Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Historic sites/Archive 2

Chicago Landmarks

I am interested in this project because I am hoping to get people involved in cleaning up List of Chicago Landmarks to make it look as nice as some of the National Register of Historic Places lists. I could also use help keeping the list current.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 17:52, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Landmarks in California cities

I share Tony's interest in developing better lists of historic sites for particular cities. Tony's interest is in Chicago, and mine is in major California cities. The nice thing about the new project is that it opens things up to a broader approach (i.e., non-US) sites, but also can promote deeper coverage of certain major cities. For example, and with doncram's assistance, I have been developing lists of the Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument sites for each sector of the city. I have also created start-up lists for List of San Francisco Designated Landmarks, List of San Diego Historical Landmarks in La Jolla, California, and List of City of Long Beach historic landmarks. Anyone who shares an interest in California historic sites is welcome to help. Cbl62 (talk) 21:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for that; Cbl62's great work with the LA ones has been an inspiration to me. Could you please create a top-level list-article for each one, and include it/edit what i've added so far in the table on the main page of this wikiproject, e.g. List of San Diego Historical Landmarks? Also please indicate where specific discussion should take place. I took the liberty of creating shortcut wt:LAHCM and stating that is where the discussion for Los Angeles ones should take place. Actually I think there ought to be a real top-level List of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments, giving the subpages and stating how many are in each sublist, at least (like wp:NRHP editors have created to summarize the counties within state lists, e.g. List of RHPs in CA). Currently that toplevel list name is a redirect. (Perhaps then the main discussion should be its talk page. I'll follow the current wt:LAHCM; more specific discussion about this specific point could take place there). I would like to support individuals like Cbl62 or small groups of editors who are working on a register or two, without need to create a separate Task Force here necessarily. But maybe there is a need for a California historic sites task force to cover all of these. There are many more town historic registers, too, such as in Pasadena and South Pasadena and Santa Barbara.

What other support would you like? As you know I created the {{infobox local1}} specifically to accomodate LAHCM sites, but i don't have the impression you are very keen on using that infobox or infoboxes in general, which is okay. doncram (talk) 22:18, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget Pasadena :D ! They have a list on the city website. Einbierbitte (talk) 16:46, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

So.... shall we start a California Historic Landmark task force? :-) That's sorta one of the reasons I wanted to join this project. I've actually never been involved in task forces before, but from reading WP:TASKFORCE it looks like we might have to wait until the infrastructure of this project as a whole is compiled? What is everyone's thoughts on this? Killiondude (talk) 08:10, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd be interested in a California task force. I have a camera and I'm not afraid to use it. :-) - PKM (talk) 01:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd be happy to participate in such a task force. California local history is terribly overlooked, and there are many cities here in SoCal with many historic buildings and districts. LA, Pasadena, San Diego, Long Beach are just the start. There's also Santa Barbara, Whittier, Santa Monica, Santa Ana, and Oxnard/Ventura. Cbl62 (talk) 07:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park: I think we might consider combining Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park and Old Stagecoach Trail, which is in the park. There's really good information (with a map) in the 78-page cultural resources park brochure (PDF). - PKM (talk) 01:33, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, what do you have in mind for what the Task Force would do? I assume it could cover the CA Historical Landmarks and all the municipal registers, but what do you want it to do? By the way, linked from some wp:MILHIST election page, is this: "initial discussion that led to the creation of the project coordinator positions took place in January 2006; it arose from the development of the "task force" concept within the project." I like Kirill Lokshin's last comment, at 23:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC), in the discussion. In that vein, what tasks might you do, which could be laid out and split up if others chose to join in? doncram (talk) 02:31, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the advantage of task forces is that they can have their own talk pages to focus on subareas of the project. This page is getting huge, to the point that it's hard to follow all the conversations. - PKM (talk) 06:05, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with PKM's comment above me. It'd be nice to have task forces mainly for the reason that discussion can be more focused on specific areas. Of course, it would all be umbrella'd under this WikProject and stuff can be discussed on this talk page, but discussion on this page (as we've already seen) can be unwieldy and hard to keep up with. It would be nice to have a place where there could be a "To Do" list, a place where infoboxes for that specific historic list could be shown, etc. I guess I pretty much summed up parts of WP:TASKFORCE (after reading it again). I just took a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Task forces for the first time, and I really like how it is very organized. Killiondude (talk) 07:30, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Point about unwieldiness proven by my missing these comments from a few days ago. I now believe that if we had a separate discussion area, there could be / would be more specific discussion of CA historic places. My concern before was that i would not want to start a first Task Force that then got no activity, or that had immediate scope definition issues, or immediate issues with the Task force name. Okay, i count expressions of interest in having a California historic sites task force:

1. User:Killiondude, expressed here
2. User:cbl62, expressed here
3. PKM, expressed here
4. User:Rosiestep, expressed here
5. User:Doncram

I may have missed one or two more. And i know that, of these, at least cbl62, Rosiestep, and i have all created multiple articles that would be included in its scope. The guideline from Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals is that a wikiproject needs 5-10 active wikipedians. Given we have five at least, plus probably other support from other HSITES project members, i guess it is now clear this Task Force is justified. Also, the Task Force scope is pretty clear, to cover the state's California Historical Landmarks plus all the many municipal registers (Unlike for the U.K. listed buildings, where maybe the English want to stay separate, etc.). I've seen no suggestions for any scope definition smaller or larger here. Also, i think California historic sites is the obvious task force name, following the wp:MILHIST examples. So, i'll wp:be bold finally now and try to start it. If i screw up, or anyone else can refine/extend what i do, please do step in administratively. doncram (talk) 23:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Tagging

Will you be using a bot to tag articles with {{WikiProject Historic sites}} based on categories such as Category:Landmarks in Chicago, Illinois, Category:Illinois Registered Historic Place stubs and Category:National Register of Historic Places in Illinois?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I've been watching wp:bot requests recently and notice they can program bots to do really complicated WikiProject tagging tasks. I think we should plan to put in a bot request eventually, when we get sorted out what Task Forces we want, and otherwise. Similar to Kevlar's concern about categories, I think we'd want not to add {{WikiProject Historic Sites}} to the Illinois articles that are NRHP-listed, which should be tagged for wp:NRHP. (Perhaps a bot should be run for all NRHP category sites, to ensure that wp:NRHP is added to those with no Talk pages, though.) And for the other Illinois historical sites, I think Kevlar would want it clarified what is the register on which they are listed. I am not sure if we'd want to create a Task Force here for any Illinois state or municipal registers. If so then we'd want to tag them with this WikiProject indicating that Task Force at the same time.doncram (talk) 19:33, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking about getting the project tag to work like WP:Canada's, where the project tag includes any other related project tags. I was also thinking that if we did that, I bet the NRHP tag could be rigged to display the historic sites tag with the parameter for NRHP already filled in (causing all nrhp articles to be instantly tagged for WP:Historic Sites). --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 20:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll have to check out the WP:Canada system. Not sure what you mean about the NRHP tag, you mean to change the wp:NRHP template? Of course that would have to be discussed with wp:NRHP, too. Do you think that all NRHP articles should show WikiProject Historic Sites, too? What i had in mind, anyhow, was following the WP:MILHIST system, in which they have multiple Task Forces, each with separate discussion areas and those article tally tables (# of articles of each class X each importance rating). I think there should be enough interest to have a Task Force on Canadian historic sites, perhaps even a second one for Quebec ones, though I am not keen on splitting too quickly, eh.  :) I think there should be a way to make it a joint Task Force, showing within the WP:CANADA system and showing within this wikiproject. If a Task Force is really linked well into just one WikiProject, then I think it should be here. Based on how well the wp:MILHIST system appears to be working, I expect there will be a lot of mutual benefits for having register-specific Task Forces as part of this one big Wikiproject. Common assessment systems, common use of infoboxes, help on technical problems, I think lots to share. doncram (talk) 20:40, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I think an exemption could be coded to allow articles like the Keeper of the Register from being included. I figure fixing the tag on a few articles would be easier than adding one to thousands. It should be possible to do both and do task forces like WP:MILHIST but also be able add a related project for ones included in something ike WP:NRHP (I assume that an NRHP task force would be considered redundant). --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 20:52, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I think we need to avoid overlap and generally not tag NRHPs with this project's tag. I tagged Historic marker with our tag, even though it has an NRHP tag, because it also covers other markers. Taskforces of this project sound good, overlap like the above mentioned doesn't sound like a good idea. §hep^Talk 21:23, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Assessments

I've set the project up for WP 1.0 and ran the bot to generate a table, all of the categories/bot stats are here. Would anyone be opposed to starting an assessment subpage to start talking about assessments? §hep^Talk 21:05, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

No objection to setting this up & we could work on clarifying importance rankings (assuming that we are using the general wp class rankings), but other work in assessment really starts once project tags have been applied & stats tables & alerts can be (automagically) generated etc. One other thing I find useful on project pages is examples of FAs, FLs, GAs etc which fall within the scope so that others can use those examples to improve articles they are working on.— Rod ^talk 17:51, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Stepshep, thanks for what you did already, and I support you're going ahead, wp:Be bold. Is assessments just about article quality on the stub to FA / FL scale, or does it also include importance ratings for this wikiproject? On the subject of importance, I think we'll need to make some big decisions about what is important or not for this wikiproject; discussion can happen here in the main Talk page or i guess am okay if you think it should be in a different Talk page, just please clarify. I guess I hope we can keep wp:CSB in mind in setting targets for this WP. Also I think that two pages for each register should be rated as "High" importance: the basic article about the register itself and the corresponding top level list-article. doncram (talk) 19:31, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I've put up an outline at Wikipedia:WikiProject Historic Sites/Assessment with the standard class system & a template for people to fill in the blanks with articles that fit into the importance categories. The associated talk page could be used to discuss the fine print. We would still need the categories to be set up for the different importance levels and do we have a project banner yet to put on the talk pages of relevant articles to start this process?— Rod ^talk 20:05, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Cancel the question about the banner. It is at the top of this page !! Do people want me to set up the automated system of WalterBot & the article alerts system?— Rod ^talk 20:18, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think that especially for a project of this dimension alerts would be certainly helpful, as it would help avoid misuderstandings in AfD process; I've seen some listed buildings being brought up for deletion because the editor proposing hadn't clearly understood that the designation was official.--Aldux (talk) 20:53, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, WP:AAlerts are very useful. I'm not sure if we should use an importance rating system to be honest. What would makke a US designated place more important than a UK one, or something similar? Or we could do something like WP:BIO, only have our top-importance articles in an importance rating and have the rest all be the same importance? §hep^Talk 01:06, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Assessments page created. §hep^Talk 01:11, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) So have we come to any agreement about tagging articles? It'd be nice to get this down soon (since this has been an official WikiProject for some weeks now :-) Killiondude (talk) 07:43, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for Lists

My general feeling is that lists should be by heritage register and not by country, country sub-division, or city. But I get the feeling I won't win that battle.

At the minimum, I feel we shouldn't have that city, state, or province-specific lists that lump a number of different heritage registers together. If there is a list for a city it should focus on one register only, the model being List of Chicago Landmarks. If you want to discuss all the heritage efforts undertaken in a city by various levels of government, then you need an article, not a list. The model would be Heritage buildings in Edmonton.

If we adopt this proposal certain existing lists would need to renamed or re-purposed to focus only on one heritage register; alternatively, they could converted into articles. The offenders are: List of heritage buildings in Vancouver, List of Heritage listed buildings in Geelong, List of heritage listed buildings in Melbourne, List of heritage railway stations in the United Kingdom, List of designated heritage properties in Ottawa, List of oldest buildings and structures in Toronto, Historic sites in Scotland, Historic sites in Orissa, List of buildings and structures in the Australian Capital Territory, List of Perth landmarks, List of historic buildings in Perth, Western Australia, List of historic buildings in Sweden, and so on.

Thoughts? --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 22:58, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

List of heritage buildings in Vancouver only lists buildings registered by the city of Vancouver. That shouldn't be offensive. clariosophic (talk) 02:13, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

No but it should be renamed, because the current title doesn't suggest that. The current title suggest that provincially and federally designated buildings could be on it. And what's with the 2003 cutoff date? (seems arbitrary) And why nothing mentioned about the famous density bank? --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 21:34, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, u lost the battle before u started.  :) List of Chicago Landmarks is a mix of city of Chicago-designated landmarks, plus also U.S.-designated National Historic Landmarks that are not Chicago-designated ones. And it mentions approximately how many U.S. NRHP listings there are in the city. :) Actually, I would like to build some general support for having lists that mix types of registers in a given geo area. I think more readers are interested in historic sites in a given area, less so about which of many similar sounding registers covers which ones of them. But, about Vancouver ones, those are fair-sounding questions, although i don't know what "density bank" you might be referring to. doncram (talk) 05:26, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I do not see why or how the heritage ra\ilway stations list should be renamed. If done per county, that would be pointless as some counties may only have one sation or be only one heritage railway. Per country may be okay. Simply south (talk) 13:54, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Damn. I thought I had something there. But I still think the name of the list should clearly specificy if it is geographical or register-based. I will be about creating register-based ones. If others create geographical lists we will have to reconcile them later. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 01:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

New template

A new user created {{Infobox nhsc}} for National Historic Sites of Canada, and then the user diappeared. Do we like it and want to keep it? Should we change anything about it? Can it be adapted for use with other registers? How does it compare the current US templates? --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 23:54, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Speaking for myself {and I am, of course, unanimous in this), I like it. I'm not in favor of adapting it to other registers, but that's because I believe different countries should have infoboxes which are sufficiently different as to be recognizable at a glance. I fully recognize that I may be in the minority on that count, however. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 15:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I like it and would be fine with using it, but I've been working on {{Infobox nrhp}} a lot, and it has a nice "other designation" feature that I believe could be modified a bit to be able to cover pretty much any designation imaginable. We could make templates like {{NHSCanada}} or something that included all the parameters needed to make the infobox show Canada Landmarks, etc. I could work on a draft if anyone's interested.. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I think Dudemanfellabra has a lot of skill now which could support having different-appearing infoboxes for different countries, probably customized just as far as AlbertHerring could possibly want. Yet using one underlying system which efficiently and simply handles common elements like site name, latitude and longitude coordinates, register name, etc. For all sites in one register, I think this would require just one example article and one setup to determine an input code and a bunch of customizing settings specific for the register (name of register, a color choice, wikilink to an article about the register, term to use for adding a site to the register like "designated" or "listed" or "enregistre", formatting for the register entry number if any, etc.). Dudemanfellabra should also be aware of the Local1 template which is my fork off the former NRHP2 template and is now obsolescent programming-wise. It can be ignored, there are fewer than 100 articles that use it for some LAHCM and California Historical Landmark sites. Dudeman, I hope you will please go ahead, probably first by collecting a good collection of test articles to try infoboxes for. Maybe we should add a column to the growing first page chart to identify those test cases? Or, better, set up a sandbox and testcases system like was done recently for infobox nrhp. I think this is a situation where Albert and others may remain skeptical until they see what can be done and they try to require whatever specifics they want for a given register type. doncram (talk) 18:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually i like {{Infobox nhsc}} too, because of how it looks and for it looking different. Does it work for covering National Historic Sites of Canada? I wonder if there are enough discussions about Canada-specific questions to make a separate Talk area, where more people would feel free to talk further. doncram (talk) 05:33, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

help needed doing the World Heritage Sites

I joined wp:WHS but don't find it to be very active yet. Its list-articles on List of World Heritage Sites in Europe, etc., contain many items like:

• Historic Centre of Salzburg

which in my view aren't really historic site items. I think it should show a redlink

• Historic Centre of Salzburg

instead, so that an article about the WHS site of that name could be created from that redlink. There are only 878 sites to list out, all listed in English at this UNESCO website. There's a webpage at UNESCO for each separate site, with enough info to fill out the infobox that is set up already, and to start a stub article. It's all organized by country, in the same order as on the UNESCO site.

