Talk:Octagon House

Purpose of this page
I see this page is now linked to Octagon house and I note the serious historical research behind it. However I ndon't see the purpose of the page. It's not disambiguation, just a list of historic buildings, all of them as far as I can tell falling within the scope of Octagon house. A better researched list than that in the article, to be sure. I'd suggest a merge is in order, See also section included.

Unless there is a genuine resason for keeping this separate? In which case the names need to be different, it is not good having two pages with only a capitalisation to distinguish them. ProfDEH (talk) 13:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, there is a reason for keeping them separate and yes, it is a disambiguation page for various United States National Register of Historic Places. The core is Octagon House and the list was generated usingElkman's National Register Tools. It serves as a map to create articles on NRHP octagon houses.


 * The Octagon house article is a generic article defining what an octagon house is (or was according to the article). Basically, the purpose of the two articles is completely different. In my experience, when an NHRP list is merged with another article, it gets diluted and loses its purpose. Certainly the two articles complement each other, but in my humble opinion, it's better to keep them separate. clariosophic (talk) 14:09, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Initially I thought the Octagon house article was too centered on the American examples, but in fact there are no other octagonal houses that I can find, certainly not as a regular cultural trend. All the houses on the list are octagon houses as described in the Octagon house article - American, dating from mid to ate 19th century. The one exception on the list is The Octagon (Roosevelt Island, New York) which is not a house and belongs elsewhere - in List of octagonal buildings and structures where it is already listed.

Don't see what there is to disambiguate - 'octagon house' is not an ambiguous term - it's a house with octagonal plan shape, and the term means the same thing in every case. 'Octagonal house' is descriptive, but is never used as the name of these houses. This is simply a list - which presumably can be added to from other sources.

It is not good to have two articles with the same name apart from capitalization. I'd suggest this should be called List of octagon houses.

ProfDEH (talk) 21:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd support moving this article either to List of octagon houses or Octagon House (disambiguation). Like ProfDEH says, it isn't good to have two articles with different purposes differing only by capitalization.  Regarding whether "Octagon House" is a proper name for a structure: it might be, but First Baptist Church is also the official name of a lot of places, so we have a disambiguation page for it.  There are several different properties on the National Register whose name is "Octagon House" and several more whose name contains "Octagon House".
 * I revised the introductory sentence to indicate that "Octagon House" is a specific name for the generic type of "octagon house". I'm leaning more toward naming the article Octagon House (disambiguation), but I'm not decided one way or the other yet.  --Elkman (Elkspeak) 22:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I support moving this to List of octagon houses, or to a narrower definition such as List of U.S. Registered Historic Places that are octagon houses. However i prefer the first, more general definition which would allow the addition of any other octagon houses that individually meet wikipedia notability criteria (which NRHP sites all do already).  There are lots of paired articles about some type of thing and a list of instances of that type.  The Octagon house article deserves to have a paired article that can grow longer than the short list that it includes in one section.


 * By the way, i like the organization by state and city, but note that should be clarified in the lead of the article. Or, perhaps better, make it a sortable table.  doncram (talk) 22:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I guess i understand Clariosophic's purpose in creating / converting this to be a disambiguation page. However, there is still a need for a List of octagon houses that is more general, that could be developed into a table with pictures and descriptions, and that will include octagon houses that do not have "Octagon House" as part of their name.  So I just started that List of octagon houses article, including a paste-in of all the NRHP houses with "octagon" in their name, from this article.  I also edited this article, hopefully making it more clearly a disambiguation page ONLY.  Hopefully the List article can develop into something nice for general wikipedia readers, as a complement to the main Octagon house article. doncram (talk) 20:19, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

how many o. h.'s
hey, i think i created the majority of the octagon house articles so far! of 9 linked from the Octagon house section list, i took the pics for 1, i created 7 articles, and i contributed to the other 2 articles. there are only 12 so far linked from this list-article, including the same 7 i think, not sure if i created a couple more of the rest too. someone else could run out and create more articles on the red-linked / non-linked ones, but i have a good lead.... And, hmm, i want an octagonal house icon created so i can slap up at least 7 of them on my User-page. :) doncram (talk) 23:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Clariosophic has scored several, also, but i may still be the only o.h. ace. :) doncram (talk) 23:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Clariosophic has been busy and is now an o.h. ace, if he wasn't before. I think he has pulled into the lead now, oh well.... :( doncram (talk) 20:19, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Clarify purpose of this page
Hey, Clariosophic undid pretty much all of the changes to this page that i implemented to try to clarify what this page is.

