Talk:Phillips House

Comment
Seems better to keep organized by state then city, per a long discussion at WikiProject Disambiguation. There would be a link to that discussion from wp:NRHPdab. Happy to discuss further. doncram (talk) 23:07, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Pages like this look better and are easier for our readers to use if they are alphabetized by article title, then--with articles with the same title--by state then city. Currently this is a disorganized mess. I wish at least the postal abbreviations were spelled out--that's in the MOS somewhere. Not all of our readers are from the U.S., and they don't necessarily know our postal abbreviations. But if WP:NRHP advocates for poorly formatted, half-finished (as this was previously), and aesthetically unpleasing pages over usability and accessibility for our readers, then I suppose I can't really stop you. There are too many of these pages and I would drive myself crazy trying to clean them all up. I'll stick to Oregon stuff (though I'm hiatus from most Oregon NRHP articles for now too) and take this off my watchlist. Good luck. Katr67 (talk) 03:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, wp:NRHP as a whole does not advocate for anything, whatever you don't like about how this was / is is my fault. Plus some guidance from the Disambig wikiproject.  The half-finishedness is definitely my fault;  I have been working on a lot of these and it has taken me a lot longer than expected to clean them up.  About what they should be finished to, I'd be happy to revisit that, perhaps in a new discussion at the Disambig wikiproject.  I'm not entirely happy about them, either, although i don't think its obvious what to change (besides finishing out the obviously unfinished stuff, as was done here).  What's best for the readers is what should govern, i agree with that sentiment. doncram (talk) 04:09, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * On Katr67's point that the page should be alphabetised by article title: if a reader knows it's "John Phillips House", then they are likely to have searched on that heading and found the article. If they're here, it's probably because they don't know the exact name. (I feel the same about surname lists in dab or surname pages, where sorting by date or field of endeavour is probably more helpful, as again people who know the forename anyway won't have come to the dab page!). PamD (talk) 07:40, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with PamD on organization by state and with Katr67 that state names should be spelled out. Also,
 * How about spelling out NRHP on its first appearance?
 * Does a gas station belong on the Phillips House page?
 * Would it make more sense for the lead to be "Phillips House may refer to any of several historic locations:"
 * Matchups 11:08, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict--posting above later post because my post references the above one) Forgive me for chiming in after I said I would not. This is how I propose it look, and it did address a couple of the above-mentioned issues. If I have time I'll make a sandbox showing how the current version of the list would look if so-arranged. I don't usually bother to mention my professional cred, because doing so is kind of tacky, but I do get paid to do copy editing in real life. I think my version is clear, readable, has the needed context in the lede sentence, and avoids unnecessary redirects. As far as I know, WP:MOSDAB does not go into detail about the alphabetization of dab lists, but as a professional, I know in the "real world", it would be alpha'ed by article title. The NRHP project is doing a valuable service on Wikipedia by attempting to disambiguate all these properties, but frankly, judging by what I have seen, I think they should leave the copyediting to other folks. If they disagree (and no, I'm not going to read the lengthy discussion--I quit WP:NRHP because of such things), I'll butt out, but again I really want to emphasize that we should think about our readers first, and our policies and guidelines second. WP:IAR and all that. Katr67 (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The lengthy discussion was at WikiProject Disambiguation, not wp:NRHP. Your returning here is appreciated;  i left a note at Katr67's Talk page in fact.  I find it a bit odd that u insert ur comment before mine, and further indent mine, putting mine out of context.  My post also references the ones above.  No big deal, will just reformat mine.  Thanks for planning on a sandbox, that would be helpful.  The previous version "This" which you link to only covered 6 or 7 entries including the main group that are the same, and your formatting approach may or may not work well in the full, more diverse, list.


 * About spelling out the first use of NRHP, i would be fine with that, will put in National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) into the article. I would call this a minor matter, okay to do or not to do.  I'll edit that into the article.


