Talk:List of National Historic Landmarks in Boston

Add a neighborhood column?
I think it would improve the article if a neighborhood could be identified for each NHL, and if that were added as a sortable column. Organizing a city-list by neighborhood is done in other cases such as List of RHPs in Chicago.

While the neighborhood is known and clear for some of the Boston NHLs, such as that MGH and its Ether Dome are in the West End, it may not be so clear for all. If the column were added, someone with good knowledge of the city would have to classify them all. The article Neighborhoods in Boston, Massachusetts provides a scheme of neighborhoods that may work. Unlike the corresponding Community areas of Chicago list for Chicago, however, the list of Boston neighborhoods is not MECE. So I am not sure if every NHL could be identified cleanly. It would be okay by me if a few were not identified and if "Boston" were given as their locations, instead. Is anyone willing to try to identify them all? doncram (talk) 17:14, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


 * 21-March-2009: Support for the NHL-list articles has been low, so even the basic descriptions had been missing for the entire year. Due to space limitations on portrait-style windows (800x600), there is little space to add extra columns; however, if the "Locality" column (with "Boston") were treated as the neighborhood, that would also avoid the drone, repeated "Boston, Boston, Boston, uh... Boston" in that column. Remember quality of presentation is not just the base substance of facts, but also the form of those facts, such as over-tall tables and repeated "Boston" (over & over & over) in a single column. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:24, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Hey! I represent that remark, why say support is low? I support them, what u be calling me? :)
 * Identifying neighborhoods for Boston sites is more of an issue for the much larger List of RHPs in Boston article. This was dicussed at its Talk page and at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Massachusetts.  The RHP/NRHP list has had a column added for neighborhoods, and it was figured out how to identify neighborhoods by a lookup at a City of Boston website.  Addressing neighborhoods or not, in this smaller NHL list, can wait until all the neighborhoods are identified in the NRHP list (which includes all the NHLs). doncram (talk) 17:06, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Other discussion pages
21-March-2009: Discussions of all NHL-lists, for all 50 states, have shared pages:
 * wp:NHL progress - a to-do list for improving all 50;
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/TableDisplayTestCases - discussion about format-changes affecting various NHL lists.

Specifics for the Boston NHL-list continue below. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:11, 16 March 2009

Adding short NHL descriptions
21-March-2009: I have begun adding the remaining ~50 descriptions (under column "Description"), based on the NPS source webpages. Some can be copied as short 2-sentence summaries; however, many of the NPS webpages have very long descriptions, which must be reworded shorter, to fit the table. Some issues to consider:
 * say a site was important for 3 reasons, but don't repeat each;
 * avoid too much about the person or event tied to the site;
 * avoid "currently renovated" which won't be current 2 years hence.

For all the excessive text, each landmark article would be a more appropriate target, for writing details of a battle or a person's life. The several "currently renovated" sites should be described, instead, in each landmark article, converting "currently" to a specific year and drop the word "currently" (or recently). Time has shown that Wikipedia writers do not update articles, fast enough, to allow tracking current events in most articles, so consider instead as adding to Wikinews or just state the year. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:24, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Great that you are adding descriptions. Indeed this NHL list article has been short on anyone taking some helpful ownership.  However, please don't cut and paste from the U.S. NHL webpages.  Technically, yes, they are in the public domain (as products of Federal employees) and it is not a copyright violation to copy from them.  The more usual wp:NRHP practice and I think widely held preference is to not copy, but rather write summaries in our own words (perhaps with short quotes in quotation marks).  In a couple state NHL list pages where editors had pasted in U.S. NHL webpage summaries, i and others have gone through and ripped out that material, to make way for our-own-words descriptions.  That didn't make the pasters happy, but it avoids sourcing problems and avoids the appearance of plagiarism (different issue than copyright).  Actually, i prefer to work on the individual NHL articles, so that the description here can be a summary.  In the more developed NHL list articles including List of NHLs in NY and List of NHLs in AL, the descriptions are summaries of the corresponding wikipedia articles.  But it doesn't matter too much which you prefer to work on first: if you write a longer description here than is available in the NHL article itself, that can be pasted over into the NHL article, too. doncram (talk) 17:15, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Fortunately, I've already re-worded most of the 50 new descriptions from the NPS webpages, due to either excessive length or too many WP:PEACOCK glowing terms "about one of the finest architectural examples in America". I'll keep re-wording until all of them differ from the NPS webpages, but I will have added all descriptions+dates today. Feel free to replace any of them with alternate wording. I wanted to add many descriptions to an NHL-list page to better understand the formatting issues, when filling a large list of NHL sites. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:15, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Would you please agree not to start any new descriptions by pasting in the NHL webpage text. It makes more work, in my opinion.  For the ones you have done, although I appreciate that you have modified them, I feel obligated to go and check every one and strike language / change more, to avoid the appearance of plagiarism.  It would be easier for me in every case if you would just compose new text, or put paste-ins into explicit quote marks.  Now, I have to compare what is at the NHL page vs. what you have, and to consider changing any strings of words that seem similar (to either different strings, or to use quote marks).  This is a huge issue for the NRHP system of pages, where often there may be public domain text available, or text which is perceived incorrectly to be in the public domain.  You might think my concern here is excessive, but the point is we have effectively had a zero tolerance policy and are relatively "blemish-free".  It is that important to go and try to stomp out any new introductions of pasted in text.


