Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Standardizing lists of NRHPs

I had a message on my talk page from SEWilco suggesting that I convert the San Francisco NRHP list into a table that includes geocodes and now one from Murderbike here suggesting the table format that he's been adding to List of Registered Historic Places in Washington. Personally, I like the idea of having the geocodes so that people can quickly create a Google map with all of the locations pinpointed. I also like the idea of allowing a photo of each location and the NRHP ID in the lists (btw, MurderBike, it's NRHP, not NHRP as you have in the Washington list), but am ambivalent about the need for the Built/Founded and Comments columns.

Shall we try to build some consensus on a standardized format or is the consensus that each locale's list can have its own look? --Sanfranman59 (talk) 21:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Is everyone familiar with the GeoGroup Template shown to the right? It's pretty handy. dm (talk) 22:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think standardizing is a good idea. And I wouldn't mind switching the Built/Founded parameter for coordinates if folks thought that was a good idea. And thanks for pointing out the silly mistake I've been perpetuating. Erg. Murderbike (talk) 21:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the table format for the smaller NHL lists was discussed here, can someone point out the relevant archived discussions? Or was that in a test page's Talk? One reason the Comments column was added was to give some hint of what each thing is, particularly for redlinked items. If Comments grows beyond a few lines then enough material exists for a stub (and Comments then shrinks to a brief summary). -- SEWilco (talk) 21:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Some of the sites don't have coordinates listed, like sensitive archaeological sites and some shipwrecks. The National Register database also may be missing geocodes for historic districts that span several city blocks or that are multiple property submissions. That said, I think it would be a good idea to geocode these lists, in case someone wants to make a map and visit those sites. In fact, I've thought of doing that myself with Google Earth so I can plan out NRHP photo tours. I have the National Register database loaded on my web server (the same location where the infobox generator lives), so I could set up some queries to get a list of latitude/longitudes for these sites. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 21:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If a standard format is agreed upon, a skeleton could be added to the Project page. But coordinates are optional, as we fill in the blanks with what we can find. A note would mention that some locations are omitted to protect the site. We might want to include an HTML comment "not for publication" in such a coordinate field to remind editors to not speculate with their GPS readings (locals might think they know where a site is, but WP:V requires a published source). -- SEWilco (talk) 21:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I have noticed a few NRHP sites with unpublished coordinates where a local or state park has been created to recognize the site. In some cases I've then used the coordinate of the park, although in one case the park map includes the location of the protected site. -- SEWilco (talk) 22:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

There are some NRHP site polygons available, but usually the coordinates of a landmark or main entrance are used for large sites. Some such coordinates are in the USGS GNIS database of named places (if you can properly identify which "Spring Creek" is the NRHP). -- SEWilco (talk) 21:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

yeah, I kinda forgot about how the one time I used NRHP listed coordinates to find something, it was way off compared to Google Maps. But I have no idea how accurate/inaccurate Google Maps coordinates are. Murderbike (talk) 22:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Most of the NHL Lists are now pretty similar (check them out at List of U.S. National Historic Landmarks by state). Is there any reason to not use the same format for all of the NRHP lists? Also, some counties have been broken out of state lists; given the magnitude of these lists, I think that makes sense.--Appraiser (talk) 22:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The format of the NHL list looks good to me. There's no sense in reinventing the wheel.

SEWilco: The link to the list of geocode coordinates for San Francisco sites was very helpful. Does this such a list exist for every state/county? --Sanfranman59 (talk) 23:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I don't care about a "Year listed" parameter. Seems to be about the least interesting detail we could have. As well, the "county" and "locality" parameters would be a bit redundant since the lists are organized by county and locality. Murderbike (talk) 23:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The /coords lists were mentioned in this archived discussion. -- SEWilco (talk) 02:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

How does this look? --Sanfranman59 (talk) 07:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

It looks good. I would suggest giving neighborhood names, according to some official neighborhood districting scheme for San Francisco, instead of repeating "San Francisco" for each row. I would suggest dropping the reference number column, as reference number is really not an interesting fact, it is only useful to look up info that we will have used in developing the articles, so readers don't want to see it. I do suggest restoring a date listed on NRHP column. That way readers can sort and look for the most-recently-created NRHPs. Murderbike is fair enough to comment that it is not that interesting, but I do think it has merit, and it is certainly better than reference number. I also suggest that, as a general rule, a photograph thumbnail ought to be included only if that photograph is included in the NRHP article it covers. The one photo of James C. Flood does not appear in the James C. Flood Mansion article. (This specific criticism about James C. Flood also applies to the List of National Historic Landmarks in California article that I have been contributing to, but i did not add that pic myself.) This general rule is important to follow so that readers trust what we are conveying in the thumbnails, that they will be rewarded with a larger version of that pic and more explanation about it if they go to the article. About the black coloring of the column headers, which is copied from the List of NHLs in CA format: I am not so much a fan of it as i once was. I suggest choosing a new color scheme for NRHPs and another new one for NHLs. Then in mixed lists it may be possible to indicate the NHLs among NRHPs by some use of that color in the NHL rows. How about Blue for NRHPs, Green for NHLs? See List of National Historic Landmarks in Idaho for a yellow color scheme example. doncram (talk) 08:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I feel like ID# kind of implies date added, making the date added redundant, and making it easier to do further research on a site. But I've never seen any reason for the date added to be useful. And really, the ID# is useful, 'cause I know it's going to be quite a while before all the tens of thousands of sites get articles for themselves. I definitely think "Locality" for a city's list is redundant, though I've never made a city list. I like the idea of a two color top scheme though. As for the photo, all you have to do is click on it to get a bigger version of it. The only reason I've put different photos in a list, is to give a little variety, like a bonus for people that look at the list. Murderbike (talk) 08:38, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