Would a few persons be willing to join me in just spelling out this 878 item list, and then march through creating stub articles?

I'd rather avoid any big turf issues, so perhaps we doing this could just join the WHS wikiproject as members, and coordinate about what we are doing within its main Talk page, wt:WHS. I like the idea of working on some small U.S. municipal register, but geez, wouldn't it be better to flesh out this one world-wide heritage sites list, pronto? doncram (talk) 02:54, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

A thought: If WP:WHS is inactive, why not seeing about folding it into WP:HS as a task force? --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 03:12, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid wp:HSITES is inactive also, meaning we haven't done anything yet. Who would we be to presume to absorb anyone else yet? Sometime later, I think, for that if it ever makes sense. But, I would be happy to regard WHS like a task force of HSITES, just work within it. Anyhow, I started on its Talk page already. I am starting with their Europe list, and already I completed out the country of Albania. See wt:WHS for my detailed report. :) doncram (talk) 03:27, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't say were inactive per se, but that is getting into semantics. Does it matter that Salzburg has a WHS infobox already? While I agree with needing an article for Berat and Gjirokastra (two sites under one listing), what's wrong with piping to an already existing article (similar to piping an NRHP historic district to an existing article on a small town if the district includes it almost entirely). The only example I can come up with right now would be Old City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 04:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I shouldn't have said the wp:WHS is inactive, i just wouldn't know where its activity is going on. There could be people working away on lists and articles that I don't at first see, who don't need to be chatting at the Talk page. Thanks for your help fixing up the Albania stub i had opened! To be consistent with NRHP treatment like you describe, which also applies to certain ghost town sites i could dredge up, it would be fine by me if the WHS name Historic Centre of Salzburg was a redirect to the Salzburg article, as long as that article has the WHS infobox showing the full WHS phrase and reflects the full WHS phrase as a bolded name in the article text. Thanks! I think Austria is next, will do some of that tomorrow. doncram (talk) 05:00, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying that a separate article is always needed for a WHS rather than having it as part of a city article? The example close to me is listed at List of World Heritage Sites in Europe as City of Bath, which takes you to Bath, Somerset - one article about the city which includes the WHS infobox about 75% of the way down. What is the rationale for having a separate article just about WHS status?— Rod ^talk 08:18, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

No. In a list-article of sites of a given register, I believe the sites should appear as named in the register. They may wikilink to articles that have somewhat different names, either by pipelink or by redirect. (If the list-article accomplishes that by using a pipelink, then a redirect should usually be created, anyhow, so that a wikipedia user looking for a specific World Heritage Place will find it immediately. "City of Bath" is the WHS name, which appears in the WHS Europe list-article. It linked to Bath, England by redirect already, and there already is a WHS infobox titled with the "City of Bath" WHS name. The only further change I think necessary for the Bath article is to show the "City of Bath" name in bold in the intro of the article, to explain to some readers why they arrived at this article of a somewhat different name than what they clicked on. (I just changed the article slightly to do that, in this diff. Is this not okay and helpful? ). Another change to possibly consider would be to add a note at the top of the article saying that ' "City of Bath" redirects here ', but I don't think that is necessary given the WHS name now showing in bold. doncram (talk) 15:30, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Further point to consider - the component properties within each WHS. As an example, take a look at the Wooden Churches of Southern Little Poland: in English only the combined WHS has an article, whereas in Polish each of the churches has also been granted its own article. Something similar can be said about the Wooden Churches of Maramureş (although there we have far fewer articles to translate from the Romanian, as a starting point). And I'm sure there are other listings which could be treated in similar fashion, although I haven't the time to go searching for them in-depth. Perhaps we should attempt a comprehensive list as a subpage? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 13:44, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe it would be helpful to create a separate, comprehensive list-table of the WHS sites, sortable by name and by country. This could include sublists of their contributing properties like those churches. It would be another index to the WHS articles, complementing the existing list-articles which are organized by continent and then by country. But, we should be having this discussion within the "Task Force", meaning at wt:WHS. AlbertHerring, would you consider joining the task force (meaning would you sign up as a member at wp:WHS) and either way would you discuss this at wt:WHS? I am sure that we have a lot to learn from the WHS members who have developed the WHS list-articles and 400 or so articles on WHS sites already. They could have useful feedback about our bright new ideas; we are the newbies with respect to that particular register. doncram (talk) 15:49, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, maybe there is a need for a World Heritage Sites task force here. I've opened a couple discussion items at wt:WHS which aren't getting immediate response, and then I don't want to overwhelm by posting further there. If anyone here would watchlist and participate there, as a member of WHS or not, I'd appreciate it. But perhaps a task force here is needed, at least to have a discussion area for it, which could be replaced by wt:WHS itself later if the WHS wikiproject chose to become a task force here.

A list-table is started at Wikipedia:WikiProject World Heritage Sites/Tables of WHS Sites. Small table now, followed by text list that needs cutting up into table format. Editing help to cut up a continent or just a country or two would be appreciated. Coordinates can be added later, to help make maps for List of World Heritage Sites in Europe, etc., articles, which lack them. doncram (talk) 22:51, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Perfect, a mindless editing job fits my mood. I'll work on Africa. Lvklock (talk) 00:40, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to help out on a task force, certainly; the thing is that I'm not sure what kind of time I'm going to have right now. I'm maybe not the best person to lead, but more one to follow. There's also the point that I and a couple of other folks have been discussing getting WP:ECHO back up and running. If that meets its intended purpose, of finding and transwiki-ing content from other Wikis, I think a lot of what the task force might be trying to accomplish could already be covered via translation from, say, Polish. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 13:56, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Update: The Wikiproject WHS's discussion area has been silent to my questions and comments. I wonder further about absorbing WHS as a Task Force here. I and one other member here have been doing some development of WHS lists, in draft form at Wikipedia:WikiProject World Heritage Sites/Tables of WHS Sites. It is coming along okay I think. I think its Africa list, with coordinates, is now better than the existing mainspace List of World Heritage Sites in Africa. I'd like to develop an intro text for the Africa section, and plan to release it with a DYK promotion. Any help drafting a DYK-eligible intro text would be most appreciated. doncram (talk) 02:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I know this section is months old (perhaps this talk page needs archiving), but what was the progress on the revamp of the WHS articles? Nev1 (talk) 21:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Standardization of Grade I listed buildings

There seems to be a general persuasion (I may be wrong) that first of all we should attempt to cover England and Wales through lists of Grade I listed buildings by county and, if too big, by district. That said, there seems to be a need of standardizing the various Grade I lists and estabilish an agreed and unified way to tabulate the lists that still haven't. Till now, we have multiple models in the already tabulated lists: List of Grade I listed buildings in Bristol is tabulated name (of the building) - built (date of construction) - location - grid ref - ref (IoE link). Variations of this model can be seen all around: that used for list of Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester name - completed (i. e. construction date) - architect - location - grid ref - ref. The Greater Manchester example has been duplicated exactly in the same way in List of Grade I listed buildings in City of Bradford and the seven articles that come from List of Grade I listed buildings in Somerset. From Bristol, the change here is the insertion of the name of the architect. List of Grade I listed buildings in South Yorkshire is also similar, but adds to the 6 classes of Greater Manchester a 7th, i.e. "date listed", that is when it was officially registered. The most extensive for number of classes seems to be List of Grade I listed buildings in Wiltshire: name - photograph (of the building) - place (i.e. district and town plus eventually village) - location (i. e. road number and grid) - period (of construction) - description (of building) - ref (IoE, as always). The image class is also present in List of Grade I listed buildings in Tyne and Wear which for the rest follows exactly the Bristol model. As for Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire its pattern name - place - coordinates - date - notes - ref - images is mostly taken for its style by listed buildings in Runcorn, and includes as can be observed a "notes" class for basic info. on each building; a similar class, "comments", is in List of Grade I listed buildings in North Yorkshire.

Sorry for being so verbose, but I wanted to go in detail so the varieties and alternatives were clear. Personally I'm a great fan of how the NRHP editors were able to maintain such an astounding degree of coherence in so many seperate lists by so many different editors, and I would like this to repeat itself here for the listed buildings listings. As to how, I think we should insert image and description classes in these tables, like the NRHP listings do, in part because I find it neater, in part because it'll take a lot to complete the 6,000 articles so a basic description and an image would at least give an idea of the buildings; but that's just my 2 cents - or better pence ;-)--Aldux (talk) 19:19, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Right - a slightly verbose response. I did the List of Grade I listed buildings in Bristol (NB redirects to Grade I listed buildings in Bristol) before sortable lists were invented. I started with a picture for each building - however this was removed at the "suggestion" of reviewers for featured list status. I believe list of Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester (NB redirects to Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester) was the next and developed the theme. Architects are often not available (particularly for buildings pre 1700). I followed the Manchester model with List of Grade I listed buildings in Somerset - but had to split this into 7 sections (as it was the largest done at the time & the page became massive) & I think the Wilts one will fall at this hurdle once it is more fully completed. Perhaps different designs should be "permissible" for different size lists (47 in Manchester, over 1000 in Somerset including 663 in Bath and North East Somerset alone). I also removed a notes section from the Bristol one at FL review on the grounds that a list should be just that & additional info should go in the article - when its created. Maybe the NRHP achieved consistency as they already had a relevant wikiproject and were working together rather than isolated individuals & I think this is the advantage of guidelines, for both lists and articles - which I would see as one of the functions of this wikiproject. I know that the guidelines produced by WP:UKG have helped with the consistency of UK articles on counties, towns & villages etc and there are others for rivers etc - but I have searched in vein for similar guidelines for buildings etc - perhaps this is the sort of thing this project could/should be working on.— Rod ^talk 19:58, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I've given a look at the FL discussion on Bristol; having seen the development of the NRHP lists I was quite astounded to say the least by some criticism and I think it reflects old positions that are not really held anymore, as proved by the fact that List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama has recently been promoted to FL, and this despite having like all NHL and NRHP listings an image and a description for each entry, so I believe what wasn't accepted then would be OK. As for the architects, I'm certainly not supporting its inclusion: it's incredibly weird that it's present in a FL (Greater Manchester) despite of a very large amount of these 6,000, if not the majority, we have no way of having a chance to put anything better than "uknown". I'm wary of too much diversity, and too be honest would prefer to avoid confusion. As for Wiltshire, is certainly going to have to be split, probably along district lines. Another issue: what to do with clusters of closely related Grade I listed buildings. I think we should follow strictly English Heritage here, and so list them seperately, but without necessarily linking them, or linking them just as redirects to the main article. I like what you say about the need of a guideline: maybe at this project such a guideline for the listings and a specific infobox should be among our first goals. I would like to hear Doncram's opinion on this: due to his great experience with NRHP he could be of great help.

Something, you probably already know but maybe not everybody: while many here have correctly observed that Images of England database is static, that is not updated, apparently Listed Buildings Online is at least partly updated: I found this of St Cosmas and St Damian Church, Keymer while tagging listed buildings.--Aldux (talk) 21:01, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

On listing "closely related" Grade I listed buildings separately, English Heritage is not consistent. To give a couple of examples from List of Grade I listed buildings in Bath and North East Somerset...Lansdown Crescent, Bath which has 20 buildings has a single IoE entry whereas Widcombe Manor House a single building with attached walls, balustrading, gates and fountain has 4 separate entries. It would seem ridiculous to me to list each of these separately & would make that list massive. These issues are not unique to BANES in List of Grade I listed buildings in Mendip you will also see examples of where I've groped them together... would you like Vicars' Close, Wells to have six entries in the list because of the (arbitrary) way English Heritage has divided it up for listing?— Rod ^talk 21:29, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

On Images of England being static - the new Heritage Gateway is supposed to be dynamically updated, and is getting the county Historic Environment Records as well as all the existing stuff, but I still find IoE easier to use but that may be because I'm very familiar with how it works.— Rod ^talk 22:01, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Heh, I see what you mean about inconsistency: I guess it's a conseguence of not having like the NRHP a thing like the historic districts that group in one single formal NRHP enry multiple buildings unless they are outstanding in value among the buildings of the HD. That said, we do face a potental problem of ending under OR if we use criteria different from those on English Heritage.--Aldux (talk) 22:12, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry i have not responded sooner. Aldux, thanks for the compliment, but other members of wp:HSITES here have longer and greater experience with NRHP articles and the wp:NRHP wikiproject than i do. I am just one person interested in creating standards that work for NRHPs and for other historic sites, too. I do like the idea of working together on general guidelines and on a specific infobox for UK listed buildings. Perhaps I could start a guidelines section, in the form of a manuual of style for HSITES, generalizing from the wp:NRHPMOS example (although that was a draft never receiving wide scrutiny and not approved as part of Wikipedia-wide MOS). doncram (talk) 03:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I've been following this closely, although I haven't had a chance to respond yet. (My thoughts will appear here soon!) Anyway, the debate above has been very useful, and I am willing to help with defining some guidelines and similar for listed buildings. I am currently working on some listed buildings lists, and am similarly happy to help fix some style and layout conventions for those (in reference to the comments earlier about existing lists having slightly different formatting). Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 08:07, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

By the way, Aldux opens this discussion with idea that some think "we should attempt to cover England and Wales through lists of Grade I listed buildings by county and, if too big, by district." I whole-heartedly endorse that! Also, the relative uniformity in the U.S. NRHP lists was a product, first, of a great initial discussion within the NRHP wikiproject and cooperative development of a standard using a few test county cases. But then, second, the use of the standard was hugely supported by Elkman's provision of a county-list-table generator that spits out new county lists in that format. For UK listed buildings, I hope that a database can yet be obtained from Listed Buildings Online or another source, and then a little programming following Elkman's example can follow. You will be unstoppable if you get that. doncram (talk) 08:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for participating in the discussion, Doncram and Hassocks; it's good to see that several editors have a common interest in the issue :-) Personally, it came to me when I thought of making lists for Suffolk, and I noted an absence of general criteria. Doncram, I've given a look to NRHPMPOS: it really is quite impressive in its detail and coverage, and could give helpful indications for the guideline needed. As for a database from LBO to create a list-table generator, I'm a bit puzzled how this can be done, but to be honest I'm quite an ignoramus regarding computer programming, but it seems fantastic if it can be done.--Aldux (talk) 00:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Task forces

