Talk:List of fire lookout towers

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 31 March 2020 and 19 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ahall4426.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:30, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

About the National Historic Lookout Register
Maybe I am just cranky and unusually suspicious today...

My attention was called to separate article National Historic Lookout Register today by a link to here, which was added there today. In this list-article, I and perhaps others had referred to it and accepted it as having some legitimacy. But I wonder now if that register is close to being a private for-profit thing which should not be linked or covered in Wikipedia at all, or if it is serious and legitimate and comparable to the National Register of Historic Places, say. There are in fact private commercial websites which try to associate themselves with the NRHP program which should not be linked or tolerated in Wikipedia in any way...e.g. https://nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/, which is just a bad copy of the official NRHP data in the National Register Information System (NRIS) database, but with added advertisements and with systematic errors in its programming (they don't understand some data definitions, or didn't bother to address them properly). That site and perhaps others (Archipedia?) ostensibly allow for public input/editing, but they are just scams, in effect, trying to appear official. There is in fact some association between the National Park Service and this NHLR, e.g. as in this press release at nps.gov, but the NPS has also tried other partnerships, like with Flickr for engaging the public in collecting photos, which don't amount to much IMHO.

Is there actually an application and review process for the National Historic Lookout Register, or is it just a scam somehow, too? Points that bother me about it, up front:
 * Its name Is National Historic Lookout Register, but its map includes non-U.S. places. That signals bogus to me!
 * It mentions the U.S. National Park Service-run National Register of Historic Places, and claims that being listed on the NHLR is something that can be done on way to getting NRHP registration. But I don't believe I have heard of it mentioned within the NRHP program.  Is the United States Forest Service really associated with this, formally?
 * It has an easy-for-anyone-to-use nomination form, and it accepts user visit reports.... but is anything done with submissions, or is that just a black hole, or worse a phishing type trap?
 * The webpages belong to "American Resources, Inc.", which, it appears to me from quick searching, to be a Houston-based oil & gas company....

I wonder:
 * 1) If it is effectively bogus, then perhaps the separate article about it should be deleted, and perhaps its pages should not be used as sources in this List of fire lookout towers.
 * 2) If it is effectively bogus, but has some legitimate data copied from a United States Forest Service database, say, where/how could we get the underlying source instead?
 * 3) If it is legitimate, and listings on it are significant and involve reviews like how NRHP applications are reviewed, where/how can we get such applications and reviews? Are there dates of listings, and is there a delistings process, like there are for any national or local historic places registry?  And how should listings on it be covered, perhaps with merger to this existing article?

Pinging editors at its article User:Howcheng, User:Evrik, User:GhostInTheMachine.--Doncram (talk,contribs) 20:09, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm agnostic. I do think it is a valuable non-profit effort to spotlight an unmet need. Look at the sources and you'll see the organization partners with federal agencies. My work today was simply trying to clean-up the article.--evrik (talk) 22:40, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I have another thought. Go ahead an merge the two articles. Use the National Historic Lookout Register information as a value added to this page. --evrik (talk) 22:43, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks... browsing its pages about its history as a nonprofit group starting from a meeting in 1990, and seeing the group has bylaws and other formal trappings, makes me more comfortable about it. I don't see any ads; it's not a commercial thing.  The separate article, or a section about it if it is merged to this, could/should include more about its (mainly self-reported) history. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 05:00, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Sample of a new format
--evrik (talk) 22:55, 9 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. It would be good to put all into some table format.
 * Some parts are table-ized already. Here are the first 2 rows of the table in separate page List of fire lookout towers in Louisiana:


 * There are some notes below the table in the article about when the information was collected, but if information like this is presented, I think the table headers should have footnoted explanations (e.g. who is it that is unsure or can't verify, and as of what date?) and/or the rows should provide such info if it varies between rows. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 05:07, 10 June 2023 (UTC)