You could put the ID# at the end of the Description of redlinked items, or fill the Description with part of the PD text from the NPS site and conclude with a link to the NPS page (which has the ID #). You don't need to do all that before publishing the list; people can edit the individual items after the conversion. You might fill in a couple of the Descriptions so there is an example for others. -- SEWilco (talk) 15:53, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

On reference ID# vs. Date: I can see the ID# serving that way for you, as you know the first 2 digits are the year of NRHP listing, but general readers do not, and we editors couldn't possibly want to explain it to them, it would be easier to just state the year or the full day-month-year date. Also I speculate the ID# sounds useful to you as you may use it in doing NRHP lookups. I virtually never use ID# in doing NRHP lookups, as I do my lookups in the [Elkman NRHP infobox generator] searching by state and a word or two in the site name which always works fine. That further generates hits on boundary increases and other associated NRHP sites that I am happy to learn of and would use in article crafting, while ID# searching would not. An ID# column would not fly in a Peer Review / Good Article / Featured Article / Featured List review. An ID# column could possibly even be a Manual of Style specific violation. We wouldn't want to craft a standard that had a built-in style problem. As SEWilco suggests, and had nicely implemented in the state NHL tables, the reference ID# can live in the description field temporarily, until an article is created and description is refined. FYI, here is [a dated version of one of the NHL lists when it showed ID#s that way]doncram (talk) 18:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

About suggesting a rule that list-table thumb photo ought to appear in article, I do appreciate variety in photos. I advocate putting multiple photos in the article. If you want to change the thumbnail in the list-article, you can just be sure to add that pic at least somewhere down in the article. Also, links to commons galleries of photos are good, as have been implemented well in New Orleans NHL articles. I suppose a weaker version of the "rule" could be to relaxed to ensuring that the photo is covered at least in the commons gallery linked from the article. Such a "rule" proposal is meant as a guideline, it could come up in Good Article review of an NRHP site article, or Featured List review of a list-table and doesn't matter until then. doncram (talk) 18:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

On pasting in PD text, SEWilco knows I do oppose that for NHL sites, which thankfully are nearing completion (after much deletion of pasted-in NHL webpage text in some state articles such as PA and CA). I find the best policy is to revert, immediately, any wholesale additions of PD text, but that is another discussion that SEWilco and I have engaged in elsewhere. Just a simple reference ID# and blank space is more inviting and appropriate for temporary use. I do hope that there is not a general source of outdated, error-ridden, poor quality text on NRHP sites available as there has been for NHL sites, as I am sure someone would blindly paste that into NRHP site articles.... :(

By the way, I think it would be good to focus joint effort on fixing up one NRHP list and promoting that toward Featured List, to learn from review process, rather than working forever implementing a flawed standard. We're mostly talking about a standard that is for "finished" list-articles, not temporary ones, right? doncram (talk) 18:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the Description in these List articles should be rather brief. I don't encourage pasting of the entire NPS PD text in the description, but often there is a sentence or paragraph which suitably summarizes the site. Sentences might accumulate in the Description field for a redlink, but after there is a paragraph or two that will get drained into a stub article and the Description can provide a brief summary again. A standard should encourage the Description to be brief, and can guide readers to the NRHP stub/article creation process. -- SEWilco (talk) 19:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I think working together on one small list first is a good idea. Some of the state lists have been broken into county lists (e.g. List of Registered Historic Places in Lauderdale County, Alabama) and I think that is a good idea in general, given the magnitutude of the state lists. Since Lauderdale County, Alabama is a short one, I propose making that the standard, work it to what we think is "complete", get it peer-reviewed, and then FLC. At that point we'll have a roadmap for every county NRHP list in the country. (I'm not partial to that county - it's just the shortest one I found.)--Appraiser (talk) 19:11, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like a few of you have pretty definite ideas of how you would like the list to look, so I think I'll step back from this being the newcomer to the block (I just wish I hadn't spent hours and hours yesterday working on the prototype San Francisco list I created ... DOH!). Working on a smaller list is a better way to go until consensus is reached.