Following discussion at #Landmarks in California cities above, i opened up a Wikipedia:WikiProject Historic sites/Task forces general page, and from there opened up a first task force Wikipedia:WikiProject Historic sites/California historic sites. I thot the discussion established enough of a consensus that there is 5+ members' interest in the task force, that its scope is well-defined, and that the name is likely to be stable. doncram (talk) 00:18, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Now, i am not sure what shortcuts, tagging, etc. should be set up. Especially because using CA to mean California in a shortcut like wp:CAHSITES would conflict with possible Canada historic sites task force, yet to be created. Should it be wp:CALHSITES and wt:CALHSITES as shortcuts? I'll go for the latter. If anyone can proceed with setting up tagging, and reporting of articles under this new Task force, that would be most appreciated. doncram (talk) 00:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm wondering what's the best way to set the WP:HSITES banner to display the task force. The banner currrently uses {{WPBannerMeta}} which can be used for task forces, but it only can support up to 5 task forces. Is it likely that this project will have at least 5 taskforces? WP:MILHIST uses a hardcoded banner to support its many task forces. Should the WP:HSITES banner be changed (internally) now to be similar to WP:MILHIST's or wait until there happens to be a need for a 6th task force here? --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 01:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

If you're up to following wp:MILHIST's example right off the bat, I think that would be best. I think there are probably more than 5 members interested in Task forces for Canada, for the U.K. and/or England, for World Heritage Sites, for other areas, soon more than 5 Task forces will be needed. I like how the MILHIST system allows for separate tally boxes of articles by importance and quality for each task force. Go for it! :) doncram (talk) 05:39, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Its best to allot now for future growth, rather than change things in the future. I think the banner should be changed to the hardcode. Killiondude (talk) 05:47, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I set up a rudimentary banner at {{WikiProject Historic sites/test}} dealing mostly with the task forces. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles like WP:MILHIST's yet, but should be able to do anything the current banner is set up to do. It's set up for the California task force as well as the 3 other possible Doncram mention above. For example: |California_task_force=yes will display the California task force. There still is a bug that I can't see seem to fix (the show/hide link allowing you to toggle between showing and hiding the task forces doesn't appear). --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 21:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Great! I further moved that to {{WikiProject Historic sites/sandbox}} and set up corresponding {{WikiProject Historic sites/testcases}}. The sandbox and testcases can be reused in the future as we develop new editions, and these seem to be standard names in template programming. At the testcases, i try "California=yes" and "California task force=yes" examples; the first shows a California flag (but maybe it just shows all task forces?). The second does not show anything about California, but may be properly inserting a California task force category, i can't tell. So i think there's some more tinkering needed, which is to be expected. More detailed template discussion can happen at Template talk:WikiProject Historic sites. I'll watch there, anyhow. Is there documentation of the options? I wonder how wp:MILHIST provides documentation of its options. Thanks for starting this already. doncram (talk) 22:42, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Did use underscores instead of spaces? I changed it so "task force" doesn't need to be in the parameter. So accepted parameters are |California=yes or |CAL=yes, |Canada=yes or |CAN=yes, |United-Kingdom=yes or |UK=yes, |World-Heritage-Sites=yes or |WHS=yes. --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 23:11, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Discussion notice about possible Canadian historic sites task force

I opened a discussion section at Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board#Canadian historic sites task force about creating a joint task force on Canadian historic sites. doncram (talk) 18:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

No interest there, whatsoever. Okay, no problem. I'm going back to working on World Heritage Sites in Africa, and California ones. :) doncram (talk) 00:26, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

On finding scheduled monuments

Hello everybody, I was hoping I could get here some assistance regarding finding a database of scheduled monuments. It would seem that all scheduled monuments are in PastScape; but while scheduled monuments are 18,300 currently, PastScape claims to have 400,000 entries [1]. Scotland has, fortunately a specific online database for scheduled monuments [2]; but it doesn't seem the case for England and Wales, and if it is, could you please give me a tip? In the immediate, the issue came from some categorizing I'm making on English windmills; some of these may be scheduled, but I don't know how to see this and with a fully reliable source, better if official, like English Heritage. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, and ciao :-)--Aldux (talk) 16:07, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Since this is an old post, I left a note on Aldux's talk page where I thought it more likely to get noticed. For those interested, the note is here. If there is an easy way to find them, say an online database, I'd be interested too. Nev1 (talk) 23:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

AfD notice and Oyster Bay, New York historic sites

I commented at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fleet's Hall. New User:Inoysterbay has started a quite reasonable looking start for a local register at List of Town of Oyster Bay Landmarks‎, but is running into AfD trouble with one of them already. doncram (talk) 00:22, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

History walks

Are there many other history-themed walks / pedestrian walkways like the Freedom Trail in Boston, Massachusetts, USA? Also there are the Oyster Bay History Walk in Oyster Bay, New York, and the Black Heritage Trail in Boston, which are clearly history walks. Other walkways, such as the Boston HarborWalk don't seem very much history-themed. doncram (talk) 18:20, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Uxbridge, Massachusetts has a walking tour contained in an NPS pdf file [3] as part of the Blackstone Valley#Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor. clariosophic (talk) 20:31, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

New York Songlines' has Virtual Walking Tours of Manhattan Streets[4] clariosophic (talk) 20:38, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Remarkable Gardens of France

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Might be worth considering adding to the project page. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 17:29, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pischalauski Castle

Heads up, as the discussion seems to have shown some evidence that this is a historical site in Belarus, possibly Minsk. Thought perhaps some people here might be able to help with sourcing if you're familiar with where to find such info for non-English speaking areas. StarM 00:01, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Result was Keep, on May 4. doncram (talk) 18:43, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for new infobox

It has been mentioned before that there is a great need for an infobox for international, state, or local historic sites that don't have their own infobox. I committed a lot of work to {{Infobox nrhp}} and added in some "other" designations that allowed local and state designations to be added on top of NRHP designations. This was limited, however, and for the past few days I've been working on an infobox that can cover pretty much all designations for sites that aren't on the NRHP. It doesn't discriminate, though, haha.. NRHP sites can be included in this infobox as well. The working code for this infobox can be found at User:Dudemanfellabra/Sandbox. If you have suggestions or questions, let me know.

I've included parameters for each designation such as the number (NRHP#, CHISL#, USMS#, WHS#, etc.), designation date, delisting date (if a site has been removed from that designation), parent listing (some designations have bigger areas designated, then certain sites within those bigger areas are designated separately), type of designation (for World Heritage Sites, IUCN categories, Listed Buildings, etc.), official name (for NRHP, WHS, and other official titles), and criteria (for any designation that requires a certain criteria). Also, there are "free" fields for each designation that can be whatever the editor pleases.

The designations are handled by templates like {{USMS designation}} (Mississippi Landmarks) and {{NRHP designation}} (National Register of Historic Places). The templates are constructed with the abbreviation for the designation, so World Heritage Sites would be handled with {{WHS designation}}. Inside the templates, there are several identifiers which you can see if you look at the code of them. The "text" identifier tells the infobox what to write in the bar at the top. The "color" identifier tells the infobox the color of that bar. The "position" identifier tells the infobox where to display the designation number (for some designations, the number is vital to the identity of the site; for others it is not. The number can be displayed in the title bar, in the information section, or both locations). These are the only three identifiers necessary for any designation template, so they're rather easy to create. {{NHL designation}}, {{CHISL designation}}, etc. will all be created for use by the template once (if) it's up and running.

This is kind of a bare sketch of my ideas, but I was looking for thoughts of how it's coming along. I included an example of the infobox in practice using an NRHP and a USMS designation (the only two I have created), and I think it looks pretty good. The infobox example shows a site that is listed on the NRHP and that is also a former Mississippi landmark (setting a value to the delisted date will grey out that designation's title bar and add the word "Former" to the beginning). It lists the parent district for the NRHP listing and also uses the free fields to show the Multiple Property Submission of the building. What do you guys think? Any suggestions? Criticisms? Thanks! --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyone? If no one says anything, I'm just going to move the code to {{Infobox Historic Site}} and begin using it... --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:41, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't know enough about the code behind infoboxes, templates etc to really comment - just a question have you tested it outside the US eg with listed buildings &/or scheduled ancient monuments in the UK?— Rod ^talk 21:01, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I haven't created those templates yet. MS Landmark and NRHP are the only ones I've created so far just for a test because I didn't want to create a bunch of templates if the infobox wasn't going to be accepted. The templates are very easy to make, though. As long as you can input the title of the designation, the color of the bar that will appear at the top, and the importance of the designation number, the infobox can handle any designation imaginable in any country. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:29, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

My first reaction is that the infobox is too long (partly the problem is the Mississippi locator map). What if the colored headings were used to separate the different designations, instead of underneath the article name. --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 22:20, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Yea, the MS map makes it really long, but you can shrink the map to whatever size you like by adding "map_width=width" to the code. Also, other maps aren't as long as that one. The USA map is short, as are many other states' and countries' maps. It just kind of depends on which map you choose.

About moving the bars down, that's a good idea; I didn't think about that. I'll look into moving them down into the information section.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this for while now (initially for the nrhp infobox, but it applies here as well). Would it be possible to move the locator map to the bottom of the infobox (similar to way the Geoboxes do, which I feel works very well, especially if it starts to become too long) when an image is present, but to display in its current spot when an image is not? Sorry to keep adding things, but I wanted to get it out there before I forgot. --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 02:41, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I took your advice and moved the colored bars down into the info section. Doing this actually removed the need for the "position" identifier in the designation templates since the designations will be so close to the numbers. Now the only identifiers needed are "color" and "text." I'll work on the map thing; I see what you mean.. I'll see if I can make it work and how it looks. Haha it's good that you're throwing out ideas.. no one else seems to want to :P --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:40, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I moved the map down if there's an image specified. How does it look? (I also removed the website parameter because I didn't think it was that vital.) To see the map back in the top of the infobox, you can comment out the image parameter from the infobox code and show the preview. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:55, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Well I, for one, quite like it. And I'm champing at the bit to use it - I have a New York City landmark or two that I'd like to work on creating. Two questions, then: one, do we have a color code for New York landmarks? And two, for things like that (which are city landmarks rather than state), do you think there might be the possibility of uploading a city map rather than a state map? For instance: I know that the 130 West 57th Street Studio Building is in Manhattan, so seeing that on the state map wouldn't help me much. But seeing it on a city map would make more sense. I realize I'm asking for a lot of maps, here, but I think it would be good to come up with some way of being more exact, if possible.

Another question, and one I've been meaning to address for some time: the one flaw in the current infobox that I see is that it always uses the NRHP header for any registered historic site that's on the Register in some capacity. Look, for example, at the infobox in Debtors' Prison (Tappahannock, Virginia). That top, light blue bar reading "U.S. National Register of Historic Places" is redundant to me; do you think it could be removed as part of the infobox overhaul? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 13:37, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Well I don't think there is a specified color for any certain designation.. I'm pretty sure we just make them up haha.. I've seen red used in a bunch of NYCL articles, so I'm thinking someone has decided that red was the best color to use.. (I personally don't like the red because it makes the blue link hard to read.. IMO it needs to be a lighter color.) You can pretty much use whatever color you like, so long as the same color is used in each article.

Yes, articles on the NYC Landmark program now use red because some like it for connecting to the idea of New York City being "the big apple". Red=apple. I support using the {{NYCL color}} and related {{NYCLcolor}} templates everywhere, rather than hard-coding in the red color, to enable easy changing, everywhere, if consensus settles on a different (or lighter) color. All color templates should be in Category:Historical Site color templates. doncram (talk) 22:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that's another thing I wanted to address.. if this proposal goes through, there will no longer bee a need for the {{NYCL color}}, {{NRHP color}}, {{USMS color}}, etc. templates. They will be replaced with the {{NYCL designation}}, {{NRHP designation}}, {{USMS designation}}, etc. templates. This combines different uses into one template instead of needing many different templates for each designation, which I think is very tacky. {{NYCL designation|color}} will do the same thing {{NYCL color}} does, so {{NYCL color}} will no longer be necessary.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

About the maps question, this infobox actually doesn't control the maps haha. It outsources to {{Location map}}. Any map created for that template can be used here. That template gives you instructions on how to create new maps for any location imaginable. Actually, there's already a map for New York City haha.. You can type "locmapin = New York City" or "locmapin = USA New York City" to see it.

About the bar, that's actually in {{Infobox nrhp}}, not this infobox. While this infobox can handle NRHP designations, I don't think it will necessarily replace the NRHP infobox, which is transcluded on thousdands of pages and is well-rooted in practice. Many people at WP:NRHP will probably still use that infobox. That infobox can actually handle other designations like World Heritage Sites, State Landmarks, etc., but all those sites have to be on the NRHP to use that infobox because it's strictly an NRHP infobox. The point of this infobox was to allow sites that were World Heritage Sites, State Landmarks, City Landmarks, etc. to have an infobox that didn't have NRHP in it. In other words, this infobox doesn't force that blue bar.

If you want to try to get that bar removed from the other infobox, I suggest raising the idea on that project's talk page (where I'll probably respond too haha), but here are my two cents: All articles that use that infobox are on the NRHP. While the bar seems redundant to us editors that know all about the register and all about articles that use that infobox, the average reader has no idea what the register is or how the infobox works. Including the bar/link to that page in all articles of listed sites will tell the reader that this article is on the NRHP. Without that link, the reader will know nothing of the NRHP. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:14, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, OK - thanks for clarifying. That does raise another point, though, about colors...which I think I'll note below. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 18:40, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Names

I can't really evaluate this whole proposal, it is too much to consider. I think the infobox should be made available for test usage by anyone, now, with understanding that its syntax etc. may be changed a lot still. I agree with one person's suggestion that we need to start test cases on various other types of historic sites. Dudemanfellabra has done a great job addressing many issues (map placement, site numbers, etc.) that have come up previously in discussing template requirements for U.S. sites. I don't know what other requirements will come up for other sites, we just have to start test cases. One requirement may be to allow for an English language name for a site as well as for a local language name. For U.S. NRHP-listed sites in Puerto Rico, there is very uneven treatment, sometimes a Spanish language name is the NRHP official name for a site and sometimes a good or bad translation into English is the official name. I think allowing for both, and further allowing editor control to choose which one is presented first or otherwise as the official or primary name, may be needed. In some cases there will be official names in two languages, in other cases only one will be official. See archived discussion about the Arles Obelisk / Obelisque d'Arles for more about how selecting the name to use for an article is difficult. An infobox for the Arles Obelisk would be a good test case. doncram (talk) 22:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I see what you mean about the native name thing. I personally think the English name should be the official name because this is the English Wikipedia. I may look into adding a "native_name" parameter for the top of the infobox, though. I just created the {{WHS designation}} template for use in testing. I don't really want to move the code out of userspace until testing is over, so for testing just transclude User:Dudemanfellabra/Sandbox. I'll also be working on some documentation. For now, you can look at the code of the three designation templates so far, and it shouldn't be that hard to figure out how to make your own designation templates until I get the documentation ready. I'd like to know if you make new ones, though, so I can keep up with them. If you make a new one, just drop me a comment on my talk page. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi, and thank you for the great infobox. I, too, think that we need to allow for multiple names. In many cases, such as with historical sites in Switzerland (which has three official languages - German, French and Italian) there will not be an English name, but there may be a German, French and Italian name, one of which (depending on the region the site is in) will be the one to use for the title. Thanks,  Sandstein  05:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

This would be a case where there could be as many as three official names, and then also English name. By official names, what I and Sandstein meant is the name as given by the given historic register in its own language(s). I think giving four names for Swiss historic sites in the infobox is probably appropriate, and further to allow the editor control over the order/prominence of different names. What's an example Swiss site we could do a testcase infobox for? doncram (talk) 06:32, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, we could use the Rütli, which is called Grütli in French and Italian and has no particular name in English that I am aware of. Another case would be the Teufelsbrücke (French: "Pont du Diable").  Sandstein  12:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

