User:Doncram/Proposal on organizing lists of historic sites in Texas

Proposal on organizing lists of historic sites in Texas

This is a proposal to revise NRHP list-articles in Texas to put nearby historic sites together, arguably to serve readers better. Recent discussion, which did not reach consensus, was at wt:NRHP. The proposal, in option A below, is to combine counties in each of 10 coherent regions defined by the state's historical commission. For three alternatives, working versions of state-wide indices are presented and are nearly complete in how their links work, showing what reader experience will be like. However option A's draft is complete with respect to its links for just the Plains Region so far. In the drafts, temporary bolding and strikeouts highlight which text differs.

Background
A vast number of list-articles were created since 2006 at state and lower levels organizing redlinks and bluelinks for the approximately 92,000 NRHP-listed historic sites, indexed from top-level List of NRHPs (and all included in Category:Lists of National Register of Historic Places).

Each of the 50 states and several of the U.S. territories have too many listings to be tabulated in just one list-article. Many tables for county or county-equivalent were split out to separate list-articles, and many of these have been further divided after some discussion, e.g. by neighborhoods for New York City (using major streets to define divisions), Denver (using highways), Boston (using official neighborhoods). Cities have often been divided out of larger county list-articles, and downtown areas out of city list-articles. Grouping by county was disputed for Hawaii, where counties don't make much sense, and Hawaii was divided by island groupings instead. Puerto Rico's 68 municipalities were grouped into six tourist regions.

Texas is the state with the most counties of all, 254 in total, and many counties have zero or one or two NHRP listings. In practice it is virtually impossible to figure out what counties are near each other in any area, and to see the NRHPs on a linked "Map of all coordinates". Such linked maps work extremely well to serve readers and editors in NRHP list-articles elsewhere.

Option A: Counties grouped by regions

 * Draft state-wide list, including a section defining 10 regions
 * Draft list for Texas Plains Region, one of 10 regions
 * Sample link for "Lipscomb County" on the state-wide list

Adopt the Texas Historical Commission's partition of the state into 10 regions per this map. Each region has a brochure suggesting driving tours to visit the state-owned historic sites and concentrations of historic sites in various cities of the region.

State-wide list-article tabulates all 254 counties and their corresponding regions, and also provides tabular info about the 10 regions. For most counties, the county link goes to that county's table within one of ten regional groupings, such as NRHP listings in the Texas Plains Region. For about 15 very large counties (none in the Plains Region example), too big for inclusion in their corresponding regional grouping, the county link will go to a separate standalone county list-article instead. The system consists of about 28 geographically-coherent list-articles, counting the state-wide one.

Future variations: A map showing borders of the 10 regions will be produced and included directly into the state-wide list-article. That and/or maps for each of the 10 regions alone will be included into the regional list-articles. For regional list-articles, the separate tables might be combined into one. For each regional list-article, a map mirroring the linked "Map of all coordinates" might be created for direct inclusion, showing the locations of the listings (similar to map done for List of NHLs in TX). Wikipedia's future coverage of Texas' state and local historic sites can be organized likewise and mesh together.

Option B: Counties with few listings grouped together

 * Draft state-wide list (B)
 * Sample link for "Lipscomb County" on the state-wide list

Merge the smaller counties (or, equivalently, split out only the larger counties) in the state-wide list-article, similar to current list-articles for NRHPs in several states including Minnesota.

In the draft, for the 45 counties having just one listing apiece, the county link goes to that county's table below the state-wide list. The "Map of all coordinates" link shows the locations of NRHPs which are in these small counties, scattered across the state. Result: 181 list-articles, including incoherent (geographically) state-wide one and all others covering just one county having two or more listings. Of these, 29 are two-item ones, 23 are three-item ones, etc.

Future variations: The 29 counties having just two listings apiece might be added to the grouping. The links going to separate articles could be italicized to differentiate them from links going to sections below. Combining the separate tables into one seems not advisable, as the combined table would not be natural grouping, and/or it would have to be introduced carefully as a table of all the single-listing counties scattered across the state. Creating a map for direct inclusion seems not advisable, and/or it would have to be introduced carefully as a map just of listings within the single-listing counties scattered across the state.

Option C: Each county alone

 * Draft state-wide list (equivalent to current mainspace list)
 * Sample link for "Lipscomb County" on the state-wide list.

State-wide list with no coordinates, and linking to a separate list-article for each of 225 counties having one or more listings, similar to current list-articles in several states including South Carolina. In each of the separate list-articles, a "Map of all coordinates" is available (which shows just one location for the single-listing counties).