You did great work, it is a great contribution. I only commented with some criticisms because it was put forth as the one to discuss here, for a model. Really, u wasted no time. Hard luck about there being no official neighborhoods, as there are in many other cities. What about city council districts or census districts or any other districts? But I suppose if no one knows where the borders are, then those aren't helpful either. doncram (talk) 04:04, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Echo - your time wasn't wasted; actually I think the format you used is not far off from what we'll end up with.--Appraiser (talk) 14:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not totally convinced yet that I can't find some official source with neighborhood boundaries in San Francisco. There are definitely maps with neighborhood names, but the ones I've seen don't have boundaries. There are 11 (I think) numbered supervisory districts, but no one refers to them. Everyone says "I live in the Castro/Noe Valley/Pacific Heights/Nob Hill etc etc". There are certainly voting precincts and census districts, but I don't think it makes sense to put them on a list like the one we're talking about. --Sanfranman59 (talk) 04:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

One comment in response to the suggestion that neighborhood designations be used instead of city is that, there may be no "official" neighborhood boundaries. There aren't in San Francisco. I learned this today when I called several offices at City Hall. I was quite surprised by this since every San Franciscan I know knows the name of the neighborhood in which they live. A second problem is that while useful for people who know the city in question, the neighborhood designations are useless and even counterproductive for people who don't. I ran into this inconvenience when I was updating the Los Angeles County list and had to figure out in which neighborhood to add each of the new listings.

Newbie question ... people are referring to NPS PD text. What's "PD text"? I know PD can refer to Public Domain, but that doesn't seem like the right context here. --Sanfranman59 (talk) 02:54, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

PD definitely means public domain. It's referring to info that is easy to find at places like www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com, which can describe a property, and since it's federal government stuff, it's public domain. Oh, and don't feel bad about having done a bunch of work you may have to change, I've spent days worth of hours on the Washington list, and will probably have to change a bunch of it pretty soon. Oh, and I've spun the Pierce County list off of the Washington list, and have started filling in a bunch of the descriptions, and as many refs as I can. And honestly, so much of this is done, that it might actually be easier for a group project than the Alabama one. I'll have nearly all of the photos done within the next couple weeks, and there's tables for a majority of the localities. Murderbike (talk) 03:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes PD refers to public domain. But I actually don't understand what is the NPS PD text that SEWilco refers to. There are webpages for each NHL at the National Park Service (see any one of the California NHLs for an example link), but not for NRHPs in general. And Murderbike, I am afraid you are mistaken about www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com, that is a private site masquerading as an official one. That site copies and serves up public domain information, but IMO we should not use it as a reference in articles and direct traffic to it. I don't know how they make money or what their evil intentions are, but the fact that they seem deliberately misleading turns me off. Check their "contact" info, it says something like "to be provided in May" of no particular year. I do use printouts from it for the NRHPs in a given county, when I am setting out to visit sites and take pictures. Also, I am not aware of it having descriptions written about NRHP sites, it just serves up NRIS database information as far as i know. If they did write descriptions, we could not copy them as it is not public domain. WE are the ones writing descriptions, and they will probably get around to copying them from us, that is the nature of our contributing to Wikipedia. doncram (talk) 04:04, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

NPS refers to the National Park Service (nps.gov), where the Register can be searched. -- SEWilco (talk) 04:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Eek! I had no idea. Glad I haven't referenced them at all. Murderbike (talk) 04:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

As far as formatting goes, what about the subdivision issue? I mean the counties. Within most states, some counties have lots of NRHPs, others few. With Florida, we've started breaking out more counties into their own lists. But should each county have it's own article, even the ones with less than five? Part of me likes the idea of all a state's NRHPs listed in one place, but I can see how that makes the list inordinately long in some cases. But does breaking out only some counties on the main list make things look uneven? Georgia has theirs in alphabetical sections, which is another option. I'm just thinking out loud, as it were. Other thoughts? -Ebyabe (talk) 00:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be reasonable to lump several counties into one article, especially if they can be grouped logically. I'm thinking of counties that are in the Iron Range, for example.--Appraiser (talk) 05:57, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Just noticed that the Alabama list has a separate page for each county, even the ones with only a few sites. Hmmmm.... -Ebyabe (talk) 20:23, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Candidate county lists of RHPs to work on together

Sounds like several of us would cooperate and work on a county list. Great. Let's discuss candidates. If the goal is to select a county list where a lot of RHP articles are already created, that would likely be in Minnesota where Appraiser and others work, or in Dutchess County or thereabouts where Daniel Case works. Others have been suggested. Perhaps we could comment on pros and cons of various candidates? doncram (talk) 05:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