How about you just use the one official name parameter (because most sites only have one official name) and introduce <br/>s? For Rütli, you could use |designation1_offname=<br/>[[German language|German]]:Rütli<br/>[[French language|French]]/[[Italian language|Italian]]:Grütli. Teufelsbrücke would be the same. You can give more than one official name and control exactly which order they are displayed in. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:22, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

We can do that, of course, but it might be troublesome for those who want to be able to extract useful metadata from the infobox. It also invites inconsistencies. Using multiple parameters would seem to be the more elegant solution.  Sandstein  17:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that most sites have only one "official" name. If there's more than one, it's not really "official," is it? It's just another name. This is why there's only one official name parameter; it works with 99% of designations. There shouldn't be an extra 2-3 parameters for each of the 5 possible designations solely for the handful of designations that allow more than one official name. Yes it may be convenient for these designations to have their own parameters, but that would be inconvenient to the other designations. There's a native name parameter (and there can only be one native name) for the top of the infobox, so the name can be shown in the locality's local language, and there are official name parameters for each designation. If that isn't enough, there are three "free" parameters for each designation that allow you to type whatever you'd like (like French name: Grütli, etc.). The combination of these is able to provide for everything you ask, even though you may have to work a little harder to get it to do what you want. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:48, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

All right. Fortunately, most sites even in Switzerland do not have more than one name.  Sandstein  18:24, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I expect that there are two or more officially given names for nationally designated sites in Canada, Switzerland, Nigeria, Estonia, Uraguay, Antarctica, South Africa, New Zealand, and many other nations that have more than one official language. Probably there are six official names for all World Heritage Sites, but that, as the one world-wide historic register program, is a special case. (There is a WHS infobox in place on almost all of the WHS articles already, which I would not recommend trying to absorb into this new infobox. Note that it has some entirely different fields, in part because some World Heritage designations are for natural rather than cultural sites.) About which name to show, I think the local official name should usually be given first. Thanks Dudeman for setting up the example Arles Obelisk infobox for a French example. For the French example, I think it should be "Obelisque d'Arles", with appropriate accents, then optionally followed by an English translation denoted as an official or unofficial/approximate translation, in the example "Unofficial translation: Arles Obelisk". For Swiss sites, the official German language name would be used as the official name for sites in the primarily German cantons, etc. For a Korean site, I think the official name should be the official name in Korean characters. doncram (talk) 18:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) This. Is. The. English. Wikipedia. English names get preference. That may not be what the register "officially" says, but that register is not in English. Writing a name in Korean tells an English-speaking person nothing; they just see a bunch of lines and dots. Korean titles go in the Korean Wikipedia, French titles go in the French Wikipedia, English titles go in the English Wikipedia. Frenchmen may call the Arles Obelisk "Obélisque d'Arles," but we speak English, so we call it the Arles Obelisk. Any other names in other languages are not as important to us as the English name. The French call the Eiffel Tower "Tour Eiffel," but you don't hear an American or a Brit saying that, do you? The English name should be displayed first, followed by the native name. Like you said, for countries that have multiple official languages such as Switzerland, we just pick the native name based off of where in the country it is. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:02, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

We should simply follow WP:TITLE. It tells us to use the name most easily recognizable by English speakers. That will most often be the English name (if any), but may also be the local name, depending on the site at issue.  Sandstein  19:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Designations

I just thought of something else. Are the abbreviations for each designation needed in the infobox? Why not just "Designated:" or "Reference #:" instead of "Designated NRHP:" or "USMS #"? With using the colored designation heading bars to separate designation info, it sorta becomes redundant and a waste of space. --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 02:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, well that was kind of a leftover from NRHP coding when the designations weren't separate. They were all listed together, so it was necessary to specify.. now that they're separated, though, the abbreviation is not really necessary. I guess that means we don't really need abbreviations for the templates after all haha.. we can make a {{World Heritage Site designation}} template and redirect it, etc.. You could then type whatever you want in the designation parameters instead of being limited to abbreviations. This actually expands capability of the infobox greatly. Thanks! --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if that "Category:Historical Sites color templates" can now be deleted and merge all the different color templates into one template. Similar to how the "NRHP date for lists" template works. --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 03:32, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we don't need a million different templates out there.. Check out {{Designation}}. I'm gonna code the infobox to use that now instead of the numerous other templates. When we need a new designation, we'll just add it to that main template. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

The code of {{Designation}}'s if-then type statements is unreadable to me. It is written in "mediawiki" language, right? Where is there any tutorial that would make this understandable. You can improve it if you wish, and try to provide some documentation, but there is no way you can prohibit having simpler color templates around which allow others to program simpler, new infoboxes outside of the bureaucratic and fully protected system which is going to build up here. I very much do support trying to make a unified historic sites infobox that will attract participation (carrot-style), but it won't be able to do everything and i think we do not want to prohibit editors from developing new infoboxes for different new cases. doncram (talk) 06:32, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

The code in the "Designation" template are called "parser functions". Media-wiki provides an explanation and shows you how to set them up here. There is no way we are going to do away with something like {{NRHP color}} (although there may be a way to connect them, so if the color is changed in {{Designation}}, it'll change in {{NRHP color}} without having to manually change it). --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 17:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec) It's actually not that complicated even though it may look jumbled. Of course I'll provide some documentation (like I did with NRHP) once it's fully functional, but all you really have to do is make a new line and type in all the different ways you want the infobox to be able to call a designation and then on the last one, specify a color. Like for National Historic Landmarks, you could type "|National Historic Landmark|National historic landmark|NHL|nhl=#F309D3" (that color was made up off the top of my head. You need the "#" ("& #35;" without the space) in place of the regular number sign to keep the wiki software from trying to interpret it as a numbered list). You do the same thing for the text in the second section.

Like Dtbohrer said above, we're not going to delete the templates you're so used to using; we're simply going to centralize them into one location, making it easier. Like he said, we could connect them (possibly call the main template inside each small template) so that a change to the main template would change all the small templates as well. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:22, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Documentation

I've put the finishing touches (at least for now) on the documenation of Template:Designation. This is a major step forward into developing the infobox as now anyone can read the documentation and (hopefully) understand how to use/expand the template, which will serve as pretty much the brain of this infobox. It seems as if comments have died down about the infobox, so I'm assuming a general positive feeling towards its present state? I'll work on the documentation over the next day or so, and hopefully I'll have it all set up at {{Infobox Historic Site}} before the end of the weekend – documentation and all. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:13, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Historic plaques

I just came across List of New York State Historic Markers‎ and related pages which, unfortunately, suffer from copyright violation problems (which i am raising at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2009 May 17 and [5] ). There are Flickr groups and other websites which do include photos of historic plaques, but it is my understanding that photos of historic plaques are not allowable in wikipedia, if the plaque text is copyrighted. Perhaps we could list the plaques and give their locations, though. I wonder what kind of coverage in list-articles or otherwise that there is in wikipedia, or could be, for the historic plaque programs of various U.S. states and other entities. Any good (or bad) examples? doncram (talk) 18:41, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I know there are a couple examples of PHMC plaques that were photographed, most notably this and this. I had always assumed de minimis applied, of course if the plaque is the main subject of photo, I could see where problems arise. --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 19:14, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Blue plaques in the UK do not seem to have fallen foul of copyright issues - I'm not sure why there might be a difference?— Rod ^talk 19:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

It might be worth taking a look at List of blue plaques and its associated talk page where similar discussions have been ongoing for a wile.— Rod ^talk 20:17, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I did take a look at List of blue plaques. When the copyright issue came up there, it was suggested that having a website where plaques could be corroborated with was desirable. Talk:List_of_blue_plaques#Unpublished_list_from_English_Heritage.Inoysterbay (talk) 21:19, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The copyright issues for historic plaques are being discussed at Wikipedia talk:copyrights#Copyright status: historical marker text. There also are notability issues, not suitable for discussion there. My understanding about photos has been that if a plaque in front of a building is included in a wide photo, that is okay, but a photo of the plaque itself (or a cropped version of the wide photo) is not acceptable. This treatment is the same as for public art, which, in the U.S. at least, is copyrighted and not public domain. That blue plaques discussion did not seem to come to grips with copyright issues, in my view. doncram (talk) 03:23, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Reassessing Importance of Historic Markers Within Wikipedia

User talk:Doncram asked me to include a version of the note I included on his talk page. I'd urge you to refer to my original note on his talk page User_talk:Doncram#List_of_New_York_State_Historic_Markers and also consider what I write below.

I pose to fellow editors there is a major need to revisit how we go about incorporating material on historic markers into Wikipedia. Great strides have been made to make National Register and several local historic district listings available in Wikipedia. The same rationale for doing this, to educate the public and make these sites more widely known, also applies to historic markers.

Many state marker programs had their advent in the early 20th century with the development of easy interstate travel. The placement of markers helped to educate people as they drove from place to place, providing nice brief snippets of verfied material about different historic sites. Markers like this preceded many formal systems of listing including the National Register. Just like these early travellers plying America's interstates and highways, there is a similar need for people travelling the Internet and our Information Superhighway today. Namely, to provide a brief signpost for people to easily get to or access the information they desire.

Here are some specific reasons why developing historical marker information within Wikipedia is essential:

• 1. Markers identify sites with historic significance where no evidence from the period of significance still exists, for example a building that has been lost.
• 2. Markers identify sites with historic significance where there was never a recognizable building or landmark (i.e. site of a military camp, a battle, a river crossing, etc.).
• 3. The placement of a marker indicates the will or desire of people to emphasize certain aspects of their heritage. The reason for why markers were placed may have as much interest as the original markers themselves.
• 4. Placement of a marker inveighs a heightened sence of meaning with places associated with them. This is different from National Register and other listings that to most people are invisible.
• 5. Only a small portion of documentation can be included in markers, though the marker may serve as a valuable jumping off point for expanded documentation.
• 6. Standards for interpretation of historic sites have risen in the period since many markers were erected, requiring additional explanation to help people understand the significance of these sites.
• 7. Increased sophistication on the part of audiences also requires interpretation above and beyond what each marker text provides.
• 8. When markers are taken together with states listed at the national and local level presents a fuller and more comprehensive picture of the heritage of a given area.
• 9. Markers may contribute to or indicate themes of regional, statewide, or national significance. Much like heritage trails today, several historic markers taken together might add insight to important historic events like military campaigns.
• 10. Marker programs provide a valuable index of historic sites, some that have received other historic designations, and many others that have not. Looking at sites with markers could help to influence the process of seeking historic designation.

There is a precedent for state marker programs being posted to Wikipedia - see New Hampshire Historical Markers and List of historical highway markers in Hampshire County, West Virginia. For the later there is an archived discussion which encouraged to keep: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Hampshire County Historical Highway Markers.

To close, what I would argue is that instead of restricting further inquiry to historic markers because of a strict interpretation of notability, that a looser interpretation will open the door to exciting inquiry and expand the number of people with an interest in historic places and historic sites within Wikipedia.

What would encourage me is if we could devise a strategy for how to make all of the state historic marker programs available on Wikipedia within a fixed period of time (like the next year). Then committing to curating and developing these listing further so that eventually every marker has an article to go with it as well.

Inoysterbay (talk) 19:48, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Historic register color coding

I've been looking at the list of registers on the project page, and I notice that a lot of them still lack some kind of color-coded identifier such as exists for the NRHP entries and such. I know it's not necessarily a high priority, but it bugs me a bit; would there be any objection if I came up with some colors we could use? It's not urgent for most of them, but I think it would be helpful to have something for the French listings, for instance, given how many of those there are. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 18:46, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to it, per se, but if you're going to do colors, I think you should do abbreviations as well. I personally would wait until the new infobox is up and running, though, so we can make the templates for the infobox as we go down the list. Also, we need to come up with some structure for that list.. right now it's just a big jumble of any and every designation some random person has come up with. I'd like to see it segmented by national designations, state/province designations, municipalities, etc. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:23, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, sure - abbreviations would certainly be part of it. I'll hold off for now, though. Any idea when the infobox will be up and running? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 19:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll give it a few more days for anyone to comment if they'd like to. I'd say no later than Friday if we don't hit any major snags. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:31, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I think going ahead and setting up more abbreviations and historic site colors to add to Category:Historical Site color templates is helpful to proceed with already. (How can Dudemanfellabra proceed with programming the super infobox if they are not chosen already?) I say go ahead and set up abbreviations and templates, and bring them to discussion here and/or use that template to show the color in our table of historic registers at wp:HSITES.

In the U.S. NRHP list-table design process a year or two ago, how to choose what would be the right colors for each type seemed like it was going to be a difficult issue, until we realized we could just pick a color and code it into a template. If a good reason can be found to change the color, that can be rolled out by just changing the color in one or two color templates, plus in one or two infobox templates where the color may be hard-coded. There were only a few later changes though, as I think we all just quickly got used to the initial, arbitrary, shade choices. About color choices, it would be nice if the color has some meaningful connection to the national/state/local official colors for the area, as may already be chosen for local area navbox templates. Also there are guidelines about which color shades are better for use for all browsers, etc., perhaps some at wp:color.

