. It is my guess/judgment that all of the photos taken are in fact of contributing buildings or structures among the 21 within the 2,893-acre (1,171 ha) historic district.
  • A tiny possible quibble is that a Commons category for the Sisterdale Valley District was not set up. It would usually be best to set up a HD-specific category, when one takes muliple pics in a HD. However, given the lack of clear info online about the boundaries of the HD, it was probably best to identify the pics with Category:Sisterdale, Texas, surely accurate, which is what Renelibrary did, and not guess/interpret that an HD-specific category applies.
  • This just is another example suggesting that we should go ahead and create articles (and corresponding Commons categories) for every HD out there. We are about halfway there, in terms of starting articles, about all NRHP places. For reasons of collecting and filing and informing photos, perhaps creation of historic district articles should be prioritized.
--doncram 21:55, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Let's all just take a deep breath here. Ahhhhh. Isn't that relaxing? First of all, my question above, whether I was clear or not, was more general than taking a whack at one particular contributor at Commons. That's why I didn't mention the contributor by name, and why I didn't think it was necessary to post a notice on their page about this thread. I had already left a message on that user's talk page about these images, and nothing more needed to be done. And said so right at the beginning of this thread. That took care of it with the editor, as far as I'm concerned. It was not necessary to grind that editor's nose in it. Let us not leave the impression that I came over here to covertly tattle on an editor without saying anything to them. A little misleading that is. That contributor was not meant to be the topic here, nor was any editor in particular. It was only because I'd recently relabeled those images that I linked the images as an example. I didn't "neglect" to "provide" the notice to that editor. That editor wasn't being discussed here at the time. I did not - repeat, did NOT - link the editor's page, because I didn't want them hassled about this. I didn't think it was necessary to involve that editor, since it was only the images that were being used as an example. More deep breathing and relaxing, please. Ahhhhhh.
(1) I was making a general comment that people who take the photographs don't always know it's more helpful to specifically label what they have taken a picture of. But they don't all know to do that.
(2) The Sisterdale photos are now identifiable by each one, because I went in and specifically labeled them as to what they were. It isn't because I'm terminally stupid and can't read the labels on photos. So, take a deep breath there, please. I'm the one who made it possible for anyone to now know what those photos are. If you've done something with those photos, then good for you. But this is not a major deal. Or it wasn't meant to be.
(3) The editor who took the photos did NOT set up the category in Commons. I did. The photographer didn't have any category at all for these photos.
(4) Yes, SOME of those Sisterdale images are useful for the NRHP, but only because I identified what they are. The image of the fairly new Sisterdale Fire Dept building may or may not be actually sitting in the HD, but we don't know without coords on all of it. The road sign advertising for the local grocery store had also been labeled as part of the HD, but I don't think I saw "road sign advertising" in the NRHP listing. But I'm sure someone here will jump at the chance to correct me.
(5) Orlady, you have refreshed my memory about Google. Sort of, anyway. It was Street View that was the issue, but I couldn't remember what. And it isn't all that important, anyway. In the long run, maybe none of this is as important as this thread has it. You know how sometimes you're sorry you got into a discussion, or even logged in for the day?
(6) Smallbones, the Casas image was only an example of something being vaguely labeled so it can't be used for much of anything. It wasn't specific to HD or NRHP. Just an example. Commons is full of such examples that will probably never be used, because they aren't labeled well. And I guess I find that sad, since there are some really excellent images on Commons that can never be tied to anything..— Maile (talk) 01:50, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm sorry, Maile, if I misinterpreted what you intended to discuss. And I did not understand that it was you that added the "Sisterdale, Texas" Commons category to those photos, while the original editor only added "Historic Districts in Texas" (e.g. per history of the fire station one ). But, it is confusing to me that you point to an example, the Sisterdale pics, which itself has a confusing origin and current status. The pics were uploaded in December 2012 and 5 were immediately, properly used by the uploader in the Sisterdale, Texas article. "Sisterdale" was used in the titles of the photos, so while a "Sisterdale, Texas" category was not created and added, the photos were identified helpfully. And there is no WLM uploading in this example. If the photos were known by the uploader to be of the NRHP HD, and were uploaded during WLM using the upload link in the NRHP list-article, then there would have been a proper category automatically added to the photos ("National Register of Historic Places in Kendall County, Texas").
About the current status of the Sisterdale pics, the non-historic-looking fire station and the sign photos are currently still categorized within a "Historic districts in Texas" category, because they are in the Sisterdale category, and that is within the Historic districts one. This is after the categories have been "fixed", but to me sort of seems wrong. If you know they're in a historic district, they should be put into a specific historic district category ("Sisterdale Valley District") separate from the Sisterdale, Texas one. Again clear info about the HD is not readily available, because the full NRHP nomination doc is not available online yet)...but creating the HD article (or in this case an article section) is a start. So currently I think it would be best to leave them in the Sisterdale, Texas category, but remove the "Historic districts in Texas" category. --doncram 13:56, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
My 2¥ (it's virtually identical to 2¢ :-D — (1) There's no legal or WP-policy stance against general pictures taken from the street, although of course Ammodramus' telephoto lens is a good counterexample. See here and here for a couple of relevant discussions of the subject. (2) When I take pictures of buildings in an HD, I'll do what I think Doncram is suggesting: put only the contributing properties in the district category, and put the non-CPs in a broader category for the community. For example, File:Central Wesleyan Church in Bloomington.jpg is the one non-contributing property in the Steele Dunning Historic District, so the image isn't part of Commons:Category:Steele Dunning Historic District. It would be in Commons:Category:Bloomington, Indiana, except there are way way way too many Bloomington images for a single category, so it's one of 78 images in Commons:Category:Fourth Street (Bloomington, Indiana) and one of 22 in Commons:Category:Stone churches in Bloomington, Indiana. Nyttend (talk) 02:34, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

New statistics on Progress page

After some long discussion above regarding the project's quality scale and the initiation of the bot request to tag all NRIS-only stubs, I believe we are on the way to getting back full functionality of the Progress script, which updates WP:NRHPPROGRESS automatically with information about how many pictures/articles we have created. Although I suggested earlier that we finish a mass re-assessment drive before the script is put back up, that can come later, and actually that may even be better because the periodic updates of the Progress page will give everyone that watches the page a heads up if re-assessments are being abused. I will wait for this bot request to go through and finish its initial tagging to implement it, but I think I have come up with a formula to reflect a county's overall "quality" in terms of article completion. The formula I came up with is:

netQuality = (startorhigher + 0.5*stubs - 0.25*unassessed - 0.5*untagged - 0.75*NRISonly)/listings

where hopefully the variable names are self-explanatory. This formula would produce an ideal 100% quality when all articles in a county are not just created but expanded to be Start+ (which necessitates tagging and assessing) and 0% when no articles are created. In a hypothetical county where all articles are created (and thus the articled map shows dark red) but all are stubs, the county gets a 50% quality rating. This formula acknowledges that stubs are good but that Start+ is better, as opposed to the current quality map which doesn't acknowledge stubs at all. The formula also gives deductions to counties which have a large number of untagged or unassessed articles and a large deduction to counties which have NRIS-only stubs. Theoretically the value could be negative (e.g. an entire county of NRIS-only stubs), but I will hard-code it so that if this formula produces a negative number that the quality rating is just 0%.

The formula is open to tweaking, but I think it's pretty representative of overall quality as is. As an example the entire state of California (ignoring the NRIS-only stats since those categories don't yet exist) would get a quality rating of 32% as opposed to the IMO inflated 53% articled statistic and the IMO too low 20.5% Start+ statistic. North Dakota (currently 100% articled, 5.4% Start+... kind of the poster child extreme of this project) would get a 50.7% rating, showing that we've got a good bit of something there but we're nowhere near "100%" done.

As soon as the bot is finished tagging articles, I hope to restore the script and make these modifications, believing them to be both better than the current system and independently indicative of actual quality rather than just quantity. Any comments?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:57, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

To give everyone more of an idea of how the formula works, I've updated the NRHPstats script to give the "Net Quality Rating" output, which will automatically take NRIS-only articles into account when the bot starts running. Test it out on your home counties or other counties of interest and let me know if you think it needs to be modified.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:12, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Question, when the bot has finished tagging, where would we go to get the list of articles it has tagged?Coal town guy (talk) 12:54, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
The {{NRIS-only}} template will place all tagged articles in the category (redlink right now) Category:All articles sourced only to NRIS. This category will further be split up by month, e.g. Category:Articles sourced only to NRIS since September 2013.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 13:29, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
GROOVYCoal town guy (talk) 13:31, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
The first 8 words summarize my position
I love the Progress page. Kudos to Dudeman and everybody who has helped improve it. I'll just ask that we not make the perfect the enemy of the very good, i.e. let's not argue about fine points. I'll even suggest that we let Dudeman make adjustments as he sees fit, and limit other changes to, say, once every three months, so that we can continue to have regular progress updates. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:44, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
I don't understand your formula; it sounds as if unassessed articles actually get subtracted, i.e. a county will get a -25% rating if every site has an unassessed article. Please show me how I'm misunderstanding it. Nyttend (talk) 02:37, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
As I read it, if a stub is not assessed then it adds net 0.25 since: netQuality = (... + 0.5*stubs - 0.25*unassessed - ...)
There are other pluses and minuses possible, so that you could get negative numbers, except that Dudeman has said if the total is negative, it gets reassigned to 0.0. Just thinking though, can we have an un-assessed stub? Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:21, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
It is impossible to have an "unassessed stub" because by saying an article is a stub, you have assessed it. Obviously, things that are assessed are not unassessed.... So Nyttend is correct in saying that if an article is created yet unassessed, it is a net negative on the quality of the county. The reason I made unassessed and untagged negatives is to incentivize tagging/assessing articles. If an article is not tagged/assessed, it not only skews the numbers on the Progress page but also leaves things like WP:NRHP#Assessment and Collaboration out of date/non-representative of what the project has actually done. Tagging talk pages is useful for a multitude of reasons independent of the Progress page, so there's no reason it shouldn't be done. I realize this will (at least initially) negatively portray states like Ohio where Nyttend himself has done a lot of work yet hasn't created associated talk pages, but that's kind of the point. Tag/assess articles, and you don't have to worry about the negatives :).--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:36, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
Kumioko has tagged lots of Ohio articles for WP:US and not for WP:NRHP; he's agreed to double-tag in the future, but right now we've got piles of Ohio articles with WP:US ratings and nothing for WP:NRHP, whether rating or class or even a project tag. Any chance that you could have the script count another project's rating (or the lowest, if there are multiple other projects) when an article isn't assessed for WP:NRHP? Nyttend (talk) 04:42, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
Today I poked around the Progress page and added tags and ratings for a handful of previously untagged articles. Interestingly (and relevant to Nyttend's suggestion), for a couple of National Register properties that were covered in articles about broader topics, my assessment of the article for NRHP was lower than the existing assessments for other projects. This was because the NRHP property wasn't documented nearly as thoroughly as the broader topic. --Orlady (talk) 04:59, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
I think I might have found a new reason for oddities in the statistics, particularly including articles that show up as "untagged". Oak Ridge gatehouses is a single article about three identical buildings that are separately listed on the Register. From looking at the county numbers for number of articles and number of untagged articles, I concluded that this article is counted three times on the "number of articles" count, but is counted as "tagged only once (or possibly once in each county). --Orlady (talk) 04:59, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
Orlady, good work finding that bug. You are correct that there was a mismatch in how things were counted, but it only crept in when there were duplicated articles on one list, which is from what I've seen not that common. The problem is that when I query the mw:API with all the articles on a county list, the API automatically sorts these alphabetically rather than just spitting them out in the order I queried them. The array I was using to account for duplications, however, was not re-ordered after querying, so there was a mismatch. If there were no duplications, all the numbers in my array were just 1, so nothing mattered, but for National Register of Historic Places listings in Anderson County, Tennessee, a list including the Oak Ridge gatehouses article, there is at least one entry greater than 1 that screwed things up. To fix the bug, I edited the NRHPstats script to alphabetize the titles in my duplications array so that now all the numbers should match up. Thanks again for pointing that out! Let me know if my fix was actually not a fix! Haha--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:09, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
I don't know how fast these images get added to the progress page, but this morning as of this writing I added images to Preston County, West Virginia and the Town of Huntington in Suffolk County, New York. I also noticed nearly 2.5 dozen pictures of the Downriver Residential Historic District in Natchez, Mississippi, and was ready to advocate a commons category for it until I found out one already existed. Who wants to decide which one of those images gets used for the county list? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:05, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
I flipped a coin. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:57, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Bot discussion

Hi, bot runner here. I think I've finished the list of transclusions of the {{NRISref}} that meet the requirements. If members could spot check the list User:HasteurBot/NRISref, I'll go ahead and start developing the second script (to tag pages identified with the dated maintenance template) that is driven off the list. I will try to get the coding for the second script done by Saturday (Central US time). If there's a page that should not be on that list, please let me know and I'll poke around to see why that page ended up on the list and if another exception to the list generation should be developed. Hasteur (talk) 16:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Observation, the bot did well. However, there are a few places where the NRHP ref is used once, in a list of other refs.....Kesslers Cross Lanes, West Virginia and John J. Beckley are examplesCoal town guy (talk) 16:59, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The John J. Beckley only has 1 inline citation, no {{GR}} cites, no {{sfn}} cites. I think it would be preferable to have the rest of those references wrangled into inline citations (instead of a bulleted list at the end) so an exclusion for those types would be appropriate. As to the Kesslers Cross Lanes article, the reason why it shows up on the "report" is because you added that GNIS entry after the list was being generated and the Kesslers Cross Lanes article was already in the list. Hasteur (talk) 17:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

GROOVY. I have started to take a look at all of the NRHP listings for WV and KY. I caught Kesslers last night, as well as St Colmans, in Dillon, West Virginia and there were some others. I am also creating geo articles for locations that have a NRHP property...Glad to see the bot and everyone else is on the same sheet of musicCoal town guy (talk) 17:24, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
User:Jonathunder/sandbox is on the list and should not be included, nor any other User-space pages.
It seems unhelpful to tag Louis Menand, an article which is sourced by sources listed as external references, plus having an explicit NRIS footnote used to correctly support the fact that an associated house is NRHP-listed. So {{refimprove}} or {{More footnotes}} is appropriate, while an alarmist message incorrectly suggesting that the article was sourced from NRIS, and suggesting it has inaccuracies, does not seem helpful.
It looks to me like there a lot of cases like that. How about we figure out what to do about them, before tagging the articles inappropriately, spamming-style. I would personally prefer to set up a category for exclusion from display of the NRIS-only message, where the message is pretty obviously not helpful. And then we could take a few days to visit the articles and put that in. To do otherwise seems unnecessarily wp:Disruptive and wp:POINTY. :) Or, what is intended, when Wikiproject NRHP editors or non-Wikiproject NRHP editors see it is appropriate to remove the unhelpful tag? I do understand that one or more persons want a bot to come back again and again and overrule local editor judgment, but that seems not good, somehow. :) --doncram 21:36, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
I disagree, the logic you want to introduce would needlessly complicate the code. In fact, it would make it virtually impossible to find many of the outstanding articles. I did indeed take a look at the aticle you mentioned as well as ~ 25 others. The tag i a great tool. The only pointy thing here is your resistance. It is happening, the article are going to be tagged. I have yet to see any editor, any other voice say that tagging any article and wanting it to be improved because its at best a pale repeat of a nom form, is not helpful. I was able to correct a few errors, and update a few articles as well.I also do not in any way recall, any singular peron being targeted for this effort The effort needs to happen. Its a fact. I would submit that everyone here edits. When it gets confrontational, because one source can be milked for 2 or 3, I walk away. Thats bad data. Its called rinse and repeat, ho hum. I have in fact ceased editing an article due to your insistance that a nom form summary is different than the nom form, despite the fact that the nom form summary states explicitly, its a summary, see full text below. If I recall you stated the nom form had different content. I think its not beyond the pale to conclude a summary will differ than its source on a verbatim level, but, hey thats just me. The articles are going to be tagged. The bot is running, the encyclopedia will grow.......Coal town guy (talk) 22:28, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
@User:Coal town guy: I've seen you say things about the nomination form several times in this discussion. I would like to clear up a few things if you might be confused. The idea that a summary of the nomination form is/is not different from the nomination form itself is not under the scope of this bot. We're not tagging articles that include the nomination form as a source; we're tagging articles that are only sourced to the NRIS, which is a database in which the nomination forms are not found. If an article has an NRIS reference as well as a nomination form, the article is perfectly fine and shouldn't be tagged. The only articles that are going to be tagged are those which only have one inline citation to NRIS. Adding a nomination form to these articles if it is available (or any other reliable source out there) will allow an editor to remove the NRIS-only tag. Nomination forms: good, NRIS-only: bad.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:36, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Understood, and I very much appreciate you taking the time to point that out. I am in 100% agreement, we need this bot to run. I think that the bot will help, but yes, to your point, no, its not going to adress the concern I mentioned. Specically, nom form, nom form summary, nom form at different site, all different refs...yuh, I dont agree about that, but, thats not for here or now. What we DO need NOW is to find the many many many articles with NRIS only and yes, they are out there.......Coal town guy (talk) 23:19, 11 September 2013 (UTC)Coal town guy (talk) 23:10, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Agree on the user/other non-mainspace pages. As for the architect/geographical pages, external links are not references. The articles need improvement regardless, so it won't hurt them to initially be tagged to be brought out of obscurity. In order to remove the tag, all you have to do is add a second inline citation to the article, which takes minimal effort--you don't even have to find new information to add in those cases. In fact, you could even use the list Hasteur provided before the actual bot run proceeds to find all/most of the architect/geographical pages affected and add other references to them so that they don't get tagged in the first place if you think that would be too disruptive. The bottom line is these articles only have one inline citation to the NRIS, which is what the bot is meant to find--it's doing its job correctly. Yes, these are not technically the articles we're trying to find, but the method to get the tag removed is both not that difficult and overall helpful to the encyclopedia as a whole anyway.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:30, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
It's not a technical issue with the bot, but it is troubling to see that the list includes articles like Colbert's Ferry that are amply supplied with sources, but lack in-line citations (other than NRIS). Maybe the bot logic needs to be changed so it looks for sources that aren't cited in-line -- and doesn't flag articles like that one. --Orlady (talk) 20:05, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
What's the WP:HEY value for reducing the perceived Original Research in a article by converting the end references to inline citations compared to the perceived cost for adding the maintenance template? As mentioned above (17:20, 11 September 2013) I think the benefit of having the citations is worth the cost of the increased usage of the tag. Hasteur (talk) 20:38, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
I would say those articles do need to be tagged because those sources should be converted to inline citations anyway. See my comment just above yours.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:40, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
I thoroughly agree that articles like that one deserve to be flagged for a problem. My concern is that the planned NRIS-only template is not relevant for an article like Colbert's Ferry. That particular article is clearly based on the sources listed under "Sources" (and possibly also the items listed under "External links"); the only content based on NRIS is the NRHP infobox. This is not an instance of an article based only on NRIS; it's an article that needs in-line citations. BTW, after seeing the list, I've edited a couple of biographies (David Adler and George Tibbits) that were clearly based on sources other NRIS, but cited NRIS for reasons largely unrelated to their biographical content. --Orlady (talk) 21:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
Maybe we should change the wording of the NRIS-only template then? Maybe "...includes only one citation to the NRIS..." rather than is based on the NRIS. Then it's more technically true I guess. I still don't see why adding inline citations to other sources as you have done to those 2 author articles can't be done to articles like Colbert's Ferry, et all.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:07, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
It's a good thing one of us is thinking clearly, Dudeman. Revised template wording is the obvious answer. I suggest the following rewording of Template:NRIS-only:
This article cites a single source, the National Register Information System (NRIS) database. Articles based solely on NRIS may contain errors. Please help ensure the accuracy of the information in this article by adding inline citations to at least one more reliable source. --Orlady (talk) 01:56, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
"includes only one citation to the NRIS" would be applicable to an article with piles of citations to major scholarly sources throughout and a normal NRIS citation in the infobox but nowhere else. I prefer Orlady's wording, since it more clearly excludes pages such as Virginian Railway, which we definitely don't care about for the purposes of this discussion. Can someone please give me a link to the template that we're going to use? I've looked over this page without finding it. Nyttend (talk) 02:50, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
The template is at {{NRIS-only}}. I agree that Orlady's wording sounds good. I'll wait a little and see if anyone opposes (though I can't fathom why they would) before I copy it over. Or anyone else can copy it over if they feel this is consensus. Whichever.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:55, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
Looks well done to meCoal town guy (talk) 16:49, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Bot misses?