My humble suggestion is that we continue to focus on the state NHL lists. Perhaps it's because when I tried working on my local county (List of Registered Historic Places in New York County, New York), it was a bit overwhelming. dm (talk) 05:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Good point, the NHLs are the honor roll of NRHPs, and we have yet to nominate a single NHL list up to Featured List. Do u think the New York NHLs list one ready yet? Some questions/unresolved issues remain from its recent peer review, but perhaps it could go up already. I would support nominating the Minnesota list, too. doncram (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the New York, New York county is just too big. There is no reason we have to limit ourselves to groupings of NRHP by county, however. You could choose to divide New York County into several chunks to be addressed by the expanded table-formats we seem to be talking about. Also, several counties might be usefully combined into one table, e.g. "RHPs in Northwestern Washington" or all of "RHPs in Central New York", not just RHPs in Onondaga County. doncram (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Registered Historic Places in Lauderdale County, Alabama

List of Registered Historic Places in Lauderdale County, Alabama was suggested because it is relatively short. But there are shorter ones, and not one of us is in Alabama, and there are very few if any articles created for the NRHPs it covers. So i don't like this one. doncram (talk) 05:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Registered Historic Places in Pierce County, Washington

List of Registered Historic Places in Pierce County, Washington was suggested, as Murderbike is there and has descriptions and pictures for many of the sites. It has very few of the articles created, so actually I think it would take a long time to work on to get it up to a "finished" state, but that is okay by me. I am concerned whether there would be enough source info available for those of us who are far away, though. doncram (talk) 05:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Dmadeo points out we should work on state NHL lists first. List of National Historic Landmarks in Washington is incomplete, has red-links for about 3 NHLs. So we can't work on Pierce County until those are done. :) doncram (talk) 03:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a good point, but I'm on a roll. As soon as I'm done with this list, I'll do articles for the three WA NHLs that don't have 'em, and standardize the table. Murderbike (talk) 21:57, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and by "done", I mean to a point where everything is done but taking care of redlinks and photos. Murderbike (talk) 21:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so I'm about to move on to the Tacoma section of this list, but I really want to take out the "City or Town" column, and just use the "Locality" column for GPS coordinates, and not worry about unofficial neighborhoods and whatnot. But, I'm not super good with table coding, so could probably use some help in figuring out the sizes of the columns once the one is removed. I suppose I also want to make sure that folks think this is an acceptable thing to do for a city-specific table. Murderbike (talk) 21:52, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I shouldn't be saying this, but Tacoma seems to have official neighborhoods. There are wikipedia articles about several of them at least. The Hilltop Neighborhood, Tacoma, Washington article links to this City of Tacoma neighborhoods webpage. At a minimum, it would be appropriate to add mention of the NRHPs in each neighborhood to the article about the neighborhood. You can just go ahead and be bold, but why not cover the neighborhoods in the table? doncram (talk) 02:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that map does look pretty official. I wish it was bigger, I'll dig around and see if there's a better version of it that wouldn't be hard to pinpoint streets on. Murderbike (talk) 02:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, now that I look at it, it looks like those sections are kind of bureaucratic divisions that totally ignore known neighborhoods like Hilltop, Fircrest, Old Tacoma, etc. I think that if I used those sections it could confuse people that know neighborhoods in Tacoma (like myself), but haven't ever heard of these Neighborhood Councils and their divisions (like myself). But I don't know if it's better to use divisions like this, or traditionally known ones that might be harder to pinpoint boundaries. Murderbike (talk) 02:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

There are, i count, about 89 NRHP sites in your Tacoma list. I think some subdivision, in a sortable column, would help. You certainly can use the legal neighborhood council districts to do that; it would certainly not be inappropriate. Assuming there are not wikipedia articles on each one, you could just create one separate article on the neighborhood districting in Tacoma, and set upredirects from each neighborhood council name to that one article. That's a viable way to go, and I think preferable to no geo-grouping of the 89 or so. Or, I think u have to find some other MECE districting scheme that exists out there, perhaps real estate system districts like apparently will work in San Francisco. doncram (talk) 04:33, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

A further thought: I don't like the idea of avoiding a districting scheme because it might possibly "confuse" people. This wikipedia project is educational. Educate them about it. Similar reasoning would be that we shouldn't write about NRHP sites that aren't well known. And frankly I bet more people do know about the neighborhood council areas in Tacoma than know about the 89 NRHPs. doncram (talk) 04:41, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I wrote to some city person today asking them about those divisions, and a different set of divisions (business districts), and whether or not there was some other official sectioning going on. Whatever happens, I'll use something, and if I think it's confusing, I'll just figure out a good way to clarify it, whether with a note, or an article along the lines of Neighborhoods in Tacoma. Murderbike (talk) 04:43, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I got it done enough that I put it in place. I'll move over to finish the NHLs in Washington list now. Murderbike (talk) 09:54, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I wish I had noticed this list sooner, even more so I wish it were cited. It will definitely help though. Murderbike (talk) 10:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Registered Historic Places in San Francisco County, California

