Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 42

New article archive
Over the past 2 hours or so, I've been working on reorganizing our article archive (found here). Instead of using yearly subpages, I've split the archive up into monthly subpages and used a navbox-esque template (NRHP Article Archive) to ease navigation between the archive pages. This restructuring was made necessary by the new Template:ALR, which uses the parser function to do its business (see discussion above). Because this is an expensive parser function, wiki software limits its transclusions to 500 per page. As I went back and began to label all new articles in our archives with this template, I noticed quickly that this was going to be no good. Originally the template had 3 PAGESIZE calls, but through some editing and help from WP:VT, I got it to only use one per transclusion. This wasn't good enough, however, since the yearly subpages had more than 500 article links on them (2009 had over 600 while 2008 had nearly 1500!). Because of this, I was forced to restructure the archive.

I was wondering what you guys' thoughts were as to this structure. If it is pretty well liked, I may extend it to the picture archive as well. ALR is not necessary with pictures, and the picture lists are normally smaller than the article lists, so there's no real motivation other than uniformity. What do you guys think? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:28, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, and btw, if there's no opposition, I'll Afd WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/New articles/2009, 2008, 2007, and 2006 since they're no longer in use. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:32, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I am not following / reviewing all of what you are doing here, but the 2009, 2008, etc. pages which you have emptied should redirect somewhere relevant, perhaps to the first month of the year in your version. They should not be deleted; there is edit history that is conceivably relevant, and there is no benefit to "saving space" or otherwise considering computer performance issues.  For an example of relevance, in a kinda sore subject area, i was criticized for not further developing some article and i think it was implied that i had been underhanded in starting the article.  I realized later that i had in fact announced the new article (and i checked and found it did appear in one of these pages), back when new NRHP article announcements were more important in the WikiProject and would draw many editors' attention.  Also, someone else down the road could want to switch back to annual versions when the 500 limit you mention is changed, or for other reasons.  So, please don't PROD or AFD or otherwise initiate deletion.  Thanks! --doncram (talk) 16:02, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. I've redirected them all to the archive root. Still no one has responded about doing this to the picture archive as well. Any thoughts? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:26, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I am at best indifferent about applying this ALR and converting to month-by-month archive with articles. And as since u say ALR does nothing for pictures, i think u should probably just skip that. --doncram (talk) 04:54, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

article creation drives
In two article creation drives advertised on the WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/to do template, all the NRHP articles in National Register of Historic Places listings in New Haven, Connecticut (60 listings) and in National Register of Historic Places listings in Henrico County, Virginia (29 listings) were created and brought up to a pretty good stub status, with NRHP documents included. A DYK was done in each. Thanks User:Acroterion for doing most the work on the Henrico County's Reynolds Metals Company International Headquarters DYK! Also pretty good descriptions, with sources, were composed for more than 10 entries in each list-article. Those two article drives are concluded. Thanks to those who helped! See Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in New Haven, Connecticut and Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Henrico County, Virginia.

