Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 39

Chestnut Hill Historic District

About the Chestnut Hill Historic District, in Northwest Philadelphia; Are Chestnut Hill West (SEPTA station) or Chestnut Hill West (SEPTA station) included within that district? Or any other SEPTA Regional Railroad stations? ----DanTD (talk) 15:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Assuming you meant Chestnut Hill East, for one of them, yes. St. Martins, Wyndmoor, Gravers and Highland are also included. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 16:00, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I redirected Chestnut Hill Historic District (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) to the Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania neighborhood article back in March 2009, when I was expanding the Chestnut Hill Historic District disambiguation page (and possibly it was around then that i tried to help a bit on splitting the Philadelphia NRHP list by official neighborhoods). Since this official neighborhood is very large and includes multiple NRHPs and has other material, it looks to me like splitting the HD article out would make sense, in order to allow and encourage detailed coverage of its NRHP-ness there. The HD itself is large, though, covering 1,920 acres (780 ha). And based on supplemental info in the left column of Elkman NRHP generator output, the HD also appears includes the Thomas Mill Bridge and NRHPs with refnums 82003806;78002445;79002318;72001151;7700184_. Perhaps someone more specifically interested/knowledgeable about the boundaries and other info, willing to get the PA state NRHP doc, could now choose to split it out, or develop its coverage in the neighborhood article. --doncram (talk) 14:22, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Niagara, I see that St. Martins, and Wyndmoor Stations, are on the R8 to Chestnut Hill West, and Gravers and Highland Stations are on the R7 to Chestnut Hill East. But if they're contributing properties they should be added. ----DanTD (talk) 04:51, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, I see what you did, You caught a typo on my part. ----DanTD (talk) 04:53, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of United States Air Force Academy

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. You are being notified as your project banner is on the article talk page. Unfortunately the poor state of referencing of the article meant that I immediately de-listed it as it fails to meet the GA criteria at present. When these concerns, which you can see at Talk:United States Air Force Academy/GA1, have been addressed you may renominate the article at WP:GAN. If you disagree with this re-assessemnt please take it ito WP:GAR for community re-assessment. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 08:09, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Copyright issues re. sculptures

I've just uploaded several pictures of the former Wheeler County Courthouse in Wheeler County, Nebraska. There are two that I've uploaded but have kept in a hidden category, since they show a sculpture by a living artist. Are these acceptable? The sculpture appears at a low resolution and doesn't show much detail; and its placement makes it difficult to get a good photo of the building that doesn't include it. The pictures in question are this one and this one. I'd appreciate guidance both for this case and for the future.

--Ammodramus (talk) 22:44, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I think de minimis would apply in these cases, as the subject of the photos is not the sculpture itself but the courthouse behind it. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 22:57, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Neither of those comes close to violating copyright. The sculpture must make up a "substantial" part of the photograph. Bms4880 (talk) 02:48, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Can't imagine anyone becoming unhappy with these photos for copyright purposes. Google Maps also has the statue in its Street View, and unlike you, they're using it commercially, so I'm sure someone would have complained to them by now if there were any problems. Nyttend (talk) 03:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, all—I've moved the pictures to the old courthouse's category.

--Ammodramus (talk) 04:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

NRHP/NYC Landmarks

I started adding parameters for New York City Landamrks to appropriate NRHP sites, which I swiped from Grand Central Terminal. Has anybody else considered doing so? ----DanTD (talk) 13:51, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I did that a while back with East 78th Street Houses and Houses at 208-218 East 78th Street. Daniel Case (talk) 17:26, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Two prominent recent listings for which separate articles may not be necessary

A couple of weeks ago, the Chinatown and Little Italy Historic District was listed in lower Manhattan. Since there are already articles on those two neighborhoods, the Chinatown one of which is quite extensive, I don't think we need a separate HD article and so I simply added appopriate material to the articles and talk pages.

Today, the Kent State shootings site has been listed. I added to the list for Portage County, Ohio, but just linked to the shootings article as I don't see what a separate listing article could add (and I noted the NRHP listing in the shooting article).