This county is an interesting one, includes NHLs, ships, many of us have probably visited there. An issue exposed is what would be well-defined neighborhoods for use in a "locality" column, but that could be handled. Not sure how big this is, may be huge. I like this one to work on. doncram (talk) 05:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The traditional list version is List of Registered Historic Places in San Francisco County, California. An alternative, table-based version is here in Sanfranman59's userspace: User:Sanfranman59/List of Registered Historic Places in San Francisco, California2. The table version lists 136 or so NRHPs, but it may omit some NRHPs in the list version. For example there are two Yerba Buena Island NRHPs, one a lighthouse and one a naval training center, both identified in the list version, although perhaps pointing to just one Yerba Buena article; the table version combined those into just one. (IMO, there should be two entries in the table version.) There are NHL tables that have as many or more entries, so this is not too big to handle in one table. doncram (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The list in my userspace does include both Yerba Buena sites: "Yerba Buena Light" and "Quarters 1, Yerba Buena Island Naval Training Station". I think I looked the latter up and it's just the one building that's on the register, not the entire naval training station. --Sanfranman59 (talk) 02:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm about 80% done with adding neighborhoods to the San Francisco NRHP table in my user space. I've also added NRHP IDs that weren't on the page with geocoding coordinates to which SEWilco referred me. Once I finish adding as many neighborhoods/locales as I can, there remain a few loose ends:

(1) Verify the list of sites against the official NPS NRHP list (if only it could be found in one place).

(2) Implement the color-coding scheme discussed elsewhere on this talk page. I haven't been following that discussion very closely. Someone who has, please feel free to modify the table in my user space accordingly.

(3) Decide what to do about locations that don't fit into the neighborhood/locale scheme I've been using (e.g. shipwreck sites in the Bay, cable cars, Farallon Islands, the Bay Bridge). Shall we just leave the locale as San Francisco for these sites?

(4) Come up with geocoding coordinates for the sites that didn't have them on the aforementioned page. --Sanfranman59 (talk) 21:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Re:(3) I would just put the coordinates if you have them, or San Francisco if you don't. Murderbike (talk) 21:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm ... I just caught up with the discussion of the Dakota County, MN table. It looks like I've got quite a bit more work to do to bring the SF table in line with that standard. I need to:

(1) Replace the column of NRHP IDs with the date listed (although I still think the ID is a useful piece of information to have in the table ... the date doesn't do much for me, especially if it doesn't sort chronologically)

(2) Move the locality to a separate column from the geocode coordinates (I guess I'll use "Neighborhood" as the column heading?)

(3) Add address information to the column with the geocode coordinates (where applicable)

It sure would be nice if there were a way to cut and paste columns like in a spreadsheet (there's not, is there?). The only thing I know to do is to copy the text out to another application and do some creative sorting, cutting, pasting and searching/replacing. --Sanfranman59 (talk) 22:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't be discouraged about all that "needs" to be done. Just move what you have to main space and we'll collaborate on the standardization.--Appraiser (talk) 03:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Done --Sanfranman59 (talk) 04:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Registered Historic Places in Onondaga County, New York

I just put this forward to be fair, so my work could be criticised too. It isn't really ready, i don't think. But List of Registered Historic Places in Onondaga County, New York is one I have worked on, and there are a couple wikipedians in the county working on it from time to time. It is "complex" in that it includes a city, Syracuse, within which there are well-defined neighborhoods that should be the locality, and then there are towns in the county outside of Syracuse. There are no National Historic Landmarks at all. An advantage for this one is that it is in New York State, whose state office on historic preservation makes available, on-line, scanned copies of the NRHP text and photo documents. So good source info is readily enough available, though tedious to download through the state's clunky system. (Similar NRHP scanned docs available also for Illinois, Pennsylvania, too.) doncram (talk) 05:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

This has been reorganized now and is a decent model I think, of a county list having a major city in it. Two tables both work pretty well now. In the Syracuse table, i have so far identified the official city neighborhood for only some of the NRHPs, but can do that for all eventually. doncram (talk) 05:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Registered Historic Places in Dakota County, Minnesota

