Talk:List of National Historic Landmarks in Pennsylvania/Archive 1

Archive 1

Notice of Intent to Delete Lots of Material

Hi Bill -- I am frustrated with the page-width problem and in general the too-long descriptions that are also causing a page-size problem with this article. What I want to do is delete all the long descriptions that are probably direct pastes from the NHL summary pages, anyhow. As you saw, I tried salvaging the long descriptions within first 20 rows, marking them up properly with quotations and footnoting some of them. However, the correct solution in the long run is to have no long descriptions, and to have no footnotes. Whatever is to be described for any NHL is to be supported naturally by the article on the NHL. Each of the articles must link to its NHL summary, anyhow. I think your time spent locating the NHL summaries was not wasted: it allowed you to get the shape of the list in order, to get the right names for the sites, etc. But the links to the NHL pages from this list-table are inappropriate and it is time to delete them all now, IMO. Can you identify which descriptions, if any are NOT paste-ins from the NHL summary pages? Otherwise, I want to blank out all of the descriptions besides the first few which I rewrote. If you don't object too strongly, that's what i would like to do. I would be happy to delay for a little bit, if you wanted to rapidly create stub articles and copy the links to them, but for any one article it is not hard to look up the NHL summary link again, anyhow. Please let me know if you object or approve. doncram 03:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

What is the page-size problem?--BillFlis 11:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I am responding to the notice that comes up when you edit it, the current message being: "This page is 112 kilobytes long. It may be appropriate to split this article into smaller, more specific articles. See Wikipedia:Article size." The linked article eventually provides advice: "> 100 KB: Almost certainly should be divided up". I don't know if this is a real problem yet, but there are lots of photos to add eventually. In the New York list of 257 NHLs, as photos and descriptions were added, I believe there were severe consequences, solved by a co-editor splitting it into NYC vs. all the rest of NYS. This file-size issue may or may not be a pressing reason to reduce the descriptions, but the other reason is that the descriptions are too long for readability and for serving the purpose of summarizing the articles indexed. Obviously we have many descriptions that are longer than the articles they describe, because the articles don't exist, are of size zero. doncram 11:49, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah, then why not move the list of State Historical Sites to another page? This page is supposed to be NHLs only, and doesn't even list other (non-NHL) NRHP sites, which are also Federally designated; there are very many of these, which can be found here; it lists over 500 NRHP sites in Philadelphia alone, some of which I have created articles for (I don't do stubs). I spent a lot of time removing non-NHLs that had been mistakenly added to this page; I put the links to the NPS pages to show which ones were genuine NHLs. Aren't the State sites already listed under List of Registered Historic Places in Pennsylvania? Maybe that page can be notated to show which ones are State Historical Sites, which are NHLs, and which are NRHPs. Also, if we rename the "Descriptions" column here to "Historical Significance According to the National Park Service", then we don't need to repeat "According to the National Park Service" in every entry; the source becomes clear so there's no "plagiarism", it's just quoting Federal documents, which are not copyright.--BillFlis 13:05, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I do understand that it would have taken a lot of effort to sort through all the NRHPs that were generated in the first table report. Unfortunately the NRIS system that the table report was based upon is very imperfect in its identification of NRHPs that are also NHLs. It misses both ways, putting forward some NRHPs that are not NHLs and omitting some NRHPs that are NHLs. And your using the NHL summaries in the process of sorting this out was very appropriate. I should have emphasized that it is only now that you have done that sorting out, and gotten all the names sorted out etc., that it is relatively easy to re-access the NHL summary for any given site. It was a ton of work that you did, thank you!

I believe that the State Historic Sites list is a useful cross-reference that overlaps considerably with the NHL list, and it is small, so deleting it doesn't help much with page-size. For other state NHL lists, I have found having a section like this in is useful to clarify where the SHS name differs from the NHL name for some sites, not sure whether that happens here. If such benefits never emerge by the time the NHL articles are all created, then it might not add much. The NRHPs that are not NHLs are indeed hugely numerous, could not possibly be added here, and yes, are already listed at List of Registered Historic Places in Pennsylvania which this article links to. Yes, I think it is worthwhile to add something like "(also a [[National Historic Landmark|NHL)" to that article's listing for each NRHP that is an NHL.

I dunno about retaining the full text of all those NHL summaries. They're not all fully accurate any more, since they are themselves based on the NRHP registration text or NHL nomination text for the sites (the texts that I have added in, where available, to the first 6 or so articles in the list), which can be 30 years old or more. The update information in the NHL summaries, about current threats to the preservation of sites, is relevant for the articles perhaps but not here. They're just not written exactly for use in a table like this. I agree that their text is in the public domain, so it is not a copyright issue. Copyright is distinct from the issue or appearance of plagiarism. Public domain material, just like other sources, needs to be put in quotes when it is quoted, to avoid the appearance of plagiarism. Someone quoted on this to me once, ah, here it is, from the Wikipedia:Public Domain:

For all practical purposes on Wikipedia, the public domain comprises copyright-free works: anyone can use them in any way and for whatever purpose. Proper attribution to the author or source of a work, even if it is in the public domain, is still required to avoid plagiarism.