I've found a number of NRIS-only stubs that don't seem to appear on Hasteur's list. I know too little about templates or bots to speculate as to the reason; could someone more knowledgeable look at them and see if they can figure out why the bot run missed them? Examples include St. Bonaventure Church Complex, St. Anthony's Church and School (Cedar Rapids, Nebraska), Saint Anthony's Church and Rectory, First Presbyterian Church of Florence, First Baptist Church (Casa Grande, Arizona), and C.H. Cook Memorial Church.

Also, can and should we manually add the NRIS-only template to articles that don't strictly meet the criterion? I'm thinking about things like All Saint's Church (Oracle, Arizona): the NRIS address was incorrect (probably predating an address change rather than in error ab initio), and I added a citation for the corrected address. For all intents and purposes, however, the article's still NRIS-only, since none of the other information in it has been checked against and attributed to more reliable sources. Ammodramus (talk) 14:05, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

As for the first question, the bot is still in the development stage, so the list will evolve. I think User:Hasteur is currently working on modifying the code based on some suggestions above and at the bot request page, but I'll let him speak for himself there. As to why these articles weren't included, I have no clue.
About tagging pages manually, technically there's nothing stopping you, so yes you can tag anything you want. I would be fine with tagging that article because it may be that other NRIS data is incorrect, and the article still contains basically no information.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:17, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
I pointed out the first issue on the bot request page, so Hasteur is aware of it. It sounds like a lot of pages got left out of the initial list just because NRISref is transcluded so many times and the list isn't meant to be complete yet. It seems like this disproportionately affected the church stubs that were created in the past year, which I suspect is because they're more recent transclusions than the other articles on the list. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 19:22, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
The bot's list is being truncated. I'm going to refactor the way the list is displayed on screen Hasteur (talk) 20:01, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. I apologize for raising what may have been a false alarm; I hadn't realized that the list was truncated. Thanks to Hasteur for checking it out (and for all the rest of the work on it, for which a large vote of gratitude is in order).
Could I solicit comments from other members of the WikiProject on the matter of manually adding the template to articles that don't strictly meet the NRIS-only criterion, but are morally equivalent, like the Oracle article linked above? I suspect that certain editors will object to this being done, and in so objecting will employ such words as "negativity", "bullying", and "alarmist". I'd like very much to do such manual insertions of the template, but, in light of these anticipated objections, think that I ought to seek consensus before so doing. Ammodramus (talk) 23:21, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
I can see the merit of manually adding the template to articles like that one (BTW: I edited your link to point the version that existed at the time you made you comment), but if we do that, we need to adjust the wording of the template so it will make sense when applied to three different types of articles:
  1. articles for which NRIS is the only identified source
  2. articles for which NRIS is the only source cited inline, although they may identify other sources
  3. articles for which NRIS is the only actual source of the content, although they may have inline citations to other sources. --Orlady (talk) 18:32, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
"This article appears to rely heavily on a single source, the National Register Information System (NRIS) database, either because it is the only inline citation or because it includes very little information from other sources. Articles based solely on NRIS may contain errors. Please help ensure the accuracy of the information in this article by adding inline citations to at least one more reliable source."?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:49, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
That wording should work. More concise wording would be preferable, but I don't have any bright ideas at the moment. Also, it would be nice if the linked content at WP:NRHPHELP#NRIS were a bit more concise and focused. --Orlady (talk) 19:19, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

AfC discussion about Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Downriver Residential Historic District

Resolved

There is a current discussion at AfC about a specific AfC submission (Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Downriver Residential Historic District). If a member of the project could stop by and provide guidance regarding the project's standards and the viability of the submission, that would be great.I am trying to keep this as neutral as possible to prevent battles of personality Hasteur (talk) 16:26, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Discussion there was concluded by the draft being approved to mainspace Downriver Residential Historic District. It was me who created the commons category for the 34 WLM-contributed pics, and recategorized the pics to that, and I wanted further to start an article to begin to use them.
Any suggestions of other articles needed to support WLM contributions, e.g. maybe other historic district articles especially, would be welcomed. Last year Smallbones ran a workpage of articles-to-create, specifically to provide some quality assurance that award-nominated pics were actually depicting NRHP-listed places. This time there is no comparable award going on? I am not sure. Anyhow, if someone contributes 10 or more pics for an HD it would be nice to give them some play in a new article. Post suggestions at wt:NRHP/WLM 2013 articles needed? here on wt:NRHP? --doncram 21:10, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Spectacular house mislabelled as being in Downriver Residential HD, in fact
Unfortunately, I figured out that the Swiss chalet style spectacular house labelled "File:Natchez Bluffs and Under-the-Hill Historic District-409.jpg" is misidentified at Commons; it is instead a house in adjacent, spectacular Natchez On-Top-of-the-Hill Historic District. I document this more specifically at Talk:Downriver Residential Historic District. Yikes, i don't know how to proceed now, this is a Commons issue, and I am not familiar with processes there. Can anyone else possibly please help address this with the uploader and with renaming it at Commons? Argh. --doncram 08:33, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
The uploader requested the file rename on Commons, and I renamed the file. This category may require more attention.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
Misnamed stuff like this doesn't always get renamed at Commons; a note in the description that the file's been misnamed will generally suffice. However, uploader-requested renames are almost always performed, and they'd be denied only in exceptional cases, so Ymblanter's course of action was the best. Nyttend (talk) 00:28, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
Spectacular. Thank you to Ymblanter and Nyttend, both. Unfortunately the rename put it into Natchez Bluffs and Under-the-Hill Historic District (currently a redlink; new article draft for that at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Natchez Bluffs and Under-the-Hill Historic District). It belongs in Natchez On-Top-of-the-Hill Historic District, instead. Misunderstanding by the uploader, given no articles and hence no links to NRHP documents, and given cryptic location info (from NRIS i guess) in the NRHP list-article, is quite reasonable. So now there are two categories having probably-misidentified photos. It's nice that the uploader is responding in Commons, and I am sure we'll get it all sorted out. First I want to get the articles into reasonable shape. Again, creating articles on all the NRHP-listed HDs, especially where a WLM participant is adding pics, should maybe be a priority of this Wikiproject, both to give some play to the pics and to head off / fix up any confusions on HD borders and on photo identifications.  :) --doncram 16:30, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Princeton Historic District

A while back I started a sandbox for the Princeton Historic District in Princeton, New Jersey, and I see that recently some people added images for it. If anybody wants to take it off my hands and fill in all the details I missed, they're welcome to it. And if they want to create articles on the other Princeton Historic Districts in the country, that's fine by me as well. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Cedar Point Light

National Register of Historic Places listings in Sandusky, Ohio has two separate listings for the same place: Cedar Point Light and the U.S. Coast Guard Building (no article), and they're identical. While trying to get precise locations for sites in this area, I began to suspect that it was one double-listed property; I asked for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lighthouses, and my suspicions were confirmed. I've copied that discussion here and collapsed it for the sake of those who don't want to bother reading it.

Extended content

Looking for help from anyone who has resources (preferably comprehensive books) on US lighthouses, and in particular the Great Lakes. National Register of Historic Places listings in Sandusky, Ohio lists two separate facilities at Cedar Point: the Cedar Point Light, and an additional building called the "U.S. Coast Guard Building", which according to its Ohio Historical Society profile has also been known as the "Cedar Point Rear Range Light". I'm wondering if the two might be the same building, for the following reasons:

  • All sources I can find seem to speak of just one light at Cedar Point in recent decades; lights other than the Cedar Point Light always seem to have been destroyed.
  • The property owner's website (a campground associated with the amusement park) speaks highly of the lighthouse (it's even named for it), and I can't imagine them knocking down the other one or otherwise having it destroyed.
  • Both were built in 1862, and no other source mentions the construction of two lighthouses in 1862.
  • Both are spoken of as being limestone with comparatively few descriptive details otherwise appearing.
  • This story seems to say that the Cedar Point Light served as the rear range light for a time.
  • Cedar Point Light and the Coast Guard Building were listed two years apart: the Coast Guard Building as part of a huge multiple property submission (MPS), and the Cedar Point Light individually a couple of years later. I've found one property that was listed twice: the Robert Reily House near Cincinnati was listed by itself, and then a few years later it was listed as "Twin Oaks" as part of an MPS. Basically, it's demonstrably possible for an MPS to produce enough bureaucratic confusion that a site gets double-listed.

All this being said, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could check a comprehensive list of current and former lighthouses on Lake Erie and attempt to resolve the situation. Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 22:46, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The charts say that they are the same light. If you look at this 1898 chart you will see the range in action, with the rear light labelled "Cedar Point Light" and the front labelled "Beacon". This 1907 chart shows them discontinued and labels them as "Cedar Point Front Rage" and "Cedar Point Rear Range", but they are plainly the same two lights. Someone didn't compare them and assumed that because of two names, there were two lights. Mangoe (talk) 03:27, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
Thank you! I didn't even think of looking for charts, and even if I had, I wouldn't have known where to start. I'll begin a discussion at WP:NRHP about how to resolve this. Nyttend (talk) 00:26, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Since Cedar Point Light is the WP:COMMONNAME, the article surely should stay where it is. We've removed duplicates in the past when they were discovered; for example, go to National Register of Historic Places listings in Hamilton County, Ohio and see what we've done with the twice-listed Twin Oaks. But what should we do with the list of RHPs in Sandusky — should we remove the CP Light entry or the Coast Guard Building entry? Neither "Twin Oaks" nor the "Robert Reily House" is famous to any extent, so we simply got rid of the later addition, i.e. we display it as Twin Oaks because that name was on the Register for eleven years before Robert Reily House was. Here, however, U.S. Coast Guard Building was on the Register for almost two years before the Cedar Point Light was added. Should we go with an obscure name that was listed earlier, or should we treat this like a mangled boundary increase and go with the later name? Nyttend (talk) 00:38, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Keep both and pipe links to the same article. The ref numbers are different, so the listings are technically separate. I'd note the duality with each's entry in the table, maybe even the intro as well. I probably would have suggested the same for Twin Oaks. If you'd like I could see what other information I can find on the Cedar Point, I've some experience with writing lighthouse articles. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 02:58, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
But this is clearly an error by NRIS, and there's exactly one NR-listed lighthouse at Cedar Point, while keeping both says that there are two different NR-listed places there. It's completely different from normal NRIS weirdnesses, since this one is plainly a mistake — places don't intentionally get listed twice. We should treat this like we do spelling errors, such as with the "Possom Bottom Covered Bridge" in Vermillion County, Indiana, or like we do geographic errors, such as placing the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge in Clark County, Kentucky instead of in its actual location in Clark County, Indiana. Nyttend (talk) 03:06, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
The way I see it, it may be an error, but because it is not as obvious as others someone could be easily be looking for the listing we omit not knowing its a duplicate and have removed it accordingly. Noting the secondary name might be not enough, at least with Cedar Point Light, because there are probably many U.S. Coast Guard Buildings (the same way as there are many U.S. Post Offices are U.S. Courthouses). Making sure that someone looking for either listing and directing them to the correct article with an explanation that the two are one and the same is better than trying to pretend the mistake never occurred. But, you know, if consensus is for removing one, go with WP:COMMONNAME. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 16:31, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
The way to find out is to request the nomination forms, innit? I'm reminded of the Topaz War Relocation Center, which has 2 listings in National Register of Historic Places listings in Millard County, Utah. Only the older one (the non-NHL) seems to have a PDF at Focus, so I don't know yet whether or not it's a duplicate. Ntsimp (talk) 18:52, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps the way to approach Nyttend's point is to answer this question: do Wikipedia's NRHP articles list places, or NHRP listings? If the former, you only need one entry in the article for each place, no matter how frequently listed; if the latter, you need one for each listing, regardless of whether or not it duplicates something else on the list. (I know of several duplicate listings in Massachusetts; I suspect later listings are done in ignorance of earlier listings.) Magic♪piano 19:37, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Answering Magicpiano's question, I would argue that the places / properties are what are notable, not the fact that they are listed on the NRHP (there are reliable sources to cite about the things themselves, but there are only rarely news stories, etc. that mention just a change in NRHP status for the things). I wondered if there might be two structures at the site (pure speculation, for example could there be both a light tower and a keeper's house and these were listed separately). However, looking at the article here and the picture here (and more on Flickr), it seems pretty obvious that there is just one structure. I would have the article at the common name (Cedar Point Light or CPL) with a redirect for the Coast Guard. I would mention in the CPL article that the property has apparently been listed twice, and also mention this in the county list (both in the top to point out there is apparently one duplicate, and at the Coast Guard listing to point out it is the same as CPL). I guess the last thing I would do is contact the NRHP / NPS folks and make them aware of the situation. These are my thoughts, but I am open to other ideas. I looked at the Multiple Property Submission for the Great Lakes lighthouses, but did not find much on this there. It mentions a survey at the HAER, but when I looked at the Library of Congress HABS website I could not find any such survey searching Great Lakes or light houses, and also could not find this lighthouse there. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 12:49, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Can a 3 sentence article be a start??