Any thoughts on these decisions? Daniel Case (talk) 17:37, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Is Chinatown and Little Italy Historic District (currently a redlink) the name of the first one? Where should that name direct to? In some other cases where a combo of two places already having articles has been listed on the NRHP, it has seemed useful to create a very short page at the combo name. That page can serve almost like a disambiguation page, just providing a statement that the combo has been NRHP-listed and giving links to the other two places. But the combo name does have meaning, and will be listed on the internet at the National Register, at ArchiPlanet, at NRHP.COM, and elsewhere. About the second one, Kent State Shootings Site (now a redirect to Kent State shootings#Memorials at Kent State (where Daniel Case added mention), that one is a featured property listing so full NRHP doc is available. I've added some more about the NRHP listing there including a quote from the National Park Service that i think is helpful; more could be developed, too. --doncram (talk) 18:54, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

The Kent State Shootings Site could easily be developed into a separate article since the main article discusses quite a bit of information regarding the event itself (background and aftermath). For now, though, I think the way it's set up works as part of the main article. Since the documentation is readily available, that will make it easier to spin off a NRHP article. --JonRidinger (talk) 19:01, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me hard to separate the site from the event -- in fact, without the event there wouldn't be much to say about the site -- it certainly wouldn't be notable except as part of the University (while it's true that there are Memorials, they wouldn't be there without the event). So my thought would be to move the infobox to its usual place at the top right and add any new details that seem relevant. . . . . Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 19:28, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Don: Yes, the redlink is the name of the HD. I really don't see what a separate article could add. And I also don't see it being likely used as a search term, so we'd not need a redirect. Anyone wanting info on either neighborhood will just go straight to either one courtesy of the existing disambiguation pages.

James states the logic I would use quite well. I'd add that the nom, from what I've read of it (it's 192 pages long!), makes it explicit that the memorials, the only hook you could hang a separate article on, are non-contributing. It seems to me the nom would be better served as an additional source for the article. Daniel Case (talk) 05:06, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

If a separate Kent State Shootings Site was developed, I'd use it more to organize information on the site itself: the boundaries, the contributing and non-contributing structures, and more photos of the area. Obviously there wouldn't be a great need for history of the main event like other NRHP pages other than a background of the area as opposed to the event associated with it as the nom goes into detail about the structures and the land listed in the district. Understanding a little about the history of an area helps with the understanding of an event, such as answer the question why the shootings happened where they did; it wasn't just a random location on campus. I don't think including the non-contributing memorials on a site article would be inappropriate either and instead having a summary paragraph at Kent State shootings with a "Main Article" template. I wouldn't even think about it if the current article wasn't already getting large. In any case, I certainly won't be doing much about it any time soon as I have other projects (in and out of Wikipedia) I'm working on. --JonRidinger (talk) 05:43, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

NRHP Official PDFs

When I go to the NPS search function here, I'm finding that the PDFs don't load when, for example, I'm for Reference Number 79000638. Or, a link I've used in an article no longer works. Am I doing something wrong or is the NPS site having issues?RevelationDirect (talk) 03:33, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

The site's having issues from my point of view. For some 2 weeks or more I've been getting "Error Code 10054: Connection reset by server". Ntsimp (talk) 04:18, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Ntsimp is right about the site having problems recently. For a while not even the home page was accessible. It appears to me that they are actively working on increasing the search functionality (additional search fields have recently been added to the main search page); those changes probably have led to bugs that presumably will be fixed sooner or later. Regardless, however, that link you used in an article is one that looks unstable. A link to the PDF version of the photos (e.g., http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Photos/86003755.pdf) is more likely to be available to readers of the article. --Orlady (talk) 15:06, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

• http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Photos/86003755.pdf is dead also, but perhaps this will be remedied. —mattisse (Talk) 22:18, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

This appears to be working OK now. --Ebyabe (talk) 16:20, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Middlebush Reformed Church is up for deletion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Middlebush Reformed Church. The building is part of a NRHP historic district but I don't know whether it has an independent listing. Mangoe (talk) 11:54, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Salt Lake City Public Library

While going through Category:NRHP infobox needing cleanup (which I'm almost finished with btw), I came across the Salt Lake City Public Library. The article is about a building constructed in 2003 at 210 East 400 South, but the infobox claimed that it was listed on the NRHP in 1979. The NRHP listing is actually for a building at 15 S State St, the old location of the public library. The nomination form for this building can be found here and pictures here. Looking on Google Streetview confirms that the building at 15 S State St is the one in the NRHP nom.