Also, some colors may be re-used in different parts of the world. It would be best if immediately adjacent areas do not get the same color though. How many different colors do we need to set up? I submit that just four colors should suffice for all our needs! doncram (talk) 23:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Read my comment above about the color templates; I don't like them. I think that whole category should be deleted. I guess since we're already starting to test the infobox, by all means choose the colors/abbreviations. I'm working on an example infobox for Arles Obelisk (mentioned above) and need a color/abbreviation for Monument historiques at the moment. Anyone have a suggestion? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

From discussion above, abbreviations are no longer necessary, though you can still come up with some.. we'll just make the abbreviation templates redirects to the full name designations, similar to how {{WHS designation}} is now a redirect to {{World Heritage Site designation}}. I created {{Monument historique designation}} for use, but I didn't choose a color.. I'll leave that up to you guys haha. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I guess the comment you mean is your statement above that "if this proposal goes through, there will no longer bee a need for the {{NYCL color}}, {{NRHP color}}, {{USMS color}}, etc. templates. They will be replaced with the {{NYCL designation}}, {{NRHP designation}}, {{USMS designation}}, etc. templates. This combines different uses into one template instead of needing many different templates for each designation, which I think is very tacky." But, your view is not correct. These colors are used for other things, besides just for coloring bars in NRHP or other historic sites infoboxes. For example, they are used in color-coding the NRHP list-articles. Maybe i don't get how you intend for your new templates to function, perhaps they would allow for those purposes, too. But, those would then be complicated templates and would require longer calls to use them. I would object to replacing 300 short and simple calls to {{NRHP color}} in many individual list-articles, by 300 longer calls with 5 or 10 more characters, which would exacerbate page-size issues and perhaps would also cause page loading times to be higher too. "Tackiness" and "elegance" are very subjective. In my view, it is no problem to have extra simple-to-use, simple-to-understand templates around. Perhaps we'll have to agree to differ in our opinions about this side issue. doncram (talk) 03:52, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

There's an editor above that agrees with me. I created a central template, {{Designation}}, that will take the place of all the smaller templates (including the one I was talking about creating). This template will work in exactly the same way the "____ color" templates work, and in my opinion they will be easier to maintain. Instead of having a million very small templates, we can use just one. If anything needs to be changed then, we can just edit that one template instead of having to discuss things in millions of different places across Wikipedia. For example: To get the same effect of {{NRHP color}}, you would type {{Designation|NRHP|color}}. Yes, it may make the page size a bit longer, but there will be no difference from the reader POV.. and it will make the editor POV much less complicated. In other words, if it makes our jobs easier, and the reader doesn't know the difference, it's probably a good thing to do. Also, color is not the only thing this template can handle.. it can spit out the name of the article needed for information about it. Typing {{Designation|NRHP|text}} will give you a link to the National Register of Historic Places article. This method is just way more compact and versatile than the million-template method.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I selected a color for Monument historique based on the Flag of France. The red part of the flag has hexadecimal value #EF4135. An example of this designation can be viewed at User:Dudemanfellabra/Sandbox3, where I've transcluded an example of an infobox of Arles Obelisk. What do you think? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I like it. Nice and vivid - and you went the way I was thinking of going, too. There are a couple of other comments I'd like to make, too, but they'll have to wait - I must away to bed at the moment. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 05:35, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

doncram said the following above: "About color choices, it would be nice if the color has some meaningful connection to the national/state/local official colors for the area, as may already be chosen for local area navbox templates. Also there are guidelines about which color shades are better for use for all browsers, etc., perhaps some at wp:color." I'm in agreement with him on this; as I said last night, for instance, I was thinking of going with some sort of red for the French infoboxes. Regarding the color map; I know it won't be possible to have a different color for every jurisdiction - there are far too many. But I do think that a certain amount of variety is in order, if for no other reason than to make immediate visual identification quicker. Perhaps some of the smaller jurisdictions could be bundled together under the same color in numerous instances? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 13:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. While we don't need a million different colors, I would definitely not like limiting ourselves to only four. About the bundling together, I see that listed buildings in the UK have different colors (i.e. {{Grade I colour}}, {{Grade II colour}}, etc.). Why don't we just make a "Listed Building color" for all listed buildings, and then allow the "Type" parameter to sort out which grade they are? This would reduce the need for more colors and allow for more standardization across articles. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:48, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

We just need to be a bit careful - some listed buildings are also Scheduled Ancient Monuments, therefore do these need to have different colours?— Rod ^talk 21:57, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

That would be two different designations. There would be a color for listed buildings and a color for scheduled ancient monuments. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

It was my small joke to refer to the four color map theorem, as if we'd only need four. Many more than four colors are needed to allow us to show different colors within each site that is on multiple registers, due to the overlapping jurisdictions of the regions (which goes far beyond the abstract map coloring setting in which just 4 colors can suffice). About U.K. buildings, three colors (at least) are needed. Grade I listed buildings are rare and highly significant places (perhaps like NHLs in the U.S., and British editors are working towards creating articles for each one of these), Grade II are less signficant and more numerous (like NRHPs), Grade III are even more numerous. I created those color templates to ratify the color choices taken by editor of Listed Buildings in Runcorn, an article that mixes all three. Differentiation between the three types is important to convey and color coding helps with that. These particular colors are arbitrary though. doncram (talk) 22:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)It's true; the colours are arbitrary - I just chose three contrasting pale colours. However I hope these will now remain constant as I have started to apply them to other lists, eg. List of works of John Douglas (new churches). Incidentally (and pedantically) the three grades of listed buildings in England and Wales are, in descending order of importance, I, II* and II. There used to be a Grade III but this is now obsolete (there were too many buildings, not sufficiently notable). Keep up the good work. Peter I. Vardy (talk) 13:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I've now added all the colors we have so far specified on the project page to {{Designation}}. I do have a question though: International Historic Sites (IHS) are a designation administered by the US National Park Service.. but the properties are outside the US... does this mean this is an international designation, or would it still be considered national? Also, we need to come up with some colors fast haha.. that template is looking overwhelmingly US-leaning.. in fact, there may even need to be just a US section since all the NPS designations are in there. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:07, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

There is only one such site. See Wikipedia:NRHP colors legend. I set it up to have a separate color, but I think now that it should be dropped as a separate color and just footnoted within any lists of types. The NHS color, or no color, should be used for it. The one site is Saint Croix Island International Historic Site, shared with Canada, and its article doesn't even use an NRHP infobox, it uses a Protected areas infobox instead. doncram (talk) 18:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if you'll like this suggestion or not, but there are like 10 different colors within the National Park System at present time, and they're taking over the Designation template... What if we ended all that? What if we just had a "National Park Service" color and then used the Type parameter to say it was an IHS, NBP, NMEM, etc.? This is kind of what I was getting at with the Listed Buildings thing above, but that got shot down. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:28, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I think maybe 4 of those colors could be deleted. Let's discuss this at wt:NRHP and/or where I just now put the IHS color template up for deletion: Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 May 21#Template:IHS color doncram (talk) 19:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

How would you guys feel if I found a way to customize the font-color too? I'm becoming increasingly aware that every single country in the world uses the color red in their flag :P.. Haha I was actually working on coming up with a color for Canada, and I thought it would be nice to have a white font on a red background (or vice versa). What would you think about that? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:42, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Disregard that comment. I've figured out a way to change the color of the text without changing the code of the infobox itself.. it can be handled fully in the {{Designation}} template. Check this out: If you want to change the color of a link, you can put a span inside the link (i.e. "[[WP:HSITES|<span style="color:green">This link is green</span>]]" yields "This link is green".) I wasn't aware of this before, but a quick google search told me. This method can be used to further customize the designation bars. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Is Canada's flag red and white, not orange and white? I see that the image at Canada article looks red and white, but I thought it should be orange, or a different orange-red shade, than appears there. doncram (talk) 18:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Nope, red and white. Smart idea with changing the font, I hadn't thought of that. --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 18:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Article tagging

Have we any tagging procedure defined yet? I'd like to initiate conversation about that if not... seems like a WikiProject should get that down ;-) Killiondude (talk) 05:21, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

This has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Historic sites/Assessment. I think further work on defining (& checking) relevant categories etc & agreeing importance rankings is awaited before the bots are let loose.— Rod ^talk 07:41, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Killiondude and Rodw, what are you thinking is needed? More specifically: by tagging, what do you mean? And if tagging means adding the wp:HSITES banner with quality and importance ratings, how could a bot be involved? I am not necessarily opposed to "tagging", but I also don't understand what it accomplishes or allows to be accomplished. I have noticed some other new wikiprojects adding their banners to a lot of articles, but then it seems to me that all that is accomplished is that then their banners are on a lot of articles. What is to be gained, in simple terms? doncram (talk) 16:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes I mean getting a bot to apply the project banner to the talk page of relevant articles. My experience with other projects is that this helps to:

• Identify how many articles fall within a projects scope
• Identify examples of "good practice" (eg GA & FA standard) which can be followed by others
• Identify gaps in coverage which can then be worked on by project members
• Identify articles which need infoboxes, categoriastion & other fixes
• Help to identify high priority articles for the project which can then be targetted in collaborations or article improvement drives
• Lets others know the project exists & encourages them to join

I suspect there are thousands of articles which fall within the scope of this wiki project - but only 600 or so have sofar got the project banner.— Rod ^talk 16:49, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

{{Infobox Historic Site}} now up and running!

{{Infobox Historic Site}} is now up and running, complete with documentation and examples. I created an example infobox for the Statue of Liberty, which can be seen in the documentation. The example of a former designation needs to be improved, though. Currently it is the MS Landmark example I included here. Ideally, the example would be from outside of the United States since the Statue of Liberty is included already. As mentioned before, there is also documentation of Template:Designation ready now; it explains how to add new designations and how to use the Designation template as a stand-alone template.

Now that the infobox is in main template space, it can be used on articles! If no one objects, I'll go ahead and add the infoboxes for Arles Obelisk and the Statue of Liberty. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, yes - I like it. I like it a lot. Excellent work! --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 04:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this great work!  Sandstein  07:26, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Designation request

Designation now added
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Per Template:Designation/doc#Adding_new_designations, I'd like to propose the following: Title: Swiss Cultural Property of National Significance Colour scheme: White text on red background (matching the colours of the Swiss flag) "designationn" parameter: Swiss Cultural Property of National Significance Thanks,  Sandstein  11:00, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Sure, sounds good to me. This page says we should use pure red (#FF0000), and I'm assuming pure white, but no source has said that. While I'm fine with using the red, the image on the main article for the designation shows an image with a blue/white color. Should we use this color instead of the national colors, since apparently it is associated with the designation itself? I also think callnames like "Switzerland" and "Swiss" should be included. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:48, 26 May 2009 (UTC) FF0000 is what the Swiss federal authorities use, so it's probably good, although the exact shade is not clearly defined, see Swiss flag#Color. The colour scheme of the book cover in Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National and Regional Significance is derived from the Hague convention emblem, which is a generic cultural heritage emblem not specific to Switzerland, so probably should not be used as a colour scheme here (although we could adopt it as an emblem for project puroposes).  Sandstein  21:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Sorry, I've been in California for the past week visiting family, so I haven't had much time to get on here. I agree with your reasoning, and I'll add the Swiss designation in shortly.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:35, 3 June 2009 (UTC) Designation now added. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:52, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Designation request2

Designation now added.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Per Template:Designation/doc#Adding_new_designations, I'd like to propose the following: Title: Scheduled monument or Scheduled Ancient Monument Colour Scheme: No idea Callname - not sure quite what this means but "Scheduled monument", "Scheduled Ancient Monument", "Ancient monument" reading Scheduled monument possibly also "Areas of Archaeological Importance" but not sure about this. Possibly all variants with UK included Text selection - should probably be Scheduled monument (as the official term), but I'm not sure if this should be capitalised Designation - OK you've really lost me there I've found the only way to test new infoboxes etc is to try them out so I'm having a go at Yarn Market, Dunster in my sandbox at User:Rodw/Sandbox/YarnMarket (simply because I was there with my camera last weekend & I know it has more than one designation). I think I've got Grade I listed building sorted but need the scheduled monument one as well - looking at some sources these seem to be numbered by county rather than a national numbering system, which might be an added complication. I'm not into coding templates or infobox & found the instructions overwhelming. Help appreciated.— Rod talk 18:49, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Ah I had actually planned to add this in before the infobox was rolled out; sorry about that. For future reference, you only have to have a Title (which serves as the text selection), a color scheme, and some callnames (which are the same thing as Designation parameters). I think the color scheme should be the one listed at Union Flag, with the blue of the flag (#00247D) as the background and the red of the flag (#CF142B) text. It looks like this:  U.K. Scheduled Ancient Monument  I also think "Scheduled historic monument" and "Monument in state care" should be added to the list of callnames, since that's what Northern Ireland calls them. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Thanks seems fine - just one question - they are both national designations so which one comes first?— Rod talk 19:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Well, I ran into this dilemma when I was making an infobox for Yellowstone National Park (which hasn't been put on the article btw; it's at User:Dudemanfellabra/Sandbox3). It was IUCN category II and a World Heritage Site, both international designations. I rationalized putting IUCN first because WHS is kind of a subsection of IUCN. For the listed building/scheduled monument dilemma, it's not that easy haha. I, personally, would prefer scheduled monument to go first because there are more scheduled monuments than listed buildings. To my (limited) knowledge, a building cannot be listed without be scheduled first, right? If that's the case, then Listed Buildings are like a subsection of Scheduled Monuments. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:42, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Sorry no - buildings can be listed without being scheduled (& most LBs are not scheduled). In fact most scheduled monuments are not buildings - they tend to be earthworks, ruins etc which could no longer be used as buildings, but are important sites for their history/archeology etc.— Rod talk 19:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Yea I knew scheduled monuments were usually not buildings. Well if a building can be listed and not scheduled, they both have equal prominence in my opinion.. I guess it should be up to editor preference? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:58, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Designation added. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:17, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Designation request3

Designation now added.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Title:National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens Colour:I don't mind Callname:National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens, Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England, Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales & possibly some others. I've just been writing about Tintinhull Garden & the garden is Grade II on the register, as well as the house being a Grade I listed building. It is not possible to search/check on the English Heritage list site but many are listed at Parks and Gardens UK.— Rod talk 20:27, 8 June 2009 (UTC) For color, I think we should use #1e8c00, which is the color of links on the register's homepage. It's a nice green color that would generally be associated with parks and gardens. I think the text should be white as well. The bar would appear like this: National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. Do you like this? Also, the callnames you suggested seem to be a little long; I don't think we should include the "of special historic interest in ____" part. Maybe just "National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens", "Register of Historic Parks and Gardens", and "Historic Parks and Gardens"... and each with UK in front? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:26, 9 June 2009 (UTC) Colour is fine by me. Watch out for UK because Wales (CADW) is different to England & I don't know what the situation is in Scotland or Northern Ireland. What do you mean they're different? Is this like the listed building thing above, where they have different names (e.g. "Grades" vs. "Categories"), or are they simply overseen by different organizations? If it's the latter, the distinction won't matter since the title bar will appear exactly the same. If, however, they have different names, then there will be a similar dilemma as above – which still hasn't been sorted out. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC) I'm not sure! National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens says "In England..." & gives info about Cadw running another register (which I believe uses the same grades). Scotland appears to have "Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland" - searchable at Historic Scotland. The Northern Ireland Environment Agency lists & registers Historic Parks, Gardens and Demesnes. So multiple names/agencies & possibly different criteria.— Rod talk 08:16, 9 June 2009 (UTC) Ok, well it looks to me like "National Register of Parks and Gardens" is an English-only designation, so I would support adding it as a regional/provincial designation instead of a national one. The Cadw designation looks like it would be only for Wales, so it would also be a regional designation. The regional designations for Scotland and Northern Ireland appear to be completely independent of the others as well, so I would propose making all of these regional designations. If no one objects, I will add the English version shortly (since it's the only one that apparently is required at the moment), and if need be, I will add the others later. This was a bit easier to sort out than the listed building mess above. Would you mind checking that out and commenting above? Thanks! --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:36, 9 June 2009 (UTC) I don't want to get into the political minefield that is devolution, however many claim separate national status see, for example, the three refs backing up the first sentence on Scotland "Scotland (Gaelic: Alba) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom." & also talk pages of each country. These really are sensitive issues to some & it would be best not to "step on toes" but calling them regions.— Rod talk 21:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC) Crap. Freaking Brits.. need to get their stories straight haha. What if we changed the levels to "Global", "National/Regional", "State/Provincial", and "Local"? Doing this would allow designations that are common to the entire UK and English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish-specific designations to be listed in the second level. If anyone complained saying that England, Scotland, etc. weren't nations, we could simply tell them they're regions, so they fit there. If they complain that the UK is not a nation, we can simply tell them that it's a region, so it fits there. Sound good to you? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:31, 9 June 2009 (UTC) I'd be happy with that but I would wait for any comments from others.— Rod talk 08:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC) I'm pretty sure no one else is following this thread. I've asked for comments on several of these, and no one seems to be interested enough to reply to any of them. It looks as if a small group of two or three is going to make the decision for the entire project. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:19, 10 June 2009 (UTC) Actually, I'm following. I just only will speak up when I have an idea or there is a problem. Perhaps having "Municipal/Local" instead of just "Local"? Other than that, changing the levels seems like an elegant solution to this complex issue. --​​​​D.B.talk•contribs 02:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC) "National Parks and Gardens" has been added; I'll add the others if anyone requests them. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

