User talk:Doncram/Archive 1

Welcome
Hello , and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: &#126;&#126;&#126;. Four tildes (&#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Y0u (Y0ur talk page) (Y0ur contributions) 16:15, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
 * The Five Pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Editing tutorial
 * Picture tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

Kinneloa Mesa, California
I fixed everything myself before noticing that you had asked the question of how to fix it on the talk page of Talk:Kinneloa mesa. Deletes are rarely necessary - as I did, redirects are all that is necessary. To redirect, use this code for example:


 * 1) REDIRECT Kinneloa Mesa

If the location to which you want to move the article does not yet exist, then you can use the 'move' tab button at the top of the page. That will automatically create a redirect from the old page to the new one. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask on my talk page! --└Smith120bh/TALK┐ 04:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Westhill High School
Nope, problem 2 wasn't me. But I did just fix problem 1. I requested a speedy deletion of the Connecticut page (by inserting   to the top of the page), an admin then deleted it, and I moved the CT page over. --└Smith120bh/TALK┐ 18:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your NY NHL work!
I see you've been creating some of those articles we didn't have. Especially Riverby ... now all I have to do is worry about getting up there to take a picture one of these days. Keep up the good work! Daniel Case 08:08, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Two tips: Use cite web or the  [URL Title or other info about the page]  syntax for any web links you want to add as references so the URLs themselves don't clutter up the page. And use PDFlink for links to PDFs.

Also, don't use other Wikipedia articles as sources and don't use the article space to discuss issues with the article. I solved that by redirectifying Dutch Reformed Church (Tarrytown, New York) to Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow when I confirmed via the NPS NHL writeup that they were the same building. But that solution isn't always available, so keep discussion on the talk page.

And BTW, it's "Adirondack Park" because that's the term used in the state statutes defining it (ECL 9-0101(1)) and by many many mapmakers. It's thus official and in wide use to boot. The article itself explains why that term is used. Daniel Case 03:03, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Continuing advice: Don't assume the separate RHP cats for counties exist unless you already know they do (like the one I created for Orange County, which is currently the only separate county one). Stick with "Registered Historic Places in New York" and just put the county cat last (and speaking of which, Hyde Park is in Dutchess County, not Westchester). Daniel Case 03:54, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

And all RHPs in New York City should be put in "Registered Historic Places in New York City" until we start subdividing them by borough (it's always "Brooklyn", never "Kings County, New York" and ditto for the other four). Daniel Case 03:56, 3 September 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a category "Registered Historic Places in Manhattan" dm 04:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

There are no state subcategories for National Historic Landmarks yet (BTW, I finally split off Arden (estate) into a separate article, although I think I may have to rename it again). There probably should be as has a potential size of 2,000+ articles (way too big), but this needs to be discussed at the WP:NRHP talk page since the category is currently added automatically when "nhl" or "nhld" is entered as the value for nrhp_type in the infobox. Thus there would be issues in creating a subcat for states (or even New York City, which could certainly support one) without modifying the infobox code (I bet it would be possible to have it read from the location fields and add to a subcat automatically, but I'm not that skilled with template syntax). Daniel Case 16:35, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Another tip: NHLs that are historic district take the "nhld" value for nrhp_type.

Also, seeing where you're going with these stubs you're writing, do you think you could hold off on Old Blenheim Bridge? It would take the bridge infobox instead of NRHP and come under that project as well. Daniel Case 20:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi, when you're going through the NRHP's, if the various NHL documents are already used as references, there's no need to put them in External links. In fact, even if you find something new, it's probably better to put them in as references, rather than external links.  IMHO.  Thanks for your work though, When I finished off all the NHL's in Manhattan, I lost some steam for a while.  It's been building back up now that it's getting cooler :)  dm 04:38, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, are you removing references like on purpose? If so, why?  I noticed you did it on Central Synagogue as well as one other entry.  Thanks Daniel Case 00:55, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is me, the four ~ should have left my name there :(  You're trying to figure out which reference should be used to document which fact.  I was just trying to get all of the references I could in there.  They often cover much of the same material, but I tried to make sure they didnt stack up as [1][2][3][4], etc.   I love the Nomination PDF's you're finding by the way, excellent references to add. Daniel Case 00:55, 12 September 2007 (UTC) (dm)

Perrine's Bridge is actually the closest covered bridge to me, but someone else already shot it. Other than that, there are a few in the Catskills — Beaverkill, Turnwood — that I might be able to cover if and when I get up there to go hiking again (I've been introducing my son to the joys of hiking, but he's been partial to the (closer to us) Hudson Highlands so far). Old Blenheim would be quite a stretch ... I'll keep an eye on Flickr.