I'll throw this out as an option. It has 33 NRHP; about 15 articles have been created already. User:Elkman and I have photos of some of the others ready to upload. I should have mentioned this one initially instead of the Alabama one, since it's more pertinent to the work I've been doing. (List of Registered Historic Places in Minnesota hasn't been broken up yet.)--Appraiser (talk) 14:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The MN list is 95 kilobytes in a minimalist format, so it should be broken up during expansion. -- SEWilco (talk) 16:20, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been playing around with List of Registered Historic Places in Dakota County, Minnesota today; feedback is welcome. And I agree that larger (high number of nrhps) counties should be broken out.--Appraiser (talk) 20:43, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You and Elkman have done a nice job already. This is the best candidate so far, although then I am not sure what the rest of us can do besides comment. I like the different color for the column tops. I like the placement of the google map link at the top of the article, though I wonder if it could display something more descriptive than "Map of all coordinates". In the google map, currently, the sites are listed as "List of Registered Historic Places in Dakota County%2C Minnesota" and by item number, rather than by name of site (which I assume would be the intention eventually). Right now I am curious what controls the site listing name and item number, i don't see that in the table, perhaps they are automatically generated from the article title. doncram (talk) 00:24, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I think theres a name= field that will fix the labelling. I don't know of any way to change the "Map of all coordinates" or the funky heading at the top left of the map.--Appraiser (talk) 01:02, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I added name= to all the entries. -- SEWilco (talk) 03:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much!--Appraiser (talk) 14:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm curious if people think that bigger counties (like Pierce) shouldn't be broken up by locality, instead of the Dakota example where all the listings are in one table, with locality specified. Murderbike (talk) 01:16, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I think one big table is better, otherwise it is not sortable and space is wasted on repeated the column headings. Also, as one big table, the importance of locality is lessened a bit, which is good IMO. For example reader can more easily find a particular site they have heard about, but for which the reader doesn't know the town. I was going to comment on the Pierce County, Washington example, that currently there are tables with just one entry in them. Certainly such a table does not need to be sortable! :) For the Onondaga County, New York one though, I may keep 2 tables, one for the towns exclusive of Syracuse, one for the neighborhoods in Syracuse. Those two tables will have slightly different column headers. doncram (talk) 03:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

That makes sense. Tacoma easily has half of the entries, so I think it makes sense to at least keep them in their own table. Murderbike (talk) 03:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Bigger tables are better, so why not combine Minneapolis-area counties into one table? If Minnesota was to be divided into several big chunks each combining multiple counties, Minneapolis area could possibly be one of those chunks. doncram (talk) 22:33, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Coordinates As well, is there something easy to use to get those coordinates templates? Murderbike (talk) 02:02, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Define "get". -- SEWilco (talk) 03:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I suppose "make" might be a better word. I just didn't want to have to go through ten different steps to make the template for each site. Murderbike (talk) 03:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I've sometimes found the coordinates within the site's documents, and they are in the coordinate database which I already converted. Often the coordinates are also in the GNIS name database: http://geonames.usgs.gov/ -- SEWilco (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Order What order should the sites be kept in? Currently the Dakota County list is ordered by town and then alphabetically by site name. I think initial ordering alphabetically by site name is better. The town column, like others, is sortable, so the reader can look by town if that suits the reader. But it is a puzzle at first, why is this list not alphabetical, if the initial order is not alphabetical. If you choose for it not to be alphabetical, that would have to be explained in text introducing the table. Then if you really mean town to be more primary than site name, then town column ought to be first, then a site name column. Personally I'd rather just put it in alphabetical order. FYI, that is how most of the NHL lists have been redone, eventually. doncram (talk) 03:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed.--Appraiser (talk) 14:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorting by county/town made sense in a large report, which is where much of the info came from. With the sortable location column that becomes less important. Order it by site name. -- SEWilco (talk) 18:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Color Hey, what about using the blue from the infobox as the color for the top of the table, a little consistency? Murderbike (talk) 18:08, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I like that idea. There are also blue shades for NRHP historic districts, NHLs, NHL historic districts. Potentially these colors could be used in the rows for items of that type, perhaps coloring the leading number cell in the row. Like the colored boxes in the manual tracking table of NHL article progress, on the project page of WP:NRHP. There may be display issues with the contrast of font color vs. background color in some of those, and we might want to choose to use black font only and hence have to change some of the background shades chosen, but that could be fixed universally to be consistent with our choices, by adjusting the NRHP infobox template. doncram (talk) 22:26, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

See new Color section below.--Appraiser (talk) 22:49, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Sortable dates It includes day-dates of NRHP listing, but as formatted now the dates don't sort properly. Most NHL sortable date columns use "DD MMM" "YYYY" format, such as 11 Nov 2000 which happens to sort properly. Also I recently learned about a different "date-sortable" format, as in "dts|11|11|2000" or , for example used in List of Liberty ships: A-F. doncram (talk) 22:26, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Try adding {{smd}} to the first date entry. See archives.[1] -- SEWilco (talk) 04:02, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Lead I like that you have a lead to the list-article now. It starts off reading as if it is the wikipedia article on the county, though, so it is a bit roundabout. Another approach is to try to give an overview of the count of sites, and what types they are, as the current lead for List of National Historic Landmarks in New York tries to do. To be able to write that kind of overview in much detail, you have to have a pretty good command over all the articles that the list covers, but you can state how many historic districts there are, how many houses, how many of at least a few categories. doncram (talk) 06:07, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Upfront See-Also I think the "see-also" to List of RHPs in Minnesota should be moved to the end of the article.

