Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Maintenance guide/Weekly List Processing

This page describes how to update articles within the scope of WikiProject National Register of Historic Places when the National Park Service publishes updates to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Park Service publishes updates to the National Register on a roughly weekly basis here. These updates include the following actions, only some of which are of significance to this project:

• Listing - a new listing is entered into the National Register
• Additional documentation - further documentation is provided for an existing listing
• Boundary increase or decrease - the boundaries of an existing historic district are altered
• Removal - a listing is removed from the National Register
• Property moved - a listed building is moved, or approval is given for its move
• NHL designation - a new or existing property is designated a National Historic Landmark (NHL)
• NHL dedesignation - designation is removed from a National Historic Landmark

The most common activities needed to keep Wikipedia's lists and listing articles synchronized with this are the addition and removal of listings. How to do these is described in the following sections, followed by actions for handling the other events.

Adding a listing

The weekly update for adding a listing looks something like this, annotated with numbers for later reference:

ARIZONA, MARICOPA COUNTY[1],
Celebrity Theatre[2],
440 N. 32nd St.[3],
Phoenix[4], SG100003323[5],
LISTED, 1/24/2019[6]

This information needs to be copied into a new {{NRHP row}} in the proper location of the proper list. For the description below, the word "county" should be read to include parishes in Louisiana and boroughs and census areas in Alaska. NOTE: it is sometimes the case that something that is essentially a district boundary change is listed as a new listing. If you believe this to be the case, follow the guidance under Boundary changes below instead of these instructions.

• Find the correct list for a given listing. This will usually be obvious from [1]. Some counties are subdivided by city or other geography, and even some cities are subdivided. For some cities (notably Louisville, Kentucky and Kansas City, Missouri), some counties, and the District of Columbia, it may not be immediately obvious which sublist is correct. In these cases, you have to geolocate the listing, and then identify which sublist covers the geographic area in which it is located.
• Add the listing in the alphabetically correct place. This is best done by copying an adjacent {{NRHP row}}, and then modifying all of its fields.
  • pos can be left unchanged, or updated manually. For short lists, you should manually update the pos fields of following rows. For long lists, use a position renumbering script such as as User:Magicpiano/NRBot/ReorderNRHPlist.js to renumber the entire list after you've added listings to it. NOTE: these numbers are not monitored or updated by any regularly run process, so they will stay wrong until someone notices and fixes them. If you do not want to update these numbers, ask a project member who is prepared to run a script to do it.
  • refnum should be modified to contain the numeric part of [5] (from the above example, 100003323), omitting any lettered prefixes ("SG", "MP", etc).
  • type should be NRHP for listings not known to be a historic district or National Historic Landmark. For districts, it should be HD; for landmarks, it should be either NHL or NHLD (non-district and district, respectively).
  • article should be the name of the article. Generally this will be what is in [2] (Celebrity Theatre in the example), but see #Article naming for details.
  • name should be what is in [2], with only minimal formatting applied. Ship names are typically rendered in italics (e.g. S.S. Minnow, not S.S. Minnow) and in mixed case, even though they are typically listed in all capital letters. Property names with inverted person names (e.g. "Smith, Bob, House") should be normalized (to "Bob Smith House") in both the name and article fields, but placed alphabetically in the list by last name.
  • address should contain [3] from the listing. It should be edited to include links to state and federal route numbers, and other roads known to have articles on them, if they are present. The same applies to references to bodies of water and other geographical features that might appear. If the address is "Address Restricted", you can substitute the template {{Address Restricted}}.
  • city should contain [4] from the listing. The municipality name should always be spell-corrected and linked (even if this creates a redlink). There is disagreement within the project community on whether or not the word "vicinity" should be placed in this field when present in the listing.
  • county should contain the linked county name. For the District of Columbia lists, this field is suppressed; it should contain District of Columbia.
  • date should contain the listing date [6], in yyyy-mm-dd format
  • image should either be left blank, or populated with an image of the property if you choose to search Wikipedia and/or Commons for one.
  • lat and lon should be populated with decimal geographic coordinates, if they can be readily determined. For "Address Restricted" properties, they should be left blank. If you are not certain you have located the property, leave these blank.
  • description should be left blank, unless you know what the subject of the listing is.
  • commonscat should only be present if there is a Commons category containing images of the listed property.

• Repeat this for each new listing that appears in the given list.
• Once you have added all new listings to a given list, update the count of listings at the top of the list (if one is present) to reflect the new total number of listings.
• At this point it would be appropriate to run the position renumbering script.
• If an article already exists on the subject, add the {{WikiProject National Register of Historic Places}} template to its talk page, with appropriate class and importance=low. Add geographically and subject-appropriate NRHP categories at the bottom of the article, and mention in an appropriate section that it has been listed.

