Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lighthouses/Archive 1

Stub sorting

I went ahead and sorted out a lot of stubby articles on American lighthouses, and added them to the lighthouse stub category. I also, when I have a little free time, will be writing up a few more articles on keepers/engineers/terminology and the like so that we can have a shot of getting a "pharology-stub" template to use. I think there are enough articles not relating to particular lighthouses that such a stub would be very useful. --AlbertHerring 18:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

• I've also gone and stubbed the non-American articles as well. --AlbertHerring 19:44, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a wonderful film from the [Swedish Film Institute]http://www.sfi.se/sfi/smpage.fwx?page=5673 called lighthouses.

OK, I have written, all told, some 50 articles for the subject, most of which are stubs. I really don't have the time I'd like right now to write more comprehensive entries, but I've tried to get as broad as start as possible. Any thoughts? --AlbertHerring 08:22, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I've now counted 61 stubs in the {{lighthouse-stub}} category pertaining either to lighthouse terminology or to notable people connected with lighthouses. This should be enough to create the {{pharology-stub}} category again, although it might do with renaming. The trouble is, I can't think of a good, all-inclusive name for the category besides "pharology"; any ideas? I also think it's time to suggest a geographical split of US lighthouses from the category - I'll add some more stubs today and see what comes up.

I hope I'm not being too intrusive with this - I'm just a huge lighthouse buff and rather overeager to get to work on this project. And I have a lot of questions, I'm afraid - sorry to become a bit of a nuisance. --AlbertHerring 18:02, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Terminology

One other thing I have noticed while stubbing articles for this project is that there seems to be no consensus regarding terminology for articles; some articles are titled "such-and-such lighthouse" while others are titled "such-and-such light"; some are also "such-and-such light station". I think there ought to be some agreement regarding what titles articles should bear - is there one, and am I missing something here? Or should we go ahead and decide now? --AlbertHerring 08:22, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

You may want to read the discussion in Talk:Lighthouses in the United States. The consensus for United States is that it should be called "Light" Skapur 11:44, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I figured it might have come up, thanks. --AlbertHerring 19:22, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

What makes a person important enough to have an article?

I've been looking over some back issues of Lighthouse Digest looking for article ideas, and have come across a number of articles about particular keepers: Emily Fish, Eben Emerson, Kate Moore, and Roberta Boyd, to name a few. Their chief claim to fame seems to be that they were a.) lighthouse keepers, and b.) some of them saved a few lives during their careers. Are these criteria enough for inclusion in Wikipedia? Currently the only keepers I've added in have been those for whom Coast Guard buoytenders were named; other than them I've only added articles for a couple of keepers who I felt were important for other reasons.

I guess my biggest question here is, what should be the standard for importance in writing articles about lighthouse keepers? Is being a keeper enough to have an article, or should there be more information? --AlbertHerring 07:02, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Were they noteworthy or newsworthy in their own time? See Wikipedia:Notability (people) for more guidance Skapur 12:24, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Well...Emerson and Boyd were written up and honored for their heroics in saving lives, Fish seems to have been fairly popular as a socialite in her area, and Moore was written up in one or two of the New York papers for a human interest story. Thing is, a lot of people saved a lot of lives during the ninteenth century, and a lot of them were written up for it in their local newspapers. Is that enough notability, locally and historically, for an article? --AlbertHerring 17:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I would say yes. The very fact that you know about them meets the criteria of enduring historical record and heroically savings many lives is (in my opinion) a widely recognized contribution as specifiied in the guidelines: The person made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in their specific field (see also Wikipedia:Notability#Don't delete historical persons based on modern tests.) Skapur 20:36, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, all four added, plus a new one that I found last night. Thanks for the input! --AlbertHerring 21:20, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Terminology, part 2

As per the discussion here - "light" or "light station"? I wrote the article under the name "Baltimore Light". It was changed because the Coast Guard's official designation is "Baltimore Light Station". So which do we use? Do we continue to go for "light" or use "light station"? Or do we discriminate - "light" when referring to the tower, "light station" when referring to the whole thing? --AlbertHerring 01:39, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The person who changed the name is plain simple WRONG. The Coast Guard calls it a light and not a Light station. See see http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/WEBLIGHTHOUSES/LHMD.html and page 77 of District 5 Lights list at http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pubs/LightLists/V2COMPLETE.PDF. In this particular case, the National Park service runs it and calls it Baltimore Light Station even though the Coast Guard still calls it Baltimore Light. In the National register of Historical places it is called a Light Station, see http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/MD/Anne+Arundel/state.html --- Skapur 02:15, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Shall I go ahead then and ask for improperly named articles to be renamed? --AlbertHerring 01:39, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Contacting others