Template box The "Updated as of" a certain date statement belongs at the bottom of the article, or perhaps in some kind of template box having key facts about the whole county list. Updated as of date, number of NRHPs, number that are HDs vs. regular NRHPs, earliest declared, latest declared? Just an idea. doncram (talk) 06:07, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Registered Historic Places in Florida

Pick a county, any county, none have redlinks. Some have been broken out to separate lists (the largest are Hillsborough, Polk and Volusia). Though St. Johns is possible. It's a small list, but the county contains St. Augustine, which has both of Florida's National Monuments and 6 NHLs. And is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the continental US, or something to that effect. :) -Ebyabe (talk) 03:22, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

WOW! that is awesome about the whole list! The list-article looks great in other ways, too, with layout and pics, besides the fact it has no red-links. Also the St. Johns County would be an interesting one to do as a separate list-article, but would breaking it out detract from the main Florida RHP list? Wow, again, the FL RHP list-article is grand. doncram (talk) 04:08, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I concur. Very nice work.--Appraiser (talk) 14:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I had nothing better to do for four months or so a while back. :) Used Microsoft Excel to create the basic stub templates to copy and paste, which I highly recommend. -Ebyabe (talk) 00:34, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

As far as breaking out St. Johns, I'll discuss that up in the overall formatting discussion. -Ebyabe (talk) 00:35, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

And planning on getting lots of pics in and around St. Augustine soon-ish, if that helps. -Ebyabe (talk) 00:37, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Ebyabe is to be commended for all the hard work he's put into this list for my adopted home state. I don't think there is another state, etc. that has no red links in its list. I know Delaware, Rhode Island, and D.C. have lots of them. clariosophic (talk) 14:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Much thanks! I thought that if there were at least stubs, others could come along and expand them. Which you and others have done, which gratifies me greatly. :) -Ebyabe (talk) 16:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Now, to get pictures of them all! It does get one away from the computer, doncha know. :) -Ebyabe (talk) 16:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Registered Historic Places in Middlesex County, Massachusetts

You might want to look at this list which is for the largest county in Massachusetts. It has more listings than many states and is broken down by municipalities, since every square inch of the commonwealth (state) is part of a municipality. Many of the municipalities have been broken out and have their own lists. See List of Registered Historic Places in Cambridge, Massachusetts for one example. Another is my hometown, List of Registered Historic Places in Newton, Massachusetts, which has over 180 listings, which I've further broken down by village within the city. I had started to put them in table form, using one I saw in another place. The tables you all are promoting are much better. Apparently they're sortable, which would make it much easier to put Newton back into alpha order with a village column that's sortable. Having images in boxes is better than how they're done now in Florida or in Cambridge, Mass. They take too long to load for people like me that are stuck with dial-up connections. Other places that are broken down below the city level are Cook County, Illinois (Chicago) and Suffolk County, Mass. (Boston). It is difficult to find places if you're not familiar with the layout of those cities. clariosophic (talk) 14:01, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Note. I didn't intend for this to be part of the List of Candidates, but someone made it so. My intent was to show that all counties are not equal. You might want to consider a city or town of historical significance, such as Cambridge, Mass. However, I think St. Johns County, Florida, would be better. It could easily be broken out. For FA, we're going to need a place with extraordinary historical appeal. clariosophic (talk) 17:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I think we might run in to the problem of what constitutes "historical significance" being a bit POV. It feels a lot easier to work with articles that are already well beyond the basic bare bones list of sites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Murderbike (talk • contribs) 18:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Naming convention for NRHP places in a list: use NRHP name or not?

I commented to Sanfranman79, in Talk:List of Registered Historic Places in San Francisco, California, that: "The only naming convention that makes sense to me is to use the NRHP program name for a site, and to state that up front. In this list, some sites are named differently. E.g. the ship Eureka is given a helpful parenthetical explanation. To me that explanation should be in the description column not the site name. (Note, there are National Historic Landmark ships, and perhaps non-NHL ships, which do have parenthetical expressions as part of their NHL program names. So, in a list of NHL sites, it is appropriate to use those, consistently applying NHL program names for all sites in a list.) If the NRHP name is no longer the common name for a site, e.g. Farallone Islands rather than current common usage Farallon Islands, I think it is best to show the NRHP name here but link to the article under the common name. As done in most of the NHL list-article pages." This was perhaps unfair to direct to Sanfranman, as the edit history shows that a parenthetical expression was already part of Eureka's name (though he grew it longer) and Farallone Islands were already named Farallon Islands. But my point remains, we are describing NRHP sites and I think we should use the historic NRHP name for the sites. You can show a different common name, too, in italics below a given site name. doncram (talk) 08:12, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Not much was said about this but we shouldn't fly in the face of Wiki's naming convention which is to use the common name. Some of the NRHP names for sites are absurd and make no sense to those who know the site by its common name. The NRHP is a giant beauracracy. Wiki isn't. NRHP names should probably only be used when they are the common name. I think this is especially true with the archaeological sites. Take this one in McLean County, Illinois - the Warren Bane Site, uh-huh, the what? I lived in McLean County for 20+ years and had never heard of the Warren Bane Site. I have, however, been well aware of the Grand Village of the Kickapoo, the same place by its common name. Can anyone give a good reason why we should follow the NRHP's naming convention other than "because the government does it"?69.137.246.61 (talk) 12:31, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I think we agree that article titles should be the commonly-known name, per Wiki convention. The question is about what to put in the column "Registered Historic Place name" (see List of Registered Historic Places in Dakota County, Minnesota for example). It makes sense to me to use the NRHP name there, but pipe-link to the actual article name and add a note in the "Summary" column or a parenthetical entry in the "Registered Historic Place name" column with the common name.--Appraiser (talk) 13:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