If you do an entire state's worth of updates, you should also update the numbers in the list containing the state summary (e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in Arizona). You should then update that state's entry in {{NRHP date for lists/dates}} to reflect the date of the list from which you processed the updates.

Removing a listing

The weekly update for removing a listing looks something like this, annotated with numbers for later reference:

ARIZONA, PINAL COUNTY[1],
Southern Pacific Railroad Depot[2],
201 W. Main St.[3],
Casa Grande[4], OT02000734[5],
REMOVED, 1/31/2019[6]

Unlike adding a listing, removing a listing does not involve creating a new {{NRHP row}}, but relocating and then modifying the existing row for the listing.

• Find the list containing the listing. You may have to look through a county's or city's sublists to find it. Verify you have the correct listing by comparing the refnum in the notice [2] to that in the list.
• If the list does not already have any former listings, you will have to add a new header below the main list (between it and typical footer material. You can copy the following:

==Former listings==
{{NRHP former header|splitdate=yes}}
[new delistings go here]
|}

• Locate the listing to remove, cut it (to the clipboard) from the main list, and then paste it into the former listing table in the alphabetically appropriate location.
• Make the following modifications:
  • pos should be set appropriately. See instructions in "Adding a listing" for updating this field.
  • type should be set to NRHP-delisted.
  • Add a field delisted_date whose value is item [6] from the delisting notice, formatted as yyyy-mm-dd.
• Update the position fields in the main list. See instructions in "Adding a listing" for updating this field.
• If the list has a count of listings at the top, modify it to account for the removal. A count of the number of delistings should be added if there is a listing count and this is the first delisting.

If the listing has an article, modify it as follows:

• If it has {{Infobox NRHP}}, add to it a delisted field, whose value is the delisting date [6].
• Add the category "Former National Register of Historic Places in state".
• Note in the text that the property has been delisted.

Boundary changes

Boundary changes (increases and decreases) are published by the Park Service when it accepts changes to the size of a historic district. The change is usually filed under a new reference number. Here is a typical boundary increase notice, with numerical annotations for later reference:

ARKANSAS, INDEPENDENCE COUNTY[1],
Batesville Commercial Historic District (Boundary Increase III)[2],
Roughly Main between State & 5th Sts., Broad between Main & Boswell Sts., Central Ave. between College Ave. & RR.[3],
Batesville[4], BC100003328[5],
BOUNDARY INCREASE APPROVED, 1/24/2019[6]

The notice may be for an increase, a decrease, or both (meaning that some areas have been added to the district, while others have been removed). On rare occasions, an individual non-district listing is expanded to a district. It is also sometimes the case that districts get renamed as part of an expansion. The following process propagates these changes into Wikipedia's lists and articles.

• Find the list containing the listing. You may have to look through a county's or city's sublists to find it, and check similarly-named districts to verify whether this boundary change also includes a renaming.
• Modify its {{NRHP row}} as follows:
  • name: this should reflect the new name of the listing, if it has changed.
  • article: this should only be changed if it is a redlink, and name is changed.
  • refnum: add the change's refnum [5] (numerical portion, without "BC" prefix) to this value, separating it from earlier values with a comma and space.
  • type: If the boundary change changes an individual listing to a district, change this to HD (or NHLD, if it is a National Historic Landmark).
  • address: If the address information is unchanged in substance, no action is needed. Otherwise add "; also " followed by the new address material [3].
  • description: If there are no earlier boundary changes, and additional addresses were added to the address field, append "Second set of addresses represent a boundary change approved date", where date is as given in [6]. If there were previous boundary changes, edit the sentence appropriately to include notice of the change.

If the district has an existing article, and it contains an {{infobox NRHP}} template for the listing, modify that infobox as follows:

• If the name changed, alter name to reflect the new name. Both the old and new names should appear in the article lead section.
• If there were no previous boundary changes, add an increase or decrease field, whose value is the date [6], formatted yyyy-mm-dd. If the change is both increase and decrease, pick one field to add. Add a matching increase_refnum or decrease_refnum whose value is the change's refnum [5], without the "BC" prefix.
• If there were previous boundary changes, the fields to add are increase<n> and increase<n>_refnum (or similar for decrease), where <n> is the next number in the change sequence. Note that this scheme will only work for three boundary changes, the current limit of the infobox. (If there are more than three boundary changes, it is best to put all of the refnums in the refnum field, separated by commas, and the dates in the added field.
• If the listing is converted from individual to district, set nrhp_type to HD or NHLD (the latter for National Historic Landmark Districts).
• If it seems appropriate, mention the date of the boundary change in the article text.