Editors are invited to help in a new drive on National Register of Historic Places listings in Fairfield County, Connecticut (199 listings), in conjunction with WikiProject Connecticut editors, including one who should be able to take and add pics for many. Article drive topic was chosen in discussion at wt:CONN. Please help develop starter articles, or help in any other way! See Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Any requests, ideas, for another drive topic? --doncram (talk) 21:22, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Table headings in Michigan
Before I start making mass changes to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Michigan article and county articles within, I have one concern that I will address here. On the tables for county listings, one of the headings is title City or Town. My concern with this is that Michigan, as well as many other states, do not have towns. Michigan consists of cities, charter townships, and civil townships — no towns. There are also villages and numerous unincorporated areas, but those are under the control of the township in which they are located. I've also noticed many listings are mentioned within a municipality in which they are not actually located, but that's a concern I'll bring up on that page or easily fix on my own. Now, back to the heading, I propose to change the heading to something more relevant instead of City or Town. On the National Register of Historic Places listings in Lenawee County, Michigan, I changed it to Municipality, which can make the column slightly wider but is more accurate. I'm not sure what other term to use. I thought about Locale, but that can be ambiguous. If anyone has any dire concern about my simple changing of this, please state your case. I see it causing an inconsistency issue with the other state articles, but I don't see it to be a real issue at all. I intend to make the alterations to the Michigan articles only, many of which need much work. —  ♣ №tǒŖïøŭş  4lĭfė   ♫   ♪  07:45, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. I think "Municipality" should be not only on Michigan but on all state/county/other lists. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:15, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The column label given in the table should describe what is the actual information provided, so if entries are not municipalities that title shouldn't be used (likewise "City or Town" might not be best, too). In the NRHP tables for Michigan and other states, as generated from the National Register's NRIS database by User:Elkman's program, the locations given are in some cases unincorporated hamlets that are not municipalities, and other location names.  The locations given may be the "nearest" town/village/hamlet, and hence could be across a county line or even a state line from the actual location of the place.  The error is not by the National Register, if those seem to be presented incorrectly in our tables.  In the list-articles for Connecticut where the state is partitioned into towns (and there are no unincorporated areas), all the "City or Town" column titles were changed to Town, i think, and all the locations given were converted to the Town.  I think that lost useful information as the Town is less specific than village/hamlet locations, but it was the consensus decision talked out at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Connecticut/Archive 2.  Also while the NRIS-based info no doubt had some specific spelling and other errors, the conversion using editors' asserted knowledge of locations, rather than a central source, introduced new errors.  Does Michigan have unincorporated areas or are all parts of every county belong to a town? --doncram (talk) 16:48, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Michigan has a tremendous amount of unincorporated areas. I myself live in an unincorporated area.  But, that doesn't mean these areas have their own autonomy.  For governing purposes, areas of each county that have not been incorporated as a city are organized as civil townships or charter townships.  Villages are one step above an unincorporated area and have semi-automony within the township they are located.  Cities, on the other hand, are completely independent and are not controlled by a township, even if they are completely surrounded by it.  My concern with how this relates to the NRHP is that numerous articles I've come across incorrectly list a property by the nearest city, as you have noted, which may be many miles away from the actually property. In Michigan, the state government graciously provides these municipal boundary maps online, and many of the larger townships and cities also have their own boundary maps, which can be used to cite a property's actually location without introducing new errors by changing NRIS information on a Wikipedia article. —  ♣  №tǒŖïøŭş  4lĭfė   ♫   ♪  22:52, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * How about "community"? Einbierbitte (talk) 23:25, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know if this helps, but Pennsylvania is somewhat similar in that counties are subdivided and incorporated in townships. Boroughs (which seem to be similar to "villages" in Michigan) and cities are incorporated from parts of townships. Exceptions to this, of course, are Philadelphia, which is both a city and county, and Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, the only "official" town in PA. While townships are incorporated, there are alot of unincorporated communities in the township. I think titling the column "Municipality" should work fine in the states that are fully incorporated (ie, most states in the Northeast). Nyttend, I believe, has been replacing any unincorporated communities in the PA lists that were given as locations by the NRIS with the relevant township(s). ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 01:07, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The correct nomenclature varies from state to state. "City or town" probably is 100% correct in a few states, but it sounds like "City or township" would be a better choice for Michigan, and other states have other situations. "Municipality" probably needs to be avoided in almost every state, since the term refers to legally incorporated places, and most state lists include the names of various unincorporated places (including townships, postal "cities" that don't correspond to a legally established place, and other unincorporated communities). At the Open Directory Project, we finessed this situation by using the term "Localities" to encompass all manner of cities, towns, villages, boroughs, townships, hamlets, communities, and what-not. The same word (actually the singular version "Locality") would work here. --Orlady (talk) 03:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I like "Locality". --sanfranman59 (talk) 21:07, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I can vouch for the use of "Locality" as a table heading. To address User:Niagara above, listing a historic property as part of an "unincorporated community" might cause some issues — two of which immediately come to mind.  (1) Most unincorporated areas do not have their own articles and will require a redirect or a link to the township in which it is located.  I don't like links that don't go where they say they're supposed to go in this case. (2) More important, unless it is a census-designated place, an unincorporated area will not have a defined boundary and therefore may be potentially erroneous to list a historic property as part of that unincorporated area. Unless it is 100% certain that the property is within a specific unincorporated area (and the unincorporated area has its own article), then the property should just be listed within the overall township.  I haven't actually come across this issue yet. —  ♣  №tǒŖïøŭş  4lĭfė   ♫   ♪  22:58, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Minor comment: Like it or not, these tables do list a lot of unincorporated communities as the locations of listed properties. The tables were initially created with information from the NRIS database. The database lists place names that were on the nomination forms, which placenames often are not incorporated municipalities. And, BTW, many of those unincorporated communities have articles. --Orlady (talk) 23:38, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Redirects aren't needed if you just start the articles. Many of them now have articles because they were listed in the NRHP tables as redlinks at first, and NRHP editors or others then started them.  I have started lots of such, using mention of the one or two NRHP-listed places as being located in or near the place as something to say about it, to start.  User:Sweet kate, working recently on National Register of Historic Places listings in Vigo County, Indiana, has also created a whole bunch of articles on smaller places in Vigo County.  The NRHP lists are good for prompting the generation of articles on placenames that sometimes are fading away from wide use, in part because the NRHP listings date back to the 1960s and 1970s when some places were more distinct from now-suburban regions, or before a hamlet shrank away.  I think the NRHP name sets have enriched the coverage of geography in many states. --doncram (talk) 16:37, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S. One approach to consider is that you could start all the obscure placename articles including mention of the NRHP-listed buildings in them, and only then use your updated/better knowledge of locations to refine the table "Localities" or whatever.  That would build lots of helpful connections between articles, capturing much of the benefit available from the NRHP lists of placenames. --doncram (talk) 16:58, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * One could argue that the unincorporated communities themselves aren't notable. Don't get me wrong, some unincorporated communities have some history behind them (I just got a DYK for one in Pennsylvania). Others, however, are just names on a map. For states where this applies (like Pennsylvania and Michigan), the location of a site should be given as the municipality its in (be it township, borough, village, city, etc) rather than a community, with ambigious boundaries, that may or may not still exist. ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 20:46, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with User:Niagara that some unincorporated areas are just a name on the map, and if they're lucky, a minuscule mentioning in the U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System. There are 20 legally defined unincorporated areas in my county, and some of them consist of an unofficial stretch of signed road, gas station, church, bar/liquor store, and a small number of people.  One place has a liquor store and post office in the same building.  I can't in good conscience create these articles, but they all have a mentioning in their township's article.  Only 6 of the 20 unincorporated areas in my county have articles (and they consist of mere census data since they are census-designated areas in the 2000 census).  In fact, one's a ghost town that hasn't existed in 80 years.  I have yet to come across a NRHP listing in Michigan that falls directly within an unincorporated area.  I'm sure there has to be some of the 1,716 listings in Michigan that are within unincorporated areas.  In the northern rural parts of my state, we have county seats that are unincorporated areas.  If I come across that, I may just have to mention it's "municipality" or "locality" as the township or charter township.  Of course, a note in the article can be made to indicate that the listing is within a certain unincorporated area, but no red-links or redirects should be made for an area that clearly doesn't warrant an article.  —  ♣  №tǒŖïøŭş  4lĭfė   ♫   ♪  22:50, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There are at least a few historic properties/districts that fall squarely within an unincorporated community. As obvious examples, the "Gwinn Model Town Historic District" covers most of Gwinn, Michigan, which, though unincorporated, is a clearly recognizable community; the Cherry Hill Historic District covers most of Cherry Hill, Michigan; and the Eagle River Historic District is in Eagle River, Michigan.  Structures clearly in unincorporated communities include the Holy Redeemer Church (Eagle Harbor, Michigan) in Eagle Harbor, Michigan, the Thomas and Isabella Moore Clyde House in Cherry Hill, Michigan, and the Sheldon Inn in Sheldon, Michigan.  Although Sheldon is so small as to be nearly non-existant, and Cherry Hill is just a crossroads community, the other communities are visually indistiguishable from villages, and would be the best description of location. Andrew Jameson (talk) 02:50, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What if you used the "Location" column to note the unincorporated community. For Eagle River Historic District, put "Roughly Front, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and Main Sts., Eagle River" as the location and put "Houghton Township" in the column in question. ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 15:43, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I know in Pennsylvania it seems as if Post Office addresses are often used, not necessarily incorporated areas - for example the Buttonwood Covered Bridge is in Jackson Township in Lycoming County, but the NRHP lists it as in Liberty (which is a borough in Tioga Co., the next county north) as that is the postal address. Similarly, Archeological Site 36 LY 37 is in Loyalsock Township, but the NRHP lists it as Williamsport as that is its postal address. Is there some consistent way that both kinds of the information (NRHP location and actual) can be presented in these articles and lists? Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 03:22, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