I'm a little mystified, because I was trying to accept what I thought Clario wanted for this article. And it erased some innocuous / helpful changes, like putting in Carmer Octagon House explicitly wikilinked to Armour-Stiner House.

This leaves the article unclear again. It now does provide a for link to "a list of octagon houses", but this article itself appears to be a list of octagon houses, and the relationship to another list is not clear. Why have two lists, again, if it is not clear that this is a disambiguation page and how that is different from the other list. For example, should I or other editors add the known other octagon houses that do not have octagon house explicitly in their name, here? (I think that is not appropriate for a disambiguation page about Octagon House.) Yes, there is indication at the bottom of the page that this is disambiguation, but that is not apparent unless the reader scrolls down. I see benefit, and no harm, from explaining that this is a disambiguation page at the top.

Actually, perhaps this article should be moved to "Octagon House (disambiguation)"?

This version is what i suggest is better. This {http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Octagon_House&diff=219582578&oldid=219518570 diff shows that Clario only accepts a very small amount of my changes].

Clario, can you explain? And/or can anyone else comment on this? I know we are both trying to make good pages but the page as it stands now is confusing in relation to the other pages. I don't object to some modification of what I changed, and I don't want to overstate the other list page (that is, it is okay to avoid referring to it as a "complete list of notable octagon houses", though it is meant to be that, and to refer to it instead as "more complete" or something like that). But it seems unhelpful to have almost all of my changes rolled back. doncram (talk) 23:38, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, after seeing another edit of mine undone by Clario on a related page, i am going to wp:be bold and try again. I will just move this page to Octagon House (disambiguation) and try to edit it better for clarity about what it is.

break from unsigned edit above

 * yeah, sorry, that was me above. doncram (talk) 01:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Doncram, I don't want to get into an edit war with you. I do wish you would wait for feedback before you make changes to this article. The lead in my opinion is still too complicated and lacks clarity. The original lead read simply:


 * Octagon House, or 'Octagonal House, etc., can refer to:


 * but this is now stuck onto the end of:


 * "This is a disambiguation page for houses named Octagon House or which otherwise have Octagon or Octagonal in their name".


 * In addition there are two dablink type paragraphs above that. It's really too complicated . And the at the end of the list, you've added:


 * "Note, there are many octagon houses without "Octagon" in their names. For others, see List of octagon houses". Isn't this overkill? Doesn't this belong in ==See also==?


 * BTW, I used to put disambig templates at the top for the very reason you state. but everyone always moved them to the bottom.


 * Anyway, can't you combine your two dablinks into one paragraph and put your next sentence into an italicized note, then start a new paragraph with:


 * Octagon House, or 'Octagonal House, etc., can refer to:


 * At this point, I regret even starting this article. I thought I was being considerate by not trying to mess with the Octagon house article. Call me Clariosophic. clariosophic (talk) 03:38, 16 June 2008 (UTC) clariosophic (talk) 10:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC) clariosophic (talk) 10:18, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I am sorry you feel regret. Our interactions on these pages did feel contentious to me also.  I hope you can wp:Assume good faith however.  I believe that we were/are both trying to develop this system of pages positively.  I am glad we have worked positively together in other areas, which helps me AGF, too.


