Talk:List of Smithsonian museums

List of Smithsonian museums is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured list on January 30, 2012.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 6, 2010	Peer review	Reviewed
March 22, 2010	Featured list candidate	Promoted

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on April 2, 2009.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that there are two Smithsonian Museums in New York City?

Current status: Featured list

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External links modified[edit]

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External links modified (January 2018)[edit]

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Rock'n'Soul Museum[edit]

Hi Found5dollar -- do you think that the Memphis Rock N Soul museum "counts" as a Smithsonian museum? They say they were "created by the Smithsonian Institution". -- Cloud atlas (talk) 04:26, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cloud atlas, The Rock N Soul museum is one of the 200 Smithsonian Affiliates mentioned in the second paragraph of the "Museums" section. The only museums listed here are the ones owned and operated by the Smithsonian. The Rock N Soul Museum is neither.--Found5dollar (talk) 15:12, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Page issues[edit]

Coming here to check this against the FL criteria. I see the original nominator, Found5dollar, is still active, so I'm listing out the things I'm noticing rather than taking it to WP:FLRC.

The table widths need some adjusting so that the ", D.C." part of "Washington, D.C." doesn't always go onto multiple lines, making the table longer than it needs to be.

done--Found5dollar (talk) 15:44, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure where the type column should be sortable, given that its a subjective description.

made unsortable--Found5dollar (talk) 15:44, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The "year moved into current building" dagger doesn't have an appropriate place to go and isn't formatted like a normal footnote.

What was I thinking? As I was putting in a correctly formatted note for these, it got very confusing with the references, so I added a new Ref column and moved the references there (most where the same reference for the whole row anyway). I think this cleans it up and makes information more legible.--Found5dollar (talk) 15:44, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The satellite image needs a whole bunch of changes. I'm not sure it should be a satellite photo, which is distracting, rather than an interactive map, like at e.g. List of Broadway theaters. The Washington Monument looks like it has some construction going on, the labels have accessibility issues, the tooltip is massive, and there are non-Smithsonian items labeled. The second paragraph of the caption also mixes comma lists with the National Gallery.

This will take a while to figure out. it seems that the image used previously was overwritten with a larger file, but one tat is just hideous. I'm not sure if an interactive map constructed the same way as at List of Broadway theaters (which I wrote by the way!) would work here as you really need to see the shapes of the buildings and their relationships, not just dots on a map. I agree that what is there now is not good, let me see what i can come up with.--Found5dollar (talk) 15:44, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, small world, I forgot you're the one behind the Broadway list! If you want to include the shapes of the buildings, you could try fetching them from OpenStreetMap like I did at Claremont Colleges#Colleges, but getting the integration to work can be a nightmare. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:28, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A landscape photo for the Air and Space museum, a colored photo for the Anacostia Museum, and a slightly taller photo for the Postal Museum would be nice.

New horizontal image of the Air and Space museum that shows the whole building, Searched commons and flickr for a color pic of the Anacostia Museum but to no avail, and a new, taller image for the Postal Museum was added. --Found5dollar (talk) 15:44, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Some unformatted dates in the references.

formatted dates in references. all of these were added by bots archiving external links.--Found5dollar (talk) 15:44, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If these things are addressed, it should be possible to avoid going through a formal FLRC, or if you'd prefer to have an FLRC so that others can help address them and identify touch-ups to help keep this page in shape, I can create it. Best, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:34, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sdkb, thank you for taking a look at this page. To be completely honest I havent paid much attention to it in the last 10 years since it became a featured list. I've made small fixes and protected against vandalism but havent taken a step back and looked at it more systematicly and against the FL criteria. My schedule is a bit weird right now so I am not sure exactly when I can address these comments but I do plan to over the next few days. I feel indifferent about a formal FLRC, it might be nice to get more eyes on the article but most of these issues seem easily fixable by me.--Found5dollar (talk) 13:09, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good. Take your time and just ping me once you're done. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sdkb, fixed everything except for the map issues which I need to mull over. Notes can be found above. I'll ping you again when I figure out the map.--Found5dollar (talk) 15:44, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Would you want to test out a map of all the museums, zoomed out to see New York, DC, and Chantilly? How would that display? Interested to see on a map where the other DC museums are, and Chantilly in relation to the DC ones... $ɱ$ (talk) 00:40, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We now have a few options for display - could go simply above the table to the right, or could go side-by-side with the National Mall map, stacked like the two maps at Chicago. Alternatively, there's a minimap inset being developed here, but apparently not live yet.

ɱ

(talk) 00:44, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ɱ I dont personally see the need for additional maps beyond the mall, but I dont have a really strong enough opinion to say that I am against it either. If you feel it would drastically help the article feel free to create it. If we were to do as you suggest I feel like we would likely need two additional maps, one of the museums in the DC area and a second maps including NYC. That just feels like a lot of maps to me and may muddy the cleanness of the single map. Maybe Sdkb has an opinion now that we have fixed their map issue with the page?--Found5dollar (talk) 22:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a huge need for a map initially zoomed out beyond the National Mall, although the current title of "interactive map" overstates its scope if it's only limited to the mall.

That said, we might still want to have the points present on the current map so that people who click on it and zoom out will be able to use them. I'm also wondering whether or not a label in a different color on the National Gallery would be good, since yeah it's not technically a Smithsonian, but it's a federally-funded museum so it's something readers of this page will want to know about. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:47, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The map is interactive in that you can zoom in on the buildings, click on the markers, click on the links and images provided, etc. And yeah, even without a second map, I agree it would be good to add the other Smithsonian museums, in case someone does zoom out. And sure the National Gallery wouldn't hurt to be included.

ɱ

(talk) 23:03, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ɱ and Sdkb, I added the remaining Smithsonian museums not on the mall and the 3 parts of the National Gallery to the map. I'm still having issues with my edits making the icons on the map disappear in main space... --Found5dollar (talk) 02:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be rendering alright to me. And the changes look good—as far as I'm concerned, this quasi-peer review is successfully passed. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Opened" Dates[edit]

There is a mixture of dates in the "Opened" column. For many, [note 1] indicates when they opened in their current building - but the other dates are a bit mixed. Several use the dates they were authorized by Congress, which is not necessarily the same as when their first exhibition opened - for exmaple, NMAAHC is listed as 2003 (authorized), but its first exhibit opened in 2007. NASM is listed as 1946 (authorized), but its first exhibitions could be argued as 1918 when the Aircraft Building opened. NMAfA is listed as 1964, which is indeed when Robbins opened his gallery, but it did not become a Smithsonian museum until 1979. I wonder if some consistency is in order - what dates make the most sense? Etoile ✩ (talk) 21:51, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]