In the nomination form, the building is said to "currently" (so in 1979) house the Hansen Planetarium. A quick Google search for that shows that the Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake City was replaced by the Clark Planetarium located at the intersection of 400 West and 100 South; this building looks completely different from the NRHP nom pictures. Furthermore, the Salt Lake City Public Library article states that the old library building is now home to The Leonardo, an art museum, and the building is located at the intersection of 500 S and 200 E, on the same block as the current building. The "History" section of the Salt Lake City Public Library article mentions the State St building as opening in 1905 but then skips to the current building being built in 2003.

Obviously there are some history gaps in here, and I can't quite figure them out. My best theory (though I haven't found sources to back it up) is that the original library, as stated on Salt Lake City Public Library system and in the NRHP nom, was housed in the the Salt Lake City and County Building in 1898. Thanks to a donation of land and money by a John Q. Packard, the library was moved to 15 S State Street in the building now listed on the NRHP. When the State St library required more space, a donation of $400,000 was used to renovate the building into the Hansen Planetarium (No year is given in the nom, but it had to be before 1979). The preceding information is all gathered from the NRHP nom. The nom form doesn't say, however, where the library was moved to.. just what happened to the existing building.

My guess is that when the State St library was converted into the Hansen Planetarium, the library was moved to what the current library's article claims is the "old" building, where The Leonardo is housed. Then in 2003, the new library was built. That still doesn't resolve, however, the fact that the old Hansen Planetarium is now the Clark Planetarium in a completely different location. My guess is that the two planetariums are not in the same building. When it was said the the Clark Planetarium "replaced" the Hansen Planetarium, I think that meant that the Clark Planetarium was a new building that would be better (more modern?) than the Hansen. The Hansen wasn't torn down or moved.. it simply closed.

Ok, so my question is... can anyone find sources to back up my theories? I'd like to sort out the details on all the involved articles, especially on the Salt Lake City Public Library system article. Is there anyone from Salt Lake that may have local knowledge of some or all of these buildings? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm from Utah, and you're right about what happened to the Hansen Planetarium; it no longer exists. The beautiful building it was in (listed on the NRHP) does, though I'm not sure what it's being used for now. It was used as the police station on Everwood for a while. I'll see if I can look into this. Ntsimp (talk) 20:53, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

OC Tanner Jewelery (you can see the name on Google maps). They even have a video 'n' stuff, and I'll bet there might be some recent news articles. Andrew Jameson (talk) 20:57, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Ding ding ding "O.C. Tanner: A gem of a building: Business turns old Hansen Planetarium into flagship store" amongst others. Andrew Jameson (talk) 21:02, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Using the source above, along with others, I have updated/expanded the Salt Lake City Public Library article, the Salt Lake City Public Library system article, and created a new article in my userspace, here, about the library building on the NRHP. My question is... what should I name the article? The NRHP listing is "Salt Lake City Public Library", but that is already taken.. The Hansen Planetarium article exists, so I'll redirect it when I do the move, but I don't think this should be the title of the article since it's no longer the Hansen Planetarium.. Maybe Old Hansen Planetarium?. Also, since O.C. Tanner has been there for less than a year, I don't feel right naming it O.C. Tanner Company Headquarters. I think I'm leaning toward simply 15 South State Street.. it's an all-inclusive title, and it's easily recognizable. What do you guys think? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:08, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

What about something like Salt Lake City Public Library (1905)? I've got a similar predicament and I'm thinking that's going to be way to go. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 00:42, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Most Utahns would recognize it as Hansen Planetarium; I think that's the best choice. By the way, I can get you a freely-licensed photo of the building tomorrow. Ntsimp (talk) 01:07, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Is "Utahns" a word? Haha :P. I think Old Hansen Planetarium would be more accurate, though. It's still as recognizable as Hansen Planetarium (and of course that would be a redirect). And you would be awesome if you could get the photo.. I was kind of disappointed that I couldn't find one already one here. I found some images of the building during reconstruction, but I didn't take the effort to ask OC Tanner if I could use them.. Do you think the NRHP photos are public domain? How would I check that? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:23, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I like Old Hansen Planetarium, except for the fact that it's made up. Maybe that's not really a problem, though. Ntsimp (talk) 02:52, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Criteria for listing