 * However, I think you bear some responsibility here for setting up the situation of having two pages named nearly identically. Of course that causes confusion, and some other system needs to be worked out.  It would have helped if you would have acknowledged that was a problem when two or more others pointed out it was a problem.  If you are okay with this page now being named "Octagon House (disambiguation)", then that goes a long way to settling this down, and we are left with 3 pages, all necessary:


 * Octagon house -- descriptive article, which includes a list of examples
 * List of octagon houses -- list-article which can grow to include hundreds and hundreds of examples
 * Octagon House (disambiguation) -- disambiguation for all places named Octagon House or Octagonal House, whether NRHP or not
 * I think this is how it should be. There is still some confusion about this, by the way, as i note ProfDef (sp?) just revised a link to here to state that this is a disambiguation page for NRHP places, when in fact now there is one non-NHRP place listed here.


 * If "disambiguation" stays in the page name, then yes, there is some redundancy. I didn't think it was that bad, but I just deleted the leading sentence that appears out of place.  Overall, I would prefer to have some redundancy though, in order to have clarity.  An extra phrase, or a sentence, can be helpful, even if it is not exactly consistent with terse style that works elsewhere.  Perhaps this situation is not exactly the same as other disambiguation pages, so the rules and style elsewhere don't apply.  For example, a disambiguation page like Parker House does not have the complication of there being a topic and a page named "Parker house", and it all fits on one screen so the disambiguation tag is clear.


 * I do think the two links at the top of this page are helpful. I also think the note at the end of this page is potentially helpful to the person who is looking for a particular octagon house and does not find it in this disambiguation list.  But i am okay with your dropping that if you want.  And i probably will be okay with any other edits you might want to make, because i do believe that it is settling down into a reasonable form and i do believe that you would only want to improve upon this.  Cheers, doncram (talk) 01:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I agree and apologize for any unpleasantness. Best wishes. clariosophic (talk) 03:01, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Page move
This issue of adding (disambiguation) to the page name has been thrashed out here at length, it is not helpful to have it summarily moved without any discussion. There are many links pointing to Octagon house which may be disrupted by changing the page name, all of which would have to be checked and amended if necessary. While disambig pages don't necessarily have that in the name, in some cases it is necessary to avoid confusion, and that is the case here. ProfDEH (talk) 20:26, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Somehow in the shuffle the History of this article got lost. It's at Revision history of Octagon House. I think it will take an Administrator to put it back where it belongs - with this article. clariosophic (talk) 21:49, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry for stepping on people's toes here but I would point you to the article on malplaced dab pages, WP:MDP, which this is, plus the section on naming conventions WP:DAB Tassedethe (talk) 07:53, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I read that article and I'm sorry to say a cut and paste move is what happened here - Clariosophic is right, an admin is needed to sort out if there are issues related to this. The point here is that Octagon house has a well developed use, I think everyone has agreed the dab page is secondary. Octagon House redirects to Octagon house but ideally would just be deleted. ProfDEH (talk) 14:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree except that Octagon House should continue as a redirect to Octagon house. clariosophic (talk) 19:58, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Not sure if you mean Octagon House should redirect to Octagon house, or you agree with me except for that point? ProfDEH (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You suggested that Octagon House could best be deleted. IMHO, it should not, but be kept as a redirect to Octagon house. Best wishes. clariosophic (talk) 01:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I moved it as you suggested but then put a speedy deletion tag on it, so the admin people can decide. You have to agree the whole thing is getting tiresome - time to move on to something more interesting. ProfDEH (talk) 09:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, ProfDEH, I have replaced your change with a merge proposal (see below) since your change did not solve the basic problem which is that the Revision History at Octagon House belongs with Octagon House (disambiguation). Best wishes. clariosophic (talk) 12:21, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge Proposal
It has been proposed that: Octagon House be merged into into Octagon House (disambiguation) in order to reunite Octagon House (disambiguation) with its Revision History which is at Octagon House. An editor has to do this. Please discuss here. clariosophic (talk) 12:16, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Now I see what you mean. I'd support that.ProfDEH (talk) 13:13, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's a way for an admin to restore the history in a merge. I'm going to go ahead and remove the templates, as it's preventing Octagon House from working as a proper redirect. If I'm wrong, the history is still there; nothing will be lost. -- Ja Ga  talk  17:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)