List-article first, or do all the articles first? A false question

If you want to create a list-article that is a model, and/or that could reach Featured List rating, you have to create an article for every one of the NRHPs that it indexes. So it is kind of a false question, to ask which is first, the list-article or the articles. However, what is the quickest process towards getting there with both? I think the quickest way is to identify all of the list items but waste no time with descriptions of any item that does not yet have an article. Note, if you do not have an article on the given NRHP which is an implicit source for information in the description, then you might feel you have to add a reference to the list-article for the info you put in a description of a site, and then later you or others will probably have to remove the reference from the list-article. In my view, it is better to put that reference directly into the article about the site.

Also, I don't really believe any list-article including red-links is accurate in the names and locations of what it links. I have found it necessary to make a zillion changes to list-articles as I have gone into creating articles on the sites it indexes. And, even if what I say doesn't matter, I am told that Featured List reviewers will usually not allow any red-links whatsoever. doncram (talk) 00:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

But do we need a list-article to be FA before we adopt a style as a standard for all the lists in a category? Murderbike (talk) 00:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps not. But I have a feeling that after we get one to FA, there'll be an expectation by reviewers that all the lists will look similar. Since we have the time, why not take advantage to figure out what the "standards" should be? Or at least guidelines. -Ebyabe (talk) 16:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Alright, so do we do an NHL one, or an NRHP one first? Is NHLs in New York ready? Will we be able to use an NHL list to base our NRHP lists on? Murderbike (talk) 17:02, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

To some extent the NRHP list development would be informed by what happens in Featured List review on the NHLs in New York list-article, which I assume will be first. It is getting closer to being ready, knock on wood. (But can you look at it and comment, in Wikipedia:Peer review/List of National Historic Landmarks in New York/archive1‎, the peer review for it which is still open?) doncram (talk) 17:20, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

For example the NRHP descriptions column treatment would be informed by how the NY NHL list descriptions are considered. As i have expressed, I prefer for the descriptions to be based on the articles that the list-article covers, and prefer not to have separate in-line citations for each description. Some have expressed, though, that a list-article is like any other article, and ought not to rely on other wikipedia articles but rather has to be individually sourced to external, verifiable sources. So another way to go with the references is to include in-line citations to external sources to support each of the descriptions. List of Chicago Landmarks, which is a Featured Article, did that. Also, Altairisfar added such for List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama, linking to the NHL summary webpages for each article. He must have felt this is necessary/appropriate, despite the fact i had created at least a stub article for each Alabama NHL already, each of which would already refer to the corresponding NHL summary. I dislike the NHL summaries as sources, by the way, for anything but establishing the date of NHL designation. doncram (talk) 17:20, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I would imagine the problem with depending on the outside articles for sourcing, is that articles are always changing. If the statement in the summary is at some point removed from the linked article, then we have a verifiability problem. It definitely feels safer to include inline cites. As well, some people may not care enough to read a whole article, but like the comfort of seeing the cites. I know I do. Murderbike (talk) 17:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't want to add 257 plus footnotes to the NY and NYC NHL list-articles. And, the description column top as a whole does get a clever footnote, refering to all of the various NHL webpages plus sources in the articles indexed, see List of NYS NHLs, Also, a List of Pennsylvania state parks which reached Featured List is done this way, with descriptions implicitly sourced by the articles. Perhaps a reviewer could require that the list-article description material be obvious enough to have been covered in the first paragraph of the indexed article, that would be a compromise. Anyhow, it remains an empirical question whether FL reviewers would insist upon it. Again, personally, I don't want to have to do in-line citations for the descriptions in an index list-article. But this is all to say, we don't know what will fly or not, necessarily, so should bring some up to Featured List before doing 1,000's of separate county articles. doncram (talk) 01:45, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That's amazing the Chicago Landmarks list got FL with so many redlinks. surprising. Well, I totally understand not wanting to go through and cite stuff, I think I'll stick to doing it though, unless someone has a more compelling argument for not wasting my time doing it. Murderbike (talk) 03:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)