I have pictures coming soon of Vassar College Observatory, Old Main and Locust Grove.

I moved Hudson River Heritage Historic District to Hudson River Historic District ... that's the official name. I think the state likes the "Heritage" bit. I had been planning to create that only when I got the right picture, which would be a challenge ... hopefully from Staatsburg or Rhinecliff, with the cross-river view (much better in morning light) and maybe some buildings in front. That would illustrate it best. I'm glad you didn't put in a map because it's a very large district. I might create one later from the description in the application. Daniel Case 00:55, 12 September 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Daniel Case (talk • contribs) 00:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

In general, infobox names should match article titles IMO. It creates some confusion with the reader otherwise. I have been adding "State Historic Site" where relevant for a long time: Washington's Headquarters State Historic Site, where it's as important that the state made it the first-ever state historic site in the country as it is that Washington slept there, for instance. You can't always go by the names the NPS uses, as the project has recognized ... Slabsides is always going to remain that way; no one calls it "John Burroughs Cabin" and we wouldn't use that in the infobox. The federal naming system also omits the "National Historic Site" on a number of sites so designated.

The register number is all the connection to the official system we need, IMO, and it's right there in the infobox.

I'll leave John Jay's home the way you did it until I get a picture (I had one but the memory card with it and I lost everything on it). Daniel Case 02:40, 16 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Update to that: I was back in the area last weekend and got it, plus a contemporary one for the Elephant Hotel. They have snow on them, which actually improves on what I would have gotten in summertime and makes them look all Currier & Ives-y. It will take my usual eternity to add them, unless you want them earlier. Daniel Case (talk) 06:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The more that I think about it, I can see your point re: State Historic Site in the infobox, it's sort of superfluous (though for now I'm not changing some of the local ones that have it).

I guess we need a line in the infobox where we can tell people how it's listed if the name commonly used is not the one in the NRHP data base. The bridge infobox is set up that way ... sort of to accomodate situations like the one that used to prevail with Cabin John Bridge (read the article it redirects to).

In that direction, I have some interesting issues coming up with U.S. Post Office (Wappingers Falls, New York) and Gardiner School. Both of them are now used and commonly known as their communities' municipal buildings. I can't very well put "U.S. Post Office" in the infobox for the former, can I? Because Wappingers Falls has a new post office a few blocks away.

Maybe I'll raise this over at the project talk page. Daniel Case 03:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as the pictures go, I think there may be some issue with the Commons servers. I've seen it on other articles. Daniel Case 03:31, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Poughkeepsie
You created some of those Poughkeepsie NHL article just in the nick of time. I had pictures ready to upload, and did. I did some research and made Locust Grove into a real article (Take a look! It only took an hour to put together). I also put in a contemporary pic of Main Building (Vassar College) (after a brief flirtation naming it Old Main, a Google check found that the college calls it Main Building and it gets a lot more Google hits ... "Old Main" is used more widely for the 1907 building at SUNY New Paltz, which really ought to be on the National Register itself) and I might expand the article later with info from Vassar's online encylopedia (yes, it would be a reliable source). You may also want to add some of your external links to Vassar College Observatory, which I changed to the NRHP infobox as it's a defunct observatory.

You may notice, also, that I insisted on "Locust Grove" in the infobox title. That's what the state puts on signs, and what the big sign at the traffic light on Route 9 says. I think we'll just have to create a "listed_as" parameter in the infobox for these situations ... I'll try to get a discussion going to get consensus at the project talk page.

Some further notes:


 * Be careful to distinguish between cities/villages and towns in New York where they both have the same name. Linking to Poughkeepsie, New York just gets you to the disambiguation page (Almost all of Poughkeepsie's NHLs are located outside of the city, in the town).


 * Go check the RHP lists for each county and update the name there if you rename something.

Keep going! Glad that you're doing what you're doing! Saved me a little work today.