What say you?. Trying my best to get the ratings...Coal town guy (talk) 17:19, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Of course that's a stub! --Orlady (talk) 17:37, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
Almost all of the points in the stub criteria apply to this article:
A very basic description of the topic; minimal content, no structured information.
May explain the nature of the property and why it is significant, and perhaps a bit of its history and design, but little more (and often less). :::Usually very short; but, if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible, an article of any length falls into this category.
Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than confirming the site is listed on/related to the NRHP. Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority. --Orlady (talk) 17:45, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
Thats cool. My sanity check is complete. I was told within the edit notes of the Talk Page section by another editor that it was changed back to a start because after AFc, its best to keep the rating assigned at that time see here.... I disagree in this specific instance. I did not get that at all, so I changed it back to a stub. Once in a while, a sanity check is just thatCoal town guy (talk) 18:04, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
That explains your query. AFC reviewers apparently see so much dreck that they have started to regard three complete sentences and a infobox as a "start-class". --Orlady (talk) 18:34, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
Got that, I changed it to a stub, fro a start, then another editor made it a start again, and then, I thought, it is a stub, made it a stub again and JUST IN CASE, I thought I would ask hereCoal town guy (talk) 18:40, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Orlady, I would appreciate if you abide by the sense of the arbcom process, involving your egging on editors like one banned in the arbcom from interacting with me. You were advised in the arbcom to back off. You have since been advised in a recent ANI that you opened, to back off. Here, you seem to be egging on an editor to dispute Wikiproject AFC Start ratings on articles begun by me, assigned by an AFC editor (the editor having no knowledge that I know about about regarding your long-term behavior with respect to me, and having no knowledge of your and others pushing of an unusually high standard for Start to be applied to NRHP articles for WikiProject NRHP). This is nonsense, you are advocating that CTG should change a named AFC editor's rating of an article for WikiProject AFC? That is highly inappropriate, even moronic, to use a strong word. Just back the hell off, Orlady, please, and don't egg on another clone like you did egg on S. and also egg on P., imho. (revised for clarity to O.) It is what you do, you stand off a bit and egg on others to harass me. I suppose it will probably require further Arbcom or other processes, to get you to stop, if that will ever happen. However, I would hope nonetheless that you would choose, personally, to stop with propagating the battleground. Just stop, please. --doncram 21:33, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Warning at all: Please for the love of DIETY do not edit war over the evaluation that a member of the AfC project gave to a page. If you disagree with the rating given on behalf of your project, feel free to change it, but each project has it's own rubric over what constitutes the various classes. Coal town guy, Why did you not bring the issue to the reviewer who promoted the submission out of AfC space rather than have (what appears to be) a conniption fit/disruptive point making on the talk page. @Doncram: Toss kerosene much? It takes two to tango and your actions are significantly less than helpful in diffusing conflict. I ask that you take steps immediately to take the appropriate steps for dispute resolution or to cease your accusations of misbehavior by Orlady. Failure to pursue either of those routes could lead to actions that would be disruptive to both you and the project, up to and including asking for Arbitration Remedy enforcement (for which you have already been warned twice this year). Hasteur (talk) 22:37, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
Or the AfC project could, you know, actually assess articles properly. Wizardman 22:39, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, if an article uses the stub template, it should be rated Stub on the talk page. Conversely, if someone rates it Start, they should remove the stub template from the article. One or the other. 66.217.196.143 (talk) 23:24, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

[EC] Doncram, I fully recognize that you won't believe me, but I did not know who had written the article that User:Coal town guy asked about until after I saw his post at 18:04 today. I took his question at face value and responded without looking at the article history or the talk page history. Excuse me for being straightforward and acting in good faith, instead of treating Wikipedia like a treacherous battle game where all actions must be premeditated in order to achieve some sort maximum strategic advantage against other players. If I had investigated the background to his question and seen you name on that article, you can bet that I wouldn't have responded the way I did. (However, I do think that AFC volunteers are over-rating some of your contributions.) --Orlady (talk) 23:38, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
God dammit, Doncram. The bot request was just withdrawn because of this. Can you please just do everyone here a favor and simply go away? For good? Please?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Dudemanfellabra should be given a block, IMHO, for repeated personal attacks and swearing. And, that is simply not what Hasteur stated, it is not because of CTG's and Orlady's and others disputing what uninvolved AFC editors have been rating articles, that the bot request is withdrawn. I don't fully understand the withdrawal, exactly, myself, but that is not what is stated, by Hasteur, here in this thread or there. Dudemanfellabra, your growing tendency to blame me for everything that you don't like, is not helping anything. --doncram 00:50, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Doncram-I've usually sided with you on arguments, especially against Dudemanfellabra, but your actions over the last few weeks have caused me to say "God dammit, Doncram."--GrapedApe (talk) 00:43, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Is there really an argument over whether this is a stub or a start class article? Time would be much more productively spent just expanding the thing to where this is moot. Jonathunder (talk) 01:03, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

As of this date 9/16/2013, I am in totum UNINVOLVED with the rating of ANY NRHP article. I will contribute pics, I will add data. EGGING ME ON are you shitting me, really? I am NOT an emotional tampon nor am I at the behest of any person here. I actually respect people here. Funny, eh? I worked my cock off for a Start article, BUT you want a Start for 3 sentences, GO FOR IT. In fact, why not make it a FA because you looked at it? HOW THE HELL was I supposed to know who to let know? You mean 3 sentences getting changed from a Start to a Stub, requires notification? Being bold, ALL BULLSHIT. I am DONE performing to every little nuance or argument or decision or St. Vitus Dance because this editors name is mentioned. I do not give a dried shit who edits, we all edit, all I want to do is learn, and contribute more and here we are, doing the shower stall shuffle. OH HELL NO.Coal town guy (talk) 01:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm surprised this project is as active as it is given Doncram's long-term vandalism and disruption. Don't worry, I won't touch anymore involving this, you guys can solve your own damn problems. Wizardman 01:19, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Final note: DMFB's characterization of why I have decided to shelve the bot task is partially correct. As I get closer to getting a workable solution I see the veiled threats to filibuster, scream vandalism, and threats to have the bot's overall authorization revoked (which will affect the AfC work I originally became an operator for) is too much risk. If the NRHP project can get an agreement about the purpose of the task and can police itself in terms of the disruptive elements, then the task can probably be re-evalutated. Untill then I have low confidence in any proper cleanup happening. Hasteur (talk) 01:58, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

OK, we have a problem here. I can't deal with this tonight, but when we have one otherwise uninvolved editor describing Doncram's behavior as "long-term vandalism and disruption" and a bot op complaining of "veiled threats" by "disruptive elements", I think we've crossed the line for an editor subject to sanctions if he "fails to adhere to...any normal editorial process or any expected standards of behavior and decorum." (I note also the speculation that Orlady is "egging on a clone"; this is not supported by evidence, and Doncram was warned in April and May not to engage in this type of behavior.) I would prefer to take counsel at WP:AN, because I want to be scrupulous about finding remedies that allow Doncram to raise legitimate grievances when they arise; the existence of his sanctions should not be a carte blanche to silence him when he dissents. In this case, however, I have seen the proponents of the NRIS-only tag respond in good faith by changing its wording to be more accurate and non-perjorative, while Doncram has continued to insist that tranches of articles, largely created by him, be exempted from the tag. The freedom to dissent does not extend to indefinitely throwing sand in the gears of a proposal that's largely welcomed by this project. The tagging proposal in question is obviously useful to the project in organizing efforts to improve and enlarge (not to delete) articles. I welcome constructive suggestions for sanctions that would, at minimum, enable the tagging to go forward. Choess (talk) 04:20, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure how Arbitration Remedy enforcements works, and I didn't see anything at WP:AN on this, but I'll make a proposal on this that I'll call a "progressive topic ban." 1st though, I'll say that I have some sympathy for Doncram's general aims and say that he has been a productive (if not collegial) editor on this project. At times, I think I have been his strongest supporter here. I have seen things that I've identified (to myself) as "ganging up" on Doncram. That said, Doncram, your participation just isn't going to help anything here if you can't get along with other editors. Wikipedia is a project run by consensus, and even if the consensus is wrong, ultimately you have to go along with it, or just work someplace else in WP. A couple of weeks ago I asked you to take a 2 week vacation from WP:NRHP - that obviously didn't work.
a progressive topic ban proposal
For this disruption Doncram should receive a one week topic ban on any articles, talk pages, bot requests, etc. that relate to WP:NRHP. Every additional disruption (as determined here and passed along to the proper administrators for confirmation) should result in a doubling of the length of the topic ban, i.e. the next topic ban will be for 2 weeks, the next after that 4 weeks, the next 8 weeks, etc. The 6th disruption would be for 64 weeks, and then the length would just keep on increasing. This should give Doncram a way to find some method that he can get along with other editors, while if he fails getting only minor topic bans at first. On the other hand, if he continues to fail, he will end up banning himself for many years. One possible objection to this is that it would encourage his opponents to be unreasonable to give him longer and longer topic bans. Given the extent that Doncram has pissed off editors here, I fully expect that to happen once or twice, but that, once the ban goes up into years, folks will be much more reasonable on both sides. It's just a cost Doncram will have to pay for pissing off so many editors here. I don't know if this type of progressive topic ban has been tried before, but it should end the problem here one way or another. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:55, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
User:Smallbones: The venue for discussion of this is Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Doncram. Your ideas regarding a topic ban could be a useful addition to the ongoing discussion there. --Orlady (talk) 17:56, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Let me propose this rather bold remedy instead: everyone involved is restricted from further debate here, and instead will go out and find an article to improve. Jonathunder (talk) 22:46, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Somewhat urgent image request, and other question...

Howdy,

In my usual searches, I have come upon (another) listing slated for demolition: the Nelson-Kirby House in Shelby County, Tennessee. First, is there anyone in the Memphis area that can go over to the site in Germantown and get a photo of it before it's torn down? From what I can glean from the comments (can't get to the full article) there seems to be a 90 day window here. Second, is this the proper place to make requests like this? I had found one earlier in Texas, but knew a couple users that lived somewhat close to the listing to possibly reach the site. Here, I don't know any users in TN to reach out to, so I posted here. Here's the link to the article [1] Thanks. 25or6to4 (talk) 08:22, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for posting this. Unfortunately I'm several states away. Orlady? I dimly recall you might be closer. dm (talk) 10:34, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
I think it is fine to post here (and I am also way too far away). Could you also post it on the Wikiproject Tennessee talk page? Or is there a Wikiproject Memphis? Ruhrfisch ><>°° 11:23, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm in the opposite end of Tennessee. User:doxTxob is in west Tennessee and has taken a number of photos for Wikipedia -- he's a likely candidate to visit this property. User:Theopolisme is in Memphis and also may be able to help. --Orlady (talk) 13:13, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
I took a look at the article; there is a window of sorts..."giving the property owner 90 days to remove the house, barns and other buildings before [the developer] removes them." The property owner could begin removing things at any time, so yes, time is of the essence. I usually find myself in Germantown at least once a week – I'll add taking a picture of the property to my list of the things to do if at all possible. Theopolisme (talk) 20:24, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
  • What about contacting a historical/preservation society in the area? They might be willing to get you a picture for posterity.--GrapedApe (talk) 01:05, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Doncram topic banned

Just wanted to bring this to everyone's attention.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:21, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places listings in Orange County, North Carolina question

I have had a question from Commons User:KLOTZ about "Faucett Mill and House" which does not have an article of its own yet, but it is mentioned in National Register of Historic Places listings in Orange County, North Carolina. He went to the road and found three houses. One was too modern. He has pictures of the other two houses, but is not sure which is Faucett Mill and House (also known as Chatwood or Coach House). Does anyone know of any sources of information to determine which is which, or have any ideas or suggestions? Thanks Ruhrfisch ><>°° 02:08, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Does this help? It has one picture at the end. Chris857 (talk) 02:16, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I was about to post the same link, so I'll just add that the form has descriptions of each building on the property in addition to the picture, which appears to be of the house. It could be that both buildings are part of the listing if they're not too far apart. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:21, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm pretty good at identifying the locations of new NRHP listings. Based on this photo, I believe this is the house you are looking for. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 02:23, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks all! I will pass these on to User:KLOTZ and he can upload the picture(s). Ruhrfisch ><>°° 02:31, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Randolph (Amtrak station) = an NRHP CP site

During this latest Wikimedia Loves Monuments campaign, I saw somebody uploaded an image of Randolph (Amtrak station) which they recognized as being a contributing property to the Depot Square Historic District. I've added a few relevant items to this, but it's clear there is plenty of expansion and copy editing that is necessary at this point. I should start working on a history for the article sometime this Autumn. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 04:39, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Washington DC data

As promised, no rating discussion. However, the links for DC properties, on the NRHP, the use the DC preservation site, appear to be dead or no longer available at that specific URL. I was able to correct one, but thought I would bring that up.Coal town guy (talk) 16:17, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Does this issue relate to lists? If so, could you please link to the other page(s) you are talking about? That would make it easier for others to try to tackle the problem. --Orlady (talk) 16:20, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Looking nowCoal town guy (talk) 16:23, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Central DC 194 listings . I am looking now one at a timeCoal town guy (talk) 16:39, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
here and here links go to a main web page, the portion with that data (inventory) is no longer fully up.Coal town guy (talk) 16:44, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
You probably already found them, but there are several PDFs with annotated lists of properties at http://planning.dc.gov/DC/Planning/Historic+Preservation/Maps+and+Information/Landmarks+and+Districts/Inventory+of+Historic+Sites . --Orlady (talk) 00:38, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Commons category links

A lot of NRHP listings have their own categories on Commons (at least 1800 according to this category). Lists for other countries contain a field "commonscat" to link listings to the category on Commons. This will add a small link "more images" under the image linking to Commons. What do you think? Should the NRHP lists contain such a link too? The report about possible links to add is at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Missing commons category links. Now quite small, tomorrow it will probably contain 1000 items. Multichill (talk) 10:51, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I would certainly be in favor of adding a field with links.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:03, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Makes sense to me. --Orlady (talk) 14:52, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Adding this to the images column? Tables of this sort do not work well with text-and-images together (it's one thing for a monthlong project, but a permanent fixture is a bad idea), because of height issues: the link distracts from the image itself, and it makes taller the column that already is almost always the tallest part of the table. Only in two situations does additional text not have this effect: when there's no image (so you'd not have this link in the first place), or the very unusual situation in which the image is short and the description is very long and thus taller. Put such a link in the rightmost column and I'll agree, but it would badly mess up our tables if we put it in the images column. Nyttend (talk) 16:51, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
I was certainly thinking about a separate column.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:13, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps a simple "Yes" or "No" thing, then? We could make the column really narrow if it were set up to display "No" as a default, and if a link to the Commonscat were put in the code, it would have a piped link: the word "Yes" would appear with a link to the code. How's that? Nyttend (talk) 07:06, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
Good idea, but there ought to be an option for an override if the article name isn't the same as the category name (shouldn't happen often, but it does).--GrapedApe (talk) 17:20, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
Either you don't understand me, or I don't understand you. I'm imagining that the table code would have an additional parameter, e.g. "Commons". For W&J Old Main (or whatever the NR calls it), you'd fill the parameter with the following code:

|commons=Category:McMillan Hall

This would produce a link of Yes, while if you didn't supply the name of a Commons category, it would present the word "No" without a link. Nyttend (talk) 20:45, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
Then, I was the one who misunderstood you. Bad reading comprehension is sometimes.--GrapedApe (talk) 23:46, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:41, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Commons category in infobox nrhp

And once we are at it, should not we make a commons category field in the {{Infobox nrhp}}, so that the link to the category would appear at the bottom of the template rather that a separate {{commonscat}} template at the bottom of the article?--Ymblanter (talk) 15:41, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Better idea: Fetch it from Wikidata :-) Multichill (talk) 16:00, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
This is obviously an option, but I guess we are discussing the design at this point, not yet the realization.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:09, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Give a field in the infobox? Good idea! Encourage the removal of the {{commonscat}}? Bad idea: such templates are routinely placed at ends of articles, so people know to look there; putting the commonscat only in the infobox, when an article is long enough that the text goes way below the bottom of the infobox, will have the effect of hiding the link from many readers. Nyttend (talk) 16:56, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
There are also a few tools depending on commonscat to deliver usable contents, e.g. Wikisense, which itself is used by FIST and Flickr2commons, for example. I don't know if at this momement those tools are already able to use a possible Wikidata entry. --Matthiasb (talk) 08:14, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Buildings that no longer exist

I have been working on adding more information to some of the stub articles that relate to Masonic buildings... and came across an article on a building that was torn down after being listed on the NRHP... Masonic Temple (Paducah, Kentucky). What is the project's take on something like this? We obviously want to have articles on every building listed by the NRHP... but what do we do when the building no longer exists? It is unlikely that the article will ever grow beyond a stub. Should we keep it? Blueboar (talk) 20:08, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, if at some point it was notable it continuous to be notable after being demolished.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:15, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Part of me figures that there should exist sources for this other than the nomination document, but a cursory Internet search is not fruitful for me. There could well be offline documents somewhere. I'm not convinced that it has to stay short, however, since the nomination is fairly extensive. But, it would be best to have more sources than the nom docs. Chris857 (talk) 20:21, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
Notability is not temporary, so we should keep it. If anyone could get access to the offline sources in the nomination form's bibliography, they could probably expand the article, and the nomination form should be enough to get it at least to start-class if someone was willing to put in the effort. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:45, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
OK... just checking. thanks. Blueboar (talk) 20:57, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

NRIS link has changed

OK... The NPS has once again changed their website... and the search functions are quite different. I can not figure out how to access the NRIS database/focus from their new page. I am sure there is still a way to access specific property listings (and thus the nomination docs that have been scanned)... but they have made it harder to figure out. Any help? Blueboar (talk) 14:07, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

If you first discovered this issue today, you can probably blame it on the government shutdown. For help, contact your congressman. --Orlady (talk) 14:16, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
What I want to ask my Congressman is this: If the US government was supposed to be shut down as of mid-night last night... who showed up for work this morning to implement the changes? And will they be paid for their work? Blueboar (talk) 15:11, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
FWIW, the news media in my area reported that, in the event of a government shutdown, all personnel at the area's national parks would report to work in order to do the work necessary to shut their park down, then most of them would go home. I imagine the same sort of thing happened with some government web services. --Orlady (talk) 19:00, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
I just checked NRHP Focus and got this shutdown notice http://www.nps.gov/shutdown/index.html Also note that the Library of Congress website has shut down. Presumably we can deal with this for a day or so, but I have no objections to Orlady's comment, which I interpret as "feel free to write or e-mail your Congressman, and tell them that they are all asses." That's a good principle in general, but especially appropriate for today.
I'll also note that one interpretation of the LOC's shutdown is that it is a protest along the lines of Wikipedia's SOPA blackout a year or two ago. If so, their site notice is completely devoid of any statements of protest. In answer to Blueboar, they all had to have contingency plans in place, but shutting down and then reopening a site a week later likely costs much more than the small amount of keeping it open and letting it run without supervision.. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:08, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
I think these website "closures" are mostly just high profile ways to say "Well, this is now unavailable, because we know it will impact lots of people; call your Congressperson to get it back". It's part of the bureacratic (as opposed to Dem or Rep) spin on the shutdown. Magic♪piano 18:54, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
And if you contact your Congressan, he (whether Rep or Dem) will reply by pointing fingers and saying "don't blame me... it's all the other party's fault"... Oh well. We can still do a lot of WP editing without using any government websites. Blueboar (talk) 19:25, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
Note that individual nominations are also not available. See the next thread, which is related to this. Nyttend (talk) 22:50, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Progress on WP:NRHPPROGRESS?

