Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places

Good article reassessment for Ben's Chili Bowl

Ben's Chili Bowl has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article.

Black History Month NRHPs?

February is Black History Month, and in the past this WikiProject has often had DYKs posted during the month, often created beforehand and saved up by DYK editors. Draft:Persons of Color Cemetery at Kinderhook, in New York, is one DYK-eligible draft that I started but didn't finish, could use help on. I wonder if there are other DYK possibilities in progress by anyone?

There are numerous redlinks on List of African-American historic places and its subpages for states with a whole lot of entries:

• List of African-American historic places in Florida
• List of African-American historic places in Georgia
• List of African-American historic places in Washington, D.C. (few if any redlinks, due to past editing campaigns)
• List of African-American historic places in Mississippi
• List of African-American historic places in North Carolina

And I see there are a number of unlinked museum items on List of museums focused on African Americans, all of which should probably be redlinks indicating articles are needed, some of which are likely housed in an NRHP-listed or other historic building. Doncram (talk,contribs) 23:09, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

List of historic places in Allentown, Pennsylvania

Would some members of this WikiProject mind taking a look at List of historic places in Allentown, Pennsylvania? The first part of the article seems fine, but after that things aren't so clear. The "Notable landmarks" section and "Significant legacy historical sites" have unclear inclusion criteria and some of the entries are completely unsourced and read like PR blurbs. Some of the entries have stand-alone articles written about them and perhaps these are OK; many, however, do not and it's not what criterion besides having a stand-alone Wikipedia article about them that they satisfy. -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:01, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I have tagged the list for not having inclusion criteria. Magic♪piano 17:57, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

[I made an incorrect assumption that it was yourself who created the list, and I was assuming recently. In fact it was User:Bwmoll3 (no longer active) back in 2013-14, and several editors have developed it further. Please be charitable about my comments, following?]

Interesting work. Thank you for asking about it here. This WikiProject, or at least me as one member, has had, let's say, mixed feelings about comparable collections of historic places specific to a given area, and how those are to mesh with corresponding NRHP lists. I myself participated in some AFDs, at least once on side of Keeping and at least once as nominator for deletion and on side of Deleting, related to a series of "historic places in TOWN" type list-articles of places in Arizona all developed by one editor. I recall liking the first one I saw there, like I was enthused to see a local-type editor enthused about their local historical places, but then it rubbed me the wrong way. I recall not liking there how it seemed to be competing with the corresponding NRHP lists and leaving the NRHP lists undeveloped; I thought it would be better if the local editor would help develop descriptions, etc. in the local NRHP lists first, but IIRC instead they were just duplicating anything in the NRHP lists and adding more in their own version. A second way it rubbed me wrong was that the editor appeared to me to be just using their own personal knowledge/opinions about what was historic and deserved preservation, in their choice of the non-NRHP-listed places in their lists. This seemed non-encyclopedic to me. Like User:Magicpiano just observed here, that there were "unclear inclusion criteria". I really didn't think that editor had local conflicts of interests, like if they were an investor and owner of properties and they wanted to promote their own ones or nearby ones for their own financial advantage. And I did not suggest that, but there and maybe here I do not see how the groupings are being defined in any objective way that anyone else could verify. Editors here in this WikiProject in the past and editors in other areas of Wikipedia have been very meticulous about finding objective-type criteria to make divisions (i.e. to set up categories) between different types of things, e.g. to divide a given city into neighborhoods (best to find a division of the city used officially in some way) and refraining from making the division if someone else's division cannot be found and relied upon (perhaps with one or a few tweaks that can be justified by brief explanation).

About this example, I first wondered how it would fit with the Allentown, Pennsylvania article (like maybe it should be a section there), but I see that the Allentown article has been well-developed (probably by you), and this would be too long as a section there I suppose, and it does seem to "fit" with it. It is linked from Allentown's section "Arts, culture, and recreation"'s subsection "Landmarks and popular location", which also links to List of city parks and recreation facilities of Allentown, Pennsylvania and National Register of Historic Places listings in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Comment 1: could that subsection give some more introduction about those three sublists, and link to them from its body rather than in italics from just below its header as if they were {{Main}} links? E.g. say at least that there are so many park sites and so many NRHP listings and that this one has 18 historic places, perhaps saying further that there are x, y, z numbers of its three types.

The division into three types, "National Register of Historic Places" vs. "Notable landmarks" vs. "Significant legacy historical sites" is interesting. Comment 2: I haven't seen that division before, am not sure exactly what those are. Without explicit explanation, it may convey accurately enough that the NRHP ones are the best-preserved or most historical or such, that the landmarks are next, and that significant ones are third most important. I'll think about this a bit more, but Marchjuly can you explain about what you mean by the three types and how you have determined which sites are which? --Doncram (talk,contribs) 20:12, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate your comments Doncram and apologize if my post made it seem as if I had created the article. I actually came across it while checking on something else. As for possible WP:CSC, it would seem that the first section would be limited to entries which have been officially registered as US historical places and can be reliably sourced as such. Many of the entries do have a stand-alone articles and perhaps these include citations supporting such claims, but those that don't probably can be included as long as they are supported by proper citations in the list article. I'm not two sure about what criteria could be used for the other two sections. It seems the most basic one would be that a stand-alone article be created or already exist per WP:WTAF. Often when dealing with "Notable people" sub-sections in articles about schools, population centers, organizations, etc. lots of WP:LISTCRUFT gets added over the years for WP:Namechecking reasons by people applying their own personal and subjective standards. The "best" way to try and control this seems to be stating that a stand-alone article which clearly establishes a properly sourced connection between the subject needs to already exist for inclusion even to be considered. In some cases, even when such a stand-alone article does exist, a local consensus might be established through article talk page discussion in favor of non-inclusion because some individuals aren't deemed as "notable" as others. I'm not sure how things are done for non-people type of entries such as businesses, landmarks, buildings, etc. For example, I don't understand the point of the "Mack Allentown Assembly Plants" entry in List of historic places in Allentown, Pennsylvania#Significant legacy historical sites since it's nothing but a mini-list of GPS coordinates, a link to a photo, and a single sentence. The entry for "Sears, Roebuck & Company Building" in the same section seems to rely on a TV station website's piece focused on the memories of one local resident. An example of completely unsourced content is "Ritz Barbecue" in the List of historic places in Allentown, Pennsylvania#Notable landmarks section. There are other entries in those two sections as well for which inclusion seems more subjective than anything else. Absent any kind of basic criteria, it's going to be hard ensure some kind of encyclopedic standard for those two sections. Anyway, maybe it would be better to move further discussion about this to the article's talk page where it's there for others to more easily see and participate in. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:51, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! This is an example of a bigger problem "we" haven't resolved here. I'd personally like to keep a bigger discussion here, though post notice at the Talk page of Allentown and of the specific article, for now. And maybe ping editors of the specific article there, too.

