Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Museums/Guideline

Question about this Guideline

I have some serious questions about this guideline, but since it was written by one person, I wonder if this should instead be in that users sandbox, rather than the wikiproject? dm (talk) 08:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

A fine question. I'm reopening the question of what this guideline should be like, and how to treat articles about notable individual items and collections within museums, on the main Wikiproject talk page. –SJ+ 01:25, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I have questions as well. At present the guidelines have the following sections which are prone to very limited scope:

• Owners
• Visitors
• Awards
• Location
• Future plans

For example, "Location" is usually a simple address; "Visitors" is an annual figure; "Owners" is confined to a history of past names and the present owner/operator; "Future plans" will be either 'N/A' or 'demolish' or 'expand'. And how many museums get "Awards" to the extent a section is warranted? Each of these is items (and perhaps others) is not worthy of a section in that the text will be one sentence. Do members have suggestions to address this problem? I look forward to seeing your comments. --S. Rich (talk) 05:31, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I think several sections could be combined to "Business", "Operations" or some such, with the invitation to expound on those topics. -- ke4roh (talk) 03:08, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Updated. – SJ +

Sequence

I've been working on USSRC, which, in my opinion, is a pretty rough article for a museum. I'm glad to get some ideas for more improvement to be made through this page, but it strikes me as odd that the museum article wouldn't begin with (after the lede) a description of the stuff that is likely to make a person want to visit. The history section, while relevant, is not the first thing I want to know about a museum when I take an interest in one. -- ke4roh (talk) 02:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

You should get a consensus to change project guidelines. -Fnlayson (talk) 13:16, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Very well. I just changed it based on WP:BOLD and the short and stale history on the guideline page. I could be entirely wrong, but my thought is that the typical reader will want to know things in this order:

1. What (in general) is this museum?
2. Why should I go there (what will I experience)?
3. Who else goes there?
4. Who runs the place?
5. Why and how did this place come to be?

And how should we (or shouldn't we) enumerate highlights of contents of museums? At USSRC, it's rusty. At National Air and Space Museum, there's a gallery at the bottom of a few things on display. -- ke4roh (talk) 03:25, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• By convention, History tends to come very early on in the structure of almost all articles. Location is less important, so it seems appropriate to have that nearer the end if the location has not already been mentioned earlier in the article. I would have thought that in most cases a location section wouldn't be needed. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 08:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

  You can see that this guideline was written by someone working primarily on small-town US museums. We should improve it to apply more broadly.

  History does make sense as a general followup to the summary in the lead. Especially for most museums which by definition are there to preserve and showcase historical artefacts. The summary and TOC will point you to any other information you need.

  An additional section of the guideline related to 'highlighting contents' is a good idea. Do be bold in adding things! But a wholesale reordering based on one person's gut instinct v. anothers usually requires discussion. – SJ + 18:45, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

  I expanded the part about the collections. Please review. -- ke4roh (talk) 03:22, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

  Now that I have looked at several GA museum articles specifically to understand how they deal with collections, I also noticed that, while many begin with history, some do not. Kenilworth Castle caught my attention in particular because it begins with architecture (which is effectively the collection) followed by several centuries of history. I'm thinking the sequence should be flexible, and in particular, one that makes sense for the museum in question. -- ke4roh (talk) 02:53, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

More nuanced article template

I rearranged the proposed article sections to have fewer top-level recommended sections, keeping most of the other sections as potential subsections or topics to cover within them. This included the comments above and observation of the actual structures of featured museum articles. I also removed some inconsistent language saying "this is just a guideline. but all right-thinking editors will follow it. this is just a guideline." leaving only the first bit. :) – SJ + 18:48, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Having gotten a heads-up from ke4roh, I intended to play around with my other project and then add some thoughts (if I could come up with anything) this weekend. Well, Sj has done some nice tweaking of the guideline and I endorse the changes. --S. Rich (talk) 02:00, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree with the note "Perhaps we can modify layout to something similar to WP:WikiProject Cities/US Guideline?" - go for it! – SJ + 01:29, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Native or English name in article title and lead section?

The guideline doesn't answer my question, so hopefully anyone can comment here. I translated the article Regional Archeological Museum Antonio Salinas from the Italian Wikipedia. However, I'm not sure if the article title is correct:

• They don't have an official English website so I had to make up the name.
• I see inconsistency in the choice of native language or English when it comes the names used for articles on museums.

For example, for Altes Museum and Museo del Prado the native names are used on Wikipedia. On the other hand, in Galleria Borghese the article title is Italian but the name in bold in the lead and the infobox is English. In Capitoline Museums the English name is used both in the title and lead.

I'm confused. I guess I should use the Italian name for my museum since it doesn't have an English name. But what would be the proper solution for the Galleria Borghese article? --AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 14:10, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Relevant Link?

A possibly relevant link re Museums and Wikipedia is as follows => < ref name="NYT-20140319">Cohen, Noam (March 19, 2014). "Warming Up to the Culture of Wikipedia". New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2014.</ref> in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:12, 24 March 2014 (UTC)