Just a thought I had, but would it be useful ti include the criteria (A,B,C,D) in the infobox? Many articles don't include a reason why a particular place was listed in the NRHP. Einbierbitte (talk) 23:10, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Is the criteria supplied in the NRIS database? Or possibly in the NRHP nomination document? I've never come across it myself.. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:02, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

On the newer nomination forms it is in Statement of Signficance, block 8. On the Focus website (I think the NPS finally pulled the plug on NRIS) it is listed in the first few "Subject:" listings: EVENT for 'A'; PERSON for 'B'; ARCHITECTURE/ENGINEERING for 'C'; and INFORMATION POTENTIAL for 'D' Einbierbitte (talk) 19:10, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, the reason I was asking about the NRIS database is that if it was in there, we could add the output to Elkman's tool.. if the information is readily available for most listings, I'd be willing to add that to the infobox if others think it would be useful.. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:31, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Is it useful? I think it is. What do others think? Einbierbitte (talk) 19:38, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it's useful. I would use the actual terms instead of the letters A, B, C, or D. Bms4880 (talk) 19:53, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Possible new structure for lists

I was recently collaborating with User:BrownHairedGirl on the List of National Monuments of Ireland. We (or mostly she) came up with a new way to display lists that I think may be suitable for this wikiproject. Instead of simply splitting out lists and leaving a link to county lists on one page, the county lists are transcluded back into the main page systematically to assure that the county lists look like full articles but the country (or state in our case) article contains a list of every single listing... without any duplication of content. The whole list is sortable across counties, which makes the combined table a good tool for national comparisons.

I feel like I'm not doing a great job of explaining this, so maybe you guys should just go look at the coding of the articles and templates involved. What do you guys think? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:15, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a list is broken up in the name of shrinking page size and shortening load times, and then transcluded back together; wouldn't that negate any potential increases in perfomance. On a side note, I did wonder if it was possible to transclude mainspace articles and now I know :-) ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 23:56, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, the load time is about the same, really... there's not much that can be done about that other than get faster internet haha. I was under the impression that the main reason pages were split out was because of page size.. maybe like a server deal.. Idk. The List of Irish Monuments loads pretty fast on my connection – no slower than would be expected for a list of its size.. and the page size is a LOT smaller than including the code for all the counties on one page.. Idk.. just a suggestion. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:19, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

For a list of 648 items it didn't take much time at all to load - but then I noticed - it has no geo coordinates on the page. Whoops. Smallbones (talk) 04:43, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

What does having no coords have to do with load time? Does coord slow down a page? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:44, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely does. Smallbones (talk) 12:18, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 34#Loading speed of our longer lists. Note that the "Try it yourself here" examples cited there are no longer in my sandboxes. The fundamental answer is that using coords quadruples the load time, which has much less to do with internet speed than with evaluating hundreds of coords.. . . . Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 14:00, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

West Meadow Beach Historic District in Stony Brook

There's already an article on West Meadow Beach in Stony Brook, New York that I just added to West Meadow Beach Historic District. Is there any reason that the WMB article should'be merged into the HD article? I'm also considering addressing this issue on the WikiProject Long Island talk page. ----DanTD (talk) 15:52, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Generally, I think that if the boundaries of the HD and the political/geographical area (West Meadow Beach Historic District and West Meadow Beach, in this case) are substantially the same, AND if the historical/architectural information that characterizes the HD does not unduly overburden the article, then the two should be combined. In particular, after a brief look, it seems like that's the case for these two articles, so a merger makes sense, IMO. Andrew Jameson (talk) 16:31, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, how do you like the expanded version? ----DanTD (talk) 13:08, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced living people articles bot

User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects provides a list, updated daily, of unreferenced living people articles (BLPs) related to your project. There has been a lot of discussion recently about deleting these unreferenced articles, so it is important that these articles are referenced.

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Articles needing infoboxes

The Kingstree Historic District needs an infobox for that article. Is there a parameter for the talk page where we can mark this and other articles that need them? ----DanTD (talk) 04:48, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I think there is no such parameter and corresponding category set up yet, but it would be good to create that. I think wp:SHIPS and some other wikiprojects have that. This would be a change to the {{WikiProject National Register of Historic Places}} template, right? If one change is being made to that template, it'd be nice also to add a link in the template to the Talk page of the wikiproject (i.e. a link to here), too, like other wikiprojects have.