bright orange house
NRHP-listed Henry B. Tompkins House (currently a redlink) in Atlanta, Georgia is the newly-painted-bright-orange house in the news. As here in Atlanta Journal Constitution article, currently showing with pic in the "Most Popular" section of Google News' main page. According to the article, "Built in 1922, the stucco home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as “one of the most complete remaining examples of a Reid villa,” referring to famed Atlanta neoclassical architect Neel Reid." --doncram (talk) 13:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Map
Wouldn't it be more beneficial if the maps showed city street level location of the historic place, instead of a generic dot on the city, from a statewide view? Specifically in Iowa, cause it looks like not all states use maps? C T J F 8 3 chat 20:57, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry I don't fully understand the question, but if you click on the coordinates given in the county lists or on most NRHP articles you'll be able to get the "dot on the map" from google, bing, or other providers. If you use the google map, click on street view and bring the little icon guy to the dot and if Street View covers the area you can see the site.  More precise question will probably get a more precise answer.  Oh, don't forget about the errors that occur in the coordinates...
 * There has been some talk about providing a link that comes up automatically in google street view - I've tried this and am not 100% satisfied, but I'll find an example of how you might do it. Smallbones (talk) 21:17, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Philadelphia City Hall * Google Street View - all the code in the link comes from clicking on "link" in Street View after finding the place and angle you want. Smallbones (talk) 21:26, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, maybe you're asking about the scale of the map? You have to remember everybody is not from Iowa and doesn't know where Davenport is, much less Waterloo. I'm against having more than 1 map in the infobox - it just clogs everything up.  Lots of times I'd prefer a Philadelphia street map to the Pennsylvania map, but would this work for Ottumwa?  Smallbones (talk) 21:26, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * More specific would help, I mean the infobox maps like Davenport City Hall. But you make a good point about not everyone knowing where cities are.  C T J F 8 3  chat 01:27, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * So you don't think a side by side map like this looks good? C T J F 8 3  chat 01:28, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the detour, this is about the scale problem. A good example of why I don't like multiple maps in infoboxes is at Chester, Pennsylvania - the infobox runs off the bottom of the screen and there are very few words on that first screen. There used to be some maps with insets, e.g. Pennsylvania with PA in the USA inset - I don't mind these, but somebody else must because I couldn't find any examples.  Perhaps on the finer scale this would work - a Philadelphia map with Philly in Pennsylvania inset.  Your side-by-side map might cause some problems, least of all in placing the dot.
 * I'm sure I don't represent all the views members of the project have on this. I've put in my 2 cents and I'll let others give their views.  My guess is that you'll get lots of sympathy, but the status quo will likely stay because we're used to the problems it causes.  Smallbones (talk) 02:48, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The maps with the smaller US insets were, I think, superceded with a bunch of new locator maps were rolled out by the German wiki. Incidentenly, Smallbones, if you feel like you could always leave a note with the people who developed the new maps and see if they could do one for Philly (they did really nices ones for NYC and LA). ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 03:04, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The French Wikipedia has a trick with being able to show two maps in the same space - clicking the text below allows you to toggle between two different maps. See the map in the bottom of the infobox in Parc d'État de Black Moshannon for an example. WOuld be neat if we could do that or something similar here, Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 03:57, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That's quite a trick! If the French can do that, there shouldn't be any reason we couldn't also.  Maybe we could one up them and have 3 rotating maps, e.g. USA - Pennsylvania - Philly.  Off on a long road trip so I can't pursue this, but might when I get back!  Smallbones (talk) 04:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's come up before. Right now, the trick cannot be implemented due differences in software between the EN and FR wikis, as well as accessibilty issues. Still would look cool and would solve alot of problems, though. ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 05:14, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I knew about the earlier thread, but missed the software differences that mean it cannot be implemented here. Thanks, Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 13:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Infobox update dealing with autocategorization
I just opened a thread at Template talk:Infobox NRHP. I detailed edits I just made to the Infobox NRHP sandbox that will autocategorize historic districts into state categories rather than the national one. I also added the ability to display a district map if one is available and the ability to handle boundary increases. Comments are welcome there. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:49, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