 * About the use of a lede sentence. User:Katr67 suggests "Phillips House may refer to one of these structures in the United States:" and User:Matchups suggests "Phillips House may refer to any of several historic locations:".   I prefer just "Phillips House may refer to:" for reason that we don't actually know how to describe the list that currently follows (given that some items are red-links), and for a dab page we don't want to seem to prohibit the addition of other items of the same name that will not fit with any given description.  "Historic locations" is relatively benign as a description, but there probably are other Phillips Houses to be added that are not particularly historic.  Many lists like receive the addition of non-historic college dormitories;  i think it is easily possible there is a dormitory or campus house named Phillips House somewhere.  "Structures in the United States" is also fairly benign, but we don't actually know that all of the listed ones are individual structures.  It could turn out that one of the red-links is a hospital or other institution consisting of multiple structures.  It's unlikely, but one could be a publishing house.  All we know for sure about the red-link NRHP ones is that they are classified by the National Register as buildings, objects, historic districts, structures, or one other type of NRHP item that i don't recall, in the United States.  I would prefer for there to be no lede sentence attempting to describe the list, to keep it open-ended as a dab page only, not a descriptive article.  This is currently meant as a disambiguation page, as opposed to a wp:SIA set index article or a wp:SAL Standalone list, for which a descriptive lead sentence would be more suited and in fact required. doncram (talk) 21:17, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * FYI, there is a Snyder-Phillips dormitory building at Michigan State University (see here). There is a Snyder House Nursing Home in Waverley, England.  I don't know if these ones justify wikipedia articles, but my point is that the dab should be open-ended to include places like these, if they are wikipedia-notable. doncram (talk) 21:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Katr67 "that we should think about our readers first, and our policies and guidelines second," but IMHO that means a primary geographic organization. I believe the guiding principle should be to put entries in the order that best matches what readers are likely to know about the term.  (For what little it's worth, I'm a semi-professional copy editor.) Matchups 04:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) doncram, I'll never understand why you always address me in the third person. Please don't. I don't have time to read the entire thread right now. But my "this" is obviously only an example. You can change the the lede anytime you want. As it stood then, it only included NRHP properties, but if there are not NRHP properties then it could just say "historic properties". Any editor who has half a lick of sense can easily change the lede if they find the need to add something to the list that doesn't happen to be a historic property. But since these type of dab pages tend to be mostly about NRHP properties, I think it makes sense to state that up front. As far as moving your thread, your general comments and poll seemed to be tied to the thread more generally, while my comments directly referenced the comment directly above mine. After the edit conflict, I didn't have time to rewrite my post, so I just pasted what I had already written before your post came in. It looked like the thread still made sense, especially since I attached the disclaimer about the ec. Anyway, putting your poll in a separate section makes sense, so since we're not here to address the finer points of talk page formatting, I hope that explains. More later when I have time. Katr67 (talk) 04:37, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Here's the guideline about postal abbreviations: Manual of Style (abbreviations). I think "normal text" extends to dab pages and lists, which should have spelled out state names. Though it makes me cringe a little, I can see the utility of abbreviations in certain types of templates and infoboxes, I suppose that would be "abnormal text". Katr67 (talk) 04:47, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

spelling out state abbrev or not, and other issues
(reformatted into a separate discussion section, and reformatted, by doncram)

Thanks for comments. I dropped the gas station one, it was my error not to remove it already. The list is derived from a report of all NRHP listings having the word "Phillips", then pared down to remove many non-relevant ones. It is possible that the Folly one is not a house, too, but I don't know until an article is created.

About the state abbreviations, there is and was never any use of the two-letter abbreviations of a state, without the spelled out state name being provided in the same line. It seems useful to use the same phrase "listed on the NRHP in State" for all NRHP entries, either as a bluelink to the corresponding state-wide list of NRHPs, or unlinked. Following three types of entries use state abbreviations 0, 1, 1 times, with state spelled out 2, 1, 1 times. Set 1
 * Phillips House (Arcata, California), listed on the NRHP in California
 * Phillips Mansion, Pomona, CA, listed on the NRHP in California
 * Harry and Lilly Phillips House, Fruita, CO, listed on the NRHP in Colorado

Alternative, to spell out the state every time, uses abbreviations 0, 0, 0, shows state spelled out 2, 2, 2 times: Set 2
 * Phillips House (Arcata, California), listed on the NRHP in California
 * Phillips Mansion, Pomona, Colorado, listed on the NRHP in California
 * Harry and Lilly Phillips House, Fruita, Colorado, listed on the NRHP in Colorado

I think the first set is better, being a bit shorter and having no real ambiguity. In longer NRHP disambiguation pages it seems even more important to shorten by use of selected abbreviations where meaning is clear enough. If there were 10 in a row instances like the Phillips Mansion row, it becomes even more clear visually that CA = California, and CA doesn't need to be spelled out, IMO. I don't mind changing the practice though, if there is a consensus the state be spelled out as in set 2, when people look at that. Please comment on set 1 vs. set 2 (or perhaps present another set showing how change could be implemented). Thanks! doncram (talk) 19:30, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Phillips' Folly is a house. Google has lots of info for anyone who wants to start the article. Matchups 03:54, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I summarized suggestions here at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. To Katr67:  for transparency, I think i should have said earlier that I mentioned this Talk page discussion there, but I was actually asking for and expecting more general discussion there, instead.  However, I think it was my mention there that brought PamD's and Matchup's attention here.  Sorry for not mentioning that sooner.  Anyhow, thanks all for the feedback here.  It is changing how I do other dab pages now, somewhat, already, and I am not opposed to doing a later cleanup of other NRHP dab pages. doncram (talk) 20:59, 26 April 2009 (UTC)