"National Parks and Gardens" (as in your post above) doesn't work in the infobox but "National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens" does. I wasn't sure how to indicate Grade II so I've put it under designation number (which I don't have) on Tintinhull Garden, is that right?— Rod ^talk 12:42, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

For Grade II, I'd use the "type" parameter (designation2_type in this case). Valid callnames for this designation are "National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens", "Register of Historic Parks and Gardens", "Historic Parks and Gardens", "England Historic Park", "England Historic Garden", "English Historic Park", and "English Historic Garden". My typing above was just a blunder. Sorry about that. For other designations' valid callnames, see Template:Designation/doc. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:03, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Designation Requests 4 and 5

Designations now added.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
National Monuments of Singapore and Declared monuments of Hong Kong. Both lists have been pretty well filled out, but the articles need infoboxes; trouble is, both Singapore and Hong Kong currently use the traditional red-and-white color scheme on their flags. Might it be possible for, say, Singapore to be tagged with red letters on a white ground? I don't know what to do about Hong Kong, though. --User:AlbertHerring Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla! 16:06, 10 June 2009 (UTC) Sure, red letters on a white background would be fine for Singapore; I guess just the generic #FF0000 and #FFFFFF would be fine? (although it would look exactly like Canada's bar) For Hong Kong, Flag of Hong Kong specifies that generic red and white are to be used for the flag, and that looks exactly like Switzerland's bar. Since the two designations will never overlap, though, I don't see why they can't be the same, so white text on a red background sounds fine to me; good for you? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:18, 10 June 2009 (UTC) Sounds fine to me - let me know when it's implemented and I'll start infoboxing away. Question: have you considered changing the font to differentiate between countries that have the same color bars? For instance: text for Canada would be in block letters, while text for Singapore would be in italics. Just a thought. --User:AlbertHerring Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla! 18:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC) Well, I hadn't really thought about it, but I don't think it would be a good idea. Opening up font styles will create pretty much an epidemic, with each designation having its own font style and people requesting like Wingdings and computer code or something. I would rather just stick with the simple system of text color and background color. I'll implement these designations shortly. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:55, 11 June 2009 (UTC) OK - I'll start putting 'em to some use soon. Tomorrow, most likely. --User:AlbertHerring Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla! 02:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC) "National Monuments of Singapore" and "Declared Monuments of Hong Kong" have been added. Singapore is a national designation, and Hong Kong is a provincial designation. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:29, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Listed buildings

Another little problem - can we have a "rebuilt" option in the Infobox? It appears The Yarn Market was rebuilt in 1647 after damage in the English Civil War having been originally built around 1590.— Rod ^talk 20:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC) I note the coords show up in the infobox - but not at the top of the page - does this mean it will show up in Google maps etc?— Rod ^talk 21:24, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Possible solution for this one - another editor has added 2 lines to the infobox on Manor Farmhouse Gatehouse, Whatley which makes the coords show in the box & at the top of the page. ie

• | coord_parameters = type:landmark_region:GB
• | coord_display = inline,title

Should these be added to the infobox?— Rod ^talk 19:13, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Also.... Infobox Historic Building had a field for client (as well as architect) to record who commissioned a building - can we have one of those in this infobox?— Rod ^talk 21:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

If I can add myself here, I think also a "restored date" field would be useful for listed buildings, as an enormous number of relevant listed buildings are churches heavily restored through by no mean simply conservative interventions, with also a field for the architect that restored the building.--Aldux (talk) 23:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, in addition to what I just said, Scotland has a very slightly different system: there are Grades A, B, C instead of I, II*, II, but for the rest and the legislation it's exactly the same. Also the colours should be identical to the English ones, I believe.--Aldux (talk) 23:12, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Outdent - Next "silly" thought can we make the number supplied in the listed building template automagically link to Images of England in the same way that Template:IoE does? I've no idea of the code which make this work but somehow the number is added into the URL after http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/Default.aspx?id= & becomes a clickable link to enable users to verify the listing & get further info (accepting that IoE is out of date and in a few cases inaccurate).— Rod ^talk 10:23, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been in California for the past week visiting family, so I haven't had much time to get on here. I'll add the "rebuilt," "restored," and "restored_by" parameters in a minute. About the coordinates, the top line of that code Rod gave does nothing with coordinates; "| coord_display = inline, title" makes the coordinates display at the top of the article too. Default display is just inside the infobox, but this can be changed I guess.. would we rather default it to both positions or leave it as default inline? Is "client" the person or organization that designated the site? To make it more inclusive, I could add a "designated_by" parameter, which I believe would be more self-explanatory than "client."

I think client is the person who commissioned the building, as opposed to the architect.— Rod ^talk 17:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Is commissioning the same thing as designating? (I'm not a construction buff if you can't tell haha) --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:06, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

It's certainly called designated as... in the UK.— Rod ^talk 18:32, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I can add the Scotland Grade A, B, and C designations in a while.. it looks as if they'll just have different callnames to me, so they'll be easy to add. About linking the number, that can't be done with the current coding. World Heritage Sites does something like this with their infobox too, but since this is such a broad infobox, it is difficult - if not impossible - to give special attention to just one or two designations. I've been creating my own link for World Heritage Sites. Look at the WHS# on Statue of Liberty to see what I'm talking about. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:46, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Upon further investigation of the Listed building article, there are more than just Grades A, B, and C in Scotland. It seems to me that being a "listed building" is common to all provinces (is that what they call them) in the UK, but each province has its own designation scheme. Grades I, II*, and II are used by England and Wales; A, B, and C are used by Scotland; and A, B+, B1, and B2 are used by Northern Ireland. Should we then downgrade the designations to state/provincial designations with their own individual colors instead of national ones? Being Grade I is not national, but specific only to England and Wales; therefore, it should be a provincial designation. Thoughts? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

You are correct that they are not the same, even if they are subject to the same UK legislation on the matter (Grade I is equal to Category A), but each is under a different national organization: Historic Scotland, English Heritage and Cadw. I would keep the same colour for each level (Category A should have the same colour of Grade I to avoid confusion; also, what is the "national colour" for Grade II* or Category B?) Also a note: I previously said "Grade A"; that was a slip of mine: it's "Category" in Scotland, not "Grade".--Aldux (talk) 23:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

So if they're not the same, are they not provincial designations? There are 4 categories of Northern Ireland's sites, so we'll need at least one extra color if we're going to give each designation its own color/bar. We can either do that, or we can make "Listed Building" a national designation and use the "Type" parameter to describe if the site is Grade I, Category B, B1, B+, etc.. Personally, I prefer the latter, even though we'll have to do away with the Grade I, II*, and II colors. What do you guys think? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:50, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

These are just my 2 cents, but I would prefer to give the major possible visibility to the grade level, as in all Great Britain the grade/category level means the same level of official importance. But then, mine is just one opinion.--Aldux (talk) 00:18, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

National designation Invalid designation Type Grade II Designated 11 June 2009 Reference no. 123456

Regional designation Listed Building – Grade II Designated 11 June 2009 Reference no. 123456

Well I was kind of hoping for more input haha.. but apparently no one cares.. it seems one person (me) is for a single national designation with one color, using the "type" parameter to distinguish grades and categories, and one person (you) is for several regional designations. Will anyone else comment for like a tie breaker? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:17, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to see a mock-up of both next to each other? Both proposals have their merits and I can't decide. Perhaps a visual would help (maybe one would then look better than the other). --​​​​D.B.^{talk•contribs} 02:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) To the right is an example of a Grade I listed building with the national designation and then again with the regional designation. The color of the national designation bar is currently {{Grade I color}}, but it can be changed if desired. Using this national designation will require only one color (instead of a different color for Grade II, Grade II*, Category A, etc.) and will take up much less space in the {{Designation}} template. Using the regional designations, though, the Grades/Categories will be given higher prominence and will be distinguishable based on the color of the bar. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:27, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not following every twist here, but it sounds to me like an extremely helpful use of the coloring scheme to unify across the different category names in England+Wales vs. Scotland vs. Ireland. Namely, to use one same color for the top grade in each, even though the top grade is named differently in each, and likewise to use the same color for the 2nd grade in each, etc. The input to the historic sites infobox should allow the different names to be entered, e.g. Scotland type A, but generate the same color for that as for England+Wales Category I. So, visually for readers, it is gradually conveyed that they mean the same. This is a perfect, great use of color choices. Note, after some recent changes in the U.S. NRHP color legend system, now there are several different U.S. NRHP types of the same level but different wording that get the same color, too. doncram (talk) 07:12, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Northern Ireland has 4 designations instead of just three. That's the problem. We'd have to make a new color for the 4th. Not to mention that the 3 designations for England/Wales, 3 designations for Scotland, and 4 designations for Northern Ireland will result in 10 different designation bars on Template:Designation/doc devoted only to listed buildings. If not for that 4th designation, we could combine Grade I, Category A, and Grade A into the first row of the documentation, Grade II*, B, and B+ into the second row, and II, B, and B1 into the third row and just list all the callnames (England/Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) in each row (so the first row would have all the callnames for Grade I, Category A, and Grade A displayed, even though it would only show the text for Grade I). The text displayed in the infobox bar would change depending on which callname was used, but we wouldn't have to list out all the different texts in the documentation. We could still do that now, but the 4th designation would seem out of place because it's only for Northern Ireland and not present in any of the other nations. We could just leave that 4th one out of the documentation, but that wouldn't be good. What if we made B1 and B2 use the same color and just stuck B2 in with the 3rd row? It's not exactly "correct," but it makes for an easy fix haha :D--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:59, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

A fourth color is needed, someone just needs to pick one. The application of these colors will be in pages like Listed buildings in Runcorn, which is a geo historic sites list-article covering all 3 types of listed buildings in one geographic area in England. In some Irish geo list-articles it will be helpful to be able to use all four colors. I don't understand what you are talking about in terms of there being any size limit or anything within the infobox code or within the documentation. The infobox does need to allow for 10 or 13 different types of input, but only one of the input choices will be selected for the infobox of any one listed building. You simply have to have 10 or 13 rows in whatever documentation you are referring to (which is where?) ; there is no possibility or advantage in trying to economize on rows in a documentation somewhere. Also, where is a simple table of these 10 or 13 types and the colors they yield? Can we please build a legend at, say, Wikipedia:WikiProject Historic sites/Listed buildings colors legend to describe this? I'll start something there now, I guess. doncram (talk) 19:15, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary edit point

(outdent) Here is a draft legend of the Listed building colours, currently using 4 colors for 12 different grade/country options. This is transcluded, so what displays here will change as the draft is revised:
(begin transclusion)
This is a Listed buildings colors legend, providing index to colors used in Wikipedia lists and articles on Listed Buildings historic sites in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

Abbreviation and color	what it means	count estimate	list of sites
Grade I	Grade I listed building (U.K.: England & Wales)	>6,000	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Grade II*	Grade II* listed building (U.K.: England & Wales)	18,000	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Grade II	Grade II listed building (U.K.: England & Wales)	418,000	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Grade A Northern Ireland	Grade A listed building (U.K.: Northern Ireland)	?	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Grade B+ Northern Ireland	Grade II* listed building (U.K.: Northern Ireland)	?	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Grade B1 Northern Ireland	Grade II listed building (U.K.: Northern Ireland)	?	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Grade B Northern Ireland	Grade B listed building (U.K.: Northern Ireland)	?	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Category A Scotland	Category A listed building (U.K.: Scotland)	?	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Category B Scotland	Category B listed building (U.K.: Scotland)	?	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Category C Scotland	Category C listed building (U.K.: Scotland)	?	Listed buildings in the United Kingdom
Grade I HK	Grade I listed building (Hong Kong)	?	List of Grade I historic buildings in Hong Kong
Grade II HK	Grade II listed building (Hong Kong)	?	List of Grade II historic buildings in Hong Kong
Grade III HK	Grade III listed building (Hong Kong)	?	List of Grade III historic buildings in Hong Kong

(end transclusion)

I arbitrarily picked a color, Dark Khaki, from List of colors, to provide a fourth colour. Note it currently uses one colour, pink, for Grade I listed buildings in England/Wales, for Grade A listed buildings in Northern Ireland, for Grade A in Scotland, and for Grade I in Hong Kong. Is that right, are these levels equivalent in these four countries? Note, behind the scenes the legend is calling just four simple color templates. Redirects would need to be set up from the various labels here so that these colours can be called using the suggested labels displayed here. doncram (talk) 19:55, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Um.. did you even read my message above? The documentation was linked. It's at Template:Designation/doc. And my main point in the whole message was that 10 (now 13) rows would be too much to devote to listed buildings... One designation shouldn't get 13 rows in my opinion. What I was saying is that all the designations that use Grade I Color should be combined into one row, all the ones that use Grade II* color should be combined into a second row, and all the ones that use Grade II color should be combined into a third. The fourth color would seem out of place, though, since it's only used in Northern Ireland. I proposed using the same color for B2 (which you mistakenly labelled B) as is used for B1, Grade II, and Category C. Then we wouldn't need a 4th color, and we'd only take up 3 rows of the documentation. I said all this above; did you just not read it? Oh and btw, I love how you asked a question above about creating an entirely new page that will be used only once... and then proceeded to create it in the next sentence regardless of what anyone else said. There are tables there showing not only the listed buildings (currently only Grade I, Grade II*, and Grade II), but all designations supported by this template.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:42, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I think i didnt see your response when u wrote it. I don't get what the issues are, and completely miss ur point about some hypocrisy on my part about saving bandwidth for this discussion somehow. Conceptually, can't you "combine" all the ones that get Grade I colour, in the code. It just should be clear for users, for them to designate say that this is Hong Kong Grade II, which they know for sure, and then for the correct color to appear. It is unnecessary to make the HK editor identify on some vague, perhaps changing scale, whether HK Grade II is currently deemed to be the same as England Grade II* or whatever. You have to allow users to enter what they know is accurate. Perhaps to be rendered into a different color, later, due to a later consensus that HK Grade II is really equivalent to some different England grade. Frankly, though, the Brits should be speaking up to clarify! doncram (talk) 14:01, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Also i am sorry not to have checked Template:Designation/doc until now. It looks good, very helpful. It does lack, however, different input options for the various Listed Buildings types. For an HK editor, it seems to imply the options are to describe ur listed building as something like only "Grade I United Kingdom" or "Grade II^ United Kingdom" or "Grade II United Kingdom". Why not allow HK editor to designate it in terms of the HK-specific terms, with Hong Kong as part of the wording? It is just software, yes? doncram (talk) 14:13, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok so I think I've noticed something. It appears that England/Wales, which use Grade I, II*, and II, are listed based on "special", "significant", and "outstanding" interest.. meaning it's a quality based scale. For Scotland and Northern Ireland, though, the various Grades/Categories are assigned based on a scope of sorts.. the highest designation (Category A/Grade A) is of national or international significance, the second designation is of regional significance, and the third (and 4th) are of local significance. This makes me think that the designations are not equal because a site in England/Wales appears that it can have only local importance, but if it's really really interesting ("outstanding interest"), it can be Grade I, whereas if the site was in Northern Ireland or Scotland, it would only be Category C(s) or Grade B1. Since they don't appear to be equal, should they be given the same color? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

"throws spanner into works" In the UK, there was originally Grade I, Grade II and Grade III (now Grade I, Grade II* and Grade II). The grade III category needs to be catered for in case someone writes an article on a Grade III listed building which has been demolished. Also, with the templates for listed buildings, how are they compatible with {{Infobox Windmill}} which is used in many windmill articles. A majority of windmills in the UK are listed buildings. Mjroots (talk) 11:48, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Franks Hall is a Grade I listed building in Kent. It is tagged as an orphan. Would it be worth creating a template for Grade I listed buildings in Kent and tagging all article in Category:Grade I listed buildings in Kent with the template, thus creating more linked articles and removing the need for the orphan tag. By extension this could apply to other grades of buildings and counties. Mjroots (talk) 12:10, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

It's already included in List of Grade I listed buildings in Kent but my understanding is that lists & templates are excluded from "orphan" consideration. Seeing as it is already linked from the local village (ie Horton Kirby) & River Darent the orphan tag could probably be removed.— Rod ^talk 13:44, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

This is a response to several people at once:

Doncram: For one thing, the Grades in Hong Kong have nothing to do with the Grades/Categories in the UK. In Hong Kong, they're not even called listed buildings. Therefore, I think there should be different colors. The reason the documentation lacks different input options is because I haven't added them yet. I was going to wait until this (now months-old) discussion was concluded and we knew exactly what we were going to do.