New Rochelle Railroad Station
The New Rochelle (Metro-North station) is supposedly listed on the NRHP as New Rochelle Railroad Station. So why can't I get an NRHP infobox from the Elkman generator? DanTD (talk) 03:49, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The station was listed on October 14, 2009, and Elkman's tool only includes sites that were listed before March 13, 2009. Any site listed after this date must have an infobox built manually. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 03:57, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, but guess what; Not even NRHP's official site has this... except as the new listings for the week it was supposedly registered. No other details are around. Nothing on the current architectural style, or anything else. It's not on NRHP.com either, and I know you guys dismiss that site as a source, but I thought I'd mention it anyhow. DanTD (talk) 14:39, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That's pretty much all you'll find on nps.gov about any listing that has been announced since the NRIS database was last updated (March 13, 2009). Some state Historic Preservation Offices and local historic societies post nomination forms online, but I don't think that's the case in New York. --sanfranman59 (talk) 15:52, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually as DanTD knows the New York State docs are on-line. And it happens the New Rochelle Railroad Station's documents are there already.  Here is the text doc.  The accompanying photos are also obtainable in the NYS search interface.  The Elkman generator won't provide an infobox yet;  you can cut-and-paste one from another article and adapt it, using the NRHP's weekly new listing announcement as one source (for refnum and for NRHP listing date at least). --doncram (talk) 16:38, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hey, not long ago, i already put the full NRHP doc reference into the article! DanTD, to get the architectural style and other info that would go into the infobox, just take the info from the NRHP doc directly.  E.g.: Architecture=Late Victorian.  That is where data entry staff at the NRHP get the info to put into the NRIS database (sometimes introducing data entry errors), which then eventually is re-released. --doncram (talk) 16:49, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for correcting me, don. I now recall having tried to use New York's SPHINX online system in the past and not having much luck with it. But the links you provide were easy to use. Did they recently change the online user interface? Maybe I'm confusing New York with another state. Are all New York nom forms online? --sanfranman59 (talk) 17:14, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you're probably recalling having difficulty with the NYS interface, which was/is klunky. The fact you have to select the "Results" tab to get the search to run, is most weird, and then the viewer which provides up a document is still as weird as ever, for non-MSIE browsers.  Full instructions are now at WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Editor help' section on New York State .  By the way, that editor help page of ours is pretty hard to find anything in, needs merging with similar "editor resources" and reorganizing.  The NYS interface does work pretty reliably though, and has served User:Pubdog and to a lesser extent me and others, in starting up pretty good stubs for lots of NYS NRHP articles.  (For current tallies of pics and articles, see counting table at Talk:List of RHPs in NY.) --doncram (talk) 17:35, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I made the new infobox for the site. I wish I had more of the info I needed for it, though. DanTD (talk) 18:20, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The new combo infobox looks good to me! And i merged the "Editor help" and "Resources" project pages, now combined and reorganized at WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Editor help (shortcut wp:NRHP help or wp:NRHPhelp ).  The New York-specific info is at WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Editor help now. --doncram (talk) 19:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Not to be nitpicky, but I generally find, when using combo infoboxes, removing duplicate parameters (coord, build date, etc) avoids cluttering the infoboxes and extending its length more than necessary. ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 19:23, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Normally, I do too. But in this case there were already two different coordinates for addresses covering the Amtrak & Metro-North services. The NRHP coordinates appear to cover the station at large, and isn't creating a conflict with either of them so far. DanTD (talk) 01:43, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

