Talk:National Historic Site (United States)

Deletion or replacement of this article by a disambiguation page
As discussed also at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, I feel this article is not helpful and should be deleted or replaced by a disambiguation page.

Currently National Historic Site and National Historic Sites redirect to this wikipedia article National historic site, and this article is misleading. This article attempts to make up a kind of a definition for a term "national historic site" out of thin air. Currently, the article describes "national historic sites" in a generic way. In its section on national historic sites in the United States, the specific National Historic Site program operated by the U.S. National Park Service is mentioned, but so is the NRHP program. This is confusing. It would be very reasonable for a reader to take from this that any site which is listed in the NRHP is a U.S. national historic site / National Historic Site, and that therefore that say, the Dickson Mounds site is a National Historic Site. I believe we want National Historic Site to mean the specific program, and this article on generic National historic sites just muddies the waters.

I guess I think that this article should be wiped out and replaced by a disambiguation page. Material here ought to be moved to new, separate articles on Canada's National Historic Site program and on the U.S.'s National Historic Site program, and a pointer to the NRHP program could also be provided. But it should be clearly stated that there is no universal definition of "national historic site". Perhaps this should be implemented by moving the current article to "National Historic Site program of Canada", because it appears to me the current article is more about Canada's program than the U.S. one, and that would preserve its edit history. Then set up the disambiguation at the original location. Also, List of national historic sites of Canada should be renamed to List of National Historic Sites of Canada.

Comments? If there are no objections I will implement such changes soon. doncram (talk) 13:17, 5 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Nobody has objected in the two years since you made this proposal, so I will assume there are no concerns. The article covers two distinct entities, which just happen to share a similar name.  Moreover, it's always been a bit awkward that the background information on the Canadian sites is split between this article and List of National Historic Sites of Canada.  I've merged the Canadian information into the Canadian list, and can move the U.S. info to National Historic Site (United States).  Someone has tagged this article with a merge tag, suggesting it be merged into National historic park -- if they want to merge the U.S. information with that article, they can do so.  Skeezix1000 (talk) 00:31, 24 August 2010 (UTC)


 * As suggested at WP:FIXDABLINKS, it would be helpful if you would now address the several hundred other Wikipedia articles that contain links to "National historic site" or one of its capitalized redirects. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)


 * If you checked my edits, you'd have seen that I did do a few last night. It occurred to me, however, that it is premature to shift too many of them at this point, given that the targets are in a bit of flux -- the Canadian article is subject to a WP:RM proposal, and I assume that the merge proposal for the U.S. article may get acted on now that the article has been split.  So it's best to hold off for a week or two to see where things end up. Skeezix1000 (talk) 10:33, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * If that's the case, I wish you would have waited before creating this disambig page. -- Ja Ga  talk 13:35, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Although I am not sure that I am troubled by it.  The articles were a mess, conflating and confusing separate concepts and subject to two-year+ old merge and DAB proposals.  Finally, there is now involved discussion as to how to sort it all out, and most steps have already been taken.  I can't imagine losing any sleep over the fact that some links will point to a DAB page for a week or so.  --Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:30, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, but when you create a disambig page, other editors (or at least those on the WP:DPL project) will spend their time fixing the links to that page. Hopefully this will get resolved before someone on the project starts working on the 500+ links to the disambig. If not, it could lead to a huge waste of time. -- Ja Ga  talk 15:41, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, but then there is a small chance that the links would point to redirects instead of the DAB page. Again, I just don't see a huge problem.  In any event, we're dancing on the head of the pin, because the WP:RM for the Cdn article appears non-controversial (so we can likely presume an outcome without much risk) and the U.S. page may be resolved today.  --Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:27, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Appropriateness of redirect
There is a link below to list of national historic sites that takes you to units of the national park system. There are, however, national historic sites that are not managed by the park service. These include Fort Craig National Historic Site run by the BLM and Grey Towers National Historic Site run by the USFS. So the link to units of the NPS is arguably inappropriate. MDuchek (talk) 20:16, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:National Historic Landmark which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 22:17, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Ulysses S Grant house dates wrong
The years given don't make sense 2600:8801:280C:5900:1910:C811:1BAC:B65F (talk) 03:42, 9 October 2023 (UTC)