P.S. The two NRHP-related cleanup categories that I know about are:

• Category:NRHP infobox needing cleanup, which currently has about 21 articles flagged by Dudemanfellabra's coding of the NRHP infobox template (to indicate infoboxes lacking refnums or otherwise deficient)
• Category:NRHP dab needing cleanup, which currently has about 200 NRHP-related dab pages that need cleanup

--doncram (talk) 20:44, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I went thru the infobox list. I cleaned up most of them, but a handful have me stumped. Einbierbitte (talk) 17:22, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Also what are your thoughts about adding the criteria or reasons for listing in the infobox? (see above) Einbierbitte (talk) 17:49, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to the Elkman toolbox, I just created an infobox for this article. But that still leaves others out there somewhere. ----DanTD (talk) 04:14, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

feedback requested on NRHP dab pages

Comments requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#feedback requested on NRHP dab pages. Please note, those of you who have been bothered by the creation of minimal NRHP stub articles to support disambiguation, that I am asking there for dab-focused editors to approve of dab pages having all red-links, without concurrent creation of stubs. --doncram (talk) 05:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

updates on nrhp dabs

Update to NRHPers: Happily it seems there that dab pages with all items being primarily red-links (but with properly formed supporting bluelinks) are now being accepted. That is a big change, relative to past discussions and drives by other editors to delete NRHP disambiguation articles in the past. So, it seems completing out disambiguation supporting the system of NRHP list-articles can now proceed without requiring a lot of new stub articles. As I noted there, there are many NRHP names which are used by 2 or 3 or 4 different places, in different states, which haven't been properly disambiguated (I and others have already dealt with almost all cases having 5 or more NRHP places). It seems fairly important to me to fix the NRHP list-system, so that multiple red-links or bluelinks from different states don't point to the same article name in a different state. Creating dabs for those cases will force some page-move decisions sooner rather than later, when no place has wp:PRIMARYUSAGE for a term but one place's article has been started, and it will avoid a lot of future edits by avoiding such situations going forward. So I am planning to proceed with a concentrated effort to create the missing dab pages. Which can be followed by one concentrated effort to "solve" the resulting dablinks in the NRHP list-articles (using User:Dispenser's dab-solver tool). If you haven't used that tool yet, you could try it: See this application to look for dablinks in the Pittsburgh NRHP list-article. The dab-solver now works, a bit kludgily, with MSIE, while it has been working great with Firefox for a while already. --doncram (talk) 15:13, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Who knew that there are:

3 places named exactly Chestnut Street Historic District, one in Kansas, one in Maine, one in New York

3 places named exactly Douglass School, in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Virginia (separate from the 3 named Douglass High School)

4 places named exactly Grimes House

4 places named exactly Holy Rosary Church

4 places named exactly Logan House

2 places named exactly Confederate Park

2 places named exactly New Era Building, in Iowa and in Pennsylvania

2 places named exactly Patrick Ranch House (leaving aside Patrick Rancheria, which should probably be covered too)

2 places named exactly Queen Creek Bridge, and

2 places named exactly Scott Covered Bridge?

All of the above and many others are currently red-links, needing dabs to be created. See here for lists sorted 2 ways, and here for cut-and-paste ready draft dab pages, which require just a little knowledge to apply. I'd be happy to have help completing these out quickly. --doncram (talk) 18:07, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Done--Pubdog (talk) 00:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for creating those. I started all the remaining ones whose names start with A and B. When all the dab pages are created, it will then be efficient to make one pass through the NRHP list-articles to fix the disambiguous links, using the dab-solver tool. For few more, who knew that there are:

2 places named Cottonwood Creek Archeological Site, one in Nebraska and one in Alaska? (Or is there a typo in the state code for the latter one?)

2 places named Tecumseh Historic District, in Michigan and Nebraska

2 places named Tucker School in Arkansas and in Oklahoma

2 places named University Apartments in Illinois and Montana

2 places named Union County Jail in Georgia and South Carolina

2 places named Oak Hill Cemetery Chapel in Vermont and Washington D.C.