Mjroots: Is the old Grade III now equivalent to the current Grade II? If that's so, then the old Grade II is now equivalent to the current Grade II* and not the current Grade II, and that's going to make this a lot more complicated....... Fuck. All these different Grades for all these different localities are too freaking unorganized. In light of this, I still support adding one UK Listed Building Color and using the "Type" parameter to specify which Grade, Category, or whatever the hell else kind of crap is out there.

It don't make it that much more complicated. Current buildings use the current listing grade. It just needs to be borne in mind that an article may need to use Grade III, and the historic system of grading. Mjroots (talk) 20:40, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

About Infobox Windmill, there's not really anywhere the template could be transcluded, so the infobox would have to be modified. Perhaps adding a "|listed=" parameter to the code and allowing an editor to input Grade I, II*, II, III, A, B, C, pig, elephant, walrus, Mars, and whatever other kind of designation is present in the UK would suffice?

All windmill listed building status is stated in the lead, and by a category. I'd say this was sufficient. What I didn't want to happen was the replacement of the infobox windmill with the listed building infobox. The former was designed specifically for use with windmill articles. Mjroots (talk) 20:42, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Everyone: With so many different types of listed buildings, it is hard to say which level corresponds to which other level in some different area or how they are distinguished or whatever else. There is too much crap trying to be thrown at these listed buildings, which apparently is a much more broad designation than anyone wants to admit. Being a listed building is common to all of the UK, and that is very easy to implement into the infobox. It is only when we try to go into much local detail that all these former designations and equalities get mixed up and confusing. Personally, I don't believe that these different grades/categories are equivalent in any way. Each individual nation (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) has its own way of specifying the importance of buildings, which may or may not line up with how the next nation over does it. Since so much devolution has gone on in the UK and the designations no longer have really much more in common other than being a "Listed Building", I still support adding one color/title for listed buildings and using the "Type" parameter to distinguish grades. It is the easiest method and most broadly applicable solution to all these troubles. If a building used to be Grade III, but has now been demolished, |type=Grade III. If a building is currently a Category A building, |type=Category A. etc etc etc..

Yes, the infobox will have only one color, but no other list articles or whatever are going to have to be changed. Those other templates can use whatever coloring scheme they want, but for the purposes of this infobox, I think using the one Listed Building color in conjunction with the "type" parameter will solve all these problems. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:09, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:09, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Conflict & criticism re use of this infobox

I used this infobox on Farleigh Hungerford Castle this has now been challenged/removed (twice) and replaced with infobox military structure. It is currently being debated on the talk page. Some useful discussion is emerging particularly suggesting that this infobox should have fields for client, construction materials, and current ownership. Could these be included in this infobox?— Rod ^talk 16:33, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I addressed "client" above; I'm thinking about adding a "designated_by" parameter that would serve as the client. I can add a "materials" and an "owner" parameter too. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

In this case, client refers to who the castle was built for, not who designated the site. Nev1 (talk) 18:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah I see.. but since "client" can have more than one meaning in the same infobox, how about we change the parameter to "built_for" or something? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Good call. It might be worth looking at Infobox Historic building for extra fields. Nev1 (talk) 18:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Fine by me.— Rod ^talk 18:32, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I've just added "rebuilt," "restored," "restored_by," and "built_for" parameters to the infobox and will update the documentation accordingly. I elected not to add a "client" parameter since client is the same as built for. I think someone was in error above when they said client was meant to be the commissioner; I can only find evidence that it means the person for whom the building was built. I didn't see any more parameters in Infobox Historic Building that I found appropriate for this infobox. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:41, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Historical Marker Database

Are historic sites with markers listed by hmdb.org covered by this wikiproject? For example, I just created Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad which has a marker near the old train depot, placed by E Clampus Vitus. If 'yes', I've got a follow-on question about which infobox should be added to the article. Thanks, --Rosiestep (talk) 05:01, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not clear to me how we want to cover historic markers. There are copyright issues about markers which hmdb.org may be more free to ignore, but may cause problems for wikipedia, which has different standards and much more at stake. To cover a series of historic plaques may require getting copyright permission from the plaque placing organization, e.g. a U.S. state or a local historical society that has put out a series of markers. If the copyright permission is obtained, then I would think covering the plaque series is okay and good to do, at least in a big list-article (I am not sure whether many individual plaques would be notable enough for separate articles, though). See ongoing discussions above about these issues, including link to a copyright discussion area. It's conceivable we could find or obtain a legal ruling which removes all copyright issue doubt though.

So, say the answer is yes, then is your follow-on question what infobox to use, for an article about an individually notable plaque? I myself don't know what infobox could be used. Perhaps the new infobox about historic sites, under discussion in other sections above, could be adjusted to accomodate them. doncram (talk) 05:33, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

National Historic Ships

Another register for us to consider, perhaps? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 19:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

You may want to drop a line in at WT:SHIPS re this one. Mjroots (talk) 11:50, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Progress stats

For nearly 2 years now I've been updating monthly stats for Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset see Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset/progress would the same sort of table be useful for this wikiproject? I know we only have 739 articles tagged currently but if we ever get the bot to start tagging this could rise dramatically & it is useful to see a record of a how a project is progressing.— Rod ^talk 12:27, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think it's a great idea. And I can't wait for the bot to start marching: till the historic sites are reached manually we will only reach a small fragment of them.--Aldux (talk) 14:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

OK see Wikipedia:WikiProject Historic sites/progress - I try to update on the 1st of each month but obviously if others want to do this (? more frequently) then that is great. & I can't wait for the bot tagging either - I'm trying to add this wikiproject banner as I go, but its a long slow process.— Rod ^talk 14:49, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thumbs up for the great work! I can only speak personally, but I think that once a month is certainly enough. Thanks again.--Aldux (talk) 14:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Project cleanup listing

A cleanup listing has just been generated for this project. It shows that (as of June 4th) of the 852 articles tagged to this project, 114, or 13.4%, are flagged for cleanup. It includes those needing citations, those with dead links, those missing geo data etc. Any help with tackling them appreciated.— Rod ^talk 17:55, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks useful. I've done the Sussex-related cleanups. Do you know how often the list will be updated? (I think it's an automatic process, if I'm reading it correctly.) Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 18:53, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

It's an automated process, which works on all articles tagged for a project, each time there is a successful database dump - which seems to vary from a few weeks to several months. What we do in the Somerset WikiProject cleanup listing is mark the ones we've done (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset/Cleanup listing) so that other people don't go & try the same ones. Any changes (eg marking them as done) are overwritten the next time the bot runs.— Rod ^talk 19:54, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, cool. I'll strike out those I've done. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 20:04, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposed Mills task force

I tried a while back to get a WikiProject Mills up and running but did not gain enough support. User:Doncram has suggested that a Mills task force as part of this Wikiproject would be a good idea. One concern I have is that this WP exists to expand Wikipedia's coverage of historic sites that are officially designated. Not all mills in the UK are listed, although all Dutch windmills are designated as historic monuments by law. I'm not sure about other countries in Europe.

If a task force was set up, I'd want it to be able to cover windmills, watermills, horse mills, animal engines, and millwrights. There may be scope to cover power driven mills too.

If such a task force is formed, I'd like it to have its own importance rating within the Wikiproject, in a similar way to WP:UKRAIL has within WP:TWP. Mjroots (talk) 08:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Eh well.. I mean I could see a WikiProject Historic Mills being a task force of this project, but if the mills aren't historic, I don't really see how they can fit into this project's scope. I would suggest trying to create a separate wikiproject – not a task force. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:31, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I've already tried that. Hopefully a task force, if formed, will eventually gain enough momentum to turn into a Wikiproject.

It all depends on how historic is defined. What about mills that are no longer standing, such as Chislet Windmill? OK, probably not the best example as it was a listed building. Try St Leonard's Mill, Winchelsea, which was blown down in 1987. There are many other mills which could have articles written about them which are no longer standing. These are historic in the sense that they existed in the past. Mjroots (talk) 08:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey, let's consider it. First maybe we should look a bit at what User:mjroots has been doing, which includes:

• List of windmills in Belgium,
• List of windmills in France,
• List of windmills in Germany,
• List of windmills in the Netherlands
• List of windmills in Scotland

and in England:

• List of windmills in East Sussex
• List of windmills in West Sussex

and many others...

and well, all the entries in Category:Lists of windmills

It also includes disambiguation pages Black Mill, White Mill, Upper Mill, Lower Mill, Great Mill, Little Mill, New Mill, Old Mill, North Mill, East Mill, South Mill, West Mill, Town Mill, Union Mill. (The format of the disambiguation pages is under discussion elsewhere; I think they are not quite wp:MOSDAB-compliant currently, and would like to help fix them up as part of HSITES.)

A great portion of the mills covered are historic places comparable to NRHPs in the U.S. and other kinds of Listed Buildings in the U.K. I think the issue areas would be about Mjroots interest in covering former, demolished mills that are not current historic sites which could be visited, and perhaps in covering newer, modern mills. I note that WikiProject NRHP covers demolished places which once were NRHP-listed, although it does not cover demolished historic sites that were never NRHP-listed. Mjroots, could you clarify about your interest in covering these? For example, do you want to cover every modern windpump which in the United States are called windmills? And do you want to cover all of the new wind power generators, which in the U.S. might also be called windmills (i'm not sure about that usage or not)?

Also, perhaps the use of the Historic sites infobox could be limited to actual currently registered historic site windmills, while list-articles could cover a mix of types of mills (demolished, current and registered, modern). doncram (talk) 09:09, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

To respond to Mjroots questions, yes, a Task Force here would have its own table of articles by quality rating and by importance rating, like that WP:UKRAIL example or like any of the task forces within wp:MILHIST. I'm not sure whether wp:CALHSITES, the one Task Force we have already, actually has a working table or not, but it is intended and would be provided.

About Chislet Windmill, you say that was a listed building, so it falls within historic sites definition by my view, anyhow. I am believing that once a property is listed on a register, it is within our purview as a historic site that was enjoyed as such for some time, even if it is later demolished.

About St Leonard's Mill, Winchelsea, that appears to have been a National Trust property, which sound like it was within some register or another, or maybe all National Trust properties are historic, so there is not a problem.

I am not familiar enough with windmills, watermills, horse mills, animal engines, and millwrights to know if there are any non-historic examples. Are there modern horse mills, at all? By analogy to covered bridges in the United States, there are historic ones and there are some non-historic modern ones. As part of wp:HSITES, I would want to cover the historic covered bridges but not focus on modern ones, though I wouldn't mind if modern ones were mentioned in the same list-articles. doncram (talk) 09:28, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I detect a degree of myopia when it come economic history. I have been working in the field of Cotton mills and the cotton industry and the nearest project is Textile Arts. It gets pretty lonely outside a project. I can't see that a generic historic site infobox is appropriate for a mill- but I can see the value of a project group assisting in the design of a windmill specific info box. Not all windmills would be included in a project group dedicated to listed buildings, but that needn't limit the task group. I can see that a windpump with notable design features could be considered by the task force- but not the group. If one were brave enough, there could be a second task group that considers textile mills, fulling mill, felting mill, corn mills- mills driven by water mills driven by steam, mills with electric motors, mills with individual electically driven machines, room and power mills but we won't discuss this here.:ClemRutter (talk) 09:37, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

hey, i represent that remark...

Clem, we already have {{Infobox Windmill}}. 10:18, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

A windpump

(od) In reply to Doncram, if by a windpump you mean such as that illustrated, they would be covered, but would be a very low priority. I'd forgotten about wind turbines, which leads us to TIV Resolution which would be an article to consider. I agree with Clem's sentiment that a task force could cover articles outside the scope of the main WP. A Mills task-force could also be considered as part of the Energy, Architecture and Technology Wikiprojects too. Thus some articles would fall under some, but not all parents. Mjroots (talk) 10:08, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Raised at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Mills. Should I copy this discussion there? Mjroots (talk) 10:47, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey, let's keep discussing a Task Force here! I think this should work, here, and be better for you and the HSITES wikiproject both. :) doncram (talk) 10:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, task force here, WP at the proposals page. So, what about my suggestion about being a child of a number of WPs instead of just one? Mjroots (talk) 11:09, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

The term 'mills' in general use covers a lot of structures from the industrial revolution: cotton mills, sugar mills, mill chimneys (see LS Lowry) etc. all refering to the use of powered machinery, which would include steam. A question of where to draw the line? ProfDEH (talk) 11:41, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Many of the cotton mills started off powered by waterwheels (see Quarry Bank Mill). Although not my area of expertise they would come under the task-force. Sugar mills (sugar refineries?), sawmills etc would generally not be covered unless wind or water powered (see Morgan Lewis Windmill). Steel mills and other industrial processes that use the word "mill" are outside the scope proposed. Mjroots (talk) 11:53, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Back to the issue of power. It isn't clear cut. The early atmospheric engines were used to pump water into the mills header reservoir, so the water could drive the waterwheel. Mill such as the Ancoats mills of AGMurray were a hotch potch of buildings some using steam, and others water. It is not clear that steam replaced water, sometimes it was the other way round. Some late mills used water turbines to generate electricity to operate individual frames and looms. All mills needed copious water for the condensor. Which mills were historic? Its hard to say when all of them supported hundreds of families through many generations. Once textile mills are accepted into the task force I don't see the need to exclude any mill just because it was never driven by liquid water. --ClemRutter (talk) 17:59, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

So the scope is limited to natural power - wind, water, animals? Makes some sense but there will be some areas of uncertainty.ProfDEH (talk) 22:09, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

No, the scope won't be limited entirely to natural power. It will mainly concentrate on that, but steam, electricity and internal combustion powered mills may be covered, depending on process. The large flour mills constructed at ports during the late 19th century are worthy of inclusion, and relatively poorly covered. The full scope of coverage can be discussed between members once a task-force has been formed. Mjroots (talk) 07:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

From the cotton perspective, the last cotton mill was built in the UK in 1926 so that gives a clear cut off date. From the 1760's to 1926 the mills were getting progressively larger, and thus more notable on the economics of an area. Population size and mill size in a town were roughly correlated. When examining a mediaeval community- big house, church and mill and a population of one hundred would form a viable economic unit. In the 1880, big house, chapels, tied housing, the mill and a population of 2000 would be unit. (Figures approximate- and always quaint exceptions). So we have a period of about 160 years that would be the group focus.--ClemRutter (talk) 08:43, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Decision time?

