Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Resources

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. DrKiernan (talk) 12:43, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Editor help → Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Resources – This page has been converted into more of a "Resources" page than an editor help page, so it should be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Resources. Unfortunately, that is already a redirect to here with more than one edit, so I can't move it. Can an administrator do this? Thanks!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:13, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

state-specific info and friendly tone

The original help document had state-specific information, one-stop-shopping-wise, which enabled a user to understand in one section what resources are available about their state, including whether NPS Focus documents are yet available. An editor removed all state-specific mentions of NPS Focus being available or not some time ago, noting correctly that NPS Focus info is covered up top. However, that defeats the one-stop-shopping goal of conveying info in easily usable form for editors, about what info is available for each state. I restored it. Please discuss if you must disagree. Please note, this is meant to be a useful, easy-to-use reference; it is not a succinct article for publication in a journal. Some redundancy is okay/good if it makes it easier to use.

Also, a friendly tone is well-suited to the purpose of this reference, expected to be used by WikiProject NRHP members, especially new ones. Inviting local editors in a given state to provide some information about their state which they look up, seems good to me. Rather than deleting entire states because we have no information about them! It seems terribly unfriendly to delete entire states! --doncram 21:06, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

P.S. If someone doesn't like the informal tone of "Sorry, we have no advice for you. Please share your info!", please suggest something else. I thought this seemed friendly, but I don't care about the exact wording. However, there needs to be some indication of request, and there needs to be an entry for each state, IMHO. --doncram 21:26, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Read the top of the section you're editing. It states clearly how to use the table (emphasis added):

As stated above, there are several states in which all of the NRHP nomination documents are available through the Focus database. Although many states are not included in this list, there are state-level databases that include the documents, as well as other helpful information. The NRHP website includes this list of links to state and territory specific State Historic Preservations Offices (SHPOs). Other tools are listed below. Click on the desired state in the following index table to jump straight to available tools for that state. States in bold have all nomination documents in Focus (although there may still be a link to other resources). States with no links have no known alternative sources available.

There is no need for all of the "NRHP nom docs available online for almost all" bits (overlooking the unprofessional use of the word "nom" instead of "nomination"); that is covered by the bolding in the table. There is also no need for the "We have no information for you" bits. In fact, the links you've added are misleading given the intro text. It clearly says that some states won't have links. If there is no link, we don't have any information. Adding a link makes it look like we have information when clearly we don't. No states have been "deleted"; there just isn't any information about them... as is clearly stated in the intro text.

Don't penalize people for reading instructions.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:29, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

If you state everywhere that "All" are available, well that is simply false. That is unacceptable. Fine, i'll spell out "nomination" where "nom" is used. I removed the one sentence, which many readers would not find, about states not having links being states where no info is available. It is unacceptable, IMHO, not to have an entry on each state, and readers will go to their state and see what is available there. It should not be a READING TEST, it should be simply usable as a lookup. --doncram 21:35, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't know much about this WikiProject, but I did find a useful link to information on Florida's Historic Places. It's at http://www.flheritage.com/facts/reports/places/index.cfm. --Bsadowski1 21:38, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Will add about that now....--doncram 21:42, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Along with that, I found Delaware's: http://history.delaware.gov/museums/historic_sites.shtml --Bsadowski1 21:47, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Also, Dudemanfellabra, if a state is completely missing, how is a reader to know whether it was simply omitted accidentally or not? The point is to develop full information available about each state, at each state's place, not hide it in a coded way elsewhere. If it is not straightforward at the subsection for a state, then I and other readers would tend to disbelieve the complicated coded information elsewhere. --doncram 21:42, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

An update pass

• I did a complete update pass through the states, checking to see if the given state info link (where provided) was still good, making changes as needed.
• I added bold to the table to show focus availability as needed
• I potentially opened old wounds by adding the "NRHP nomination documents available online for almost all listings; see #NPS Focus above" to states that are in focus but didn't already have that line. It was present in several state listings. Now, to be consistent, it is there for all to which it applies. Either all, or none, is correct. I don't see a problem with the most complete data being included in each state summary, as a one stop shop. That allows a user to see what there is to be seen by scrolling down the page to the state details, without first stopping at the box table.
• I spot checked to see if the newly available focus states did, in fact, show scanned PDFs in a focus query. Louisiana and Maryland are not on the "no focus" list, but they don't seem to have any scanned nomination forms present - or at least none of my random checks turned up a result. I left these non-bolded, and didn't add the boilerplate to the detailed listing. I didn't change the NPS-sourced list, however. Generic1139 (talk) 19:41, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for doing an update, User:Generic1139. I don't think there are any old wounds relevant about being accurate in indicating which states have NRHP documents available. (The past disagreement was only about how that should be shown, if I recall correctly.) About indicating NPS Focus availability, though, it is not "all or none", as at least the National Historic Landmarked NRHPs in each state have (always?) long been available in NPS. And there may be scattered other NRHPs also scanned and available at NPS, for a state not yet incorporated in a major way. The "almost all" qualifier is needed to cover the newest listings in each state, which aren't immediately included. Anyhow, if you just randomly checked for availability of some NRHP items, you could get the wrong idea whether "nearly all" were available for the state. Isn't there a webpage at NPS which gives which states have been added to NPS? The assertion for a given state could be sourced explicitly to that. I am somewhat afraid that what is currently indicated here is misleading. --doncram 16:34, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