After noticing the courtesy post above doncram, I got to wondering what state the progress script and NRIS-only bot request are currently in. The script is (IMO) healthy for the project, and the bot was made a prerequisite by user:dudemanfellabra. Chris857 (talk) 02:30, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I asked User:Hasteur, the bot operator who initially took up the task but was turned off by the conflict which arose, if he would be willing to look into it again. He has indicated he would like to give the decision from WP:AE a little time to sink in and see how things pan out but may still be open to helping. If he doesn't personally want to rejoin, I would imagine another request at WP:BOTREQ would be required to see if someone else would take it up. I would still like to get that bot running so that NRIS-only statistics could be included on the first run after the script is re-uploaded. In fact, I've recently found a massive problem with the way the script queries the mw:API which will cause me to have to re-write large portions of it from the ground up basically, so the delay has a silver lining haha.
So basically everything is still slowly moving forward; however, there are still a few more things that I would like to fall in place before everything is ready to restart. Looking back, I can't help but think that maybe my premature release of the code to gather quality statistics may have led to this whole debacle in the first place. Hopefully when the script comes back, everything will be ironed out and work smoothly so as to avoid any kind of conflict or confrontation. My apologies to the project if this is how the whole thing is being perceived.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:06, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Since I've seen now 2 admins comment and endorse the indef topic ban I'm going to take the bot task out of mothballing. I take it as read the following requirements are approved (from Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HasteurBot 4) For each page that includes a transclusion of {{NRISref}}
Check that the page we're about to tag is in the Article namespace
Count the number of references
Get a list of HTML commented out sections
For each section of HTML commented out code...
Count the number of commented out references
If the number of references overall minus the number of commented references is greater than 1, do not list article as a potential target
If there is a {{GR}} template anywhere in the page, do not list article as a potential target
If there is a {{sfn}} template anywhere in the page, do not list article as a potential target
If the title of the page starts with 'National Register of Historic Places listings in', do not list article as potential target
Otherwise, list article as potential target.
I'll blank out the bot's run page so that we can verify that the code is doing what it's supposed to probably later this evening. Hasteur (talk) 16:42, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
GR is never transcluded by itself (it has to take a parameter), so please make sure that the bot looks for the template and not just the code {{GR}}. I suppose you probably already know this, but I'm just wanting to make sure, especially since I'm not familiar with bot coding or the mechanics of bot operation. Nyttend (talk) 21:41, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Also, if the title of the page starts with "List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in" (or, in one case, "List of bridges and tunnels on the National Register of Historic Places in"), it probably shouldn't be listed either. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:59, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Glad to see you decided to pick this back up! Thanks for that! As to the title names, correct me if I'm wrong via counterexample, but really any article with the phrase "National Register of Historic Places" in the title shouldn't be included. Those are usually lists or other collective articles rather than articles about individual sites.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:22, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Sorry folks, it appears I'm going to be defending myself against a baseless ANI thread calling for my community banning. Have to put new business on hold to deal with it. Hasteur (talk) 23:32, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Well, looks like that got resolved quickly Chris857 (talk) 00:20, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
Not to pester or anything, but has any progress been made on this?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:04, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
I'd love to see the Progress page updated in about 3 or 4 days, so that we can get a good reading on the effect of Wiki Loves Monuments on our progress. The reason for wanting a couple of days delay from Sept 30/Oct 1 is that it takes a couple of days for new pix from WLM to get placed (see below). Any help appreciated! Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:27, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
User:Hasteur, are you still planning on doing this? Or should we submit another bot request for someone else to take it up?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:29, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Queens/Brooklyn historic district pictures

There are a lot of pictures on the unused images page of several historic districts in Brooklyn and Queens right now, all of which appear to have been taken by the same photographer. I was looking through the photos of Cypress Avenue West Historic District to try and figure out which were in Brooklyn and which were in Queens, and I realized that all of the images I could locate were actually taken a block or two north of the boundaries of the district. I'm not sure if there's an issue with any of the others, but anyone who's clearing that page should be careful with those photos. (Also, are there any New York editors who can figure out where these pictures were actually taken? That part of the city has multiple historic districts with similar architecture in close proximity, and I can't necessary locate them unless there's a street sign in the picture.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 23:44, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

The overwhelming majority seem to be named "Ridgewood-Glendale-Fresh Pond" although many of them aren't even in those neighborhoods. Most are uncategorized, and I've been moving them to the generic commons category "National Register of Historic Places in New York City," unless I actually decide to read the summaries and then I'll move them to the specific borough. Still, any additional assistance with them would be sufficient. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 15:11, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I poked at one of these images, which is described as being in the Cooper Avenue Row Historic District. The image has a house address in it that is within the correct range, and the building is at the geolocation given in the article, according to Google Street View. Google Maps, on the other hand, was unable to use the given address as a meaningful locator. If this sort of verification (unfortunately a bit time-consuming) can be done, these images should probably have district categories created to organize them. Magic♪piano 15:57, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I've got two categories in mind for some Williamsburg, Brooklyn related NRHP sites, and I've already created some Yonkers-related categories. It wouldn't be the first time for me to create whole new categories, and you all know that. Having said that, we should also consider renaming many of the images. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:28, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
UPDATE: Clearly, I was beaten to two of the categories I wanted to create. I may have to try for one in Bushwick, instead. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:13, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I placed a Ridgewood Baptist Church pic that was in the right HD (64th Place - 68th Street), but it looks like a minefield. We should definitely create some guidelines for WikiLovesAmerica events to prevent this from happening again, with the understanding that there were about 4 events this year that happened without this problem, and that we can't give them orders in any case. I suppose the worst possible outcome here would be that we give up on these pix, don't place them in our lists, and give them a special category, maybe "Unkown sites in Queens" - but we have a ways to go before we get to that point. We should try to contact the organizer and the photographer to see if they can help us. User our well-practiced location-identifying skills as best as possible, and if that doesn't work, then give up!
That said, I removed the last sites from the list other than Queens. Thanks and congrats to all who worked on this list. There will of course be some new ones tomorrow - most likely from folks who took pix for WLM but just didn't upload them in time. And there will be some "bad penny pix" that just keep on returning - I'm not sure what to do with these. A couple of suggestions though. For signs (my pet peeve), I see no reason to place most of these in the lists, since we usually want pictures of buildings not signs. So let's just leave the signs and they'll stay on the unused list until somebody gets a photo of the building. Then there are pix that I can't really identify with the site at all, like the guy pretending to hold up the bridge. Is the bridge even in the historic district, and if so would we want him representing the district? I'll suggest we change the {{NRHP|xxxxxx}} template on the pic to "possibly on the NRHP with reference number xxxxxx" in which case they won't appear on the list again. Given that 2,500-3,000 sites were newly illustrated during WLM, 10 or 20 of these "is-this-really-the-site photos" is not too bad. Then there are the 1 site-multiple counties pix, I'll suggest we contact the photographers, ask if they want to use it for all the counties, and if not change the NRHP template as above, or just put a very visible notice in the file not to use this pic for county x. That not as neat as we might want it to be but should be adequate. Any other ideas? Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:37, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm fine with leaving signs out of the list as long as we can make exceptions for demolished sites, archaeological sites that are mainly identifiable by the sign, and possibly signed historic districts (though even with those the sign should really only be part of the picture). For instance, I placed a marker image in National Register of Historic Places listings in Walla Walla County, Washington because the marker said the listed bridge was replaced in 2007, so the marker image might be the best we can do for now. In general, though, I agree that sign pictures aren't ideal.
As for the handful of pictures like the guy holding up the bridge and the people chopping ice, I'd be fine with just removing the NRHP template, with or without a replacement. Those pictures don't really illustrate the district they're tagged as even if they were taken within its boundaries, and I don't think any of them are ever going to be used in articles. To be honest, I'm more worried about some of the borderline images than the clearly bad ones. I had to detag a bunch of pictures that were either of the wrong building or taken outside of a historic district, and I'm a bit worried that some of those probably slipped into articles. Not sure if there's anything we can really do about those though... TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:54, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm think the best thing to do with the remaining images is to categorize them according to their purported district designations, but then post galleries to the talk pages of the districts in question requesting confirmation. This would make focused attention on particular areas easier. Some of them will require either street knowledge or access to the correct boundaries of the district. For example I was able to locate these buildings on Google Street View (took ~10 minutes), but don't know if they fall inside or outside the district bounds of Seneca Avenue East Historic District, since they're on a side street off Seneca Ave. (The photographer should have stuck to Seneca Ave, parts are quite nice.) Magic♪piano 21:01, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Sounds like we're all on the same page. Actually we have all been on the same page for a month now :-) Thanks again. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:48, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes. I spend a lot of time in Brooklyn though the Queens border is one of the less familiar areas. I also often take many minutes with Google Earth and Bing birds eye to locate a picture and sometimes fail when information is inadequate or wrong. Usually yes, despite some cases of chasing a wild goose, modestly inaccurate data is better than none. 'Twould be easier if someone categorized pix for data confidence and encyclopedic desirability, but that would take quite a bit of work. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:45, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I just did a Google search on a Chinese restaurant in some of those pics (016-017), and that segment is definitely Queens. So this method my be helpful. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 03:07, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
Just to let you know that today, before discovering this thread, I put two of the pictures to the list and also two (other) pictures to the articles on historical districts (the same ones as in the list).--Ymblanter (talk) 16:01, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

For those wanting something to do, here are the Queens districts where images still need to be checked out:

Note that every image needs to be examined, and the district bounds may need to be known in detail. I looked at the images for Summerfield Street Row Historic District: two of them were not in the district (had odd numbers when the district only encompasses even numbers). Magic♪piano 20:32, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I just created a new category for the Fresh Pond-Traffic Historic District, although I think the article should clarify that despite the name it's not part of Fresh Pond, Queens. I hope I didn't create that category too soon. There's still the issue of one of them actually spilling over into Middle Village, Queens, and I don't think any other district covered by ALT 55 spills over into Brooklyn except for Cypress Avenue West Historic District. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 22:05, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
UPDATE: A new commons category exists now for St. Matthias Roman Catholic Church Complex (Queens, New York), which doesn't have an article. I think I can try for Seneca-Onderdonk-Woodward Historic District next. I noticed that many of the images that are now in the Fresh Pond-Traffic Historic District were removed even though they're not all used in any articles yet. Are the galleries the key to getting them removed from the list? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 10:47, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
They don't all need to be used; if one image appears in the list/article for a particular refnum, all images with the same NRHP refnum will be removed from the unused list. (The exception is incorrectly repeated refnums, which, as others have found, results in images reappearing on the unused list.) Magic♪piano 11:28, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
It would be pleasant to discuss Commons picture sorting and locating in a Commons discussion page. Anyway I see our cat wranglers are doing good work. New York and New York City are nicely distributed. Manhattan is perennially overstuffed but at this moment Brooklyn is fatter. I might return to that curatorial activity, but my main function lately has been geotagging, where the uploader and the picture supply enough information. Where the picture shows a sign for a restaurant, church or other extant institution, Bing Search usually has it even if Google Earth does not, so it's not hard. A house number combined with a vague neighborhood often narrows the search to half a dozen possibilities that can be checked by Google Street View. Even where the number is smudged so it might be 674 or 874, it might be enough. But really, our photographers ought to give a street name at least. Many photos are uploaded with "camera location" that's actually an object location, usually taken from the Wikipedia article. Where the Wikipedia location is mistaken, it's usually fixable but where it's vague as in a district, it's less helpful. Several photos of individual houses said they were on Vanderbilt Avenue, which is where my own local knowledge is useful since it's a main bike route and I know such houses are rare except in the northern mile of that street. Well, tomorrow's the Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC and maybe some of our NYC photo wrangers will be in town. Meanwhile I want to give some time to sorting, locating and uploading my own photos. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:09, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
Do you know what else would be pleasant? If the bot would stop adding these images back after they were already used. File:RIDGEWOOD-GLENDALE-FRESH_POND_145.JPG is currently in the article for the Seneca-Onderdonk-Woodward Historic District, and I removed it from the list and created another gallery for that district, but this afternoon I found it back on the list of unused images. I'm still going to call for renaming of these images once they're all sorted our properly. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 20:14, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
The following images were claimed to be in the Madison-Putnam-60th Place Historic District, but are not stylistically correct and I could not find them in Google Street View. They may actually belong to a different district if someone wants to try to locate them: 126 127 128 129 130 Magic♪piano 16:53, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Not sure of district boundaries, but 126 is the southeast facade (Palmetto) side of the building on the corner of Palmetto St. and Grandview Ave. (Google Maps link). Also unsure of street address; 2091 is the number that got me to that spot on the map. The rest are wholly on Palmetto, running from Grandview to Fairview Ave. Thundersnow (talk) 19:43, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the ID. That's definitely not in the Madison-Putnam-60th Place district, which is entirely on the other side of Forest Ave. As I said, it might be in one of the other Queens districts, though. Magic♪piano 23:48, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
I found the files are from the Woodbine-Palmetto-Gates Historic District by checking the WP articles' stated boundaries. I cannot turn on Java, thus cannot read the NY State link of the nomination doc to verify if these particular buildings are included or excluded. Good luck. Thundersnow (talk) 13:42, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Possible resource: This map from NYCLPC shows the boundaries clearly. They have maps for many (all?) of the NYC historic districts here. They might be helpful in future scavenger hunts. Thundersnow (talk) 13:52, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Another opinion on some images

On Commons, I found some images uploaded as part of WLM that are all titled "Screen Shot 2013-09-07 at ..." followed by a time. Almost all of them are scenes of a Civil War battle re-enactment at Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park (which is on the NRHP). See here. I have two concerns:

  1. I am somewhat concerned these might be screenshots of a copyrighted video of the battle.
  2. While the re-enactment takes place at the park, the focus of the photos (the reenactment) is not NRHP listed, so are they in the correct catgeory?

Thanks, 12:19, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

  • Good questions. Regarding 1), I would say that it is possible that the uploader is the original recorder of the video. On the other hand, the date of 2013-09-07 doesn't match the time of the re-enectment. I checked http://www.olusteefestival.com and can't find the video, and at http://www.battleofolustee.org/ the only video I see for sale is from 1996. Regarding 2), I renamed those pictures to include Reenactment in the title and added Category:American Civil War reenactments.--GrapedApe (talk) 14:23, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Thanks - I think the dates were when the screen shots were made (not when the video was made). I could not find any of the images online so I will WP:AGF. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 16:30, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
      • Actually, I think it sounds too suspicious. Per Common's Precautionary principle of only having images that are freely licensed, I suggest nominating them for deletion. I'm a Commons admin. Royalbroil 00:18, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
        • Responding only to the second question — if you upload a copyright-appropriate image of a reënactment at an NR-listed, this should definitely be included in the park's category, and the park should be in the county's NR category. A reënactment is an example of how the NR-listed place is being used, so it's relevant for the NR categories. Meanwhile, I agree with Royalbroil on the copyright situation. Nyttend (talk) 02:11, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Any progress on Progress?