3 places named Keller House, in PA, TX, WA

4 places named Chicago and North Western Railroad Depot and 2 named Chicago and North Western Depot?

All those are currently red-links, and there are more starting with letters C-Z that need dab pages, too. :) --doncram (talk) 13:43, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Update: A through M, S, X, Y, Z all done, in terms of setting up all the most obviously needed disambiguation pages. Maybe a week more for me to work through the rest of the alphabet (or less time if others want to create dabs needed, too). There have been some interruptions as a few editors scanning new pages have questioned whether dab pages consisting just of red-links need to be created, but their questions seem to be answered well enough by the still-open discussion at the Disambiguation Wikiproject. So, knock on wood, the disambiguation is proceeding well, and soon the NRHP list-articles can be checked for dab solving and then they will be pretty well free of cases of name conflicts for suggested NRHP articles. --doncram (talk) 20:55, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Update: All most obviously needed dab pages set up. In the process i moved/renamed dozens of pages to make way for needed disambiguation. But mostly it avoids future conflicts by preventing article-writers to inadvertently create a local article at what should be a dab article, in several hundreds of cases now where i have just set up new dab articles.

This now allows NRHP list-articles to be corrected to link to specific places rather than to dab names, using Dispenser's tool. Applying Dispenser's tool to the bigger NRHP list-articles within a few states (e.g. TX combo county pages and the individual counties having more than 100 NRHPs, same for MS, same for GA), I quickly found and fixed more than 100 dab links. Anyone else, please feel free to do the same for NRHP list-articles in other states, and for smaller county's list-articles in those ones. Using Dispenser's tool (linked above) is really easy. --doncram (talk) 15:30, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

A little help? Paul Harvey Deming House and OR

I just created an article on the Paul Harvey Deming House. Most of the information in the article comes from this description of the house, courtesy of the state of Michigan. Note particularly this image, which corresponds in every way to the text description. Contrast that to this image, which is in the article infobox. It's in the infobox because that house is what you see when you go to the location the Paul Harvey Deming House is supposed to be. And I'm pretty darn sure the location is correct, as a) the Paul Harvey Deming House is also called "Cherryhurst," which is the name of the lane the house is sitting on, and b) the lot size and fence location matches the description from the state of Michigan.

So: right location, wrong house, which leads me to believe the Paul Harvey Deming House has been demolished. However, I can't find any confirmation of that. In fact, as of 1996, it was "a well preserved and significant example of the eclectic architecture and landscape to which Grosse Pointe Farms' budding society was drawn." (And, truthfully, it could have been moved.) I've always understood that images were a sort of "acceptable OR," in that images are allowed in articles, as representative of the subject, without a reliable source confirmation that the image is, indeed, representative of the subject. So this image is clearly not the right house; is that enough to support the conclusion that the Paul Harvey Deming House no longer exists? Andrew Jameson (talk) 09:58, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Here, this says it all. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 15:46, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Awesome! I am humbled by your superior Google-Fu. Andrew Jameson (talk) 19:05, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

coords and other Massachusetts houses issues

I just created John Ward House (Newton, Massachusetts) article related to John Ward House disambiguation, as it turns out it is a house that has an NRIS entry but it is not listed due to owner objection, and i didn't want to leave a complicated item like that as a red-link. I wonder if someone local could add more to the article, currently a stub. Also, there is a NRHP refnum for the place and I have added an E-generated infobox, which currently displays as if the place is NRHP-listed. Is there some way to show an NRHP infobox for an NRHP-eligible-but-not-listed place, or does it need to be switched to infobox historic sites.

Also, there's a bit of a mess at Valentine Soap Workers Cottage in Cambridge, where another editor objected to my setting up disambiguation between two houses of that name. It was incorrect, previously, to have one article describing just one of the two houses of that name, with one link from the corresponding Cambridge NRHP list being actually incorrect then, and my setting up disambiguation made that clear. It would also be okay to have one article covering both places. But, the current article seems mistitled and it still provides infobox and coordinates covering just one of the two places. I'd appreciate if anyone else could fix it up better, leaving it merged, or de-merge it. Separate coords are needed for the two entries in the Cambridge NRHP list-article, too, which currently shows same coords for both places (hence wrong for one or both coords).