I think that we should form the task-force. I realise that we are one member short of the suggested minimum but am hopeful that more will join once we get going. I've been thinking about what we should be covering and what we shouldn't be covering and come up with this: what is now in following subsection "Goals for Mills". (comment by Mjroots, editing to insert discussion here by doncram)

Mjroots, after considering it further, and seeing your ambitious goals listed out below, I think it would be best for Mills to be a separate Wikiproject, not a Task Force here. I had thought we could talk it out, and that it would turn out that your core interest would be in register-type historic mills. I asked my question above about whether you wanted to cover modern windpumps, meaning that as a softball question that you would give a clear no answer on. But I see you really are interested in modern replicas and modern functional mills and old mills that no longer exist and predated any historic register, so it seems your core area is much larger. If the core area was close to being the historic register type ones, then I would have asked if the non-register ones and the related topics, like the millers and other people and the technologies and so on, could be covered in list-articles also covering historic register mills that would belong to the project, but that the individual articles about millers not be included in the project. That would have been like how there are a few dozen articles about U.S. architects who designed NRHP-listed places, started by myself and other NRHP editors, but which are not included in the NRHP wikiproject, which has a clear focus on NRHP-listed properties and districts. However, I see that you really are interested in large numbers of articles on the millers, etc., which are outside the historic sites focus of this wikiproject. So I wouldn't want to ask you to leave those out of your project. Also, besides my own signup, the only signups appear to be from persons who are really specialists in mills and don't have particular interest in historic sites. I wouldn't want to set up future conflict about policing which mills-related articles could get the Task Force banner and which ones could not, with people who have no reason to give a hang about the wishes of the Historic sites project per se, who just want to write about mills. It just now seems it should be a separate WikiProject.

I think it is obvious from your persistence and clarity with the Mills project idea, and some dedicated supporters, that it is clear this is a good WikiProject on its own. From the beginning it would have more substantial content, in all those list-articles, than many/most other wikiprojects started have ever accomplished. I suggest just starting it now, with no need for a new proposal and signup process at the WikiProject Council. And I hope this discussion here, and our interactions elsewhere about disambiguation pages and otherwise, will have been helpful in some way, and hopefully not a waste of time. doncram (talk) 08:04, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Doncram, thanks for your comments. It certainly has been worthwhile having these discussions, and those re disambiguation. As I originally said, it does really depend on how "historic" is defined. It would seem that WP:HS defines historic as meaning being on an official list or by some form of official recognition. Historic can also mean "having existed in the past", which applies to a majority of mills. I think a separate WP would probably be the right way to go too. I note from the guidelines that anyone can start a WP so it's probably a case of being bold and doing it. It will probably have to wait until tomorrow, as I'm away from my own computer at the moment and that is one I'm a lot happier using. Mjroots (talk) 11:39, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Goals for Mills

(for discussion)

suggested identifying image

Scope:- The task force will cover articles on windmills , watermills, animal powered engines, millwrights and other associated subjects. Parent wikiprojects - Historic Sites, Technology, Architecture, Energy

The following are within the scope of the project:-

• Windmills, watermills, animal powered engines. Basically if it was powered by wind, water or animal.

The following may be within the scope of the project:

• Steam and internal combustion powered mills. E.g. Cotton mills in Northern England, in the UK, Europe, United States.
• Small steam mills that powered millstones (late C18th - early C20th). Large roller mills.

• Architectural practices specialising in textile mills
• Cotton mill equipment manufacturers
• Millers - notable millers that worked mills covered by the project may also be included.

• Millwrights - traditional millwrights working on windmills, watermills, etc.

The following are outside the scope of the project:-

• Steel mills, Sawmills, modern large Paper mills.
• Modern factory millwrights are outside the scope of the project.

To do list:-

Top priority

1. Tag all mill related articles with at least one of the four parent wikiprojects as appropriate.
2. Grade all articles for class and importance.
3. Ensure all windmill articles have an infobox.
4. Agree infobox for textile mill buildings
5. Ensure all textile mill articles have an infobox

In the shorter term

1. Complete the various lists of windmills for each county in England.  Done except for Westmorland (no known windmills).
2. Create the various lists of textile mills for each borough in Greater Manchester
3. Create the various lists of textile mills for each county in England
4. Create list of windmills in Wales (separate list for Anglesey). Done
5. Create list of windmills in Ireland (covering all 32 counties).

Medium term

1. Create articles on all surviving windmills in UK.
2. Create lists of windmills for USA, Denmark, Sweden, Poland.
3. Create lists of textile mills for USA, Belgium, Germany, France.
4. Expand List of windmills further
5. Expand UK river articles to cover mills, add diagrams to such articles.
6. Expand UK canal articles to cover mills, add diagrams to such articles.

Long term

1. Create lists of windmills for Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada.
2. Expand all non-uk lists to include lost mills.
3. Create articles for all surviving windmills worldwide.
4. Expand coverage of individual millwrights and millwrighting firms, starting with those currently practicing, then historic millwrights.
5. Expand non-UK river articles to cover mills, add diagrams to such articles

Class ratings

FA/FL, A, GA, B, C, Start, Stub, List, Disambig, NA, Project, image

Importance ratings

• Top - Windmill,Watermill, Cotton mill
• High - Lists of windmills by country, some windmill and watermill articles, a very few millwrights and millers, horse mill, animal engine, a few extant cotton mill articles, notable cotton mills (Grade 2 and above listed) Wind turbine
• Mid - Lists of windmills by county (or equivalent sub-division), Lists of textile mills by county (or equivalent sub-division), the majority of windmill and watermill and cotton mill articles, some millwrights and millers
• Low - The majority of millwrights and millers, other related articles, images

Article structure

Windmill articles to have the following structure:-

• History
• Description
• Millers (if applicable)
• Public access (if applicable)
• Culture & media (if applicable)
• References
• External links

Discussion

suggested identifying image

• Logo; Don't know whether it's intended to incorporate the writing and the "skid marks" in the logo. If it isn't I've got a cleaned-up version that could be uploaded.

No objection to a cleaned up logo, but it must have a new title and not override the existing file, which is an extract from an historic map. Mjroots (talk) 11:31, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

New image is much better. I chose it for a number of reasons. It looks good at a small size (100px). It represents an early type of windmill and it doesn't represent any particular country over any other. Mjroots (talk) 16:17, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

• Article structure; very much in favour of having a consistent structure for windmill articles- the proposed structure seems fine to me. Ning-ning (talk) 09:49, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

• Proposed scope etc above is open to discussion. Clem please add in Cotton mill priorities as appropriate. I'll leave you to decide on these as you know more about the subject than I do. Mjroots (talk) 11:31, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
• Will do- just give some thinking time. --ClemRutter (talk) 16:34, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

• There's a discussion at WP:YORKS that these windmills should probably be organised by modern administrative counties per WP:PLACE rather than historic counties. There are arguments for both sides, but policy suggests we use modern admin units and it would mirror lists of castles, listed buildings, hill forts, churches, and monastic houses. Nev1 (talk) 18:04, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I've replied there, but policy does state that historic names may be used in certain circumstances. Mjroots (talk) 20:24, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

• If I can add a note, there is a problem of conflicting assessment criteria between the taskforce and the general project; for example, no mills should by the estabilished criteria obtain "high" as an assessment, and only those that in the UK are Grade I or Category A should be "mid".To put it: like grade II houses are assessed "low", so should grade II and grade *II mills be; this at least is my view.--Aldux (talk) 23:42, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Importances mentioned above are within the task-force. These are not necessarily the same as within a WP. Thus a mill might be rated low importance within WP:HS, but high importance within the mills task force. This is based on the system that operates within the UK Rail WP which is a sub-project of the Trains WP. Mjroots (talk) 04:38, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Would-be members

If you would be interested in joining the proposed task force please indicate here by signing with #~~~.

1. Mjroots (talk) Mainly windmills, also watermills and animal engines.
2. ClemRutter (talk) Interested in Textile Mills.
3. Ning-ning (talk) Interested in windmills.
4. doncram (talk) If it's a task force here, I am definitely in. I think i am already kinda involved in covering some of the U.S. NRHP windmills and also helping on the disambiguation. Update: per my comment above at #Decision time?, i now think this is better as a WikiProject on its own. And that such should be created forthwith, and I will join that. doncram (talk) 08:04, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject formed

I've now created the Wikiproject Mills. Members wanted. Mjroots (talk) 15:41, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

National Inventory of Architectural Heritage

Web site here - it's still fairly new. Yet more fodder for our lists, perhaps? Also, sorry I haven't been as active as I'd like, but hopefully I'll get a couple more National Register articles knocked off this week sometime. I have the pictures... --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 16:05, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Extra-terrestial historic sites

I was just inviting someone to please consider joining "the world-wide Historic sites wikiproject (wp:HSITES) which covers local historic registers anywhere", which looking at causes me to wonder, why should we be so very earth-bound? Perhaps I enjoyed a recent movie too much, but shouldn't we set the tone now to avoid earth-centrism in wikipedia? I don't know which inter-galactic organization might have already declared a register of such places, but there are some obvious candidates for HSITE listing comparable in one way or another to this, this, or this, n'est-ce pas? doncram (talk) 21:41, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Must you borrow trouble? I say we wait until the first Venusian joins Wikipedia as an editor, then worry about it! No need to hyper-politically correct. (And, I wanna see that movie). Lvklock (talk) 21:48, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know which organisation will claim to have the right to list them most of the sites listed on Moon landing will probably be seen as having historic significance. So Oceanus Procellarum, Mare Crisium, Mare Tranquillitatis Shackleton (crater) etc might need to be included in this wikiproject. They all have infoboxes (though not this projects one), pics etc - but I'm not volunteering to do the coords!— Rod ^talk 22:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it might be better if we wait until we hear from other galaxies. Wouldn't want to start an intergalactic rumble, now, would we? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 02:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Notice of RFC: NRHP historic districts vs. villages

RFC opened at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Connecticut#rfc: NRHP historic districts vs. villages — In the absence of evidence of substantial overlap, and of consensus decisions for mergers, must NRHP-listed historic districts be merged to articles on neighborhoods, villages, towns that may contain them? doncram (talk) 03:13, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Ohio example of same issue

The Cleveland, Ohio, NRHP Warszawa Neighborhood District was redirected by a local editor to Slavic Village, a contemporary neighborhood which, however, encompasses two old ethnic neighborhoods, Warszawa, which of course was/is Polish, and Karlin which was/is Czech. In my humble opinion, this dilutes the importance of the NRHP district. It might be OK if the NRHP district and the contemporary neighborhood were basically the same place. clariosophic (talk) 17:48, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/National Historic Fleet, Core Collection

Not sure if ships are historic sites, per se, but it seemed that this AfD would fall within the project's purview. StarM 03:03, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Bruce Castle

This is today's FA. As a grade 1 listed building I've tagged it with this WPs banner, but it needs grading for importance. Mjroots (talk) 13:42, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I added an infobox and ranked it as mid-importance, according to this page. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Were the main authors happy with the addition of the infobox? (particularly with the article being the front page FA). I had some negative comments from the principle author when I added an infobox to Brympton d'Evercy. On the talk page you will see a section "Info box not required here" in which I was told "I have removed the info box [6] because I spent a great deal of time trying to make this page look pleasing to the eye, an info box does not help in that respect. All necessary information is in the lead. Info boxes are not policy or required by any wikipedian law. so please do not place them on this page." Does anyone else get this response?— Rod ^talk 18:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Same story. Apparently infoboxes are hated by the British. User:Nev1 said on Talk:Bruce Castle: "There are pros and cons with infoboxes – a map is certainly handy – but in a case where the history of the structure is so complex, is it adding anything to the article? Stating in the infobox that Bruce Castle was built in is misleading as it was remodelled several times over a long period. In general I'm in favour of adding infoboxes, however I feel that in this case the information has to be over simplified to comply with the fields." and User:Iridescent said: "there are certain situations where infoboxes are useful, but for a subject like this, where virtually every field is open to dispute and needs a clarificatory statement, it's worse than pointless, it's outright misleading."

In any case, the article is now ranked as mid-importance, so it wasn't a total failure.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:36, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to emphasise that "In general I'm in favour of adding infoboxes". I've contributed to a lot of articles on historic sites – mainly Scheduled Monuments, listed buildings, and castles – and most of the time I've included an infobox as I thought it would be useful. However, Bruce Castle has a complex architectural history so I don't think an infobox adds much in this case. I don't see that removal of an infobox as a failure. Nev1 (talk) 18:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Likewise, I'd like to emphasise that I don't "hate infoboxes", as is being alleged (of the nine articles I've written up to FA level and 12 to GA level, the majority of which are on historic sites, all but three included an infobox); I'm opposed to adding an infobox purely for the sake of adding an infobox, on an article that doesn't have any need for one.

As mentioned on the talkpage, since Wikipedia will (presumably) never include an article on an individual house that's not of historic interest, in the context of houses this infobox is inappropriate and {{infobox house}} should be used; secondly, neither of the two infoboxes can handle the complicated history of this particular house. The building was built in three or four (depending on interpretation) architectural styles, at various dates over a 400-year period, and also incorporates a detached tower and two detached boundary walls, built at other times and in different styles. There's no confirmed century of initial construction, let alone a date, and it has been rebuilt almost constantly since then. Clear evidence of medieval foundations coupled with the near-total destruction of the area's records during the civil war makes it impossible to give an initial construction date more specific than "some time between the Domesday Book and the first recorded mention of the building in 1619". The four parts of the complex (house, tower, southern wall, western wall) were listed on three separate dates, at two different levels of listing.

Without a rewriting of the underlying code or the liberal use of line breaks, there is no way any existing infobox can handle that, and even if shoehorned into an infobox, accommodating the multiple rebuilding dates, architects, building styles, occupants and listed building register entries within the 220px width of an infobox would result in an infobox resembling a pipe roll. As mentioned at the talk page, there is no "Infoboxes are encouraged in articles, so if there's one that fits, it should be added" policy on Wikipedia; the closest the MOS comes is "Start an article with a right-aligned lead image or infobox", with which this article already complied. – iridescent 21:40, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Mark Twain House GA Sweeps: On Hold

I have reviewed Mark Twain House for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article. Please comment there to help the article maintain its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 07:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Alt text in the project's infobox

Can somebody add an alt text field to the infobox? It's now part of the FA criteria to include alt text in images. Nev1 (talk) 22:15, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

What should the default alt text be? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure there should be a default, since "Alternative text... is used as a replacement for an image" I don't think a default would be useful. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean... Nev1 (talk) 22:27, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I mean like I could set it up so that if the alt text is not explicitly set by the new parameter that it could default to a certain value.. like the caption of the image. Doing this would mean that all images in the infobox automatically include an alt text.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:34, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Setting the caption as the default alt text would be ok. Nev1 (talk) 22:48, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Parameter added. | alt= is the parameter to use; if it is not set, the template will use the image's caption if there is one.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:55, 9 July 2009 (UTC)