Not that I'm jonesing or anything. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:02, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

It seems that User:Hasteur is either busy or ignoring request to take back up the bot task. I've just filed a new request at WP:BOTREQ to see if someone else is willing to take up the task. I want to get the NRIS-only tag out to all articles before bringing back the code in order to better represent the quality of articles in each county.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:30, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
I just ran the script for the first time in over a month after restoring it and adding in some changes to make it more accurate. The script is set up to be able to count NRIS-only articles, but since we haven't gotten a bot to tag anything yet, I suppressed the output. As soon as we get a bot, I'll update the page to include information about NRIS-only as well as a "net quality" column. For now, though, you can compare the data to the run on September 2 to get a rough estimate of how many pictures were uploaded through WLM. Today we have 53,369 (60.5%) pictures while on September 2 we had 50,489 (57.3%). That gives a rough estimate of 3,000 pictures, or 3% of the entire Register! Good job, guys! I'll update the maps shortly!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:32, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
I move a large vote of thanks to Dudemanfellabra for the latest update on the progress page, and for launching the whole project in the first place. The maps have motivated me to spend a lot of time trying to find and photograph Nebraska sites. If it hadn't been for the progress page, I'd probably have spent most of that time working or something... Ammodramus (talk) 21:18, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
I'll second that vote of thanks. The progress page motivated me to investigate untagged articles and counties with zero articles. Not only did I end up adding a few WikiProject tempates to pages, but I created a couple of articles, expanded some others, fixed some bad redirects, found images, etc., etc. --Orlady (talk) 04:12, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Thirded on the vote of thanks. I've been looking through the untagged articles too, and I've found (and fixed) a number of weird issues, including two different cases where an article on a site existed but the list linked to a different article for some reason. It's also so much easier to see which areas are lacking in articles now. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:21, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Actually, it was a few more states than just Nebraska, wasn't it? I just checked the other database on Commons and a year ago we were at 50.7% illustrated, almost exactly a 10% increase over the last year. Don't worry about the barnstars from our informal contest, they are coming. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:13, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
This is great news. This tool as well as the recent contest all inspired people to do more to improve the quality of these articles than almost anything I can think of in the past two years. It's good to see it running again. dm (talk) 05:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Question about moved structures

I am curious if this removal of a site from the list was appropriate. Just because a building was moved, doesn't mean it is delisted, so should it be removed or not? Chris857 (talk) 17:42, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the editor didn't remove the site; they just moved it to Oxford County's list. This happens to ships and the like every so often, and moving it to the other county's list seems appropriate. (It might be worth putting something under the former listings for Androscoggin County, though.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:17, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
This reminds me of a question: when items get added to or removed from a list, you have to manually renumber them. Is there any way to make the numbering automatic? Ntsimp (talk) 22:04, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
There are ways to do that, but there aren't any publicly available ways to do it that I know of. User:Sanfranman59 has a system of renumbering lists using an Excel spreadsheet, and I have a bit of Python code that can renumber a list. I can send you either if you want (assuming Sanfranman59 doesn't mind). The other editors who update the lists regularly might have their own systems too, but I don't know anything about those. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:41, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I just whipped up this if you're interested. It's a script that adds a button to the top of NRHP county lists that you can click to automatically reorder the columns after adding/deleting one. I haven't really tested it, but it should work on standalone counties. Counties on the state lists are usually small and so can be reordered by hand, so the fact that this script will mess up there isn't that big of a deal. I'll work on it a little more later to try to iron kinks like that out, but if you want to use it now, feel free but don't say I didn't warn you haha. If it messes up, you can just revert the edit. If you find some bugs, let me know.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:42, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Just ran it on Oxford County, and it seemed to do the trick.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:44, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Sorry for the multiple posts, but I just reworked the code to be able to handle multiple tables on a page. The button should show up on any page that begins with "National Register of Historic Places listings in" (e.g. all the state/county lists). You can click on it on any of these pages without fear. If there is no renumbering to do, you will just perform a null edit to the page that won't show up in the history. If there is renumbering to do, the script will renumber every table on the page correctly.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:01, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree with moving the listing, but it shouldn't go in a former listings: that section is for places in the county that have been delisted, not for places that were once in the county. It would be amazing if Dudemanfellabra had some way of osmosing us his coding skills :-) Nyttend (talk) 03:31, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
In that case, perhaps we should do something like the Alameda County, California list and put moved listings in their own table. (That also means there are a few listings that need to be fixed, like the Pippin Roller Coaster in Shelby County, Tennessee, which was part of the reason I thought moved listings went under former listings.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 18:32, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
In the Pippin case, the coaster was officially delisted without relisting, which is why it's in the former section. Since I did a good section of the former listings, I would put them in the former section, because they were formerly in the county. The separate table might be useful, but the Alameda example seems a bit cluttered for a table with a single entry. And I ran the script on a few counties in Texas and it worked great. 25or6to4 (talk) 19:46, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
In that case, we need to do something about National Register of Historic Places listings in Brown County, Wisconsin, which still says the coaster's listed. (Unfortunately, I can't verify its status one way or the other until the government shutdown ends.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:07, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Bug with NRHP Progress stats?

@Dudemanfellabra:: On the Guam page, the Untagged sites hover is saying "As Sombreru PillboxesundefinedAs Sombreru PillboxesundefinedHa. 62-76 Japanese Midget Attack Submarineundefined". Now, that hover does not seem very useful, but I also can't find an untagged site on that list. I'm assuming there is at least one bug here. Chris857 (talk) 22:57, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Since the three As Sombreru Pillbox sites and the submarine all link to redirects, I changed the links to bypass the redirects and previewed the list to see what would happen. It fixed the problem and revealed 3 sites on the list that are actually untagged but didn't show up before. I assume this is some kind of issue with the redirects, but I'm not sure what it is (though as the creator of those redirects, I'd like to know for the future). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 23:27, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
@TheCatalyst31 and Chris857: You did nothing wrong. It was me who messed up. The way my code was handling redirects was incorrect, but the only time the code would mess up was literally in this specific situation haha. The logistics behind how the code works is basically to build up a string of all the titles of the articles to query separated by a "|". For example, the relevant part of the string for the Guam list was "...|As Sombreru Pillbox I|As Sombreru Pillbox II|As Sombreru Pillbox III|..."
If the script finds any redirects after querying, what I had it do before is find the title of the redirect in that long string and replace it by the redirected title. Since As Sombreru Pillbox I is a redirect, the script would look for all instances of the string "As Sombreru Pillbox I" and replace them with "As Sombreru Pillboxes." The problem with this is that the next article, As Sombreru Pillbox II, just so happens to include the entire title of the first article within it. That means instead of getting "...|As Sombreru Pillboxes|As Sombreru Pillbox II|As Sombreru Pillbox III|..." after replacing the redirect for Pillbox I, I would get "...|As Sombreru Pillboxes|As Sombreru PillboxesI|As Sombreru PillboxesII|...", which screwed things up.
What I should have been doing was looking for not only the title but the title along with the "|" that comes after it. That definitely won't show up anywhere else. Now that I changed it, everything seems to be working fine. Thanks for finding that! I'll rerun the script on the progress page tomorrow, which should fix the numbers there (and anywhere else that occurred, but the likelihood of it happening more than once is very small).--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:29, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
I found it because I was looking "oh, there are still quite a few states with untagged articles; I'll maybe knock out a few really low hanging fruit." I got Rhode Island (2) done before hitting Guam (reported as 1). Chris857 (talk) 00:34, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Route 66 segments

I've noticed for some time now that the state and county lists treat the various NRHP-listed segments of Route 66 somewhat inconsistently between states. According to this list, 6 of the 8 states along Route 66 have segments of the road listed on the NRHP. In Oklahoma, the road segments all redirect to U.S. Route 66 in Oklahoma (or at least point there in the list). Kansas and Texas are the same way, though both states only have one segment on the NRHP (which is called a historic district in Kansas' case, and described incorrectly at its NPS itinerary page), and both were redlinks up until this June. Illinois' segments mostly redirect to Historic and Architectural Resources of Route 66 Through Illinois, which is tagged as a list and is causing the articles to show up as untagged at WP:NRHPPROGRESS (though in the Sangamon County list, one redirects to U.S. Route 66 in Illinois and one redirects to a local park). New Mexico's and Arizona's segments seem to still be redlinks for the most part. Nobody seems to have written a specific article about any of the road segments anywhere, though.

I'm in favor of treating all of these listings the same way for the sake of consistency. I'm personally in favor of redirecting all of them to the appropriate "U.S. Route 66 in $STATE" article, since it seems like they can be adequately described there, but I'd like to know how other people feel about these listings before I do anything. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:50, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:US66 has been really quiet for at least a year now, as if it had been bypassed or something. Their set of individual state-level articles was quite incomplete for many years (TX returned I-40, AZ returned State Highway 66...) but by now all eight describe at least one valid route with a distance chart and a list of notable landmarks. Pointing the list entries to a subsection of "U.S. Route 66 in $STATE" which describes the road infrastructure is reasonable. Historic and Architectural Resources of Route 66 Through Illinois is an oddball MPS list which was never created for the other seven voy:Route 66 states (IL was written up early and extensively) and is likely not needed. Most of the oddities like the nine-foot paved "sidewalk highway" in OK or the Rainbow Arch Bridge in KS are best addressed in subsections of "U.S. Route 66 in $STATE" (which describe route and infrastructure) if they don't have their own articles. K7L (talk) 23:33, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:nrhpprogress

Do we have any need for this page anymore? It's a working page for the tableising process from several years ago, so we obviously don't need it for current activities; I'm not clear how helpful it is as an archive. Meanwhile, I strongly suspect that we'll do better to retarget the redirect that I've linked in the section header. Nyttend (talk) 21:54, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I also strongly support retargeting both of those redirects to WP:NRHPPROGRESS, which is by far the more useful page. I don't really see any need to keep the page itself, though I also don't see any need to get rid of it; I wasn't involved with the project at the time, so I can't really tell if it's important or not. It doesn't help that half the page is written backwards. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:51, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
It would probably be okay to mark as {{historical}} rather than outright deleting it. Chris857 (talk) 12:51, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Agree with Chris857. Retarget the redirects and mark the archive as historical. I wouldn't lose any sleep if consensus was to delete it, though.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

State v. federal at WP:NRHPHELP

  Almost all nominations online at NPS Focus
  Almost all nominations online at state-level or other source
  Almost all nominations online, but require payment
  Some nominations online at state-level or other source

With the expanding number of nominations on Focus, we've begun to get into (and will continue getting into) situations in which nominations are doubly available: at least in Kansas, virtually all nominations are available from the SHPO, while most nominations are also available from Focus. Of course, as Focus keeps getting bigger, we're going to see the same thing happening with other states, and this raises a question of priorities: are we more interested in emphasizing the state sources or the federal, as far as the map's concerned? Right now, a state focus is helpful, since they're not shutting themselves down, but even aside from that, I'd argue that the map should give priority to the state-hosted nominations, since they're typically more comprehensive. This is especially important for archaeological locations: Pennsylvania's CRGIS hosts redacted copies of all (or nearly all) address-restricted locations (example, while Focus gives nothing, and I'm pretty sure that the same is true in South Carolina. State sources are sometimes more up-to-date than Focus; Indiana's been putting nominations on their SHAARD site within a few weeks of their being listed, while sites listed a few years ago are often still not in Focus. With this in mind, is it a good idea to mark states as being "Focus-complete" only when the state doesn't provide nominations? Nyttend (talk) 22:50, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we could make a new color for states that are available on Focus as well as at some state site? Or do stripes like many of the maps I've seen on here?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:59, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
Hopefully the shutdown won't be an issue for much longer, but aside from that, I agree that we should mark states that have both federal and state-hosted nomination forms. This is already relevant for at least one state, since I know West Virginia's state source is more up-to-date than Focus is. It's also important that we still note that the forms are on Focus to deal with edge cases like Illinois' database, which has forms through this year but overwrote a number of older forms with less-useful state historic survey forms. Using stripes makes sense to me, since it's probably clearer and avoids having to find another shade of greenish-yellow to use. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 23:20, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
Curious to see any examples of what you mean about Illinois — not for the purposes of this discussion, but simply for reporting purposes. I've downloaded everything for the Ohio River counties; the only errors I can remember finding were that Pulaski County's Civil War Naval Hospital had no nomination uploaded (apparently because it's been destroyed) and that a survey form for the NR-listed Elijah P. Curtis House in Massac County has been uploaded in place of the nomination for the Duffy Site in Gallatin County. That's not a replacement but a simple mistake, as you can get the complete Curtis nomination by going to its entry — it's just one digit away from the Duffy entry. Nyttend (talk) 00:07, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Look at the forms for Shakespeare Garden or the Dwight Perkins House, both in Evanston; instead of the NRHP nomination, they link to forms from the "Illinois Historic Sites Survey Inventory". There might be more examples like that, but those are the two I remember off the top of my head. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
More examples: I hit some dead ends in HARGIS when I was trying to research Scoville Square in Oak Park, as well as its historic district. --Orlady (talk) 02:12, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Stripes sound best to me, too. I didn't really think of this, since my idea was simply to ensure that state-hosted status be marked, but it's better than my original idea of simply replacing the Focus color with the state color. Nyttend (talk) 23:59, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
While we're updating this, Minnesota has (as far as I can tell) most nominations online at the state level (text only though, no image PDFs, scattered photos). Chris857 (talk) 00:08, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
It seems like Minnesota's entries are very short summaries of the nomination form; some are only a sentence long. While we're on the topic, though, should there be an indicator for states that have detailed summaries of sites at some state resource? For instance, Arkansas has a rather detailed summary of each site on its state preservation website, including a lot of archaeological sites, and I think Louisiana and Michigan have a similar situation. On the other hand, that would mean more stripes for states like Wyoming (which has text summaries of many address-restricted sites) and could easily make the map more complicated than it needs to be.
And since we're discussing improvements to the map, is there any reason North Carolina is yellow rather than light green? All of its nominations (except for some archaeological sites) seem to be linked from the master list now. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 01:04, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I'd suggest that we continue to have the map show only nomination forms. The format of the form shouldn't matter, so plain-text HTML copies of the forms should count, as should a CD emailed from Ohio's SHPO after you pay them, but I don't think we should have this map displaying summaries. Meanwhile, I checked a bunch of Minnesota listings and found links to nominations for all of them, except for an AR petroglyphs site — you have to click the underlined/italicised property name from the list, and this will take you to a page at which you can find additional data, including a "Nomination: [refnum].pdf" link for most sites. Nyttend (talk) 01:54, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
@TheCatalyst31: Did you look further down the page, past the one sentence blurbs? Most look to have docs like Wirth Building or William A. Irvin. Chris857 (talk) 01:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Blah, that's what I get for not being observant. Though I looked through the Aitkin County properties again, and a lot of them have state forms like this instead of nomination forms. It's probably a similar situation to Massachusetts and should be at least enough to turn the state yellow, though. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:39, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Aitkin County had an MRA that resulted in lots of listings. It's apparently common when doing an MPS simply to submit a state form for each property along with the MPS cover. When I've requested nominations for the Cross-Tipped Churches TR from nr-reference@nps.gov, I've been mailed Ohio Historic Inventory forms, and numerous Pennsylvania sites that were part of an MPS (the state-owned bridges and the Philadelphia schools come to mind) have state forms in CRGIS rather than an NR form. As long as these are available, I'd say that we should count them toward making the state green. Nyttend (talk) 03:43, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Ah, that would explain it. Other sites do seem to have the actual NRHP nominations, so I'm going to assume you're right (that, and I've already been wrong twice and don't want to dig any deeper here). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:55, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
The map is supposed to serve as a graphical aide for the text located at WP:NRHPHELP#State and territory specific resources. It shouldn't include everything. If you think the summaries should be pointed out as a resource, put them in the Arkansas section there. Same for every other state mentioned here. I haven't updated the map in a while, so if it turns out that more NC/other state sources have come out, we can update it. I'll look into adding stripes soon. Currently swamped with grad school stuff, so it'll be a while. This is part of the reason why the Progress script still hasn't been re-uploaded/fixed as well.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I just updated the map to include stripes. I based the data off of what was at WP:NRHPHELP#State and territory specific resources, which probably doesn't include the information mentioned here. If anything needs to be updated/changed, let me know.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:31, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to complain, but the code needs a little work; you've got a stripe in northern Sonora, just south of Arizona. Nyttend (talk) 05:42, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Thanks! It looks good, though I have one minor correction (ignoring MN/NC for now). Alabama was a yellow state before NPS Focus uploaded its nomination forms, so it should presumably have yellow stripes. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 05:45, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Ah, on the NRHPHELP page, the info for Alabama says "site summaries", which I didn't take to mean nomination forms since generally summaries are shorter descriptions like those for Arkansas mentioned above. I'll fix that soon. @Nyttend:, though, I'm sorry, but I don't see that stripe. I've opened the file in Firefox (my main browser), Safari, and Chrome, but I'm on a Mac, so no internet explorer. What browser/system are you using? I took the code directly from another file with stripes that seemed to be working, so I'm not sure what you could be seeing. Is anyone else seeing that?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:06, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
IE8 in Windows 7. It's a dark green diagonal stripe; its top is straight west of the spot where the AZ/NM border hits Mexico. Imagine a "Line" that crosses Mississippi straight eastward from the stripe: if you look at the southernmost light green stripe that ends at the Alabama border, the portion of the stripe below the "Line" would be almost identical (except in shade). Nyttend (talk) 06:12, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I tested the map in IE9 in Windows 7, and it seems to be displaying fine there (as well as in Chrome and Firefox), so if it's an IE problem it's only with the older versions. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 06:44, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I get the same problematic image when viewing it in Firefox 23.0.1. I'll upload a screenshot later if I get the chance; I'm just about out the door to work right now. Nyttend (talk) 12:05, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Here's a screenshot. Nyttend (talk) 17:59, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm now on a public computer with IE9, and I see the same stripe in that image. Have you cleared your cache, Dudemanfellabra? Nyttend backup (talk) 21:49, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
For me, [2] displays correctly (the direct Commons link, but the file description page is showing the stray stripe. Also, the image at the top of this section is rendering without the stripe, but I know that images do not purge well. Chris857 (talk) 02:13, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
Sorry for the delayed response, but I've been busy. Now that I look a little closer, I seem to be getting the same results as Chris857. I'll also point out that there is a grey stripe on top of the Virgin Islands. I'll try to look into what's wrong, but my guess is it's something to do with Wikipedia converting from SVG to PNG for thumbnails. Maybe I'll ask at the help desk or something, but as I said, I'm kind of busy in real life at the moment, so a fix may take a while.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I just uploaded a new version of the map that fixes the stray stripes for me. User:Nyttend/User:Chris857, is it fixed for you as well? (You may have to purge/bypass your cache).--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:16, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Looks great! And no complaints about the delay; I went 2½ days with no Internet access (was in Iowa and yesterday drove all the way to Ohio), so I assumed you'd get around to it when you had the chance. Nyttend (talk) 11:25, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
Seems to be fixed here at work. Chris857 (talk) 12:52, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

So which states need updating?