Daniel Case 17:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I think I can get Locust Grove into DYK, as "...that Locust Grove was the first Hudson Valley estate to be designated a National Historic Landmark"? Daniel Case 17:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, what you're thinking of could probably best be accomplished with a navbox: something like "Hudson Valley Landmarks" (I've designed some for the fashion project: lingerie, hosiery and cosmetics (a very different side of me, hmm?). All reflect my philosophy that navboxes should have a picture where possible). But I'd rather not design one until all the articles in it were not redlinked ... I'm not sure if we're at that point yet).

To get a photo out of a .PDF (I'm assuming you're using Acrobat Reader): There should be a selection box tool on the toolbar. Select the image (you have to be careful, because unlike most programs if you make an error you can't adjust it afterwards), then choose Copy or hit Ctrl-C, then open up the imaging program of your choice, create a new file and paste it in, then edit to taste (This is my favorite way of getting around images you can't download directly from webpages ... print the page to PDF and then do this). I got this image from this PDF that way. That, however, had to be saved as a .png; for some reason PDF cuts won't make good .JPGs.

I'll take a look at that recipe. Right now, since I've reached a point in my photo backlog that corresponds to a time when I wasn't taking many photos last month because I was sick for a week, I think I'll take a break from NRHP for a few days and work on some other things — schools I need to fix up, a road article I've been planning for some time, and such.

Also, that day's images were the last of my most recent multiple NHL image hauls. I have maybe three more pictures left from my August file that are intended for articles (and only one is an RHP). Perhaps, though, this weekend I can go down with my son to the Westchester side of the Hudson south of Croton and get not only some of the Metro-North stations down that way but some of the NHLs we don't have yet from that area (Draper House, Armour-Stiner, Van Cortlandt Manor, I think) as well as Route 9 at the NY 448 junction (Old Dutch Church) where there are literally four separate signs telling you to turn left to stay on Route 9 ... I've been wanting that one for U.S. Route 9 in New York for a long time, almost as much as a picture of the cul-de-sac at the end of the highway near the Canadian border.

And maybe next weekend he and I can take that trip up to Rhinecliff I've been promising him (he's a train junkie, and he would like to see the Amtrak station) and get NHLs up there: Top Cottage, Montgomery Place, plus a river-and-landscape pic for the historic district (I suppose I could use one I have from Rhinecliff, but I was shooting into the sun as it was late in the day. You need to take that one early in the morning). And tons of RHPs in the Rhinebeck and Hyde Park areas, and (I hope) Hudson River Psychiatric Center, although it would be necessary to trespass a bit for a reasonably good image of that one. Fall is just around the corner ... there aren't too many good days for outdoor photography with green leaves left.

I see you went and created a separate Springside (Matthew Vassar Estate) article ... the last of the POK NHLs, and the only one inside the city. Now I'll have to get up there and shoot it (It's very easy to get to, but you have to park and walk the trails).


 * Update: this picture is now up in both the article and the NHL list. I will probably take some time to expand the article as I've done for most of the other NHLs. Daniel Case 16:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

But did Downing design the landscaping? The site brochure says that Frederick Law Olmsted did that (it would make more sense). sorry about confusing Jackson Downing and Jackson Davis ... I'll go reverse that.

BTW, I was two out of three on shooting those Westchester NHLs this weekend. I will be uploading pics of the Draper House and the Armour-Stiner House when I get to them (i.e., don't hold your breath). I also separately got a picture of a good remaining section of Delaware and Hudson Canal, which I see you also started (I'm going to move much of the canal section from Delaware and Hudson Railroad and leave a hatnoted summary behind).

Thanks, BTW, for including a description of the Armour-Stiner House in that article. I could probably have figured which one it was from the numbers on the other houses, but it (unusual for NY) has no historical marker, no number on the road and is screened slightly by a hedge in front. But remebering "octagonal" and "domed" made a big difference. Daniel Case 17:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

As I said, I confused Alexander Jackson Davis and Andrew Jackson Downing ... who both have key ties to Newburgh. But Downing as having only one extant structure makes sense, as he is mainly known for mentoring both Vaux and Olmsted and the books he wrote. Then he died tragically in his late 40s. Daniel Case 19:27, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Locust Grove DYK
You're welcome! Yes, I will put it on the project page ... I've been delinquent in doing that. Daniel Case 16:30, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

October update
I was able to take that other trip up to Rhinecliff with my son and get most of the images I wanted, including one for the Hudson River Historic District that meets the criteria I set for myself (It's great ... the Catskill Escarpment and Kaaterskill High Peak hazed blue across the river, whitecaps on the river itself, and brush from the backyard I was shooting from in the sides. It feels like a Hudson River School painting). I also got Top Cottage, Springside (actually, the cottage itself no longer exists, just its foundations) and the psych center. Montgomery Place remains; Tivoli was a little further north than we were willing to go). And a few regular old RHPs.