I've been thinking...do you think it might be a good idea to contact Russ Rowlett of the Lighthouse Database and the folks at Lighthouse Digest and let them know about this project? It might help to drum up some support and interest for the cause.

Oh, and I've made a template for userpages, which can be found here. Feel free to tweak it a bit if you don't like the colors. --AlbertHerring 01:39, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Template

I made a talk page template for this project. Feel free to alter it. Rmhermen 16:02, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I've appended it to the discussion page for everything under "A" and "B" in the stub category, and will attempt to do more later today when I get the chance. --AlbertHerring 18:01, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I created the template {{US-lighthouse-stub}} and the attendant category today, and will be working on another couple of stub templates (bios and terminology) later tonight. I've re-tagged a number of articles with {{US-lighthouse-stub}}, but there's still a ways to go. --AlbertHerring 01:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Lightships

For articles about American lightships, what naming conventions are we going to use? Because the commonly used names (Diamond Shoals Lightship, Nantucket Lightship, etc.) are actually names of the stations - the ships themselves were given names like WLV-151. So which do we use in writing about them?

Personally, I'd save the "name" articles for lightships which have been preserved, and are now being exhibited under that name; all others I'd write up under the official designation.

Any thoughts? --AlbertHerring 18:04, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• We can use redirect pages to cover both conventions. --Draugen 22:38, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Which convention, then, do we follow for article titles, and which for redirects? --AlbertHerring 00:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

lighthouse stubs

Why is it necessary to label every existing article on a lighthouse as a stub? Many of these articles have been stable for months without a stub label. Look at Cape Florida Light, Carysfort Reef Light, Key West Light and Egmont Key Light. How in the world are those called 'stubs'? -- Donald Albury 02:48, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe because even though the articles are long, they are still unencyclopedic? In any case I have removed the stub tag from most of the larger articles. Also with Lighthouse articles it becomes difficult to follow the guidelines of WP:TRIVIA.

--- Skapur 06:10, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

If you feel that the articles are not long enough, you can use {{Expansion}}, or if there is not enough history given, {{Histinfo}}. There are also plenty of maintenance templates available. We have enough different templates available that it is not necessary to use stub templates to mean something else. IMHO, most articles on lighthouses don't need to be very long. Unless they have some particular significance above and beyond the average lighthouse, they don't need a 10,000 word article. I would also note that for many lighthouses, useful, verfiably published information is not in great abundance. I had to work hard to find what little usable information I put into some lighthouse articles. As an extreme example, try finding material published in reliable sources for expanding Volusia Bar Light. -- Donald Albury 14:15, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I am very sorry but I did not mean to insult you at all. You have done exemplary work in creating those articles. I am just trying to help. In the case of Volusia Bar Light, you had left the structure stub on it and I added the lighthouse stub to increase the number of people who would look at it. In the case of most of the others, I had changed lighthouse-stub to US-lighthouse-stub and I am going over them again to see if they merit a stub, expand or no tag. --- Skapur 15:37, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't apologize. I shouldn't have been so harsh earlier. I need to remind myself that I don't own the articles. -- Donald Albury 00:00, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

ETC...

How the hell does Bass Harbor Head Light not have an entry yet? It must be one of the most photographed and visited lights in the US. I will work on this. Also Pictures added for Cape Elizabeth Lights and Boon Island Light. Should I replace the outdated black and white pictures for Portland Breakwater Light & Spring Point Light? Or would this be considered bad form? --Dk69 05:24, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Please add an entry for any missing light. Also please free to add and/or replace any pictures. Please make sure that the pictures you add do not have any copyright. --- Safemariner 06:27, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

You may also want to look at the gallery button to add more pictures in the Wikipedia editor (third button from the right just above the edit area). Pictures are always appreciated. --- Safemariner 06:31, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Differentiation needed on Point No Point