Just now have had time to get back into editing a bit (midterms coming up, so I'm not swarmed with homework). I updated the map with stripes earlier, but I didn't change any states to anything they weren't already labelled before. In the discussion above, it seems that North Carolina should be state-level-green as well as Minnesota. Is that all? Or are there any other states that need to be updated?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:14, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Shutdown

Looks like Focus is a victim of the government shutdown. Ntsimp (talk) 14:01, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Not so sure... it was working fine this morning (well after the shutdown started)... and a few minutes ago I was able to access but found a new front page ... so it may just be a transition glitch that has nothing to do with the government shutdown.
I could see the NPS saying that no new updates will be made (as the data clerks who update the information are not at work)... but it doesn't cost the government anything to keep an existing web-site operational (ie keeping the existing database running shouldn't have been affected by the shutdown.)
If it was taken off line due to the shutdown, someone made a bad political decision. The conservative press will have a field day with it... The spin will be: "The big bad Obama Administration managed to keep their expensive health-care exchange website up and running, but shut down the NRHP website (which didn't cost anything) just to make a point." Blueboar (talk) 14:56, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
NASA also got taken down... Hasteur (talk) 15:06, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
Sigh... so it does look as if someone is playing politics with websites. Oh well. Blueboar (talk) 15:12, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
It's ironic that today's Google Doodle (where I live) is about the 123rd anniversary of Yosemite. Chris857 (talk) 15:41, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
I suspect it got taken down because someone took the Antideficiency Act a bit too literally and didn't want the NPS to look like it was still paying people to maintain their website. Of course, NPS Focus was still running for several hours after the shutdown took effect last night, which means a (presumably paid) employee had to come in and turn it off this morning, which just shows how silly the whole thing is. (Incidentally, the shutdown isn't consistent across branches of government; the USGS appears to have left the Geographic Names Information System running, and there's no way that's an essential service.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 16:52, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
Update for you, User:TheCatalyst31 — in the last 20 hours there's been at least 1 person working at USGS, since they've now replaced the GNIS with a shutdown notice. Nyttend (talk) 12:08, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Sigh... further proving my point. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 17:43, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Nyttend, the natural hazard folks are still on the watch, e.g. the seismologists in Boulder, the volcano experts, see USGS shutdown notice, as well as NHC and NWS though the NOAA mainpage also shows a shutdown notice. What also is down is te LoC website including HAEB/HAER picture and other collections. --Matthiasb (talk) 01:37, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, Focus and the weekly announcements appear to be back in working order. Chris857 (talk) 16:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Progress

Just noticed that the Progress page has been updated. Thanks for doing this. The overall % illustrated is 60.6%. It's pretty clear that we are making progress. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:22, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Look up a few sections ;)--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:24, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for updating the maps! Been working on Virginia during the furlough. Pretty cool to see the progress on making it more red. Pubdog now in the top 20 on the list of Wikipedians by number of pages created.... cheers--Pubdog (talk) 01:33, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sackville House

An AFD of note for this project: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sackville House--GrapedApe (talk) 23:41, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Closed snowball keep. Dumbest damn thing I ever seen. O, wait...I watched the news tonite......... Gtwfan52 (talk) 04:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
It was amazing: a brand new editor perfectly executes an AFD, complete appropriate use of wikipedia jargon, in the first edit! Remarkable--GrapedApe (talk) 11:31, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

More input needed...

...at Talk:Grace Church (Manhattan)#Infobox. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:36, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

List sorting

In adding sort keys to List of National Historic Landmarks in Indiana, I observed that two entries (Riley and Republic) are out of what appears to be the proper alphabetic sort order. The items are, however, presented in the order they are listed by the NPS. I added sort keys to these entries, so that sorting on the "Landmark name" column produces an alphabetically correct ordering. The question is, ought we correct the ordering as initially presented (ie swap the entries in the list)? (This is not the first NHL list I encountered this problem on, it also occurs in the Massachusetts list; there I swapped the entries, leaving a comment noting the discrepancy.) Magic♪piano 17:59, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

How is this different from any other spelling/capitalisation error by NPS? We routinely modify our lists to resolve simple errors like this; we shouldn't be so close to the source that we reproduce obvious errors. Nyttend (talk) 21:25, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

In the Indiana list, Riley is followed by The Republic. The definite article is what is causing the problem and should be ignored in alphabetizing. We already know to list things such as James Whitcomb Riley House under R. clariosophic (talk)

Moving forward with tagging articles sourced only to the NRIS

As it seems no one at WP:BOTREQ is willing to take up the task of adding the {{NRIS-only}} template to articles which only have one citation to the NRIS, I decided to see if I could adapt the scripts that I have been using to update the Progress page to do what we want. After a few days of tinkering around with it, I believe I have gotten roughly what we were looking for. I haven't tagged any articles yet, but I plan to eventually create a bot account and get approval to do so. In the mean time, I have dumped my script's output (i.e. articles it would tag if allowed to do so) to User:Dudemanfellabra/NRISOnly. I have spot checked many articles, and the output seems to be working perfectly. I even went so far as to visit each article linked from that page beginning with numbers as well as those beginning with A (approximately 500 total) and didn't find a single false positive. I would appreciate it if members of the project would take some time to scan the output and see if you can find any links that shouldn't be there. A more difficult (but probably more useful) task would be to try to find false negatives, i.e. articles that should be there but aren't. I know of at least one problem with the script, but I'm not sure how to fix it. If an article does not include the {{NRISref}} template (i.e. it links directly to the NRIS in whatever way), my code won't find it. I have been thinking about how to solve this, but I think the best fix would just be to add the NRISref template to any articles if they are found and on the next bot run that article will be tagged.

If anyone can find anything else wrong with the script or simply sees something they think should be changed, let me know and I'll try to work it in. If everyone seems satisfied with the output, I'll move forward with trying to get bot approval to actually tag these articles so that this information can be added to the Progress page and be useful for creating a new "net quality" map which will IMO more accurately indicate the quality of NRHP coverage throughout the nation. One thing we do need to get straightened out regardless of this script, though, is the wording for Template:NRIS-only. It was pointed out before (I don't want to take the time to look up the conversation) that the current wording is a little too broad or otherwise unsatisfactory, so any suggestions on how to improve it would be appreciated.

As a side note, if anyone is interested, the way I get this output is to look at all the county lists linked from the Progress page, generate a giant list of all NRHP articles, and dump it to subpages of User:Dudemanfellabra/AllNRHPPages (If I dumped everything to one page, I would run up against built-in Wikipedia limits for how big a page can be). These subpages may be interesting/useful lists in their own right, so feel free to use them for whatever. Then after that first step is finished, I run through all of the articles on the list and detect ones for which there is only one reference and it is to NRIS. As I said above, that list is dumped to User:Dudemanfellabra/NRISOnly. I then go one more step and actually find out who is making these articles, generating a list of all NRIS-only articles created in the last month as well as a total tally of who has created multiple NRIS-only articles. That output is dumped to User:Dudemanfellabra/NRISOnlyCreators. I envision updating this last list at least every month to see if there is some new user generating stubs en masse so we can deal with that. The other lists would be updated more regularly, depending on how much free time I have. I would love to completely automate the process so that every day/week/other interval the script would just run itself and I wouldn't have to be there to click the button, but I'm not sure how to technically make that happen.

Feel free to use the information on these pages however you like, but I ask that you don't edit the pages themselves since they are intended to be used as a check for if the script is working correctly. If I get bot approval, I hope to combine all of these tasks into a single script--perhaps merged with the one that updates the Progress page--and kill multiple birds with one stone. Each step takes about two hours to run, so it takes quite a while from start to finish, but if I can make it do everything at once, I will save tons of time. Thanks for the patience you guys have demonstrated while I've tried to get everything together with this. Hopefully in the near future everything will come together and we will have a much better indicator of exactly how much this project has done to expand coverage of items on the NRHP. Keep up the good work!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:12, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

On the false negatives, I have an idea: after we figure out the tagging and get it completed, have the script look at all untagged pages and find which ones have just one citation each, and have it dump all of them onto a project page or a page in your userspace. We could then go through the list manually, removing ones whose sole source is something other than NRIS and tagging ones that have nothing except an oddly formatted NRIS citation. This shouldn't be too hard to implement if the bot work could be done. Nyttend (talk) 02:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Just for fun, I have been playing with the Elkman tool adding infoboxes to NRHP articles that do not have them. Since any article that has the NRHP infobox template should also use the NRIS ref, couldn't you run a comparison of articles in the project with articles the infobox is on as a starting point to find your false negatives? Gtwfan52 (talk) 05:37, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Not necessarily true-- if information like the listing date and the refnum were available from another source (e.g. a state historical-society website), I'd cite that rather than NRIS, especially if the alternate source had a stable URL for the site in question. Ammodramus (talk) 05:58, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
That, and I think some of the earlier NRHP articles cite mirrors like NRHP.com rather than the NRIS (which is still grounds for manual tagging IMO). Plus a handful have handmade infoboxes that don't cite anything. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 06:08, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
@Nyttend: Ask and you shall receive. I just updated the output to include a list of articles that have only one inline citation but don't use the template {{NRISref}}. While I was at it (and mostly because it didn't require any extra code), I also generated a list of completely unsourced articles. There are 802 articles with no inline citations at all and 728 with one inline citation to something besides NRIS. Spot-checking, it looks like many of them link to a specific listing date. I'm wondering if we should include those in the articles to be tagged? If we think these should be tagged as well, I could look for the string "http://www.nps.gov/nr/listings/[0-9]{8}.htm" (where that last bit is a regex meaning "eight digits in a row") and call that equivalent to citing NRIS. In fact, I've seen some articles that just point directly to http://www.nps.gov/nr/.. maybe I could even use that as a search string? What do others think?
@Gtwfan52: My starting point (as explained above) is the county lists. Any article that is included on a county list is targeted. Actually, many NRHP articles don't have infoboxes because they are part of larger articles or any number of other reasons. Besides looking at the 4+ million articles in Wikipedia as a whole, I think the county lists are the best starting place to look for these articles. If anyone else has a better idea, I'm all ears, though.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:37, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

What started my little quest to add infoboxes was the discussion that led to this one--the spat about sub-stub articles. Not on subject, I know. Working through the county lists on Oregon, I found many articles that consisted of the sentence "blablah is a structure in blahtown listed on the National Register of Historic Places." Some were referenced to a state of Oregon pdf listing NRHP sites; some had no references at all. At least with the infobox, there is some, however vague, content; and my meaning in relation to the point here is that when you create an infobox with the Elkman tool, it automatically gets the {{NRISref}} added. If this doesn't make any sense, excuse me. Cross eyed and weary...good night. Gtwfan52 (talk) 06:50, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I've copied the one-non-NRIS-reference contents into User:Nyttend/test and will be going through them. Dudemanfellabra, I've found one odd error so far: Worrell-Ettlinger House, with no references at all, was put in the one-non-NRIS-reference section. Meanwhile, lots of these one-reference pages turn out to be decent articles — it seems that many articles have been written with a citation to the nomination form (example) but no NRIS citation. I'm definitely counting those as false positives! Nyttend (talk) 13:06, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Okay, everyone; here is the completed list: Dudemanfellabra's one-non-NRIS-source page with some pages removed: I've removed all pages that I considered to be outside-sourced. Besides things using a nonstandard NRIS citation, I kept stuff whose only citation was to a Recent Listings page, or to nrhp.com, or solely to things like landmarkhunter that mirror the NRIS. Finally, as Gtwfan52 noted, many Oregon locations have simply a state list of NR-listed locations, without anything substantial; I retained those as well. Nyttend (talk) 15:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for doing that. About the Worrell-Ettlinger House, I had already found that too, and I fixed my script so that would be tagged as completely unreferenced. The reason it was being tagged as having a reference is because it used the <references/> tag rather than the usual {{reflist}}, and the regex I was using to find <ref></ref> tags apparently also matched those. I modified my regex to only match "<ref" if "e" isn't the next character, so I expect to see Worrell-Ettlinger move up to the unreferenced section by the next update (unless anyone wants to take the initiative to actually add a ref to it?). It may also be possible that other articles were missed because of that, so maybe the NRIS-only list will grow.
About the articles that are of decent size but have only one citation: If that citation is NRIS they should still be tagged since they are "only sourced to NRIS", but all you have to do to fix them is add that second citation. Since there is so much information already there, it shouldn't be that hard. The articles that have one citation to anything else won't be tagged, and all you have to do to remove them from the list completely is to add an NRISref, which they should have anyway in my opinion.
Other than those, did you find any more problems with the one non-NRIS ref list (and/or the unreferenced one if you went through it)? I manually changed a few of them to use NRISref, but I didn't get time to go through the full 700. How I think we should move forward is to simply convert the pages using a non-standard NRISref to use the regular one so they will be picked up by the script and maybe check/change the reference on the others on your test list. I'll take care of all the non-standard ones and re-run the script later, but today is football day for me haha, so I probably won't have time until tomorrow to get the new output. Thanks for the help!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:43, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
I really need to get off here; I'm supposed to be moving across town today :-) I found several others that either had no citations at all or that had multiple citations, but I figured that this was a one-time process that didn't warrant my time or yours to find minor errors on the list. As far as the decent-sized pages, I meant something else: most of these articles appeared on the list because they cited the nomination and didn't cite NRIS, so the only "problem" with their citations was that they needed something for NRIS. I left a few pages that were of decent size because they cited nothing except NRIS in a weird format; in most of these situations, the large majority of the text was completely uncited. Nyttend (talk) 18:05, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
I would appreciate it if you'd let me know exactly which articles you found with no or multiple citations.. they may be individual cases of little importance, but the lessons learned from them could help the script find numerous other articles that may be similar to those. If you don't have the list of no/multiple refs articles handy, I am making my way through the list of the ones you said were not "outside-sourced" and including an NRISref on them (sometimes adding infoboxes, sometimes just changing preexisting refs). That means the next time I run the script, those will disappear and I'll be left with only "outside-sourced" articles, and the problem articles will be easier to find.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:20, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Since I didn't record them at all, I can't let you know. I guess we'll have to wait for a repeat of the script; I'm sorry. But what are you doing watching football? Google tells me that Arkansas/Alabama doesn't start for another 2½ hours! Got to get back to moving; maybe I'll have time to continue image work later tonight, since I have photos for nearly 200 sites that haven't yet been uploaded. Nyttend (talk) 21:36, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
This is completely irrelevant to this discussion haha, but I'm a grad student at Alabama, and I was actually at the game. Kickoff was at 6:15, but the student gates opened at 3:30. After writing that comment at 3:20, I went directly to the stadium and didn't end up leaving until about 8 pm, which was halftime. I would have done a little more last night with this stuff, but I got distracted by other things and ended up not getting home until about 8 am. #sorrynotsorry haha :P--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:37, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Just an observation: Looking for edge cases and false positives is a worthy exercise, but dont forget that perfect is the enemy of the good. I think what you already have in place is enough to dramatically improve the quality of the nrhp articles. Years ago, we decided to only focus on NHL articles for this level of focused attention. Illustrated, articled, etc. That was an appropriate way to slice off the most important bits into a manageable chunk. Now we're focusing on *every* nrhp. Let's let this work through using what you've already built and in a few years, we can focus on the much smaller list of not quite perfect articles. Personally, I'd like to stay with this project until we get every nrhp articled and illustrated (with appropriate referencing of course). Don't let the rough edges that we haven't trimmed yet diminish your appreciation of the overall beauty of what we've done. dm (talk) 16:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

The reason I'm looking for false positives (of which I still think no one has found?) is that if I were to actually edit these pages incorrectly, I would get a load of comments from angry editors wondering why "their article" was tagged incorrectly. I'd rather head off those comments now by making sure it works (almost) perfectly. I'd rather miss a few articles than tag incorrect ones, but if the tools are available to find the ones that would be missed (as the list above seems to have done), I see no reason to ignore what the script missed simple because it's better than nothing. I live by the philosophy that if you're going to do something, you should do it as correctly as you can. On top of that, it's still going to take a few days to get bot approval regardless, so why not check over the output in the interim?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:43, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
I looked at a few articles on that "one citation that isn't NRIS" list. Didn't find any false positives. Mostly, I found pages with referencing that is worse than NRIS-only: various kinds of references to NPS Focus (many of these were bad links), NRHP.com, etc. I didn't get very far in checking because I got sidetracked by expanding articles and fixing reference citations. You've done good work in creating these lists! --Orlady (talk) 00:03, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the look-over; there were about 700 entries before I started working on it, because most entries were something unrelated, such as Columbia–Wrightsville Bridge or Backbone State Park (just one inline citation each, but several relevant general references) or Second Baptist Church (Poughkeepsie, New York) (a single citation, but it's the nomination form). Most of the latter type were either in New York (largely written by Daniel Case) or northern Kentucky (don't remember who was writing those); I've asked Daniel if he could simply try to add NRIS when writing these articles in the future. Nyttend (talk) 01:38, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Dudemanfellabra — I take it you enjoyed your evening :-) I've just decided to do another run-through to find nomination-dependent articles that need NRIS citations, and in the process I looked for false positives. There were fewer than I remembered: only five.
Meanwhile, Hatch House (North Berwick, Maine) and Lower Dock Hill Road Stone Arch Bridge accidentally got left off the "final" list that I gave you earlier. I couldn't find anything with multiple inline citations; I must have remembered wrongly. Nyttend (talk) 02:42, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Awesome! It appears as if one of the five above falls into the same category as the Worrell-Ettinger House article discussed above, so that will be fixed on the next run. Three of the five articles had one reference which was commented out, and the way I was checking to see if all references were commented out was a bit wrong, but I've fixed that now. That may bring out more NRIS-only articles actually. Meanwhile Lester Depot was only a false positive because you actually edited out the one ref it had haha. I'll rerun the script sometime today to get an updated output. Thanks for the help!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:37, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
I should probably note that my comment about edge cases and "false positives" only makes sense when I realized I really meant to say "false negatives" as dudemanfellabra mentioned higher up the thread. Of course we should exert all effort to identify false positives (ie: articles which are highlighted as problematic when they are not). Sorry for the mistake and the resulting confusion (though to everyone;s credit, they mostly just kept moving on). dm (talk) 06:14, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Second dump

After several attempts to fix the problems pointed out above, I've just (finally) gotten the script to agree with me (diff skips several intermediate revisions where I was trying to get things to work). @Nyttend:, I didn't check them all, but it appears that the articles you pointed out above are now in the right place. Can you check that for me? Also as I suspected, these fixes led to several other articles being included now that weren't before, the first of which I found was 19th Street Bridge, which has an NRISref but also the <references/> tag, which was before mistakenly counted as "a second ref."