Additional documentation

Additional documentation actions are essentially just notices to the public that more information has been submitted to (and accepted by) the Park Service with respect to a single listing. These types of notifications do not carry distinct reference numbers, and do not typically require any action in terms of updating Wikipedia's NRHP lists and articles. Sometimes the documentation includes updated addresses (since streets are sometimes renamed and/or renumbered); if this is the case, the listing information in the NRHP lists and articles should be changed.

Property moved

The Park Service publishes these notices after it approves the moving of a historic building. (The moving of a listed building without this approval is considered grounds for delisting.) Unfortunately, the move notice does not generally include the new address, since the building has not yet been moved. (In some cases, the building(s) are being moved just a short distance on the same property.)

At best, an interested editor should take note of these announcements and follow up with them several months later, using local resources to determine the new address.

Landmark designation

Landmark designations are formatted similarly to regular NRHP listings, except for the designation language and the "NL" prefix to the refnum. For example:

ILLINOIS, COOK COUNTY 
Wrigley Field,
Clark and Addison Rd.
Chicago, NL100005739
NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK DESIGNATED, 09/23/2020 

If the property has not been previously listed on the National Register, it should be added to the appropriate list (following the guidance above). Make sure to mark the listing as either type=NHL or type=NHLD. If the property was already listed, its NRHP listing name and date should be retained in the NRHP list, changing only the type field.

An entry will also need to be added to the appropriate "List of National Historic Landmarks in <state>" (or <city> for landmarks in New York City, Philadelphia, or Boston). These are in almost all respects the same as those found in NRHP listing pages, except that the {{NRHP row}} template begins with {{NRHP row|NHL. In this list, use the official NHL listing name in the name field.

Counts and dates in List of NHLs by state should be updated to reflect the new designation.

If the property already has an article, it should also be updated to include an appropriate category (e.g. Category:National Historic Landmarks in Illinois), and to explicitly mention the landmark designation. If it has an {{Infobox NRHP}}, it should be modified as follows:

• type is set to NHL or NHLD as appropriate
• designated_nrhp_type is set to the date of the designation. Note that this can be different and separate from the NRHP listing date, found in the added field. If the property is newly NRHP-listed, both of these fields should be set to the same date (as Wrigley Field was).

Additional steps should also be taken in Wikimedia Commons. Many NHLs have enough pictures to warrant categories for organizing them; you should check to see if such a category exists or is warranted. To those categories the appropriate parent category "Category:National Historic Landmarks in <place>" should be added, and commonscat fields whose value identifies the category should be added to {{NRHP row}} entries in both the NRHP and NHL listing pages.

Landmark dedesignation

TBD.

Article naming

Articles on NRHP subjects are typically titled by what the National Register entry says. However, there are numerous exceptions. Most significantly, properties are generally listed by historical names, not current ones, which may actually be preferrable from a broader encyclopedic perspective.

• Common names for properties are preferred to listings, if they exist. Such properties often already have articles about them.
• Names should typically omit leading articles such as "The"; a listing for "The Foo Hotel" should link to a (possibly nonexistent) article titled "Foo Hotel".
• Disambiguate names if there are other listings, or existing articles on different subjects with the same name. See Wikipedia:Disambiguation for general guidance. This is typically done by appending " (city, state)" to the name, but may be limited to " (state)" for demonstrably unambiguous countywide resources such as county courthouses. If a listing needing a disambiguated name is described as being in "city vicinity", ascertain how close the listing is to the named city. If it is sufficiently close, use " (city, state)" for disambiguation; otherwise, use " (county County, state)" (e.g. for a listing in the countryside 20 miles from the city).

Sorting

Listings are typically placed into lists based on the sort order of significant words in the listing name, in the order in which they appear. This means that words like "The" do not contribute to the sorting decision. There are several exceptions to this general rule:

• If proper names appear in the listing (e.g. "John Smith House"), place entry in list according to the surname ("Smith" in this case). Listings without given names should precede those that have them, and listings with the same surname and different given names should be sorted first by the surname, then the given name. "Smith" sorts before "John Smith" sorts before "Michael Smith".
• For listings with abbreviated words, sort according to the full word, not the abbreviation. For example, listings including the abbrevation "St." or "Ste." for "Saint" and "Sainte", should be sorted under "Saint" or "Sainte". Listings containing "Mt." for "Mount", should sort under "Mount".
• Listings including ship names should be sorted by the name of the vessel, not any prefixes such as "SS", "M/V", or "USS". Listings involving multiple ships (e.g. some shipwreck listings) sort by the first vessel name.