We have two Point No Point Lights/Lighthouses. One is in Puget Sound, the other in the Chesapeake Bay. At the moment Point No Point Light is going to be the Chesapeake one, and Point No Point Lighthouse will remain the Puget Sound one. Obviously this will need to be resolved better, but in the meantime please don't move either of them until we agree on how to distinguish them. Mangoe 02:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I've come upon another problem duplication (White Shoal Light is in both Michigan and Virginia). I've decided, for lack of other input, to distinguish by state name, e.g., Point No Point Light (Washington) and Point No Point Light (Maryland). Mangoe 13:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Can we add a see also at the top of the article giving the user a link to the other lighthouse in case they came to the wrong one? Jjegers 15:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I've already done that-- "for the lighthouse in Puget Sound see...." etc. Mangoe 15:52, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

All Maryland Lights complete

All Maryland lights have articles with infoboxes. Please look them over and see what you think.

I'm going to attempt to produce a map which shows the locations of all listed lights, to put on the Lighthouses in the United States article under the Maryland section. If anyone has any ideas/suggestions/resources for this, please let me know.

And a warning: Do not trust text locations given for the lights, not even on the USCG website. I have found several examples with cardinal direction errors (e.g. Holland Island Bar Light is south of Holland Island, not west of it). There are also occaisional errors in the lighthousefriends coordinates. I have found verification against Google Earth and online NOAA charts very useful in checking these.

My next project is Virginia. Mangoe 21:09, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Tower height vs. Focal height

I just wanted to raise awareness to a comment I raised regarding the Lighthouse Infobox. The comment can be found by following this link. Cheers! --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 22:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Status of Chesapeake Bay lighthouse articles

I'm maintaining a status chart of Chesapeake Bay lighthouse articles at User:Mangoe/Lighthouses. Mangoe 02:44, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Invalid cite template used on many pages.

The Template:Cite uscghist, used on many pages, is invalid as a result of the "FYI: USCG Lighhouse pages are down" (2017) above. USCG (and many government sites) are too fluid to have reliable long term templates. USCG has been particularly hard hit with the cutter histories and much else vanishing. As for template's state pages they appear to be preserved. For example, Maryland: U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office Preserving Our History For Future Generations — Historic Light Station Information MARYLAND. Perhaps the template can be repaired, but the URL does not appear to be indexed in a way for that to be easily done. 71.178.17.34 (talk) 09:49, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. The Coast Guard history pages have been replaced at least twice, that I remember, in the past decade, and are generally not recoverable from the Internet Archive. I have sometimes been able to find different versions of missing information on new Coast Guard pages, but have not found the time and energy to fix all of the lighthouse articles that I have worked on. In any case, we cannot expect any links to Coast Guard pages to be reliable for more than a few years. - Donald Albury 12:19, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

The template should probably be deleted to remove temptation to use it further. When the Naval Historical Center became the Navy History and Heritage Command (with web responsibility apparently in some outside technical organization) its historical data also did a vanishing act. Original WW II era documents, reports and publications simply vanished. 71.178.17.34 (talk) 20:23, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

I've proposed deprecating the template at Template_talk:Cite uscghist#Deprecate this template. Let's see how the discussion goes. - Donald Albury 20:42, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

It looks to me like Template:Cite ngall is now broken as well? I'm assuming things moved around again at the US Coast Guard website? - Ken Heaton (talk) 19:55, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I think I've fixed Template:Cite ngall now, by replacing the url's with ones that work now. I also created a simple Template:Cite ccgll to create a reference to the Canadian Coast Guard List of Lights, Buoys and Fog Signals (4 Volumes). - Ken Heaton (talk) 00:08, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Lighthouses for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Lighthouses is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lighthouses until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. Certes (talk) 10:02, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

The discussion has now been closed but I can´t work out what the decision was.Roundtheworld (talk) 15:29, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

The discussion is here: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lighthouses The result of the discussion 11 November 2019 was: Delete. (it is right at the top of that page) Ken Heaton (talk) 16:25, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

US Light Vessels/ Light Ships renaming

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships#Light_Vessels_and_Light_Stations_mess which may be of interest to editors from this project...Jokulhlaup (talk) 10:45, 26 October 2020 (UTC)