 * I have uploaded the HRHD image now and added it to the article and the NHL list. Neat, huh? As with the other NHL articles I will be expanding it based on the stuff in the PDF (or at least what I could read of it ... it seems to time out after the first fifteen or so pages). After that there will be a Rhinecliff RHP, then Top Cottage and I am finally done with my September photos. Daniel Case (talk) 18:25, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, no one deserves a break from Wikipedia and the NRHP project more than you do. Heading to Syracuse? As an SU alum, I would suggest two great RHPs to photograph on campus: the Hall of Languages (that Second Empire building you see coming up University Avenue toward campus) and Crouse College (the Gothic church-like building not too far to the west). In case you don't know which buildings they are. They're the campuses only two RHPS (so far). If you have the time to head out of Syracuse for NHL photos, closest would probably be the Harriet Tubman-related ones located in Auburn, then Morill Hall down at Cornell and maybe Utica Psychiatric Center or the Oneida Community. Read that Montana Standard article ... very interesting. It looks like we can claim the HRHD is the largest actual NHLD/HD in the lower 48. While Butte-Anaconda is the largest by number of resources, HRHD definitely has it beat by total area. I'm not surprised they got that wrong ... the HRHD is not very well-known even within the region (there are no signs telling you you've entered it) and I've learned the NPS people don't even know these things cold either. Perhaps I should drop the reporter an email ... maybe they could and should do a followup story. I definitely see a DYK coming out of this. After Top Cottage, I have no new images of unphotographed NY NHLs coming, although the interior photos of Slabsides are in the pipeline. However, in October when my son and I went to Scranton for the Office convention, I was able to get the lesser-known of that city's pair of NHLs, the Terence Powderly House (PA has a marker nearby but unless you know the address you wouldn't know which house to photograph) and then Grey Towers, Gifford Pinchot's estate near Milford, on the way back. So I can improve the PA list some more. Daniel Case (talk) 05:31, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I also see you've been developing the state NHL list into something like the other states. If you don't mind my ruining your day slightly, can I strongly suggest we develop a separate list for the NYC ones? It's going to be a very long list, and given that the city has more than quite a few states combined, I think this would make lots of sense.


 * Looks like we did it. Going through them, BTW, I noticed that for the Geneseo Historic District you had created two infoboxes, one for the original designation and another for the boundary increase. I think we decided a long time ago in the project that separate articles were certainly not necessary even if they had separate NRIS numbers. It makes more sense to try to put that in the infobox (see how I did it at Church Park Historic District). For the list I put in a picture I found in the main Geneseo, New York article, which has a nice little section about the historic district. We ought to use it in the article as well (althoutgh, ideally, I'd love to go all the way up to Geneseo (and FTM Western New York as a whole) and take some pictures of all the out-of-the-way NHLs. But given that my in-laws moved to North Carolina last year, I have less reason to do that. This weekend, BTW, I am hoping to get up to Slabsides and take a picture of the cabin interior (since today is one of the two days a year it's open) as well as Riverby and maybe some of the RHPs along US 9W. Daniel Case 14:57, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, you don't need to manually add to any article with the NRHP infobox; the "nhl" or "nhld" values take care of it automatically.

(I'm also mildly amused that you created Boston Post Road Historic District ... I passed through that section of US 1 a month ago and, other than being pleasantly woodsy, it's not all that photogenic). Daniel Case 16:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, OK, it's about the houses in the adjoining neighborhood. I thought it might well have to do with that, but given the BPR's historic importance I figured it was just a way of recognizing a section of US 1 as inheriting the legacy (Similarly, there's a section of US 9 in Putnam County just north of the Westchester line recognized as the "Albany Post Road Historic District".