NRIS website will move
The old website for NRIS "will be taken offline shortly. Please use NPS Focus". Although Infobox NRHP itself may not need to be changed, a lot of the articles in NRHP categories may link to the old site. It would be better to switch before it goes offline and clearly better to do that automatically. A similar question about a changing website was raised here: /Archive_41. I will look at the suggestions there and may comment further. Mirokado (talk) 17:32, 4 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Well searching for  produces 26,404 hits, so I'm not going to start on that manually! -- Mirokado (talk) 21:53, 5 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Firstly, I think we should see if Elkman will change the reference in the infobox generator. A bot would probably be the best way to replace the web address (although, the name of the new database is different, so that has to changed in each ref as well). I've figured this was going to happen to sooner or later, so I've already been using the new website in place of where NRIS is usually cited. ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 00:18, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I am the operator of User:MerlLinkBot. There is an request on my german user page for helping here. There are 27230 links in article namespace on enwiki and 27772 links on all wikimedia projects
 * Does anybody know something about the rewriting schema? Would by nice if you could help finding the new resources. Below i created a table for collecting different urls and their new resource location. (simply ignore the regex columns if you don't know about it) Merlissimo 15:57, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Glitch for Fort Edward D&H Train Station
For whatever asinine reason the date that Fort Edward D&H Train Station(a.k.a.; Fort Edward-Glens Falls (Amtrak station)) was listed on the NRHP won't show up in the infobox. I tried adding a reference hoping it would expose it, but it didn't work. Who can fix it? DanTD (talk) 13:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The parameter established is no longer supported by the infobox, use added. ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 13:46, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Did it. DanTD (talk) 14:21, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Lancaster Watch Company
I was out in downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania today and was able to get some photos of a few NRHP sites. I was going to start an article on one of the sites, the Lancaster Watch Company, but am stumped on what the article's title should. "Lancaster Watch Company" is right out as I haven't found that phrase anywhere except the NRHP nom. Most newspaper sources call something along the lines of the "Hamilton Watch building". The building has also been converted into a condo, and been renamed "Clock Towers". ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 19:53, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably best to go with (1) the WP:UCN ideal of "Hamilton Watch building", or (2) a descriptive name. I faced this problem with the "H.E. Fledderjohann House, Doctor's Office and Summer Kitchen" in New Knoxville, Ohio — the name is too long to be reasonable, and I didn't want to use the local name of "New Knoxville Heritage Center" because it includes two buildings that aren't NR-listed and thus wasn't really accurate, so I went with the descriptive name of "H.E. Fledderjohann Property".  Nyttend (talk) 02:38, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I take it woudn't matter that the NRHP plaque calls it "Clock Towers" and another plaque nearby says "Clock Towers Formely Hamilton Watch Company. I should mention that the newspaper sources that use "Hamilton Watch building" were written a few years ago, before the renovations were finished. ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 16:27, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Updates to the Infobox
I mentioned above that I had coded some updates in the Infobox NRHP sandbox and several of you replied there. I was just letting you guys know that the edits have been implemented now. I updated the documentation earlier as well to explain the new edits. The new features deal with district articles more than anything, allowing the infobox to handle boundary increases more gracefully. There is also a new option to show a map of a district (such as this map of Beaver Historic District) in the infobox in place of the locator map.