In my view, it does not suffice to have a label at the top of the column, you also need to put each passage that is a quote into quotes, or use indent formatting like for this boxed quote example to indicate clearly that the actual wordings are from elsewhere.

Would a temporary solution (that could be in place for a fairly long time, if the NHL articles don't get written) be to put each of the NHL summary quotes into quotation marks, and give an editor's note that all are intended to be replaced by short descriptions of NHL articles as those articles are written.... doncram 17:35, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Issues

These are some issues that I have been chatting with BillFlis on his talk page. Overall, there's been a lot of development of the List of National Historic Landmarks in Pennsylvania, which is great. Some thoughts:

• the page may have to be split, perhaps into Philadelphia vs. Pennsylvania besides Philadelphia
• Using a numbered list, like I have now started in the article, seems to be a better way to put it in a sensible order. So that Edgar Acheson House appears in the A's, for example. The reordering is not yet finished, i put in 999 for rows left out of order.
• For site descriptions, text has been pasted in from the NHL summary webpages. If one does that, I think the text should be put in quotes, and the NHL summary be listed as a reference footnote. I've edited some of the descriptions that way, to demonstrate. Actually, I prefer to write shorter descriptions that aren't quotes and don't need references, where the natural source supporting the description is the article for the NHL.
• I prefer to start at least a stub article for each site, before going very far in the list development. The articles for each NHL should reference those NHL summaries, and provide more information. Then, you have material to base your description in the list upon the material in the article.
  • That would create a lot of articles, which is fine. They are National Historic Landmarks and each is notable, deserves an article. Actually any NRHP deserves an article, is what people feel. By the way it is easy to create the NRHP infobox. Visit Elkman infobox generator and try out that neat tool which generates one for you, then u just cut and paste. I created an article for Edward Acheson House earlier, to demonstrate, using the sources available. A stub article can start with just one sentence "This is a NHL in Andalusia, PA" or wherever, and the NRHP infobox that you can cut and paste in.

• The date column in the table should be the Month-Day-Year of the NHL declaration. If you use format like 04 Apr,1988 then this column will sort properly.
  • By the way, the NRHP system started in 1966. All NHLs created before then get October 15, 1966 as their NRHP date. For NHLs after 1966, the NRHP date is before or same as NHL date. The initial table used year of NRHP listing, not what we want exactly. I/others have been manually fixing for other states.
• The width of the table needs to be controlled. I changed the photos to 100px. Not sure if i had introduced the problem or if it was there already, but there remains a page-width issue. It seems to me that it is the too-long descriptions which are causing the problem. I already tried adjusting column widths to be like those of List of National Historic Landmarks in New York, where width is not a problem. I don't think the reader should have to scroll to the right to read the descriptions.
• Check out the discussion about "Quality rating of NHL articles" and "Quality rating of lists" in the Talk pages of WP:NRHP.
• Check out other state lists of NHLs, all listed at List of National Historic Landmarks by state. All are in progress, none has reached "Featured List" status. I've worked on several, including New York, Arkansas, Mississippi, New Hampshire.

Keep up the good work! doncram 22:21, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

How many?

If you go to NPS's site and select "Pennsylvania", it lists 156 NHLs. To these, we have added two other sites that NPS actually lists in other states, but which extend into PA. Hence 158 total. 94 + 64 = 158. If you select "Philadelphia", NPS's site lists 65 NHLs, but one (Andalusia) is actually outside Phila., and we list it so (in Bucks County). So 64 in Phila.--BillFlis 11:31, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Photos

Photos in the public domain for use in the articles of many of the Pennsylvania NHLs will be available at Historic American Buildings Survey. Follow link in that article, to search form at HABS. For each NHL that has HABS photos available, I think it is worthwhile to add links from the article to its HABS photos, to any HABS drawings, and to any HABS writeup. I just added such links for Andalusia. It remains to select one or more of the photos, possibly edit them, and upload them to Commons so that they can be used within the article (and a thumbnail included in the List of NHLs in PA article). Can anyone else take it the rest of the way, through that uploading and including in the articles? doncram 03:19, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Ditto for Isaac Meason House. The existing thumbnail photo in the List page seems to be just a copy of the tiny pic from the NHL summary page. A better full pic from the HABS/HAER photos, now linked from its article, should be uploaded, preferably with full attribution crediting photographer and where it is obtained from. doncram 03:42, 16 November 2007 (UTC)