wording on consensus

In this edit, I removed what I consider to be an overstatement that is unduly chilling to potential participants, the statement that there is a "consensus in the project" about short stubs. Don't anyone have a cow, please!

• I have been pilloried in the WikiProject for having myself created many short stub articles, which I and some others defended in the past, and there may be sore feelings still, but I hope I and others can be past that. Please note I am not asserting there is no consensus at all, and please note that in fact I am currently working to add a bit to every short stub article I have ever created, to add at least one non-NRIS source and at least some information from the new source (and often to develop quite a bit more).

• What is an accurate statement of the consensus? It is not as broad as saying that there is a Wikipedia-wide consensus, which "the project" may refer to. I think it can be stated that the NRHP Wikiproject's active editors (perhaps qualified to a certain date, e.g. 2012 or 2013) had a consensus that they preferred for no new stub articles to be created without at least one non-NRIS source. Or at least that among themselves, i.e. among regular/active WikiProject NRHP members, that they themselves prefer not to create NRIS-only articles (so perhaps allowing for newbies to get started that way).

• That is not allowing for potentially good reasons to create an NRIS-only article, which applied widely in the past but are not as relevant now. (For example, in the past there often was a practical need to create a stub to end ridiculous dispute at disambiguation pages, especially new disambiguation pages, that some disambiguation-focused editors would strive to delete, if there was not some number of non-redlink entries. This is less of an issue now because the several thousand disambiguation pages needed were created, and the opposition to them has dissipated (in part by voices of reason from some other disambiguation-focused editors), and online sources have become available for more NRHP articles.) Stating exceptions is not terribly necessary now. But it would be good if they could be acknowledged by qualification that the current consensus is X, "with few exceptions", without necessarily stating what the exceptions are.

• I think most who object to "NRIS-only" stub articles would also object to stubs with just the addition of minimal, similar state-specific database type information. For example, there are many New Jersey NRHP stubs that are not technically NRIS-only, just because they include link to New Jersey state-level listing documents, supporting date when a site was listed on New Jersey's state register. This is arguably trivial, and not really different than NRIS-only. A more explicit consensus would express some standard that gets beyond that.

• There are differences of opinion within WikiProject NRHP about what an experienced NRHP editor should put into a new NRHP article. Perhaps that should be acknowledged. I don't think anyone should make too strong a statement about a standard that must be upheld, unless you are ready to recognize that several editors have steadily been creating new NRHP articles all along that might not comply. Some editors have been creating non-NRIS articles that usually focus on description of the property and do not describe the significance. Others have focused on the significance without very much on description. Some have included NRHP documents in footnotes that are detailed, others have used footnotes that could arguably be misleading (e.g. possibly suggesting indirectly that statements in an article are current, implied from omission of the source's date). And some have taken great care all along to include links to associated photos (which were part of original NRHP listing justification, but often in separate files), while others have not. (Some of these types of deficiencies might be good candidates to be addressed by focused cleanup drives, by the way.) No doubt there is common ground that we all prefer for any given article to be reasonably well developed, for footnotes to be complete, for photos to be linked, etc., but there are differences in priorities. And maybe differences in whether anyone else's priorities matter. What is the minimum that should be included, among experienced editors, is subjective and we don't necessarily want to be imposing any arbitrary standard and policing and criticizing one another.

• I personally think that it would be useful to get to a consensus on standard for giving a "Start" rating, or some new rating that is above "NRIS-only", that is not too high of a standard and that article creators can use in self-rating. That would be constructive I think. Then the consensus could be expressed succinctly that experienced NRHP editors prefer not to create a new NRHP article if it cannot achieve that rating.

• What I substituted is bolded here: "A number of editors active in WikiProject NRHP prefer not to create very short stubs with only bare NRIS data, especially not when full NRHP nomination documents or other sources are available online for the listing in question and could easily be added to the article." That is accurate, I feel, but it certainly could be revised. --doncram 16:34, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Buildings of the United States

I've added a section on the Resources page for the Buildings of the United States series published by the Society of Architectural Historians - I find them to be a valuable independent resource that covers more than just NRHP properties. Acroterion (talk) 01:39, 2 August 2017 (UTC)