Looking through the diff, I have become aware that apparently moving articles is a much more common thing than I realized, and when an article is moved from its original title, the redirect will mistakenly get tagged as unreferenced (the wikitext of the redirect doesn't have any ref tags). I figured having updated the list of all NRHP pages only two days ago, not many pages would have been moved, but I was just wrong on all accounts there haha. That said, these articles wouldn't be tagged with the NRIS-only template anyway, but still... Realizing that, I will try to modify the script to account for redirects, so hopefully the next run will fix all those. Other than redirects, everything seems to be in working order, but as always, any help looking over the output is welcomed, especially in the list of articles with only one source that is not NRIS.. I still haven't made my way through those, but it appears that many have been fixed between these two runs.

I will dump at least one more run (probably multiple) which fixes the redirect problem and hopefully addresses any other errors (like the 3 pages at the top of the list which don't exist and were causing the script to hang up for the past few days). After I get everything seemingly fixed, I plan on applying for bot privileges to tag these articles. That's looking like at least a week or more out, though, so there is still time to suggest modifications if desired. Thanks for the patience!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:23, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

As for the three pages that don't exist, I think you hit a weird Wikimedia bug that I've seen before. Occasionally the redlinks on a page will display the standard "page does not exist" message in a language other than English. All three of the errors are on National Register of Historic Places listings in Dodge County, Georgia, so presumably that page got loaded wrong when your script read it. Unfortunately, since the problem is way higher up than your code, I'm not sure what you can do about it aside from checking for "page does not exist" in several dozen different languages (for instance, it looks like the one you got is the Krio language, which doesn't even have its own Wikipedia). Since it only affects redlinks it shouldn't be a problem for the NRIS-only tagging, I wouldn't think. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 08:28, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm unclear which pages I should check. A large number, or just a small group? Nyttend (talk) 11:52, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Yea I figured out the Dodge County error a while back, but as you said, there's not really much I can do about it haha.. That's kind of the whole reason I put the error section in.. so that I could just keep track of it and hopefully when the code runs again, they'll disappear. Nyttend, I would appreciate it if you would help me go through the one-source non-NRIS pages and correctly tag them with NRISref templates if they're incorrectly formatted. I'm also changing articles that link to NRHP.com or one of the weekly listings pages to use NRISref. Also I was hoping people would still do a general spot check of the output to see if there are any false positives in the NRIS-only section because those are the ones that would definitely be tagged.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:05, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Pardon the interruption. When you said you are changing articles that reference one of the weekly listings pages to use NRISref, did you mean you are replacing the weekly link with NRISref, or just adding NRISref? Generic1139 (talk) 16:57, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
I had been totally replacing them with NRISref if Elkman's infobox generator could find them (and also adding other info from Elkman's output). Most of the articles that pointed to weekly listings were very old (2009-2010ish) and were probably created when the infobox generator/NRIS available online didn't include anything past early 2009. Should I stop? I figured when they were tagged/categorized, then we could go back and actually expand them to include more information/refs. For now, I just wanted to bring them out to everyone's attention so they didn't slip into the unknown even after the initial tagging. If this is undesirable, I'll stop...--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:00, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm probably not qualified to judge. The reason I ask is this. In the case of relatively new listings, such as the one for Thomas C. Miller Public School, I can only find the NRHP data in the weekly listings. The normal link generated by NRISref in other articles sends me off to a generic page, where I can then click on the advanced search, then cut and paste the NRHP reference into the search page. This sometimes results in a data record, but in the case of the Miller school, it doesn’t – the only way to get the data is by knowing which weekly listing it is on. I don’t know how many NRHP listings this applies to. My only worry here is that information will be lost, at least in some cases. The NRISref template documentation doesn’t say how to use it with a weekly reference. If this all gets handled some other way, or Miller is an outlier, then carry on.Generic1139 (talk) 20:53, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
The Thomas Miller School was listed very recently--May 2013--and so is not yet included in the NRIS database, which only includes records for all properties listed through August 2012. I am only changing references for those that were listed before this date. Any listed after that date (none of which I have found so far) are being left alone.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:24, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for the explaination. Generic1139 (talk) 22:35, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
IMO, if an article about an older listing has a citation to the weekly listing but not NRIS, the NRIS reference should be added to the article, but the citation to the weekly listing should not be deleted. Reasons for this are multiple, including: (1) the citation to the weekly listing is presumably where the article creator actually got the information, (2) it's easier for most readers to verify the weekly notice than it is to find the NRIS database, and (3) for the data it includes (particularly listing date and the nature of listing action) the weekly listing is probably a more reliable source than NRIS. --Orlady (talk) 02:32, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Maybe we could just combine the two? i.e. make Template:NRISref try to link directly to the weekly listing. I just whipped up some code at User:Dudemanfellabra/Test which generates a link to a weekly listings page if you give it the listing date as the first parameter. For instance, Wall Street Historic District (Norwalk, Connecticut) (an article from which I removed the link to the weekly listings page and replaced it with NRISref) was listed on September 23, 2009. {{User:Dudemanfellabra/Test|September 23, 2009}} produces "no match", which does indeed match the link I removed. I think given a little time, I could work this link into the code of the NRISref template so that it could be enabled by setting, say |weekly=yes and including |date=LISTING_DATE. The code will only work for dates after December 27, 1999, since the NPS changed the standard format of links before then.. but something is better than nothing, right? What do you think?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:16, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Having a bot normalize listings is a good thing, but losing information in the process is to be avoided. Adding the listing date in the NRIS template is good, as it will make it easier to update the article in the future if the location of the data changes. Replacing one reference with another is only good if the new reference contains the same data as the original reference. In cases where you can't be sure that is true, adding a link rather than replacing the original reference may be a better choice. Generic1139 (talk) 15:13, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
In case anyone cares, I've made the code be able to handle listings back to 1983 now. Anything listed before then has weird weekly listing pages, and I don't think I'd be able to sort it all out. I'll bring this up at the talk page of the template if anyone wants to comment there. If there is no objection, I'll add the weekly list link to the NRISref code in a few days.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:56, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Generic1139 about not removing existing references to the weekly listing notice when an NRISref is added. For similar reasons, I'm not sure I agree with adding the weekly listing notice to the the NRISref template. How about asking Elkman to add the weekly listing notices to his generator, so that thoughtful users of the generator can consider adding it to the new pages they are creating? After some experience with that, we could consider expanding it to to NRISref. --Orlady (talk) 04:14, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

3 buildings, 3 separately listed sites, and 2 HDs in one photo

700-704 S. Front Street, Philly

Much of the discussion on this page looks much too serious for me! Just to lighten things up, the photo on the right can illustrate all the following:

from right

ALL listed in 1972.

I might as well issue a challenge. Can anybody else find a photo with more NRHP-listed sites and HDs in it? Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:58, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

I cannot, but I'm glad to see that all of these articles have their own separate images. I generally try to keep "duplicated" (if that makes sense) images to a minimum, sometimes even using different pictures for one property shown in multiple county lists. Just wanted to point that out.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:54, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
I understand perfectly what you mean - a canal that goes through 4 counties will look different in each. My earlier pix of these sites were hampered by one or two big trees (which have now been removed) and fully occupied parking spaces (got to get there early in the morning and have some luck). In short I added (not replaced) this pic to 4 articles, simply because it is a much better pic for the individual sites, and adds a 2013 view for the small HD. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:30, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Me too. My multi-site shots are generally either those that can't help being multi-site (e.g. two buildings next to each other, like this, or an individual site in a district) or those that are simply meant to show that multiple sites are near each other, but I'll still do my best to get a different image for each one. Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine HD includes lots of listed sites, so I assumed that File:Over the Rhine.JPG would beat your total, but it's actually short: most sites are behind the nearby tall skyscraper, or they're off to one side or the other. As a result, the best I can give you is File:Central Butler Historic District.jpg, showing three individually listed sites that are all CPs to the Butler Historic District north of Pittsburgh. Nyttend (talk) 22:10, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Nice try, I'll score you 4 to my 5! BTW the Over-the-Rhine shot is quite nice. From an airplane or a 2nd skyscraper? Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:30, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
It has to be from a skyscraper; an airplane at this spot would be at extreme risk of crashing into a building. Judging by the angle, I'm guessing that the photographer was standing on the rooftop observation deck of the Carew Tower. The photo looks pretty much straight north, and the Kroger headquarters skyscraper is one block east, a few blocks north, and many stories shorter than the Carew Tower; both the Kroger building and the Carew Tower are on Vine Street (the thoroughfare just right of the middle of the photo); and the roof of the Carew Tower is a well-known observation deck, while I don't know if there are public observation decks on any other downtown skyscrapers. My only city-downtown image (which has been reused by lots of places) is File:Downtown Dayton, Ohio.jpg, which of course is much farther away. Nyttend (talk) 02:00, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Never said it had to be your own photo. Positively identified 11 sites/districts.
Can you spot them all?
  1. Duquesne Incline
  2. Forks of the Ohio
  3. Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania Western Headquarters Building
  4. Roberto Clemente Bridge
  5. Andy Warhol Bridge
  6. Rachel Carson Bridge
  7. Smithfield Street Bridge
  8. Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge
  9. Pittsburgh Central Downtown Historic District
  10. Pittsburgh Renaissance Historic District
  11. David McCullough Bridge
I suspect someone in Manhattan could do better. If I ever go to Pittsburgh, I'm getting a photo from this vantage point. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 23:00, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Pffft, here's 87,000. Teemu08 (talk) 23:03, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Touché ;-) Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 23:43, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
I didn't check everything out, but the bridges all look visible. Likely you've got an 11 here. Good job! The worst thing is that I've been to the forks and didn't get this pic. Next time. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:24, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Houghton, MI
I think smallbones might be winner in the listing per building visible ratio (basically 5/3). Here's one of mine (not great as a photo) but you can see:
  1. Saint Ignatius Loyola Church
  2. Douglass House
  3. Houghton County Courthouse
  4. Shelden Avenue Historic District
Bonus points if you can spot our former Carnegie library, which, unfortunately, is merely state-listed. Chris857 (talk) 00:46, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
This picture, taken inside a building, is of two National Historic Landmarks, neither of which is a district.
It's possible that there are city blocks in Boston that have a similar density. The following easily fit into a single image that includes the Massachusetts State House and part of the Boston Common:
It might be possible to fit some or all of the following in as well:
An aerial shot of Beacon Hill (something we don't seem to have), or possibly one taken from the Bunker Hill Monument would encompass on the order of 20 listings, although picking them out would be hard (as they are in Teemu08's image). Magic♪piano 16:40, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Hmm. File:BangorAuditorium.JPG has:
I'm pretty sure that I can see buildings from the Bangor Theological Seminary Historic District, and the Great Fire of 1911 Historic District historic district is pretty much dead center. I can't tell if the Adams-Pickering Block is visible or not, unfortunately -- it should be sitting in the middle of the picture as well.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 05:27, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Is there anyone willing to be a contact on this?

I'm organizing several groups with a vested interest in having a first-class Wikipedia article to link to for informational purposes from their own website (including a website I own). Because of the collective, and my personal, COI, per Jimbo's recommendation we are going to do a rewrite of Fulton, Missouri first in a sandbox and same with creating Downtown Fulton Historic District first as a sandbox. Is there some one from WP:NRHP that would be willing to be a contact person that I can recommend to any newbies to Wikipedia who would be working on these sandboxes if they need help with policy/guidelines or other NRHP specific arcane !rules that might apply to the historic district article? Please respond here or at my talk page if you would like to help by being a contact or by working on the sandbox itself. Thank you, and we should start working no sooner than 2 weeks so there is time, if you have some recommendations.Camelbinky (talk) 18:57, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Bangor Theological Seminary Historic District

Speaking of the Bangor Theological Seminary Historic District, the link is currently to a redirect to the Bangor Theological Seminary, which closed this fall and is now known as The BTS Center. Maybe someone should take a swing at the article? I'd be happy to help with photographs, I'm over there fairly regularly.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:36, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Weekly listings and delistings

Illinois' SHPO hosts PDF nominations for almost all of its listings, and most of these documents include a photocopy of the applicable recent listings page as the final page; the Alexis Opera House nomination, listed in 1985, is typical. You'll note that half of the page is Ohio delistings, and one of these is the Exchange Hotel in Sandusky (applicable list), which burned in 1977. However, NRIS says that the Exchange is still listed (it has a delisted Exchange Hotel in Ohio, but that's in a different town), even though it quite obviously hasn't been rebuilt. What to do? Should we treat this as an error in NRIS, i.e. the place really is delisted and the database simply doesn't reflect that? Nyttend (talk) 02:09, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to treat it as an error in the NRIS, as odd as it is to cite a snippet of another form in an unrelated nomination to do that. Oddly, the delisting (and the listing of the Alexis Opera House) don't seem to be in the official version of the 1987 weekly listings. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:46, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
It's also not in the 1988 weekly listings...I wonder where it could be? I only mentioned the Illinois thing because I found it there (I just uploaded a photo of the opera house) and because I'd gone through the 1987 and 1988 weekly listings without finding it. Nyttend (talk) 03:01, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
From 1989 onward the weekly listings are done in a different style, so it's not like the NRIS forgot to list these places for five years, either. The 1987 list jumps straight from the list posted August 14 to the list posted August 28, so I can only assume the missing sites are on the August 21 list that isn't there. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 03:28, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Sweet! I've been looking for that page for a while now for sourcing of delisted properties. Now to find the final 350... 25or6to4 (talk) 21:54, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
While this is here, I noticed a while back while correcting an apparent NRIS error in the list date of the Keweenaw National Historical Park (NRIS says Oct 27, 1972, but the park wasn't created until Oct 27, 1992). It wasn't listed in 1972, but it showed me that the 1992 listings has a gap between Oct 16 and Nov 13, or a solid three weeks of actions. Chris857 (talk) 22:12, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

NHLs that aren't

This just came to mind again, but I've seen cases were articles (and even news sources) claim a site is a National Historic Landmark when it is only NRHP-listed. I don't have any ready examples of articles, but here is a news source that states a post office is a "national historic landmark" (lower case), but it is only NRHP-listed. I'm kind of curious with the bot/scripting work going on, is if there might be a way to flag NRHP site articles which mention "national historic landmark" in any capitalization, but which do not match against a list of actual NHLs. This is likely to produce false positives (ie an article mentioning another NHL) so it should be a tag like NRIS-only, but it might be good as a maintenance list. Any thoughts, or has anyone else run into this kind of thing? Chris857 (talk) 02:54, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