Perhaps the best implementation of this new edit is that it fixes the dreaded autocategorization problem. While the new system, which puts articles into state level categories based on the locmapin parameter, seems to be working fine (Category:Historic districts in the United States has gone down from ~4100 articles last night to now), there is an option to turn off autocategorization all together now. Setting "nocat" to any value will suppress autocats, allowing the editor to manually categorize the article.

Examples of all of the district implementations can be found in the doc (section link) as well as on Urbana Monument Square Historic District, Bridgewater Historic District (Bridgewater, Pennsylvania), and Americus, Georgia – all articles I've edited with the features – while the categorization implementations can be found on any HD article. I was just letting you guys know so you could begin using the new features! --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:30, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Pertaining to this update, there are now substantially fewer pages in Category:Historic districts in the United States. There are still some there, however. While some of them may be there because of the lag of the job queue, most of that has been taken care of. If a few interested editors would like to help me, I plan on going through the national category and suppressing autocategorization by adding "nocat = yes" to the infobox and manually adding the articles to state-level categories. In some cases, it may be more desirable to simply add a locmapin parameter to the infobox, though. Either method will work. Anyone want to help? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 09:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I'll give it a shot. Should be able to do a good deal of them once I get home later and can use AWB. --Ebyabe (talk) 18:01, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

New Results Bot
Has anyone ever though of making a feed for this project under AlexNewArtBot? I have a feed for WikiProject Mississippi on my watchlist, so I'm made aware of new articles that might be under the project's scope, in which case I can add the project banner to the talk page if it isn't already there.

The way the bot works is by looking for keywords that follow rules we create in the bodies of all new articles. For example, if we want articles with the string "National Register of Historic Places" in them to show up in our list, we can add it to a special rules page, and the bot will add it. We can also search for other words/phrases, though. While "National Register of Historic Places" is highly likely to be on a page under this project's scope, other words like "contributing", "pivotal", and "district" may not always be in NRHP articles, but may be on some of them. The bot can handle this for us using its point-threshold system. Each text string is given a point value – strings highly likely to mean that the article is under our scope are given higher point values, and strings less likely to mean the article is in our scope are given small point values. This means that if only one of the three examples above is matched, the article will not be placed on our list; however, if all three are matched, it will.