I also note there are three other same-named houses in Cambridge, a few rows up in the Cambridge NRHP list-article, which could be left as separate articles or combined, too. Two of those three show identical coords, so one or more of their coords should be fixed, either way. --doncram (talk) 21:20, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it is sometimes useful to combine two similar sites into one -- I did this with the Downer Rowhouses. Although separately listed, they are back to back on one lot, built at the same time, very likely to the same drawings. I showed them with one infobox, and the coords pointing to the middle of the lot. Some might use two infoboxes -- I'm ambivalent. At first blush it looks like the Cambridge articles above should be done on a combined basis. I would do the same with Town Line Boundary Marker (410 High Street, Barnstable, Massachusetts) and its two sisters -- I have to wonder why they were listed separately, given, for example, the forty surviving 1767 Milestones spread over 90 miles, but all listed together.

On the other hand, we have cases where a two houses have the same name because they were successively owned by the same person, or, perhaps, by two unrelated people with the same name. We should, I think, be careful to write two articles in these cases.

As for John Ward House (Newton, Massachusetts), take a look. If you don't like my solution, feel free to revert it.Jim - Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 22:29, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Why is an article on an "NRHP-eligible" site necessary? Is it even notable? The way I figure it, if building wasn't listed due an "owner objection", it wasn't listed; therefore it doesn't have any inherent notability and probably wouldn't survive an AFD.

Also, I'm working on a double-infobox for the Valentine Soap Cottages. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 22:33, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks both for showing new things. Jameslwoodward, I didn't know u could put in a bolded line like that, good workaround within the existing infobox code! Thanks. That's about the John Ward House (Newton, Massachusetts) article, which indeed is about a non-NRHP-listed place. It's a perfectly well-sourced article though, so I don't see the problem with it. Certainly there are non-listed historic places of higher importance than many NRHP-listed ones. The Charles Scribner's Sons Building is a more prominent NRHP-eligible one, also non-listed due to owner objection. It would sometimes be helpful to have an NRHP-like infobox that helped present those.

Thanks also to Niagara for making the double infobox in this version. I didn't know u could embed an NRHP infobox in another NRHP infobox like that! I like it. It is clear in that infobox version that there are two separate NRHP listings being described, and it complies with our usage on NRHP infobox to show the actual NRHP listing name(s) of the NRHP-listed site(s). I don't know what to think of the version that replaced it already; the current version seems less clear than having two separate stub articles or than having the double-infobox version. Thanks again! --doncram (talk) 06:28, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm the evil interloper who dismantled that double infobox in Valentine Soap Workers Cottage. I, too, was impressed with Niagara's work, but I dismantled it for reasons unrelated to his technical acumen. The problem was that the itty-bitty article was totally overwhelmed by the humongous infobox -- depending on one's display settings, the infobox was two to four times the total length of the body of the article (and that's only if you consider the "this is a stub" language to be part of the text of the article).

Note that infoboxes are supposed to be auxiliary to the text of the article -- the text is the main content, not the infobox. As Help:Infobox puts it: "Infobox templates are like fact sheets, or sidebars, in magazine articles. They quickly summarise important points in an easy-to-read format. ... They are only supposed to summarise material from an article—the information should still be present in the main text, because it may not be possible for some readers to access the contents of the infobox." Furthermore, the essay Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes declares: "If the infobox is longer than a third of the article's body it is a disinfobox."

I think that moving the two photos out of the infobox improved the Valentine Soap Workers Cottage article for most users (the exception is someone with a narrow screen and large settings for image width and font sizes, but that user would have problems with many WP pages). It made it possible to see both images at once (without scrolling), it allowed captions to be placed directly below each image (to avoid confusion), and it made the page far more balanced (although at most display settings the infobox is still longer than the article).