I see that National Register of Historic Places listings in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania has 56 items, of which 16 are Allentown NRHPs. And their description fields are mostly blank. As with the other case, I'd rather see development in one list-article of the NRHPs, not duplicated and inconsistent discussion.

The 16 Allentown ones could be split out of the Lehigh County NRHP list. There are many NRHP lists for single towns, split out often because the county list was too long. How about doing that, putting a table of the Allentown NRHP-listed places into List of historic places in Allentown, Pennsylvania, dropping them from the Lehigh county list and providing appropriate linking? Then follow with a table or two of the other types. Certainly any historic sites that are designated by a local historic registry (and which are not further NHRP listed) can be included in a table of their own, say if the town of Allentown has a historic review board etc and does such designations as many places do.

About the "significant legacy historic site" ones, maybe those are big hunks of now-abandoned industrial buildings etc. which clearly are artifacts of important town history, but which haven't found their way into any economically viable re-use or other situation of historic preservation. I dunno, why not just state that kind of thing outright, in the TOWN article or in this separate list of TOWN historic places, that there exist big swaths of TOWN history not represented by any specific formally preserved places, and state that the big hunks of abandoned buildings do survive, nonetheless, in 2023. And include a photo or two, and link to a commons category of lots of photos? --Doncram (talk,contribs) 01:26, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

If it's better to keep this discussion going here, then I would suggest adding {{Please see}} to the talk pages of the various WikiProjects and articles relevant to any such discussion. I see you've already done so on the primary article's talk page (someone has, btw, already responded to your ping) as well as a few other talk pages; so, I've done the same for Talk:Lehigh Valley and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists. My initial suggestion would be to remove any unsourced entries and any sourced entries which might not be considered be viable WP:REDYES candidates if stand-alone articles about the subjects don't exist. In other words, the most basic criterion for inclusion would be to have a stand-alone article already written or be something for which such an article could almost surely be written. After that perhaps some more detailed assessments could take place on a per case basis in cases where there might be disagreement on including certain subjects which meet the most basic criterion. This, however, might be too much of a bull in the china shop approach and perhaps its better to see what some others may think. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:28, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I am just now moving User:Keystone18's comment there to here. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 02:23, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

[Comment moved from Talk of primary page to here::The National Register of Historic Places, of course, is a definitive list with no subjective nature to it. The other two sections seem more subjective and the entries should probably be assessed to see if some might be missing or whether some included are unwarranted. In a more bold edit move, the page might be restricted simply to the National Register of Historic Places. Most of the other listings do not have articles, which means they lack encyclopedic value on their own merits and these two other sections might simply be worth removing. Meanwhile, I'm going to copyedit the page. That has been my only contribution to the page to date. My two cents. Keystone18 (talk) 16:34, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

In response to both Marchjuly and Keystone18, I dunno, I want to be somewhat supportive to local editors developing more than about just the NRHP-listed places. Of course if non-local NRHP places have a separate article it's clear they can be listed. Not having an article doesn't mean they lack encyclopedic merit though. It is fine in a list-article to have redlinks (where a future article is wanted) and also to have unlinked entries (where no future article is expected), IMHO. I don't have clear vision what one of these list-articles should look like, including what sections it should have, though. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 02:23, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Walton Danforth Stowell of national park service

I just came across Draft:Walton Danforth Stowell which was removed from mainspace after Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Walton Danforth Stowell. The person, a longterm National Park Service who designed interpretative displays and more, seems notable to me. The article probably has too much detail and it was started back in 2009(?) by a relative apparently. There was a prior AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Walton Stowell in 2009. Seems like newbie-type editor(s) needed some help but could not withstand unsympathetic pressure of skeptical non-historic-preservation-interested editors at the AFDs. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 08:09, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I jotted some notes at Draft talk:Walton Danforth Stowell. Maybe it's not adding up to establish notability. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 09:47, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I see something here but I really wish more of these 118(!) sources were digitized so I could better-assess, and help rework the article. Definitely a huge COI problem affecting the article's tone. As self-stated, the subject's son was the primary author there. ɱ (talk) 16:28, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Featured Article Save Award for Hanford Site

There is a Featured Article Save Award nomination at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Hanford Site/archive1. Please join the discussion to recognize and celebrate editors who helped assure this article would retain its featured status. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:40, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

RFC on whether citing maps and graphs is original research

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RFC on using maps and charts in Wikipedia articles. Rschen7754 19:09, 19 March 2023 (UTC)