For example, say we have a total point threshold of 10. We should assign the string "National Register of Historic Places" to have something close to that.. 8 or 9... or maybe even 10. (Although some articles contain the phrase when they aren't really under our scope.. like List of heritage registers.. so it probably wouldn't be a good idea to set it to 10.) For "contributing", maybe we could set it to like 4. Same for "district". Maybe "pivotal" would be 2 or 3. The word "listed" could be about 5. This means that if a property had the words "contributing", "district", and "listed", the total amount of points would be 4+4+5=13, which is greater than 10, and thus the article would appear on our list.

I'm actually kind of surprised that this project doesn't have one, since so many others do. I thought maybe we could transclude the list in the new articles and pictures section on the main page (perhaps in a hidden box) with something to the effect of "And these new articles may be under our scope as well." It would also be a good page to have on your watchlist so you could keep up with article creation rates. While a lot of people list their new articles on the project page, there are many NRHP articles that aren't found anywhere in our new article archive, and this bot would probably catch many of them.

What do you guys think? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:20, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I suspect that the reason we don't have any such thing right now is that you're the best coder among us, and you've not yet done it. I can't understand how these things work, but since you're willing, please go for it.  Nyttend (talk) 14:29, 6 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I just created the rules for the bot; the next time it runs, the results will be written to User:AlexNewArtBot/NRHPSearchResult. If you put it on your watchlist now, you'll be able to see when the bot creates it. Depending on what it returns, I may have to tweak the rules a bit. Now I'm just playing the waiting game. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 09:26, 8 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The bot just ran. Apparently.... we've been making a lot more articles than is reflected on the front page haha. This thing is pretty accurate (though it did give a few hits that weren't right, so I upped the threshold a bit); almost all of the results were positive. The list can be found at User:AlexNewArtBot/NRHPSearchResult. I'll add it to the front page now. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:03, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Elkman down
While uploading photos a few minutes ago, I was using the Elkman generator to get information for the photo captions; a minute after getting results for one place, I searched for another, and I found that the website had gone down — both infoboxes and county lists are down. Hopefully this is a simple error, but I thought I'd warn everyone. Nyttend (talk) 05:40, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi ... it's working now.--Pubdog (talk) 09:50, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

House on a state line
In the course of visiting (a year and a half ago) the William E. Ward House (aka "Ward's Castle") in Rye Brook, New York, (it's listed as just Rye, but that happened before the village of Rye Brook was incorporated, so I feel justified with the change), I discovered that quite likely the building (see the satellite view) and definitely the 8 acres it's on straddle the New York-Connecticut state line. So, I wrote the article that way and added it to the Fairfield County NRHP list even if it's not on the NPS version of same list.

Has anybody else had any other listings like this, other than linear ones or bridges? Any other National Register-listed buildings or structures that actually sit on a state line? Daniel Case (talk) 03:45, 9 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The 1872 California-Nevada State Boundary Marker is on the state line. It's an object (not a building nor a structure), and it's linear in a vertical sense. The Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge is in both California and Oregon - the state line goes through it. Einbierbitte (talk) 20:49, 9 July 2010 (UTC)


 * A state line boundary marker on a state line? Who'd have thunk it? :-) (See also Beginning Point of the U.S. Public Land Survey, an NHL on the OH-PA state line) Nor does it surprise me that there are NRHP-listed protected areas that straddle state lines. But houses ... that would be interesting to know if there are others. Maybe we could make a list? Daniel Case (talk) 22:10, 10 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Old Spanish Trail (trade route) spans SIX states haha. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:12, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * One day, it is my fervent hope, the Appalachian Trail will be listed, preferably as an NHL. That would span 14 states. Daniel Case (talk) 20:56, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Not a state line, but the Haskell Free Library and Opera House is on the border bewtween Vermont and Quebec. ​​​​​​ ​​ Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 22:22, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Which is, of course, even cooler. Daniel Case (talk) 20:56, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

There may also be one in Rockland County, New York, right on the NJ state line, if not next to it (just as St. Thomas Episcopal Church (Amenia Union, New York) backs on Connecticut). Daniel Case (talk) 20:56, 13 July 2010 (UTC)