Talk:James T. Foley United States Courthouse

Not original

Large portions of this article were basically copied and pasted from the General Services Administration page on the courthouse. While this actually does not count as copyvio since the text is PD to begin with, we do need to indicate this somewhere.

However, it doesn't really need to be rewritten that much, actually. Daniel Case (talk) 12:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

There is an attribution section at the bottom of the article indicating its origin. bd2412 T 13:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh ... missed that. Daniel Case (talk) 12:37, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Per WP:BRD, you should not have reverted my edit without discussion. Until your proposed change is established by such a discussion, the default presentation of the article is the lede that it had for the past four years prior to your proposed change. Perhaps it is obvious that a building named "courthouse" is a courthouse, but it not obvious that it is a courthouse of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York, which is the building's significance. Where it is located is insignificant, as there are millions of buildings that could be described by their location, which does not make them encyclopedic. It is also odd that the article now contains no link to courthouse, when such a link should always appear in the lede. We have thousands of articles on courthouses, and they fairly consistently describe their subjects as "Foo Courthouse is a courthouse of foobar jurisdiction". Unless you can show me why this article should deviate from that well-thought out practice, I intend to revert this within the hour to the standard presentation of the encyclopedic information being presented. Cheers! bd2412 T 12:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, then, why not just say it's a federal courthouse if you feel that level of clarity in the lede is essential? I've written tons of articles about post offices on the National Register, quite a few of which had originally led "The U.S. Post Office-Foo is a post office in Foo ..." and nobody got upset when I changed them to something like "The U.S. Post Office in Foo serves the ZIP Code XXXXX ..." Actually, it would probably be even better to say "the federal courthouse" as there are no other federal courthouses in Albany.

Per WP:SS I don't really think it's necessary to give the name of the district court in full in the first graf anyway ... the reader's eyes are not going to fail to notice the highlighted name of the court in the first sentence of the second graf. Also, it's more accurate to just call it "the federal courthouse" as first, the article goes on to note that U.S. Bankruptcy Court sits there too; and (ahem) second, panels from the Second Circuit often go to Albany to hear oral arguments there for cases on appeal from the Northern District rather than always make the lawyers (and their clients) go down to New York (en banc rehearings are different; only the Foley Square courthouse in Lower Manhattan where the Second Circuit is based has the space to accommodate all the judges that requires). Daniel Case (talk) 13:28, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Per your suggestion, I have changed the lede to state that this is a federal courthouse. While other tribunals may use the space, its primary purpose is its service as a courthouse of the United States District Court. If you disagree, you are, of course, welcome to seek a consensus to change this otherwise stable presentation. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:36, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm OK with that (although, speaking of Foley Square, I note that the intro for the article that federal courthouse does it the same way I did, and someone else also wrote that). Daniel Case (talk) 13:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the article to which you point says (and has always said) that the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse "is a Classical Revival courthouse..." bd2412 T 13:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

What I meant was that it leaves it to the second graf to enumerate the courts that use the building. "Classical Revival" is the architectural style, and the way I write intros to articles about buildings I like to leave that detail to the second sentence, where it can be less awkwardly presented with information on when it was built, of what material, and who the architect was if it was someone notable. Daniel Case (talk) 17:06, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I see what you mean. Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:46, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, scratch even that ... its title, and the article title by extension and policy, includes "United States Courthouse". Don't you think that makes it abundantly clear that it's a federal courthouse? (As opposed to the New York Court of Appeals Building a few blocks away (which I wrote most of and nobody has expressed any problems with). Daniel Case (talk) 13:32, 16 October 2013 (UTC)