This could be another use of the list dumped at User:Dudemanfellabra/AllNRHPPages. I might be able to get a script together to create a list of all articles that include the phrase "National Historic Landmark" (case insensitive) and aren't linked from one of the NHL lists. I'll put this on the backburner for now to focus on getting the NRIS-only stuff set up, but after that all get sorted out and seems to be working as expected, remind me about this and I'll see what I can do.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:41, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure how much use a text-based search would be, but there are certainly other sorts of inconsistencies that could be flagged by structural analysis:
  • articles that are categorized in an NHL (sub)category but do not appear as primary entry in the main table of some "List of NHLs in X". (The code might be smart about picking values of X, not necessarily searching all 55 NHL lists.)
  • articles with infobox NRHP that use nrhp_type=NHL (or NHLD) but do not appear as primary entry in the main table of some "List of NHLs in X".
  • articles listed as primary articles in "List of NHLs in X" but are missing categorization and infobox. This is either an indication of an entry incorrectly added to an NHL list, or an article needing categorization and/or infobox.
Having just found some discrepancies in List of NHLs in NY (prompting validation and correction of all of its 153 entries), this sort of dump would be useful in examining other NHL lists. Magic♪piano 13:25, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Some of the "NHLs that aren't" could be contributing properties within NHL historic districts. For example, the Litchfield Historic District is an NHL historic district that includes some contributing properties (e.g., Litchfield Law School) that are also individually listed as NHLs; that kind of situation could confuse people into thinking that other contributing properties in the district are also NHLs. --Orlady (talk) 15:44, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

WLM (last day for uploads)

WLM is wrapping up for this year - today is the last day for uploads. There is a rush of final uploads, so we'll need a bit of help placing pix at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images, probably for the next 2or 3 days. Any help appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:32, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

People wanting to help in this effort should also look at commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places. It (currently) has about 400 images (some of which also appear on the unused list, but many of which do not) needing proper categorization. Magic♪piano 14:43, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
While your at it, there are still thousands of images at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Images without refnum that still need NRHP reference tags attached to them. I've been working on them sporadically, and I alphabetized the free images a while back to make them a little easier to sort through. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 13:27, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
At least some of these (and probably a lot) are images that are linked to from pages with a single NRHP info box that contains a refnum. A job for a bot? I did a few by hand, but it will take a lot of time. There is also a smaller set of images(87) that are in category "National Register of Historic Places without known IDs" that have an NRHP template with something like "71000227 84000846 (increase)" that I assume is confusing whatever is adding the without known IDs tag. What is the best thing to do here? Split that into two NRHP templates? Manually remove the "without known ID" category? Quietly slink away pretending I didn't see them? Generic1139 (talk) 21:39, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
I've been going through the "without known ids", some are just typos, some are not in the US, fixing those. Many are expansions with two IDs. Generic1139 (talk) 19:47, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Proper reference for NRHP number

What is the proper way to make a reference for the NRHP number source? For items listed in 2010 and before, using the NRISref template seems ok, if somewhat disingenuous, as all of the individual databases are now in All_Data, and one can look them up in focus - the old database date is no longer relevant (correct me if I'm wrong on that, please).

For items that are recent and aren't in the All_Data file or in focus, referencing the weekly list seems appropriate.

For items that are listed in a date range that NRISref does not recognize as valid, but are in focus, like items in 2011, for example, what is the proper thing to do?

The issue is cleaning up the articles with NRISerrors caused by editors using NRIS with a bad date, like 2011, 2012, or 2013. Generic1139 (talk) 21:45, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

  • A possibility is using the weekly list with a reference like <ref name = weekly>{{Cite web | title = Weekly List of Actions Taken on Properties: 12/13/10 through 12/1723/10 | work = National Register of Historic Places | publisher = [[National Park Service]] | url = http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/listings/20101223.htm | accessdate = 26 November 2012 }}</ref> KudzuVine (talk) 22:36, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Interesting reading

I don't know who may have found out about this, but an Oklahoma Senator has produced a report on the National Park system, with some information relating to the NRHP. It's with an eye to reform under-performing units of the system. It's interesting reading on the whole. (I found out from my local newspaper because he lampoons two National Parks in essentially my backyard.) Chris857 (talk) 02:49, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

So with all the actually expensive things America is spending money on, Coburn wants to complain about the more unusual NRHP listings (which, IMO, are some of the most historically interesting sites) and Route 66 preservation efforts? He seems to be trying to use shock value to promote small government with no regard to whether cutting NPS funding will actually fix anything. (Then again, he published a similar report about the NSF two years ago; the scientific community is still upset about that, since he pulled the same tricks in regard to making serious research look silly and somehow claimed duplication in science was a bad thing.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:21, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Two articles, same subject

Old St. Mary's Catholic Church (Fredericksburg, Texas) and St. Mary's Catholic Church (Fredericksburg, Texas) are the same subject. Does this require a merge? Thundersnow (talk) 20:16, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the churches are actually different buildings; one was built in 1863 and the NRHP-listed one was built in 1906. Nonetheless, they're part of the same congregation, so they could probably both be covered in one article. (Both articles also seem to be extensively quoting the historical markers in front of the churches, which is a copyright issue and should be fixed regardless.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:06, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree with a merger; it's best to cover the entire church complex with one article in most cases. We might have an exception if both buildings are individually listed, but when just one's listed, we really should put all coverage of the parish's other building(s) into the same article as the church building itself. Nyttend (talk) 04:58, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
MERGE, since they are located next door to each other; if they were not, it might be a different story. Remember we are dealing with church buildings, not the church organization or parish. clariosophic (talk)

I have rewritten St. Mary's and redirected "Old St Mary's" to it (I do not know if that qualifies as a merge, I thought an admin needed to do that?). Feel free to re-rewrite it; I like numbers for a reason.

Since I could not get the NPS Focus Painted Churches nomination to open I used the version hosted at Texas Historical Commission (pages 30-32). I ask for someone to please compare those two documents because the Focus doc is still linked in the infobox but I have not read it.

I also cannot find the Fredericksburg Historic District nomination online, to see what it says the architectural style is (Gothic Revival, or Carpenter Gothic as it says on the THC marker), and if Old St Mary's is included in the district. Thundersnow (talk) 11:03, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Need confirmation

I need a double check on Lowville Masonic Temple.... searching the NRIS website does not get a hit. Is it listed? Is it under some other name or reference number? Blueboar (talk) 14:35, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

  • It takes a while for new entries to enter the database. The temple in question was promoted in late 2012. [3] Teemu08 (talk) 14:40, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the confirmation. So, not only is this another "NRIS only" article... it isn't even supported by the NRIS (yet). What a mess. Blueboar (talk) 15:10, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Blueboar: you may be able to get some information from the New York SHPO's website. I know that they're quite comprehensive and usually have plenty of information, although the website's a bit hard to navigate and I've never figured it out. See the New York section of Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Resources, and if you can't figure it out, you might want to ask some New York-active editors such as Pubdog or Daniel Case. Nyttend (talk) 00:21, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. The article is low priority for me right now (as I am working on other pages)... but I will keep your sources in mind for when I get back to it. I raised the article really to highlight a potential problem and bring it to everyone's attention: it now seems obvious that some of our more notorious stub creators blindly added links to the NRIS website - without checking to see that the NRIS website actually listed the property. This means we link to a source that does not actually support what we say. As we work to clean up the "NRIS Only" stubs, we need to remember to check for that. And when it does occur, we should remove the flawed NRIS link and replace it with a source that actually does support the statement. Blueboar (talk) 00:37, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Of course, when the article was created the building wasn't even on the NRHP yet (though it was still categorized as if it was). The creator seems to have created it based on a pending nomination. I've seen other articles like that in the past, so this may be something to look out for in general. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:08, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll just note the above discussion devolves into utter nonsense, suggesting that I created articles with made-up references to NRIS, and calling for attention to seek other false statements that are assumed to have been created by me. The articles discussed were created by me with NRIS source included, because NRIS was in fact my source. The articles accurately and explicitly noted, in their first edits, that the places were not in fact then listed on the National Register. Editor Blueboar is entirely incorrect to believe that NRIS only includes information on NRHP-listed buildings. Where on earth does he think the NRHP reference number specific to the property, included in the article, comes from? NRIS also includes nominated items, including some that are really clearly notable, where the NRHP listing didn't ultimately go through because of owner objection. TheUserCatalyst31's comment doesn't directly contradict Blueboar's assertions, so it may seem to reinforce Blueboar's incorrect views. It would help, perhaps, if TheUserCatalyst31 or others would confirm to Blueboar that Blueboar's reasoning was bunko, since Blueboar appears inclined to believe incredibly negative things about me. It is absurd to suggest I made up references.

About use of NRHP infoboxes and categories for nominated-but-not-listed properties, standards on such were not clear in 2009 when I created those articles. Note in the edit summary in creating one I explicitly called attention to the question of how to treat it. I think these raised the question and that it was subsequently decided that NRHP infoboxes should not be created for these (though the Elkman generator will happily supply them). I myself soon modified one of the two to use a building infobox rather than an NRHP infobox, in this diff, whose edit summary indicated that use of building infobox had become the practice. These articles clearly should be included in the NRHP wikiproject, in Talk page banner. I don't have a strong opinion about how these should be categorized, and I don't recall if a consensus was created. It is not obvious whether or not they should be included in "National Register of Historic Places in STATE" type categories. They obviously are NRHP-related. Anyhow the text of the articles themselves was very clear about their status. And category builders and maintainers can do whatever they want, based on fully accurate info in the articles. So there is no big problem suggested here, nothing to "look out" for.

About whether there should be articles about NRHP nominated-but-not-listed properties, there is no general issue. In general, I think no one was or is interested in creating articles about all of them. I think i may have created these selected ones in 2009 because Blueboar and others were then contesting the list article on notable Masonic buildings, and also were contesting every redlink item in the list. Creating the articles ended what seemed like useless confusion about redlinks. By the way the Pasadena Scottish Rite Temple one's notability was tested in AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scottish Rite Cathedral (Pasadena, California), where TheUserCatalyst31 voted Keep and it was of course Kept. And, there has been much education of Blueboar about what NRIS is and is not, provided in many archives of wt:NRHP and in many archives of the list of Masonic buildings, so I rather think the false assertions above are willfully reckless about another editor, likely meeting Wikipedia's definition of personal attacks. --doncram 22:47, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Deletion discussion

Woodson Farmstead, an article within the scope of this project, has been nominated for deletion; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Woodson Farmstead. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 11:30, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

I hold no opinion on this AFD, but both editors who have participated thus far raise valid points. I generally agree with the stance that a NRHP listing carries with it a body of documentation which establishes notability. However, between viewing any number of perpetually subpar articles which fall under this project, or an excess of gratuitous, out-of-context, WP:UNDUE-violating mentions of the NRHP and/or listed properties throughout the encyclopedia, or insinuations that a listing is what makes a property notable RATHER THAN anything that happened which led to the property's nomination in the first place, I have to ask: is maintaining an attitude of "absolute and above question" as a substitute for common sense really the best approach? Speaking as someone who is not employed by government and has spent a considerable amount of time studying history on my own volition, I see right through it. It's as if some folks are fuming about being 35 years too late catching that plane to Jonestown, if you get what I mean. My opinion on this was formed early on, when I came across AFDs for buildings which have received mention in multiple third-party sources as being historically significant, yet the reasons for deletion basically boiled down to a lack of a NRHP listing. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 13:22, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
That's precisely why I write as I do, both subjects and styles of writing; see what I've done in the past week to St. Mary's Catholic Church (Dayton, Ohio), Sacred Heart Catholic Church (Dayton, Ohio), Isaac Pollack House, Kenilworth Avenue Historic District, Insco Apartments Building, Graphic Arts Building (Dayton, Ohio), Benjamin F. Kuhns Building, Kossuth Colony Historic District, Lewis Kemp House, and Conover Building. For years, all of these had existed as substubs with virtually no content other than details directly related to the NR. I actually prefer creating new articles to expanding substubs, but we have so many of the latter that an effort at quality control demands some expansion work. Nyttend (talk) 06:23, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Agreed; the number of substubs is probably the biggest issue this project has, and I'm glad we're finally getting toward the point where we're expanding them rather than creating more. I oppose deleting them since they're usually not too hard to expand and they're marginally better than redlinks, but substubs are hardly useful when it comes to actually explaining local U.S. history. And anyone who argues for deleting a building solely based on the lack of an NRHP listing has a poor understanding of notability criteria; even aside from the many other reasons why a building wouldn't be on the NR, there's a reason I say it has a higher standard than the GNG. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 08:43, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Frankly, I wish we could delete these substubs for our benefit and for the readers'. Whenever I'm writing an article, I'll put the name into Google in hopes that I'll get online resources about it — this works well for places without articles, but it's always hard when expanding a substub, because Google picks up tons and tons of hits for our substub. Perhaps deleting these pages would make it easier for people to find information about sites off-wiki and make it easier for us to find useful resources for writing on-wiki. Nyttend (talk) 00:46, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
To ignore wikipedia in a google search, just add "-wikipedia" to the search, e.g. ["National Register of Historic Places -wikipedia".--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:13, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Take a substub and Google its name; even if you add "-wikipedia" (which I always do), you'll almost always find its text spread everywhere through the Internet. Nyttend (talk) 01:16, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
It's not the listing itself that makes a property notable, but that in order to be listed under NRHP guidelines, a property is almost certainly notable. NRHP requirements are stricter than notability. And, personally, I find the number of wildly detailed in-universe articles about pokemon more problematic for the project than the number of NRHP stubs. It's a matter of opinion.-GrapedApe (talk) 12:25, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Louise C. Murdock Theatre

Hi, I've been going through the archives of WP:AfC and found the above article. I noticed there were links to the National register of places for historic interest and wondered if you thought it would be worth fixing up and submitting. Can anyone assist? Rankersbo (talk) 17:46, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

  • It's on the Kansas historic list, not US historic list.--GrapedApe (talk) 18:08, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Public domain photos

I got a question. I purchased the following book 1994 Inventory of Historic Light Stations that comes from the U.S. Department of the Interior and contains dozens of images from the U.S. Coast Guard and only a few (and specifically marked) copyrighted photographs. What would I have to do to put these images up? Some of them are very old and date to the 1950s and before and some of the lighthouses likely no longer exist. I see mentions of ones destroyed in the '38 hurricane. I'm lucky because I picked up another very unusual book and I happen to have access to a museum containing more information on these subjects. I'd like to make my earlier trip this year pay off for Wikipedia with a bunch of new high quality articles as promised. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd first check to see whether the photos have already been uploaded, then figure out how you're going to digitize the ones we need. Finally, just upload the digitized versions to Commons with the license being something like "PD-US Gov". Good luck. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:09, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Or, more specifically for the Coast Guard, is {{PD-USGov-DHS-CG}}. Chris857 (talk) 04:15, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Week?

52 weeks in a year. 50 U.S. states, plus some territories. Perhaps there are some tasks that could be completed at the rate of one U.S. state per week? Does WPNRHP have, or has it had in the past, a collaboration of the week? Just poking around the project and thought I would ask. --Another Believer (Talk) 22:02, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Not sure about a weekly thing, but there was a proposal for a state of the month collaboration back when the progress page was started. That gives me an idea, though. Given how much talk we've had lately about expanding NRIS-only stubs, once the bot-tagging project gets underway we might want to have a collaboration of the week/fortnight/month to expand those. We could do it on a state-by-state basis (since I assume that NRIS-only articles will be a part of the progress tables once the articles are tagged), or we could try to expand a certain percentage of them over some period. The details can be worked out once the first bot run happens, but it seems like a good way to address that issue. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:59, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
At one point long ago there was a "Collaboration of the fortnight", which focused on individual articles for two weeks, trying to get them up to GA status or higher. We could revamp that and turn it into a broader "state of the week/month/fortnight/other random unit of time" type thing if desired.
As far as the NRIS-only stats, that's still slowly moving forward. I'm going through the bot approval process right now and have been green-lighted for one trial which tagged five articles as a proof of concept. I hope to finish the second trial edits by the end of this weekend, but I have to make a few changes to the code first. I have no clue when I'll be approved to tag all ~10,000 NRIS-only articles, but as soon as I do, I'll add NRIS-only stats to the Progress page. For now, though, why not focus on untagged/unassessed articles? There are quite a few of them already tabulated on the Progress page....--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:23, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
That's a pretty good idea, especially while the bot's still waiting for approval. Since articles can be tagged and assessed pretty quickly, it shouldn't take more than a few weeks to deal with those if we get enough people on board. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 01:41, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I personally am not interested in a Collaboration of the Week: most of you seem not to care about the stuff I work on (random buildings in Ohio, and archaeological sites), and most of you seem to work on stuff I don't care about (random buildings in various other states), so I'll keep working on expanding Ohio's substubs. On the other hand, I can't imagine a sensible reason to object to anyone trying to put together a collaboration: when people have common interests, the more they work together the better. Nyttend (talk) 01:56, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I think that it would be nice to do a collaboration (perhaps "of the month") to improve some of our core articles. That way, all regional editors will have an incentive to collaborate. Teemu08 (talk) 15:32, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Image updates

Who has been keeping track of the images on the main page? Because I recently came back from a road trip to Long Island and have uploaded scores of images of historic sites, mostly on the North Shore (no Gold Coast Mansions, though), and I still have a few more to go, along with a few from Emporia, Virginia, believe it or not. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:04, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

It appears that no one has added any images to the images page for quite some time, though the articles page has been thoroughly used. That link is where you should "announce" them to the project, even though no one seems to be doing that.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:03, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Even at that, the articles announcement page is most heavily used by Andrew Jameson. Chris857 (talk) 19:12, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
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