Niagara also made the wonderful addition of a reference to the online MPS nomination document that includes these two houses. (NPS Focus doesn't link to it.) That nom form document supports my decision to combine these two houses in one article (and to provide just one infobox). Although these two houses have separate refnums in NRIS and addresses on different streets (and presumably are on separately owned parcels of land), they are adjacent to one another, NRIS has the same lat-long coordinates for both (coordinates that are inaccurate, by the way), and they were nominated together as part of a large multiple-property listing. The MPS document mentions them only as a pair. The only information about them in the MPS is: "In 1828 Charles Valentine opened one of the largest manufacturing firms in the Port, a soap factory located at the corner of Valentine and Pearl Streets. Associated with this industry are a pair of modest cottages (1835-36)(CPT.II.C.4) built by Valentine for his soap workers. They are rare survivors of a type once common on the Port." Thus, the only documented distinctions between these two houses are their refnums and their street addresses. --Orlady (talk) 17:38, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad you're developing a stub article on an NRHP topic, Orlady, but you should know that in fact there is more information available about the two houses. The MPS document linked now from the article would come in also with any fresh Elkman-generated infobox, due to a number of editors' indexing work at wp:MPS that Elkman rightly and helpfully included into the infobox system. The on-line portion of the MPS document is, however, only the cover sheet and summary information. It does not include the separate descriptive section 7 material that would provide some more specific description about these two houses. I don't know how to say this more politely than to point out you have held to mistaken understandings about NRHP documents, which has previously interfered with rational discussion about a number of other articles. This now is the same misunderstanding you repeated in discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Cathcart, where you insisted there was no more information available about that place, despite my and another editor's explanations to you that the on-line version of the MPS document was not complete and/or that there would be separate documents for each site. So there is more information available here too, which you could obtain by request to the National Register, like i did for The Cathcart. Also, there may be sources cited in the MPS document which could possibly also be obtained and which could have other documentation about the two houses.

About the current infobox, i think it gives the appearance that "Valentine Soap Workers Cottages" is the name of an NRHP listing, and that the listing had a boundary increase hence has 2 refnums, when in fact what should be clarified is that the article is covering both of two same-named NRHP listings with separate refnums. There are editors, including me in the past, who have been adamant that the NRHP infobox title should be exactly the NRHP listing name, not anything else. I think that may be written into wp:NRHPmos, a guideline that should perhaps be updated. --doncram (talk) 19:33, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Infoboxes are supposed to exist as adjuncts to the main text body of an article, to provide a ready-reference summary of the information in the article and/or to provide useful details (such as an NRIS ref number) that don't belong in the body of the article. When the scope of an article is constrained by the constraints of the infbbox template (as you are insisting is vitally necessary), it's the kind of out-of-control situation that led somebody to compose that disinfoboxes essay.

I first touched this article because I had looked at your contributions list, Doncram, to see what you were doing besides messing with the Natchez Trace. I saw that you were actively engaged in your ongoing (and seemingly endless) project of disambiguating problematic terms like Turner House and Walnut Street Bridge. The name "Valentine Soap Workers Cottage" jumped off the page as something exceptionally uncommon (much less a term that would be likely to require disambiguation), so I looked at it to see what a Valentine Soap Workers House is and why there are more than one. I stand by my position that, given the available information (and probably even if someone gets the additional information you think I should write for), this pair of adjacent houses are best covered in a single article. Since there are exactly two of them, they definitely shouldn't have a disambiguation page. --Orlady (talk) 01:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

It seems that Charles Scribner's Sons Building has notability regardless of not being on the NRHP (i.e. desgined by a famous architect; in Manhattan), whereas the John Ward House does not. Also a well-sourced article doesn't automatically get notability. Sorry, I'm ususally not one to get involved in discussions like this. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 12:49, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't mind at all. Considering it more, although i liked the workaround suggested by J, i guess it is best to keep the NRHP infobox for actually or formerly NRHP-listed places, and to use template:infobox house or template:infobox historic site or another if an infobox is desired. I just tried changing the John Ward House article to use infobox house, and won't advocate for revising the NRHP infobox to handle cases like this. By the way, any place in New York State like the Scribner building that reaches the NRHP-eligible status has already been designated a state historic place. Owners can opt out of NRHP listing by the Federal statutes involved; they cannot opt out of the NYS designation and similar designation in at least some other states such as California, too. I don't know for sure if the John Ward House is similarly designated a Massachusetts and/or a local historic site already, but such designation is likely and would further support keeping the article. The house is also possibly covered in regional history/architecture studies, including perhaps some of the sources used in the Newton MRA document. It's a stub; more can be added. Thanks again for commenting. --doncram (talk) 16:40, 31 March 2010 (UTC)