 * I do appreciate that this will have allowed you to test the formatting issues quickly. I will go through some of the 50 later, if I am getting access to the NHL webpages (perhaps it is a problem with my browser).  Could we agree, that if I go through a random sample, of say 10, and find that a lot of changes are necessary, that you will allow me to blank out all the rest?  I will only want to do that if I judge it would be easier to start over with blank descriptions for the rest. doncram (talk) 22:10, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Rethink article priorities
22-March-2009: No wonder the NRHP articles have been in such a pathetic state for years! You guys are inventing your own obstacles to progress, and there is no need to tip-toe around copyright issues with the U.S. Gov't. Trust me, it absolutely does NOT matter: I've worked with the U.S. Federal Gov't for over 14 years, and there is an expression, "Close 'nuff for gummit werk". You can do almost anything, short of proclaiming you're "The Obama" mandating new policies from headquarters of the NPS. All those fears are unfounded. As for plagiarism problems, I've been officially notified as "guilty" by a wiki-bot that told me one of my articles was a copyvio of a Wikipedia mirror-site that had instantly pre-stolen my original Wikipedia article! Let's all say together, "plagiarism-smagiarism". Honestly, just write the high-visibility articles as quickly as possible, and beware people inventing worries that just don't matter. The main concerns, per Jimbo Wales are the hollow articles, with no source footnotes: the danger is not duplicated phrases, but rather a WEAKipedia, lacking masses of content found everywhere else. Haven't you noticed that Answers.com (or similar) have been thoroughly passing Wikipedia in coverage of topics? When Wikipedia becomes seen as an outdated has-been, then funding will shrink and, if the project collapses, all pages will be terminated, regardless of quality. Wikid77 (talk) 04:06, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow. Pathetic?  I find it odd that someone who is re-editing table by hand to make them viewable in portrait mode on small devices is accusing someone else of inventing obstacles.   Although I dont feel as strongly as Doncram, I can see where he's coming from.  I tend to skip over descriptions that are already written and focus on blanks to fill in.  If you're just copy and pasting then you're certainly being efficient, but with corresponding low quality.  Hey, to each their own, but please dont disparage Doncram's concerns or the work any of the rest of us have done. dm (talk) 01:08, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks Dm, that helps here. I am kind of surprised with Wikid77 choosing to talk that way.  It is hard to discern, in writing, if that is jovial and friendly or really mean and insulting.  Well, anyhow, I am very proud of the state that the NRHP articles are in!  And proud of how we have been doing it.  And pretty damn sure that if you cut and paste in more I will revert your "work".  Also, you did not respond to my question.  If i carefully review and revise a sample of 10, and judge it is costing more time than starting from scratch, will you be fine with me blanking the rest of your paste-ins (and thereby also losing the additional editing you did after paste-in) ?  doncram (talk) 05:16, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * No reply forthcoming? I reverted the article back to the version reflecting wikid77's format edits, but excluding thorny text paste-ins.  I am not willing to review them all, or to review 10 and then have an argument.  Future editors of this list-article might choose to take note of the content of wikid77's later versions, they could well have some useful wikilinks within them to use in newly written descriptions that summarize the corresponding articles. doncram (talk) 02:14, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

MGH target article
Moved from article, note previously attached to the Massachusetts General Hospital item: "Editor note: Article about building needs to be split out of article on the current hospital, or made into a section there. Describe along with Ether room." The current target article for the MGH NHL link is not good. doncram (talk) 22:27, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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